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Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood |OT| Y'all Need to Calm Down

Wilsongt

Member
Got a really good group and cleared the Royal City of Salt last night.

The music.

The nostalgia.

The throwbacks.

10/10 would suffer through again
 

Wilsongt

Member
I'm not a fan of exactly how the Void and Auracite have been explained in the story. The whole multiverse that they came up with is confusing.

Spoilers for all content released

1st World - Literally succumbed to Light, which apparently now is a bad thing. Things are too damn bright. HydaMinfilia said cya and went to world 1. Do we need a balance then. Is Hydaelyn not inherently good? What does this say about Zodiark?

Prime World - The world our player characters all exist in.

Void World - Was a normal world, implied that it became the void after the warrior of light and adventurers started getting addicted to white Auracite crack rocks. Eventually these crack addicts turned into monsters, including the Lucavi(?), who fought over the remaining aether on that world until the whole place turned to shit. All voidsent come from this world. They find cracks in our world to enter with the purpose of satiating their hunger for more aether. Is it possible that the characters sealing up the primals was occurring 100's of years ago? It has been implied that the warrior of light and/or the 12 have been summoned more than once. Perhaps an earlier summoning 100's of years ago to defeat the primals was when that universes WoL got corrupted.

While not explained, you'd think that all the shards are on the same time period across all universes, but then wouldn't voidsent have just been a recent phenomenon. Why would the Lucavi come from there if FFT occured 100's of years earlier. Why would the Lucavi or any voidsent work together if we know that the voidsent were warring and fucking each other up? Why would the zodiac stones have any connection to half way across the world warriors trying to seal up primals?

All in all tho, living in the world of FFXIV has to be next level shitty. The most immediate issue was the Garlean empire, but you have an ever occuring supernatural phenomenon of Primal summoning, which to make matters worse have the power to mind control 99.99% of the population if encountered. You have world ending Allagan technologies hidden in places waiting to be found and abused. A storyline in The Crystal Tower where if the villain succeeded then all life would have been sucked into a void. A multi-universe threat in Omega. The chance that voidsent are going to break through and fuck everyone's day up. The FFT zodiac stones exist with the ability to possess people with ancient sealed demons. Some assholes in robes planning who knows what.

Light and Dark balance was a thing in FF3, too. Too much light is just as bad as too much dark.
 

Squishy3

Member
12 new wards, please look forward to it!

What they need is 120 new wards with the option for 240 more. Not 12.
Well, if they routinely add more new wards every patch or every other patch, coupled with housing reclamation being reinstated, it should mostly solve the issue for most servers. On Ultros, for example, right before my raid time at 8:00 there were still some houses left in the ward I bought my plot in.

I know iammieam plays on Leviathan, and he said they sold out every plot almost immediately, but then I saw something on Reddit saying one FC bought up most of the plots. They need to implement account bound housing, where you buy a personal house and it's shared across all[/] your characters.

Also actually do something about people scalping plots.

I'm not a fan of exactly how the Void and Auracite have been explained in the story. The whole multiverse that they came up with is confusing.

Spoilers for all content released

1st World - Literally succumbed to Light, which apparently now is a bad thing. Things are too damn bright. HydaMinfilia said cya and went to world 1. Do we need a balance then. Is Hydaelyn not inherently good? What does this say about Zodiark?

Prime World - The world our player characters all exist in.

Void World - Was a normal world, implied that it became the void after the warrior of light and adventurers started getting addicted to white Auracite crack rocks. Eventually these crack addicts turned into monsters, including the Lucavi(?), who fought over the remaining aether on that world until the whole place turned to shit. All voidsent come from this world. They find cracks in our world to enter with the purpose of satiating their hunger for more aether. Is it possible that the characters sealing up the primals was occurring 100's of years ago? It has been implied that the warrior of light and/or the 12 have been summoned more than once. Perhaps an earlier summoning 100's of years ago to defeat the primals was when that universes WoL got corrupted.

While not explained, you'd think that all the shards are on the same time period across all universes, but then wouldn't voidsent have just been a recent phenomenon. Why would the Lucavi come from there if FFT occured 100's of years earlier. Why would the Lucavi or any voidsent work together if we know that the voidsent were warring and fucking each other up? Why would the zodiac stones have any connection to half way across the world warriors trying to seal up primals?

All in all tho, living in the world of FFXIV has to be next level shitty. The most immediate issue was the Garlean empire, but you have an ever occuring supernatural phenomenon of Primal summoning, which to make matters worse have the power to mind control 99.99% of the population if encountered. You have world ending Allagan technologies hidden in places waiting to be found and abused. A storyline in The Crystal Tower where if the villain succeeded then all life would have been sucked into a void. A multi-universe threat in Omega. The chance that voidsent are going to break through and fuck everyone's day up. The FFT zodiac stones exist with the ability to possess people with ancient sealed demons. Some assholes in robes planning who knows what.
Ramza shouts during the raid that the enemies coming out of the Auracite we're fighting aren't voidsent or simple monsters, they're something different. Unless Unukulhai shows up suddenly during the 24 man, I doubt it's going to have much to do with the overarching Hydaelyn/Zodiark plot. If anything, the auracite might just be serving as aether batteries and then the people using them (like the mysterious person at the end that turns into Argath) turns into a primal-like being but is completely consumed by it instead of controlling it ala King Thordan/Shiva, dialogue from the boss during the encounter also seems to support this theory since when it summons the Shade adds that tether together and need to be separated it says something along the lines of "Rise, my puppet!" and they share the appearance of the person that used the stone.
 
Even outside of optimal play, there are very few situations where things go to shit where I still need to use single target GCD heals. Gathering Lilies most of the time entails straight up playing badly.

There's nothing passive about a system that needs you to go out of your way in other to use it - and even then, as said before WHM OGCDs are all planned and timed. Having them up 10-12s earlier just means I have to hold onto them for 10-12s more.
 

iammeiam

Member
I know iammieam plays on Leviathan, and he said they sold out every plot almost immediately, but then I saw something on Reddit saying one FC bought up most of the plots. They need to implement account bound housing, where you buy a personal house and it's shared across all[/] your characters.


I'm relatively sure alts buying up all the new plots weren't the problem on Levi. The queue to get in was over a thousand people within a minute or two, and by the time I got through the queue Shirogane was gone and we were down to like 10 post-move Smalls available in the old wards. There wasn't enough time for people to log in on alts, get through the queue, and buy multiples.

It's a bigger server overall, which makes the problem worse because we have more people rushing the same number of plots. I didn't see the Reddit post, but Levi does have Geuno on it which is some five-FC-alliance with I think literally thousands of players. I know that at least two of the G' FCs got plot 30s, and their members buying up a ton of houses would make sense since there's so many of them. I'd also assume GAF and ZR got a lot of houses on Ultros; not necessarily bought by alts, just a function of the size of the FC.

Even outside of optimal play, there are very few situations where things go to shit where I still need to use single target GCD heals. Gathering Lilies most of the time entails straight up playing badly.

I went back and looked at our resets from last night; we had a number of clown-show pulls with deaths that required extra single-target healing, but across all 5 clears our WHM generated 33 lilies. 15 went on Benison, so at most they got 18 lilies worth of CD reduction spread over five fights and like thirty eight minutes of actual fight time. I honestly don't think that's enough to have actually gained a CD in a fight.
 

scy

Member
I'll just stick with the point that WHM is fine in most situations simply because you can beat a tiny screw into the wall with their assortment of hammers. It was just their toolkit needed a screwdriver really badly and they didn't get one.

I know iammieam plays on Leviathan, and he said they sold out every plot almost immediately, but then I saw something on Reddit saying one FC bought up most of the plots. They need to implement account bound housing, where you buy a personal house and it's shared across all[/] your characters.


Because this will forever annoy me, I went to log in at 5:00 AM CST and got hit with a lobby error. Then the launcher refused to get the giant PLAY button until a few relaunches before I finally got in queue at 5:02 AM. Position ~1600+.

I don't mind not getting a lot. I expected to lose the race. I just wish I was allowed to try.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
They really fucked up the housing the way it started, and I'm not just talking about general availability or prices.

Who in their right fucking mind thought that small housing would be suitable for a FC? Why would you design your map around having a high number of those?

I have a radical plan that would fix some of the issues with housing and improve upon one of the things they were supposed to facilitate: Community.

My idea would be to scrap all of the current housing areas. A new area would be made specifically for FC Housing. The area would be a crescent island.

crescent_moon_island_by_fu_reiji-d9p9ubs.png

Along the inner crescent there would be designated housing plots the size of mansions going through the whole half ring. There will be a beach of course with the houses that are closest to the center having beach front property. There will also be plots on the other side across from these houses that are backed with a forest area that has a river and a pond. That way you get the best of Limsa, Shirogane, and Gridania with your FC's choice on what plot you want. The middle area between each sides of housing will be a developed road with markets and people. FC's will be able to upgrade their houses from small, to medium, and large. The plots will have Japanese school club rules, if a FC doesn't have 5 members that are lvl 50 that have played in X number of days (when you think about it this is actually generous), then your FC gives up the plot.

This system would make socializing with other players and FC's a lot higher and how the original housing system was supposed to work.

From there I would make the hard decision to scrap individual housing and focus on apartments buyable or awarded to the WoL in Ishgarde, Kugane, or somewhere else. These also would be upgradeable in size. One of the main reasons people dislike the apartments is that they are so tiny. They somehow have the power to make 1,000's of apartments instanced, but can't allow them to be made bigger?

This of course would take work and for a time redirect work from other things, but if they can build that canal that doesn't do anything in Rabanastre, I think they could do this.

On the upside, what I propose would do wonders for server costs and likely would save them money over time. The ever burgeoning wards increase server usage a lot. Consolidating it to the crescent islands would allow a lot less wards and a lot less information that has to be fetched from the server everytime someone enters an abandoned ward. While the private apartments in the cities would take some server usage, overall they'd likely take less than all of the apartments (fc and private). Most of the dent from them will just be on the database that stores what exactly is in their instanced house.

With the current system in place, even if you got rid of the problems that personal housing brought, you'd still be left with FC's stuck with smalls and mediums. I think overall it would be better to just pull an ARR and fix the problem at its source.
 

EndcatOmega

Unconfirmed Member
All this talk is belying the fact that we still don't have housing at the bottom of the pit next to Demon Wall after I dreamed YoshiP promising it. It's disgusting, quite frankly.
 

Squishy3

Member
I'll just stick with the point that WHM is fine in most situations simply because you can beat a tiny screw into the wall with their assortment of hammers. It was just their toolkit needed a screwdriver really badly and they didn't get one.



Because this will forever annoy me, I went to log in at 5:00 AM CST and got hit with a lobby error. Then the launcher refused to get the giant PLAY button until a few relaunches before I finally got in queue at 5:02 AM. Position ~1600+.

I don't mind not getting a lot. I expected to lose the race. I just wish I was allowed to try.
Yeah, I'm not trying to excuse those server issues at all. That shit sucks, I got really lucky and got in at like number 100 on Ultros.


It'd probably be better if they could figure out a system where the purchasing isn't live when the server opens, announce a start time prior to servers going up, hit a button at like 10PM and it's activated like how they do the events that don't require a maintenance to start them. This'd give everyone reasonable time to get logged onto the server and not get screwed over by issues like what happened on Tuesday morning.

They could even stagger it between wards over the course of like a week or something.
 

Astral

Member
I beat the new MSQs last night.
Single player Lakshmi was cool. I expected just another regular Lakshmi fight like they did with Titan a while back. Who the hell was the imperial at the very end? I guess were not supposed to know yet? Also, Yotsuyu is totally getting arrested once she gets to Doma right?

I also unlocked the new raid and I’m so hyped. It’s really cool how they kinda put
Ramza
and
Alma
in the game but not really.
 

Abhor

Member
Cleared the Rabanastre raid earlier with girlfriend. We both went as DPS (NIN and MNK) and I guess we had great luck to get it done with our first group. We only wiped on the second and final boss once. Aside from some of the aoes leaving me scratching my head it wasn't super hard or anything.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket

Unless it's a lot of new wards, it's just going to be the same problem. I honestly can't think of a better way to sell them, other than limiting purchase to one per account. Thew only way to fix it is to add a LOT of new wards. Anything under 48 wards per housing area will be too little.


One thing that I do think would help a little with congestion from buyers on day 1 is to open all the wards to visitors early. They should have done this for Shirogane. Let everyone spread out so everyone isn't camped at the Aetheryte. A week before 4.2, do a maintenance to open them all up.
 

Squishy3

Member
Unless it's a lot of new wards, it's just going to be the same problem. I honestly can't think of a better way to sell them, other than limiting purchase to one per account. Thew only way to fix it is to add a LOT of new wards. Anything under 48 wards per housing area will be too little.


One thing that I do think would help a little with congestion from buyers on day 1 is to open all the wards to visitors early. They should have done this for Shirogane. Let everyone spread out so everyone isn't camped at the Aetheryte. A week before 4.2, do a maintenance to open them all up.
I made the suggestion they should also look into a system where they can flip the purchase button on separately from maintenance, like they do the events. Set a dedicated time later in the day/week to open the plots being available for purchase.
 
After seeing how the hairbun style looks on Miqo'te I can only assume the new Saint's Wake ears will have the ears clipping out of them instead of having them hidden like they should be.
 
Finally got a competent group for Rabanastre that didnt wipe 10 times on the 2nd boss. The last boss was interesting to say the least. I love how the raid decends into XII and then Tactics. I hated the Bangaa in XII too.
 

Redx508

Member
Rabanastre loot run at 9pm EST 10/13/2017

Quote to reveal sign up

If you don't arrive 10 min after scheduled time, whoever asks first will get your place
 

Thorgal

Member
I haven't dived into Shinryu ex yet as i'm busy with Neo but overall how would the fight rank in difficulty compared to say O3S?

For once it feels they are on the mark when they said between o2 and O3.

The fight itself feels pretty hectic at first since you have so many things happen at once but once everyone knows how each mechanic is handled it works great.
 

Bebpo

Banned
For once it feels they are on the mark when they said between o2 and O3.

The fight itself feels pretty hectic at first since you have so many things happen at once but once everyone knows how each mechanic is handled it works great.

Still a lot easier than Thordan Ex was at launch, right? I read people took days to be able to beat it whereas everyone seems to be beating Shinryuu Ex from day 1? I wasn't there during this time in HW, so curious if it follows the pattern everyone's been saying about everything in SB being somewhat easier than the same timeframe content in HW.


Speaking of which, I thought the smaller town area (RR in SB) is supposed to expand every .1 patch and become a big thriving town by the final patch? Looks the same to me.
 

B.K.

Member
I tried Shinryu Ex tonight. That's going to be a tough fight. We got to Diamond Dust a few times, but never got past it. It would probably help if I wasn't so bad at the game. The healers finally told me to stay in tank stance during the fight to live through Akh Morn.
 

Omni

Member
Still a lot easier than Thordan Ex was at launch, right? I read people took days to be able to beat it whereas everyone seems to be beating Shinryuu Ex from day 1? I wasn't there during this time in HW, so curious if it follows the pattern everyone's been saying about everything in SB being somewhat easier than the same timeframe content in HW.

Yeah, feels far easier than Thordan was back in i190 stuff. That said, I'm really impressed with the fight, QTE aside. SE did a great job this time around, IMO. Especially after the snooze-fests that were Sophia, Zurvan, Susan, and Lakshmi, at release.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
When I jumped back to raise my ilv a week ago I wanted to grab Susano's weapon. Got only 3 clears, mostly with random people when it was brand new and at the time many parties would hit the enrage timer.
I was shocked to see how easy it got with higher ilv, feels like a slightly longer Hard mode battle to be honest.
 

Omni

Member
I'd like to take a moment just to say how /amazing/ alliance duty roulette is

like why did this take them so long to implement :|
 

Qvoth

Member
i actually think the 1st phase of shinryu ex is the hardest part of the fight
the fight is even easier than v2s if you ask me

1 big tip for shinryu ex fight is to bring the enemy list to somewhere noticable, by default it's near bottom left of your screen
 

Heartfyre

Member
I loved the MSQ this time.

Stormblood ended the way most RPGs do: "we liberated the city! We did it! We woooooooon!", but with this patch, having to see Ala Mhigo after liberation, we see the problems of the aftermath. How do we rebuild the economy? What do we do with prisoners of war? What of the native-born Ala Mhigans who only knew Garlean rule? How do we turn the populace from vengeful soldiers to law-abiding citizens? What kind of government do we establish in place of imperium and monarchy? What of the divided loyalties of those who fled Garlean rule and established a life elsewhere? Such great and important questions that this patch did a great job succinctly raising and (mostly) resolving. I felt it was a very intelligent and mature telling, and I was very impressed by how much they could cover so efficiently.
 

iammeiam

Member
I'm incredibly curious to see what the intended Shinryu audience thinks of the fight. For the most part it's a solid Thordan successor, down to being incredibly recoverable at basically any point, but the very end of the fight seems sort of weirdly tuned given who it's aiming for. Most of the fight seems to follow the trend of not threatening you with a DPS check and instead just wanting you to focus on mechanics. Which makes the end seem kind of weird? Phase spoiler, I guess.
It's not like it felt super tight, but killing them without LB did feel like an 'ok Everyone push buttons please' moment, and we're a.) overgeared, and b.) not the target audience. Given that P1 and adds have incredibly lenient DPS checks and go in hard on mechanics, the final push being straight burn with nothing else going on is a surprise.
I really like the fight, I'm just curious to see if it resonates as well with the people it's targeted to.

P1 is definitely more chaotic but less annoying to recover during; final phase is much more straightforward, but deaths at the wrong time tend to be more annoying to deal with. It's an A+ fight for ridiculous near-wipe experiences, though.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Yeah, feels far easier than Thordan was back in i190 stuff. That said, I'm really impressed with the fight, QTE aside. SE did a great job this time around, IMO. Especially after the snooze-fests that were Sophia, Zurvan, Susan, and Lakshmi, at release.

I think a lot of the times it's tough to balance a fight for two sets of groups: one being a group that's a static with voice chat and the other being a pf group of strangers and no voice chat. There can be fights that are simple and easy for the former but 11/10 hardest difficulty boss ever for the latter just because a lot of coordination is needed.

For example even doing Zurvan at lvl.70 unsync i300 today is a very tough fight on pf w/o voice chat because of the coordination required to not wipe meteors, just like Coil T9. Join a clear or farm party and it will take hours to clear usually today. I'm sure at release Zurvan would've been an insanely difficult fight for non-voice chat pf groups. Susano was pretty rough for pf groups but not that bad, mainly dps check problems and Lakshmi wasn't too bad as long as people stayed in pairs for the charm bit. I wonder how Shinryuu Ex will be for those kind of groups.

I do all my high end raiding with random pf people usually no voice chat, so will see how it goes...
 

Fraxin

Member
I loved the MSQ this time.

Stormblood ended the way most RPGs do: "we liberated the city! We did it! We woooooooon!", but with this patch, having to see Ala Mhigo after liberation, we see the problems of the aftermath. How do we rebuild the economy? What do we do with prisoners of war? What of the native-born Ala Mhigans who only knew Garlean rule? How do we turn the populace from vengeful soldiers to law-abiding citizens? What kind of government do we establish in place of imperium and monarchy? What of the divided loyalties of those who fled Garlean rule and established a life elsewhere? Such great and important questions that this patch did a great job succinctly raising and (mostly) resolving. I felt it was a very intelligent and mature telling, and I was very impressed by how much they could cover so efficiently.

Totally agree.
In addition, I liked that Lyse realized that she is not really fit to lead.it was clear in 4.0 that she was not ready.I was expecting they will address it after they face Garlemald again,but glad they did in this patch.Just trying to learn from Hien by helping the liberation of Doma was not enough.
 

Zomba13

Member
So I think I'm happy with my house (for now at least). Apart from the nagging in the back of my head that I should've tried for a medium house (even though that would've left me with next to no gil) I like my cozy shack.

Big Big thank you to everyone that crafted me all the things I wanted. I think I still need a mail box but I'll have to look at what mats I need/how much they are.

If anyone cares to look I'm at Shirogane Ward 1, Plot 14
stealthbrag
. The basement is still a bit shit though, I had an idea to make it like a throne room but then I also wanted a bedroom like area and I needed to display my dolls so it just looks a bit of a mess.

The imgur album was updated. Looks like they do actually cover the Miqo'te ears.

The Fox ears should've done the same. I would love it if they patched them.
 
I hope S-E does something about the story text bubble size issue. I haven't played the past couple days because of it. I'd like to start 4.1's MSQ story but it's just too hard to read anything right now, even with the whole 'enlarge system UI' box ticked, since I'm on PS4 Pro and playing in 4K.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
Shinryu after ATM is basically a completely different fight, which while fun is an awful way to design fights in an MMO pushing people to pug
 

MogCakes

Member
Royal City is kind of disappointing. On one hand it's awesome to know the location of
ancient Ivalice's capital,
but Rabanastre itself doesn't remind me at all of the dense city in XII. It's just more Ul Dahn/Ala Mhigan-esque architecture in the same spaced out design as other cities in XIV. The closest it gets is the Garamscythe Waterway, which was a cool take on the sewers compared to its original incarnation.

EDIT: I'm not really fond of the storyline's premise, either. I was kinda expecting more than
theater playwrights
, as neat as their airship is.
 

Shanaynay

Member
I really enjoyed the MSQ for this patch. Hopefully the quality persist in future patches.
MSQ:
Not really a spoiler per say but just to be safe. After seeing that random Qiqirn in the last quest i wonder if they'll end up being a beast tribe down the line. I'd assume they'd be the usual crafting/gathering tribe.

I cleared Rabanastre recently, i wish the instance got a bigger reaction from me but i never played Tactic. (got some reactions from the XII stuff tho)
Yiazmat when?
Still, i enjoyed it. Same with the 4 mans, simple as usual but still enjoyable. The gear's pretty awful in both the 24-mans and the 4-mans though, but that's only because i hate SE's boner on huge collars (on Skalla's gears). I know for the 24-mans it's supposed to be Tactic inspired but it didn't translate well into XIV, looks like low level shit, IMO.
 

Wilsongt

Member
I really enjoyed the MSQ for this patch. Hopefully the quality persist in future patches.
MSQ:
Not really a spoiler per say but just to be safe. After seeing that random Qiqirn in the last quest i wonder if they'll end up being a beast tribe down the line. I'd assume they'd be the usual crafting/gathering tribe.

I cleared Rabanastre recently, i wish the instance got a bigger reaction from me but i never played Tactic. (got some reactions from the XII stuff tho)
Yiazmat when?
Still, i enjoyed it. Same with the 4 mans, simple as usual but still enjoyable. The gear's pretty awful in both the 24-mans and the 4-mans though, but that's only because i hate SE's boner on huge collars (on Skalla's gears). I know for the 24-mans it's supposed to be Tactic inspired but it didn't translate well into XIV, looks like low level shit, IMO.

Spoilet stuff:

yes, they will most likely be the 3rd beast tribe of this expansion. Whether they get a Primal or not is hard to say at this point, though.
 

Qvoth

Member
did 2+ hours of uznair canals run, went into hidden canals 4 times total
didn't even use my gazelleskin maps
got like 700k

i think clearing 7th floor of normal uznair always gives you the hidden canals map, but earlier floors can drop that map too
 

royox

Member
I dunno what they did to SMN but it feels fun as hell now with all those instant ruins and egi-wide raid buffs.
 

Atolm

Member
Well, I didn't get a house but cleared the MB of Mastercraft Demimaterias before everyone else. I speculated with them and sold them for an astronomical profit.

Also crafted the first Shinryu bardings of my server and people is willing to pay whatever you ask for them and I really mean it. Maybe the fact that it requires armorer specialist has something to do with it.

But what do I do with 100 more million on top of another 200 without a house.

Godammit.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Well, I didn't get a house but cleared the MB of Mastercraft Demimaterias before everyone else. I speculated with them and sold them for an astronomical profit.

Also crafted the first Shinryu bardings of my server and people is willing to pay whatever you ask for them and I really mean it. Maybe the fact that it requires armorer specialist has something to do with it.

But what do I do with 100 more million on top of another 200 without a house.

Godammit.

Shiiiiiiiiet. I always miss out on the early patch money making.
 
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