FFXIV: A Realm Reborn

[AngryPidgeon]

He says that about everyone to mean 'significant other'.

I got 7219 on the benchmark - Extremely High.

(hue hue)

[AngryPidgeon]

Spoiler: muh sexy hyur guy

Spoiler: who does this look like? my catboy..

[AngryPidgeon]

Way to gay up the thread Iec

u no u luv it

[AngryPidgeon]

What is that?

[AngryPidgeon]

Oh thats p exciting : )

Can I DL the client before this all happens?

[AngryPidgeon]

Are you an SE representative? I have my suspicions sometimes : )

[AngryPidgeon]

For some reason I've always been opposted to the t-word. I have no rational reason why, but someone on woW that I played with used to say it and I always specifically avoided it.

[AngryPidgeon]

: |

[AngryPidgeon]

I got an email from SE. With a link to the client download \o/

Also it said I could play Friday...I dunno if that was a mistake or not on their end, I thought I had to wait to Saturday.

[AngryPidgeon]

Frick, how am I supposed to justify levelling carpentry if the guild isnt switching to crafting bonuses until 13 days from now.

Guess I'll just hoard all my mats until then.

Really Crafting bonuses should be like a weekly thing for a day. So you can log on, dump all your mats on crafting, etc. Then go back to smashing things.

Tans are you on Gilga? Whats your name? Nalem Romandi here.

[AngryPidgeon]

The best argument for just levelling cnj first is how janky switching gear is. The game should just remember what you previously had on when you swap.

[AngryPidgeon]

AP's Kevin, lmao.

I guess it is, but its so funny. SE came so close to getting this great implementation correct but decided to just not quite get it right : P

When are free transfers?

[AngryPidgeon]

What do you need to get white mage?

[AngryPidgeon]

I have Arcanist at 6 or 7 I think.

[AngryPidgeon]

Tans, I added you. Also it'd be convenient if you had people's character names listed on the front page and clicking the name sends you to the link you have there.

[AngryPidgeon]

I got a half level of Botany all the way to 18 in like 10 mins this morning oO.

Gear is so worth it.

[AngryPidgeon]

Does it really not matter at all what GC I join?

Also ew, the main story is like WASTE ALL YOUR GOLD TELEPORTING AROUND TROLLOLOL

[AngryPidgeon]

Probably more convenient?

[AngryPidgeon]

FC chat drama

<Promiscuous Guildie>: Oh ya, give it to me just like that.
<Promiscuous Guildie>: MT.

[AngryPidgeon]

Alphinaud is such a character. What is this kid doing stalking me from city to city and dropping snide comments. Does this kid have a strange obsession with me?

Raubahn's eyes are comically tiny.

[AngryPidgeon]

lol. ^

My botany and CNJ are now both 24 >.>

I end up spending all my rested bonus on Bot unintentionally.

I signed up with the Twin Adders because Gridania is all about Hyur/Elezen power and screw the other races, they aren't old school gridanians. .... : P

[AngryPidgeon]

Is there really? Run forrest run.

Although there was talk about a few inactives last night that might get booted?

[AngryPidgeon]

We need to hurry up and switch on the Crafting EXP bonus. I'm hoarding mats for carpentry/cooking and taking up all my inventory space. My retainer is just holding all my crap for me and I still need more space. : P

[AngryPidgeon]

I unlocked Totorak last night. Im like 2 monster kills from lvl 27 >.>

I think Im going to just start spending all my rest bonus on Botany intentionally. All my XP on conj comes from quests. Like 95% of it >.>

[AngryPidgeon]

Yes but Botany is not that fun to level. At this point I dont use enough rest bonus on conj to use it faster than I get it.

Monsters are laughably trivial in XP yield and quests dont affect rest.

[AngryPidgeon]

@Reckoner: Someone in our guild chat said that you can't enjoy any MMO after playing WoW, even WoW. And hes sort of right : P. But let me explain differences as I perceive them (I played WoW up to Cataclysm)

It can be compared to WoW, they are similar.

FF is more

story driven

, and there is a "main story" quest line that you are (extremely heavily) encouraged to follow as you level. Dungeons become available as you progress in the main story (and there are a few side dungeons you pick up from other quests). Getting into dungeons is 100% streamlined through the matchmaking system (alternatively you can queue as a group of however many people). I think WoW is moreorless doing things this way nowadays, but FF has like no concept of entering dungeons physically - all through finder, so very convenient. Anyways, expect an involved main story and several cut scenes throughout the game.

I dislike the

interface

compared to WoW. FF's map looks ugly in comparison and the different game windows could be more visually appealing. I feel like they are trying to be throwback-y with some of the UI and are sacrificing eye candy. But I know the HuD is configurable and I havent messed with that and I know the game is newly released to graphic updates will likely come.

I love the

tradecrafting

compared to WoW though. Every crafting (alchemy, cooking ,etc) is levelled exactly like a battle class. There is a little minigame involved with all the craftings, but I like there approach to it. There are "High Quality" items and when you use HQ items as materials for producing, your chance of producing HQ items improves. All in all, the market of FF is more interesting and seems to have more opportunities for making money with different levels of crafting. Levelling crafting can be a bit farmy/tedious, but the surrounding system and market is interesting/rewarding.

Levelling

is a little obnoxious. I feel like 1-50 is faster than 1-60 was in vanilla WoW (could be wrong, been ages). I dislike that killing monsters yields barely tangible amounts of XP. All levelling is through quests (and there will be splashes of quests if you follow the man story around) and..... fates. Fates are little mini events that pop up in regions and you show up (with a bunch of other people farming them), kill the very-high-hp monster(s) and get XP for it. Its efficient, but boring as all get out. Although apparently dungeons are having XP gains increased shortly to make them a good alternative. Also on this, FF has its own system for daily quests which is pretty alright once you get used to it.

I waffle on whether I like the graphics or not. Its weird. Some of the areas in the game have GREAT graphics and other parts of the game leave something to be desired. Once again, I expect this will only get better though since this is new.

Traveling

is a lot easier in FF once you get used to the layout of transportation networks. You can spend money to teleport to any city you've been too. So its kind of nice that mindless running is a bit less of the game (at the cost of money, which just adds to the interesting-ness of the market).

Gear

is acquired through crafting and quests (especially main story quest) and a little bit dungeons. Every class also gets their class gear at lvl 45 which is the pre-raid gear as I understand it. I cant really comment on endgame dungeons right now since I only just hit 50, but I know there are several endgame raids of size 4/8 people. I like the gear system because it is fairly viable to buy gear at a reasonable price and sell it at a reasonable price when it is needed to fill in pieces you dont have. Crafting gear at all levels is actually worthwhile to seek out while levelling on occasions.

Now one concept on FF is you have one character who can level ALL classes/tradecrafts and switch between them by equipping the right weapon/tool. You have an armory chest (in addition to your normal inventory which you don't need to hunt for bags for) which can store 25? items of every slot. This can get a bit chaotic trying to manage all the gear for different classes and equipping gear is a little weird with gearsets which need to be improved, but its all fairly manageable.

[AngryPidgeon]

if it's all on one character, then it seems kind of dumb. Especially since I love having varied races on my different classes.

Ya, I miss this too. FFXIV is a little unique in tha you have to go the extra mile to unlock useful things, so not everyone will necessarily have everything useful when they hit endgame. I can't think of anything WoW did like this except finding rare drops for crafting which was exciting but... rare. (And gearing up, but eh thats standard and also present here).

FFXIV lets you equip some abilities from other classes to your current class (there are restrictions on what and when can be crossed) but it is kind of an interesting design. Makes leveling all classes on the same character sort of mandatory as opposed to different characters though. I wish there were an equivalent of talent points.

That said, crafting and CC abilities are really fun together since all crafts give you crafting abilities to help with other crafts.

[AngryPidgeon]

I think Mara and I are in an unofficial race to 50 everything crafting.

[AngryPidgeon]

Just kidding, Mara and I are crafting buddies for life

You really should get Cul to 37 though, although I am starting to see the benefits of your round-robin levelling plan. I think Im going to start doing that so I can recycle crafting gear easier. Im sorta blocked on Leves for the time being though (only 12 left?). I'll have some after I get back from Vegas this weekend though to blow immediately >.>

Im finally reaching the point where everything is pretty easy to come by since I can farm/make it. I really do need to start maximizing XP/Leve though for this.

I need to decide if I want to race CRP to 50 for that OP CC ability or try and do round robin levelling which recycles gear much better but doesnt yield the 37/50 cc rewards until later. Bleh.

[AngryPidgeon]

If any of you lower level types see a piece of gear getting very outdated, feel free to hit me up. I can probably craft most any slot item your level at HQ without much effort.

[AngryPidgeon]

I'd not fo with the leveling each craft at the same time, some have nice skills, CRP 50 skill is great for HQing mats to HQ stuff for other crafts leves, WVR is great cuz guaranteed progress, etc etc

Ya...I actually was poking around this site a bit: http://www.ffxivguild.com/ffxiv-arr-cra ... exp-guide/
and it was pretty helpful. For every tradecraft it lays out exactly what battle/trade/gathering classes it benefits and how.

Leatherworking and Weaving each make 3 crafting gear pieces that benefit all crafts.
Blacksmithing makes at least one of {Main hand / offhand} for 7 of 8 Trade crafts (weaving being the odd one out and covered by goldsmith/carpentry). It also makes both main and off hands for Mining/Botany.

Carpentry has (imo and this is mostly a guess on my end) the best lvl 50 CC ability. MOST of the lvl 37 CC abilities are underwhelming/situatuional except the cooking one which I already have. CRP also makes one item (boots) that is beneficial to all tradecrafts.

Goldsmithing gives rings, earrings, wrist which is good for all crafting.

Armorsmithing seems mostly useless for trade/gather crafts. Alchemy provides reagents needed for crafting some things, but seems to be manageable without. It doesnt really make anything that benefits your ability to craft.

Culinary has a very low level crafting food that is helpful I think and the best 37 CC ability. I have it at 37, so pretty uninterested in leveling it right now since I think its usefulness is capped.

----------

So Im a little torn here. GSM, WVR, LTW each provide 3 things that benefit all crafts. BSM benefits all crafts except Weaving, and ALSO benefits gathering a ton.
CRP has best lvl 50 imo and also provides 1 item useable for all crafting.

So.... tl;dr I think Im goingto work on getting LTW next and maybe do some round robin WVR/LTW/BSM/CRP finagling. GSM is the onl one im iffy about here. ARM/CUL/ALC seem like they can wait until later.

[AngryPidgeon]

Mara its V important that you level Alchemy so you can feed me all the reagents I need from it w/o having to level it myself. : P <3

Also Getting GSM to 30 is AMAZING. I crafted full sets of rings/trinkets/earrings in HQ and the CP makes a huge difference.

[AngryPidgeon]

This game (and MMOS in general?) need support for some communal banking system. It would be super convenient for friends to be able to share reagents and stuff from crafts easily that way. Not just a guild/FC banking system cause I mean Im too low ranking in the FC to even care if there is one let alone getting access.

I kinda dislike the retainer thing in general. It would be great to be able to post stuff for auction when Im at a Message Board instead of having to go to the retainer spot. And getting/leaving items on 2 different retainers is just annoying to manage as opposed to what WOW did with having a bank where all your stuff goes and you dont have to go through context menus, blobs of people surrounding the one summoning bell, or disjoint storing of items.

Q fucking Q.

[AngryPidgeon]

Ive been levelling mining recently. Silver is lvl 21 required to mine it and I finally got there and mined it from West of Quarrymill for a long ass time. A ton of silver is necessary for GSM and a bunch of other random things.

[AngryPidgeon]

I keep running out of lightning shards, ugghhhh. At least I have that 3x lightning shard ability from mining now.

[AngryPidgeon]

It looks like it is impossible to make a good crafting belt past level 10 unless you get a special drop from some ltw/wvr leves or from Sunken Temple....... Im almost tempted to grind a class up to ST level so I can try and get that damn drop.

EDIT: Sunken Temple drops a WVR one (lvl 35, control +19) and Cutter's Cry drops a LTW one (lvl 37, control +20)

Should check prices on market....I really need an upgrade there.

[AngryPidgeon]

I dislike his posts for some reason >.>

I dunno how much sway he actually has in these decisions (not much?) but them using RMT as a justification for not doing things is bullshit.

Actually help fight RMT then instead of building the game around the fact it exists.

[AngryPidgeon]

^ They need a context menu item for report+blacklist as goldfarmer for easy reporting of spammers.

They need more staff to handle this problem specifically if that is what it takes.

You can't let them (edit: them being gilfarmers) affect how you make the gameplay. That is terrible. And I dont really believe him when he says that adding crafting drops from dungeons that crafters use and sell will increase demand THAT much.

The solution isn't to make Gil less valuable....what they are doing effectively.... that is self defeating.

Start being forceful. Bans on people for buying or selling, reporting made easier, more staff to handle this. I get that they are doing something already, but you cant just let them win by devaluing gil as a solution.

[AngryPidgeon]

What is the roulette system?

[AngryPidgeon]

Im almost striking distance from GSM 50 >.>

All my crafts are getting close.

[AngryPidgeon]

When is XP for dungeons getting buffed? I dont wanna fate grind THM anymore >.>

[AngryPidgeon]

Mara how are you levelling tradecrafts? you are using leve allowances, right? : P

Have to check.