Various Thoughts

The third and currently most recent expansion to the FFXIV MMO is the first to actually deliver on fans’ repeated assertations that “the game gets better in the expansions“.

It does this in two main ways. The first being that sidequests, including repeatable Beast Tribe quests, are now level-synced. So they now serve as a pretty decent alternate source of leveling XP for your non-main class. The second being the Trust system.

That feature lets you challenge most multiplayer dungeons added by the expansion with a group of NPCs instead of other players (meaning there’s no longer any waiting to find a party). Even better, the NPCs have infinite MP and don’t get caught off-guard by boss mechanics; so long as you follow their lead in avoiding attacks it’s pretty hard to get killed. The drawbacks are that they’ll only be the minimum level required to challenge the dungeon, and if you do die it’s considered a full party wipe. So while a good option for DPS classes, tanks or healers may want to stick to partying with PCs.

As far as plot development goes… while I’d have to say that it’s certainly better than Stormblood‘s overall, the writers seem to be having a contest as to who can write the most idiotic character behavior. And while I wasn’t really thrilled by the FFT-themed raids there, the Nier Automatica ones here are far more ill-fitting.

Some other minor annoyances would be how you now have to purchase the basic fast travel upgrades (with a new currency gained by clearing FATEs) rather than get them for free, and how the crafter quests have backslid somewhat. Here they behave like the Custom Delivery system, except you have to use standard (possibly quite expensive depending on marketplace availability) ingredients to craft the items instead of exclusive merchant-sold ones. The only saving grace for omnicrafters is that rather than one questline per class it’s one questline per class type: One for smiths, one for Weavers/Leatherworkers, and one for Alchemists/Culinarians. Miners/Botanists also get a shared questline (which behaves in the same way), while Fishers end up with an exclusive one.

Class quests meanwhile have also been condensed. There are four questlines based on role (tank, healer, magical DPS, physical DPS), each corresponding to one of the ‘Warriors of Darkness’ you may remember from earlier in the game. These are handled surprisingly well, and clearing them will get you access to sets of class-specific equipment (that unfortunately can’t be dyed at the moment) near the end of the main quest.

Speaking of endings, I just so happened to reach the end of the existing ShB content the day the newest patch dropped, which was incredibly fortunate timing since that patch both removed some weekly equipment reward restrictions (a bullshit system if ever there was one) and made it possible to easily upgrade Exarchic gear to be on par with the 2nd best gearset.

So I’m basically almost done with this character. Just have to finish upgrading my Resistance Weapon (the special instance here is, albeit similar, notably better than Eureka as far as progression goes), and then ~maybe~ complete the Blue Mage quests/spellbook.

The next character will tackle the Ninja, Monk, ranged physical DPS classes, and PvP. I’ll also probably check out the Deep Dungeon feature as well… something I completely forgot about after unlocking.

FFXIV’s second expansion is something of a mixed bag.

While it’s true that most sidequests are back to the base game’s standard of repetitiveness (not sure whether I hate the ones that require the use of emotes or the ones that require you to say stuff in chat more)… most of the excessive back-and-forth traveling has been moved into the class quest lines. So clearing general sidequests is no longer a chore, but clearing the class quests kind of is (particularly since you only get a decent reward for the last one in each line). The exception here being the crafter quests, which are a massive improvement over Heavensward‘s. They behave more like the beast tribe crafter quests now and no longer require any grinding and/or large amounts of money to clear.

Speaking of grinding, this expansion decides to gate some story content behind its relic upgrade mechanic. Rather than have to grind FATEs or dungeons to upgrade the new relic equipment this time around, you instead get to visit a special area where you’ll have to re-level yourself from 1-60 while collecting new varieties of crystals that (infrequently) drop from enemies. I briefly tried it out and gave up at level 5 or so after realizing the only way to efficiently advance is to co-ordinate with other players to form impromptu parties.

Aside from that though, I’ve been able to clear every other Stormblood quest without much trouble. This is in notable contrast to the base game (where it’s pretty much impossible to find groups to beat the Extreme primals or Bahamut line synced) and HW (in which I couldn’t get Extreme Ravana to launch even after 2 days of trying).

Meta and gameplay issues/improvements aside there is one other key area this expansion stands out in: Plotline development. The various questline developments which occur here are… how should I put this… utter trash. Worse than those in the base game. Not only is summoning shoehorned into all sorts of places it has no business being in, but the game seems to want to present you as both an infallible god-killer and an underdog freedom fighter. It does this by having you dispatch massively powerful primals with ease on the one hand while forcing you to lose horribly to one of the Empire’s middle managers (two of whom you’ve already wrecked) in a couple of scripted solo duties. It’s garbage and the goofy nemesis subplot does it no favors. I’m not thrilled about how the epilogue to FFT plays out either; Delita is far, far more cold-blooded than he’s depicted here.

Getting back to the gameplay now, here’s some thoughts on the classes I’ve been playing:

Red Mage is awesome if for no other reason than you can instantly cast Resurrection spells all day long. The only real flaws are a lack of (non-dual cast) instant-cast and damage-over-time spells, and you have to keep track of quite a few abilities in order to maximize your damage output. The second issue can be alleviated a bit with macros:

/macroicon "Corps-a-corps"
/macroerror off
/ac "Corps-a-corps" <t> <wait.1>
/ac "Embolden" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Riposte" <t>

/macroicon "Redoublement"
/macroerror off
/ac "Redoublement" <t> <wait.1>
/ac "Displacement" <t>

/macroicon "Jolt"
/macroerror off
/ac "Verfire" <t>
/ac "Verstone" <t>
/ac "Jolt" <t>

I’ve sort of lost interest in Black Mage since it mainly comes across like an inferior Red Mage. Sure it does more damage, but it’s far less mobile, requires better timing in switching between abilities, and lacks any healing capacity. Summoner meanwhile hasn’t lost any of its charm. It’s still highly mobile, can resurrect in a pinch, and gains quite a number of high-damage instant-cast abilities at later levels.

The flipside to Summoner is the Scholar, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of this class. The trick is to throw up barriers/shields before your party gets hurt and then sit back and DPS away until they need to be refreshed. This is in notable contrast to White Mage and Astrologian, both of which are better at healing large amounts of health quickly. They’re also both better at doing AOE damage… which puts Scholar at something of a net disadvantage.

All 3 of those healer classes are pretty ability-heavy when you get to the later levels though. So once again I ended up turning to macros to help lighten the load:

/macroicon "Raise"
/macroerror off
/ac "Thin Air" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Swiftcast" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Raise" <t>
/ac "Raise" <1>
/ac "Raise" <2>
/ac "Raise" <3>
/ac "Raise" <4>
/ac "Raise" <5>
/ac "Raise" <6>
/ac "Raise" <7>

/macroicon "Cure"
/macroerror off
/ac "Tetragrammaton" <t>
/ac "Afflatus Solace" <t>
/ac "Cure II" <t>
/ac "Cure" <t>

/micon "Medica"
/macroerror off
/ac "Assize"
/ac "Plenary Indulgence"
/ac "Medica II"
/ac "Medica"

/macroicon "Asylum"
/ac "Asylum" <t>

/micon "Whispering Dawn"
/ac "Whispering Dawn"
/ac "Succor"

/macroicon "Sacred Soil"
/ac "Excogitation" <t>
/ac "Sacred Soil" <t>
/ac "Lustrate" <t>

/micon "Emergency Tactics"
/ac "Emergency Tactics" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Fey Illumination" <me>

/micon "Benefic"
/macroerror off
/ac "Essential Dignity" <t>
/ac "Benefic II" <t>
/ac "Benefic" <t>

/micon "Draw"
/macroerror off
/ac "Play"
/ac "Draw"
/ac "Sleeve Draw"

/micon "Helios"
/macroerror off
/ac "Earthly Star" <me>
/ac "Celestial Opposition"
/ac "Aspected Helios"
/ac "Helios"

With those I can keep my number of go-to hotkeys down to a manageable 6 or so, while only having to use direct hotbar selection for emergency or niche situations.

Now it’s finally time to see whether the touted NPC party members introduced in the third expansion can actually credibly replace use of the Duty Finder (which seems to always be in desperate need of tanks recently).

The vast majority of the content included in the first expansion to Final Fantasy XIV is… notably worse than that found in the base game. The sidequests, in particular, are soulcrushing timesinks.

First of all the expansion adds several new world maps to explore. Maps which are extremely large, sparsely populated, and must be crisscrossed back-and-forth innumerable times.

Second, both crafting and gathering have been made more difficult. Instead of four nodes relatively close together, you now have three groups of two nodes spaced widely apart. So gathering materials takes more time. The new craftable items, meanwhile, now require more ingredients to craft. So you’re hit both ways. It’s far more efficient to just buy whatever you need from the marketplace… though that will end up running you close to a million (or more if you’re a full omni-crafter) to clear the various crafter quests.

The main questline is more or less on par with the Astral Era quests, though it introduces a new ‘solo’ duty feature. Which are basically Duty Finder instances where NPCs take the role of other players. And while that’s something I specifically desired, the implementation here is lacking. Most of these duties feel empty/artificial and much of the NPC behavior is heavily scripted rather than dynamic (to detrimental effect in the case of One Life for One World). The last one before Stormblood actually features what appears to be dynamic behavior (in addition to heavy scripting) though, which gives me hope the future NPC instances will be better handled.

The aforementioned sidequests are where the pain truly lies however. Pretty much each and every questline requires running back and forth between two locations 5+ times. Trips which can take 1-2 minutes each way due to the size of the maps and lack of teleporters. It’s insane. I’m ~told~ this sort of quest design fell out of favor in the next and later expansions… but then, I was also ~told~ that the game got better in the first expansion when it unequivocally does not.

We’ll see if that’s a lie as well.

As it happens, getting from the ‘end‘ of the base game to the start of Heavensward takes quite a bit of time.

Not only are there a ton of busywork main storyline quests between them, but there’s also a massive amount of previously endgame content to plow through (if you’re so inclined). Enough that if you’re normally in the habit of accepting all sidequests this game just might be able to break it. I ended up clearing every non-grind sidequest except Extreme Garuda/Shiva (which I’ve had trouble finding a party with the requisite teamwork for; got lucky finding a highly competent tank for Extreme Ramuh), though for obvious reasons I cheated (by advertising an unsynced run to attract some level 80 players) to get the Bahamut questline cleared.

Had to ultimately upgrade from free trial to full game to deal with the twin issues of the 300k money cap and dwindling inventory space. Being able to access the marketplace and use retainers makes a world of difference (unlocking Red Mage was certainly a welcome bonus as well).

Some general thoughts on the pre-Heavensward content:
– The main quests start out a bit interesting, get sketchy, and then go completely to shit around level 30.
– The class quests are much better, but some (like Leatherworker, Botanist, and Blue Mage) have cringey/annoying themes.
– The sidequests range from utter dreck to surprisingly competent (Hildibrand, several later Moogle Delivery quests).
– The main questline alone gives more than enough experience to level a single class to 50.
– You’ll want to rush completion of the Seventh Umbral Era quests in order to unlock faster travel speed and flight ASAP.

Time to see if all those claims about the quests “getting better in the expansions” have any truth to them.

Decided to go with the second option, which is to say switched over to Conjurer/White Mage to continue the main questline… and yet again I hit level 50 before finishing it. After the level 41 quest this time.

The healer role is quite a bit more involved than the DPS role. Rather than simply attacking the weakest target(s) until they die while trying to avoid telegraphed attacks, you have to watch your party’s status while at the same time hopefully getting in a few hits of your own. Moreover, unlike DPS which mostly just has to worry about accidentally drawing too much aggro, the healer has to worry about both the tank and DPS classes drawing too much aggro.

There’s nothing quite so annoying as a tank running ahead to pull 6+ enemies and getting themselves killed in less than 5 seconds. Seriously, how exactly am I supposed to react to that?

On the positive side of things there really does seem to be a dearth of people playing healers, as the mandatory party quests (in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, there are more at levels 24, 28, 32, 34, & 41) launched almost instantly this time around. It’s also pretty easy to rake in player commendations so long as you display the slightest bit of competence.

My strategy as a White Mage ended up being quite simple:
1) Cast Regen on the tank and any melee DPS.
2) Cast Aero on any enemies.
3) Cast Cure on the tank if necessary, otherwise use Stone if it’s a boss/miniboss.
4) Repeat from the top.

You’ve got to watch out for unavoidable AOE attacks of course and the lack of fast mana regen can certainly be an issue if you spam Cure II too much (Lucid Dreaming helps). This is the reason to not bother casting Stone on basic enemies in the dungeon; the DPS classes should be able to handle them fine (especially with Aero support) and that mana may be necessary to spam Cure II or Medica if the tank gets overzealous.

All that aside, since I just hit 50 again it seems time to switch to another class. Arcanist is all that’s left of the basic magic classes, and interestingly enough it has both a DPS and a healer specialization. Which fits quite nicely into this character‘s theme.

Of course shortly after I posted about not having to join a party I run into the mandatory party quests: There are 3 immediately following the ‘visit the other two starting cities’ main quest (for levels 15, 16, & 17) and another as the first level 20 main quest.

They’re… not great. While it helps quite a bit that apparently any player who’s completed the quest before can join up, there’s still notable wait times (expect at least 10 minutes for a DPS class) and playing with random people who may or may not know what they’re doing (and I include myself in that group) is less than ideal. I don’t like the rigid 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS party requirements either. I’m not looking forward to future instances of the mechanic and wish they had added that NPC party option introduced in the most recent expansion to the earlier content.

In other news I tried out crafting; it’s a little overwhelming with all the various quality-related abilities. The way the system is set up, making a high-level item is almost like fighting a turn-based battle. It’s a bit odd really and kind of annoying in regards to crafting low level items even despite the ‘quick synthesis’ option.

Long have I ignored FFXIV despite hearing nothing but good things about it. Partly because it’s an MMO game, and partly because it’s unusually expensive; generally you’ll have to either pay for the game/expansions and not have a re-occurring cost, or be able to download the game for free but have to pay a re-occurring cost. This requires both buying the game and paying a monthly fee on top of that.

Recently however I found out that the Free Trial gives you access to both the default game and first expansion for free (albeit with certain restrictions). So I figured now would be as good a time as any to see whether all those claims of high quality and being able to play it solo it were true.

After ~10 hours I’m at level 24 in Thaumaturge and 17 in Miner and enjoying myself quite a bit. The server-specific doubled experience for low-level characters plays a large role in that though, as without it the game seems like it would be quite grindy (hence all the random FATE quests popping up all over, which I’ve mostly ignored). I have yet to be forced to find a party and it does in fact look like you can solo the majority of main quests.

Said main questline has been mildly interesting so far, but the Thaumaturge questline took a hard turn into idiocy during the level 15 & 20 quests. There is also of course a large focus on fetch/deliver and generic monster extermination quests in the early game. If you’re the type who complained about having to “collect bear asses” in DA: Inquisition for example then you probably won’t have much fun here either.

Visually it’s quite impressive and I’m shocked at how much variety they fit into an action as simple as mining. Like, Miner is a full-blown class with tons of abilities. Combat is a bit more complex than I expected as well, with there even being a focus on avoiding powerful incoming attacks. I haven’t tried any of the crafting classes yet, so I’m not sure how they compare, but even just switching back and forth between blasting things with Fire and chipping away at mineral deposits seems like it will keep me occupied for some time.

We’ll see how things go at level 50.