FFXIV

[Bebpo]

Sounds good.

From reading online it seems like the biggest "grind" is that once I get to 50, I'm not going to be able to run my Ninja/Paladin side-by-side like I'm doing now because grinding a second class to 60 is slow.  So when I get both to 50 in a week or so, and then after I'm done with 2.1-2.5 and about to head to HW MSQ, I'm going to need to decide which one to take into the 50-60 MSQ march.  Tough decision.  Going back to my Ninja after a couple of days practicing and getting better with my Paladin, DPS seems kinda boring in comparison.  Here's the pros & cons as I see it right now:

Tank:
+Always exciting because every second counts and tons of pressure is on you
-If you fuck up, everyone dies
-Even if you don't fuck up, sometimes everyone dies and they blame you
-Sometimes people are dicks to you
-Most expensive class, so you'll need a lot of gil (maybe need to spend time grinding up support classes to make money on the AH).  This probably makes it the most time consuming class.  Reason being that when you're taking on a bunch of mobs, if your equipment is not up to snuff, you die.  So you need to keep your equip up.
+But you get right into any queues and everyone wants you in their party
+and people are generally nice to you when you do well
+/- solo content goes slower but is easier since you have high VIT/DEF
-You can actually get to a point where if you're not good enough, you can't progress even with a good party.

DPS (at least Ninja):
-Kinda boring once you know the rotation to do on enemies.  Mainly just doing that and picking up any stragglers.
+Gear seems less important.  If you're a bit down on ilevel, you'll do a little less damage and the fight will take an extra minute, not life or death usually.
+/- People won't really notice you or bug you if you do your job correclty
-Queues take a little longer and finding parties for Raids will be tougher
+Solo content goes quicker because you kill things faster
+Even if you're not great, you'll always be able to progress through the content with a good party.

I feel like Ninja is the way safer option to main 50-60, but Paladin would be way more fun and challenging.  Gonna be a tough decision, but it's still pretty far away.

[Lucretius]

Tank queues are the main reason to choose PLD. Tank queues are instantaneous where as DPS queues can take up to 30 minutes depending on what you're queueing for.

Tank gear (with the exception of a few outdated sets) can be used on all three tank classes. all your left side gear as Ninja is only useable as Ninja.

BUT....!!!!!  You'll get a lot of XP from just doing the MSQ to level 60. If you plan on leveling both it might be more time efficient to use all that MSQ XP on Ninja. If you use all that free MSQ XP on PLD that means you'll be spending lots of time waiting on you DPS queues for dungeons when you level Ninja later. Level Ninja with MSQ XP and you can get insta-queues for dungeons when you level your PLD later.

tl;dr:  level NIN via MSQ and level PLD by grinding dungeons later.

[Lucretius]

I main DRG these days when I raid but I do all my roulettes as a tank because DPS queues take too long.

[Bebpo]

I hear that a lot, but DPS queues haven't been a problem for me at all.  Usually about 5-15 mins and I have lots to do while waiting.

[Positive Touch]

you don't need to worry about waiting till 60 to get the really good stuff bc there's tons of great level 50 content too. playing thru all the level 50 dungeons will get you tons of tomes of whatever. you can then go to mor dhona and use them to buy ironworks gear, which is i120. i believe the highest 2.x gear is i130 so in other words you'll be set. you don't even need that strong of gear for the 24 person raids bc they're not hard. the 8 person raids on the other hand are still balls-out tough and it'll take some work to assemble a party that'll run thru it synced with you (though I will absolutely come along for that ride).

[Bebpo]

Yeah, that sounds good.

I'm planning on using the duty finder to play with random people on the raids like I do in the dungeons so far.  I know that's a bad idea, but it's easy and until I get to the point where we start losing I might as well just stick with that.  If I hit a wall, then I'll have to actually ask around and try to find a party to run the raids.  But thankfully it seems that outside of the optional raids, I can do the rest of the content just using duty finder.

[Bebpo]

So I don't really buy this "MSQ has enough xp", when I encountered my first time the MSQ caught up and passed me at lvl.35 I wrote if off as the game probably meant for me to be 2-3 levels ahead of MSQ and I was only keeping 1 level ahead of MSQ while giving some of the xp to my alt.  But then I got like 2-3 levels ahead of the MSQ with my rogue, haven't given a single MSQ since ~32 to my alt, I've done a handful of Coerthus optional quests with my Rogue while doing all the MSQ and doing the hunting logs (at the final rank 5 now), a bunch of Fates that I've run across and the optional dungeons...and I've still hit blocks twice where I fall about a half level short of the next MSQ.  Caught up yesterday by doing duty finder dungeon/guildheist, then fell short again today and caught up again doing the duty finder dungeon/guildheist.

Reading Lodestone and looking at the list of MSQ, the problem is that around lvl.35+there cases where there's only like 3-4 MSQs before it jumps a level and those are paying out like 25k xp at best so 100k but it's 250k per level at this point.  Now that I'm getting into the story was kinda hoping I could just run through the rest without doing duty finder dungeon 30 min grinds each day but eh, guess not.  I've hit the point where I feel like duty finder roulette dungeon runs are a bullshit grind and basically a waste of time each day but you need the xp.  Now I see why most people in a dungeon just want to run through to the end because it stops being fun going back 20 levels when you're missing most of your attacks/skills and doing an old dungeon with loot 20 levels below anything you can use.  Basically feels like a forced grind ><

Cutters Dry was a pretty boring dungeon with a cool boss.  About to do the Stone Vigil at lvl.41 now.  Was a little bummed the lvl.40 Ninja ability is useless in battle (teleporting) at least with a controller it's a pain in the butt to position and everything blocks your way.  Was hoping to get some new ninja magics, but I guess I gotta wait until lvl.45 or 50 and keep cycling my AoE explosion and high damage lightning mudra for another 10 hours.

[Bebpo]

Stone Vigil was alright.  Fun boss with the ice dodging but dungeon is pretty standard.  I'm actually noticing a pattern now that the dungeons all kinda feel the same, tank runs up and grabs mobs, DPS and tank and kill them, healer heals...repeat for 25 mins -> cool boss fight.  Although it's probably because playing DPS with a good tank is boring, no one attacks you and you just beat up dudes from their backs and dodge AoE attacks.  Still, I wanna finish the story at this point so gonna stick to the MSQ and finish it as my Ninja and then I'll go back and get my Paladin up to 50.  Seeing some of these lvl.40 tanks running through the map grabbing like 8 guys at a time...yeah I definitely have a ways to go with improving my tank skills.

[Bebpo]

So I have a pet theory on why the game seems pretty easy.  When I google about stuff I'm experiencing in the game, most of the results are from like 3 years ago.  Reading posts from that time, my conclusion is that FFXIV's userbase is not casual anymore.  Like back 3 years ago, a lot of people were giving FFXIV a shot and new to the game, so you'd get matched in a dungeon with people who were not good at videogames and your healer or tank would wipe and everyone would die.  But now, I'd say my experience on the server and looking at people in town's stats, like 95% of players in the world are lvl.50-60 right now, which means that the majority of players you're going to be teamed up with in a dungeon people who've played anywhere from 200-2,000 hours of FFXIV and know how to play by now.  And I don't see it ever going back to the "playing with a bunch of newbie people and dying all the time" because even though when a new expansion comes out the dungeons/bosses are new experiences, it's still going to be doing them with people with 200-2,000 hours under their belt who know how to play the game and their roles.  It's never going to go back to half my team or more is terrible at videogames and doesn't know how to play their role.

Which is fine, I mean who wants to play with random groups that are terrible.  But yeah, my experience playing dungeons is that the people I play with a fucking good almost all the time and it makes the dungeons fairly easy so far through lvl.41 stuff.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, I was looking at the expert dungeons and I'm impressed how much is different.  It's not just some stat buffs and a new boss.  It's like totally new boss and mini-boss situations.  Looking forward to them.

[Bebpo]

Also I'm getting kind of burnt out on the abominably slow pace of the MSQ.  I know people were saying it picks up after Titan, and it's certainly more interesting in Coerthas, but it's still like everytime you go meet a new NPC for something urgent they first send you on 5-10 fetch quests before they'll listen to your case and help you.  Getting pretty tired of that.  Just feels like you have one story beat movement and then a bunch of filler, 1 story beat, bunch of filler, repeat.  I don't really like how every dungeon/trial, major event is like 4 levels apart.  Hell, between Titan 34 there's nothing story-wise until Stone Vigil at 41, just the optional Cutters Dry at 38.  Ideally I would have liked a new dungeon or primal every 2 levels in the MSQ to keep in more exciting.  It certainly seems from the overall list of Dungeons/Primals in ARR that there's plenty, but they're mostly backloaded so the MSQ is super padded.

I think at this point I'm going to keep playing and power through 2.5.  Then take a break for a month or two and then come back and do Heavensward + 3.1-3.5.  That way I'll be caught up before Stormblood in the summer.  When I subbed I just did the monthly sub, so if I finish 2.5 by the end of Jan I'll probably unsub for a month or two and then resub again to do HW->Stormblood.

[Positive Touch]

"i don't trust you! run these three errands for me before I listen to you!" "oh you're finished? and you're here about x? why didn't you say so sooner??"

FUCK YOU GAME

you should definitely play through the 2.x updates tho. the msq still has plenty of padding, but everything else is top notch. the gameplay really hits its stride. also iirc you have access to a bunch of new dungeons as soon as you finish 2.0 msq.

[Valkyrie]

Oh fuck, I forgot about Stormblood. I'm still on the 7th Era MSQs so I'm feeling pretty demotivated right now, even HS seems too far away. It's really boring to play alone now, which is why I haven't re-subbed for a while. Also started playing a little WoW again.

[Bebpo]

Oh fuck, I forgot about Stormblood. I'm still on the 7th Era MSQs so I'm feeling pretty demotivated right now, even HS seems too far away. It's really boring to play alone now, which is why I haven't re-subbed for a while. Also started playing a little WoW again.

Play with me?  I'll get to 7th Era in the next two weeks.  PT also has a character around my level right now at 41 and then some 60s.

[Valkyrie]

Oh fuck, I forgot about Stormblood. I'm still on the 7th Era MSQs so I'm feeling pretty demotivated right now, even HS seems too far away. It's really boring to play alone now, which is why I haven't re-subbed for a while. Also started playing a little WoW again.

Play with me?  I'll get to 7th Era in the next two weeks.  PT also has a character around my level right now at 41 and then some 60s.

You seem to be playing when it's daytime for me. Usually I play stuff from 7 PM JST which is 5 AM to you. lol That's why I didn't go to Hyperion, because most of you seem to live in the same timezone.

[Bebpo]

Ah, yeah that makes sense.  I usually play like 8pm PST-midnight PST.   :'(

[Bebpo]

Stuck again at lvl.43 with Garuda being lvl.44.  MSQ giving less and less XP and making you grind between story quests  

There were exactly 4 lvl.43 MSQs that gave 25k xp each for 100k xp total.  There was like 1 sidequest along the way at the Twelveswood that gave another 10k.  I'm at 134k xp, but to get to lvl.44 and do the next MSQ you need 374k xp...so only like 1/3rd through lvl.43 bar and 250k xp to go.  Basically gotta do a Duty Roullete dungeon & probably a Palace of the Dead run, but too tired to do an old-dungeon re-run.

This MSQ design where you need to do a bunch of grinding between story quests, when the story isn't even all that exciting and is totally padded anyways is just ugh.  Makes me really not enjoy the MSQ.  Is Heavensward better about that?  Like if you stick to the MSQ in Heavensward does it pretty much take you to 60?  I know that doing 2.1-2.5 is supposed to get you to about lvl.52 before HW MSQ even starts which should help.

[Bebpo]

Also did my first 8 man party with the lvl.40 Guildheist (final one).  Was total chaos.  I said hi but no one else said a word, no coordination, everywhere just running wherever.  Is that how 8 man party stuff is gonna be with randoms?  Because 4 man parties have been pretty tightly knit with random people so far since everyone depends on each other.

[Bebpo]

I think tbh, so far Coerthas is the only part of the entire game I've liked so far.  It's just such a different design. 

-For starters it's one big area that you progress through.  This is as opposed to the rest of the MSQ where you teleport all around the world constantly (sometimes 3-4 times just for 1 quest!).  This is nice because A) There's a real sense of progression that I didn't feel in the rest of the world because instead of areas getting gradually more difficult it'd be like lvl.10 area -> lvl.30 area because lvl.20 area is somewhere else, and B) Because it's a single area with a consistent lvl.35-41 across it, you constantly are running into well populated fates because there's lots of people around your level in the area.  Everywhere else in the game the fates are usually empty because people pop in an area for 2 mins to do a quest and then teleport out to the next area for their next quest.  Basically I think the world progression design in FFXIV is pretty stupid, but Coerthas is good and it's works much better because of it.

-It's also the only part of the story with like actual characters.  The different houses, the character within them.  It's not super deep or original but at least there's some character development as opposed to all of these places you just hop around to for 1-2 levels of questing before you move to the next.  Again, I think this is another victim of the world design and by Coerthas being a single area you stay in for 10+ hours, you get the benefits of an actual developed area from a lore and character setting.

-It's also one of the only story parts to have an actual antagonist so far.  Yeah there's the MSQ antagonist in black hood, but that's like over a 100+ hour story.  It's nice having a shorter contained story arc with a bad guy.

-And then it looks cool and has cool music.

But yeah, since Heavensward is about these Ishagardian guys and that's the only interesting part of 2.0 I can see HW being good.  I was bummed after leaving Coerthas when the MSQ was like "now let's warp around doing dumb corrupted crystal filler quests before you can go fight Garuda".

[Lucretius]

Also did my first 8 man party with the lvl.40 Guildheist (final one).  Was total chaos.  I said hi but no one else said a word, no coordination, everywhere just running wherever.  Is that how 8 man party stuff is gonna be with randoms?  Because 4 man parties have been pretty tightly knit with random people so far since everyone depends on each other.

Guildhests are a vestige from 1.0. The only reason people still do them is to farm a mentor roulette to get a mount. Most2.xx  8-man trials can be done with little to no coordination too. Neither those nor Hildegard are indicative of the real 8-man experience later in the game.

[Bebpo]

In my spare time I'm reading all the various guides for endgames.  Like how to get crafting/fishing/mining to lvl.60, zodiac weapons, ilevel gear progression.  Everything sounds like a huge grind  :'(  People are saying play a bunch of crappy PvP to grind or Palace of the Dead over and over again (which is mindlessly dull).  This sounds like a second job.  I'm kinda starting to regret having started this game.  As someone who hates grinding in single player games and hates padding/waste of time in games, this doesn't seem for me.

Since I've invested such a huge commitment of time already (this is almost the longest game I've ever played in my life at this point.  I think the longest prior was like 120-130 hours in Xenoblade), I've got to at least go through the 3.0 MSQ of Heavensward to see this great FF adventure everyone has hyped up.  But if 2.1-> the end of 3.0 doesn't grab me and make me a fan I'll probably bail out at that point.

[Positive Touch]

bruh wtf why are you even looking into crafting, zodiacs, second jobs, palace of the dead? all that stuff is INTENTIONALLY grindy. this isn't the kind of game where you can do and see everything unless you wanna put in a huge time commitment. gotta pick and choose. no reason to jump into a bunch of grinds especially if yr not planning on paying long - term

[Lucretius]

bruh wtf why are you even looking into crafting, zodiacs, second jobs, palace of the dead? all that stuff is INTENTIONALLY grindy. this isn't the kind of game where you can do and see everything unless you wanna put in a huge time commitment. gotta pick and choose. no reason to jump into a bunch of grinds especially if yr not planning on paying long - term

^

[Lucretius]

the 3.0 MSQ is one of my favorite FF stories ever.  Also, the 2.XX raid story is up there as well and tells you what happens to that big dragon you see in the 2.XX opening cutscene.  For the 2.XX raid story, I'd wait until you're level 60 and then organize a group of folks to take you through the turns unsynced.

[Positive Touch]

but still, crafting is only worthwhile if you're playing long term. gets you great money, fun glamour, etc, but that stuff is only cool if you're hanging around the game all the time.

[Bebpo]

Yeah I don't care about glamour and money well money is helpful when I'm under equipped although why can't I even buy green/pink uniques on the marketplace that feels so weird coming from Diablo.

The thing is even if it's just "run your dailies" the daily roulette is burning me out.  Dungeons are usually 30 mins and the queue is about 15, so if I only have 2 hours to play in a night, an hour of that is re-running an old dungeon which might be one I don't even like, getting old loot that I don't need and making no story progress, just gaining like 3/4ths a level.  It's not a huge amount of work, but doing it regularly feels draining and a grind.

Fwiw, when I really enjoy the game it's when I don't care about levels and xp and I just go around and have fun.  I do some fishing, I cook some cuisine, I hang out at the golden saucer, I do some side quests and talk to NPCs, I hang out with the FC and chat, I do some old dungeon re-runs; it's fun.  When it's not fun is when I can't do the next MSQ so I feel like gotta grind to get their and then it's just work.  I guess when I hit lvl 50 and xp stops mattering that part might get better.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Patch trailer for 3.5. A nice glimpse for the type of battle content that you start getting once you reach level 50 and onward

[Bebpo]

Had some good times with PT tonight.  Then went and unlocked the Beast Tribe Quests.  This stuff should've been part of the story.  Actually developing these tribes and giving them characters would have added a lot to the world/story, but better late than never.  I did the Ixali and Amaja ones and a couple quests for each.  Pretty neat and hey wow I found a way to get ventures so I can start sending my retainer on assignments again, yay.  Plus the 5k+ xp on the Ixali ones per quest or turn in is really helpful for leveling these < lvl.15 crafting jobs.  And you get to build an airship, cool.

So the sightseeing log is shit.  Which is a shame because I like treasure hunting and tower climbing in sandbox games.  Deciphering the clues and going around and looking out at the various places could have been fun.  But the short time windows + weather requirements are totally stupid and fuck the whole thing up.  Without a guide they're impossible since you don't know the time window even if you figure out the spot.  And with a guide it's just a checkbox list.  What a waste of a potential fun side thing to do.  Apparently it's been there for 2 years now and no one likes it.  You think they'd have implemented some changes by now...

Got to lvl.44 and then some.  I unlocked Darkhold in Coerthas.  Next time I play I'll do Garuda MSQ and Darkhold and get everything moving again.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

The 2.x sightseeing log is a lost cause, but the version implemented for 3.x zones is much better. No dumb weather/time requirements, and there's a visible icon on the spots where you need to stand rather than having to do it purely by guesswork. They give a nice xp reward on the way to level 60 too.

As a forewarning, once you get to the story level 50 dungeons (Castrum Meridanium and the Praetorium), ask for someone on the linkshell to do the dungeons with you. Those dungeons are the only instance in all of FFXIV where very long cutscene got placed in the middle of a dungeon, making it so most newbies are left behind and locked out of fights before they're done watching them, missing out on the whole thing. It's best to do those with friends who're willing to wait while you watch all thelse events occur.

It's the first and only they where they make dungeons like that, with everyour story dungeon afterward putting the longer scenes before or after the dungeon is done.

[Bebpo]

Oh, that sounds like they fixed sightseeing in 3.0.  Cool.  Too bad about the 2.0 log.  Yeah, the 2.0 log doesn't even give rewards wtf!  It's really badly implemented.

For the last 2 dungeons in 2.0 I'm planning on just watching the cutscenes first time and then doing them again skipping the cutscenes to do the gameplay stuff.  I really don't see myself being able to get 8 people together to do a "watch the cutscenes" play.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

There's actually already a feature in game that lets you queue up for any 2.x instance  (dungeon, trials, etc) without adhering to either party number requirements or level sync, so you don't even need 8 people. No harm in asking people in the bore LS to tag along of we're available.

[Bebpo]

When PT and me played last night we did these Fates in Coerthas that chained one after another so you'd finish one and the next would start and you'd be gaining more players as you went along until the final Fate was against some big tough mob where you need a ton of people and by that time you actually have them.  Was well designed and a lot of fun.  And we did all this while waiting in a duty finder queue.  And then we got into Qarn which at this point is my favorite dungeon in the game since it's a puzzle dungeon which always keeps it fun with new groups as opposed to just beating up mobs dungeon.  Was good fun. 

I think that's the one issue I have with the duty finder, but I get why it can't be changed.  Sometimes you get a dungeon/trial that you like or haven't done in a while and it's fun.  Sometimes you get a dungeon you really don't care for 3 times in a row and it feels like work.  But they have to have it that way or newcomers would never be able to find a team on the shittier dungeons. 

I like that the Ixali beast tribe has crafting quests.  I wish there were more crafting/gathering quests outside of generic leves.  I was reading some thread I found in google on ideas for making crafting/gathering more fun like the battle classes and people were suggesting crafting/gathering fates where you need to supply people who are fighting.  Or mixed Crafting/Battle 8 player dungeons, 4 battle, 4 crafters were the crafters/gathers have to keep the battle members supplied.  Some really creative ideas and it made me think that yeah it'd be cool if they put more gameplay stuff into Crafting/Gathering classes. 

[nachobro]

Is that the chain that leads to killing some dragon mother? That's a fun FATE

[Bebpo]

Yesssss

It's a really great idea.  Start out with an easy fate then have another one spawn once it finishes at the same spot that's a little tougher and keep snowballing them as you collect more and more players until the final one which is tough and needs a bunch of people.  Things like that really strike me as great game design.

[Bebpo]

Finished the intro to all the Beast Tribes, lots of great writing in there.  These parts like the loser Kobold squad feel more FF than anything else in the game to me.  Got to 46, did my Job lvl.45 quest and got JOB GEAR well except they don't give you the main body piece so I look like a weird half-ass ninja until I get to 50.  Did Dzmael Darkhold with a tank who it was also his first time there.  Our healer and bard were not impressed lol.  We were extra nice to them and the healer was cool but the bard was sorta -_- Tank kept pulling way too many mobs and we'd wipe a bunch.

So now at lvl.46, I have tons of abilities between job and class, but I feel like most of them are useless :|  Like I just got a lvl.46 Rogue ability that combos following my combo attack 1, which does the same damage as my other combo attack 2 + adds DoT of 40, but then I can't follow it up with my high damage combo #3 attack and have to start the 3 part chain over.  Also I'm not sure what the point of some of these ninja magics are like the Ice one that doesn't do much damage but binds.  Mainly just casting Huton (-15% skill speed for all skills) then sticking to my AoE fireball or single enemy 320 damage lightning attack while keeping mutilate DoT on the enemy and doing my Combo 1->2->3 while buffing.  At this point or at least by lvl.50 I should check out a Ninja guide to see how I should be playing the job now.

Oh, I've also started getting addicted to GC supply turn ins.  The XP is good for all my crafting/gathering jobs so each day at the start I'm turning in all the stuff and some of my crafting/gathering jobs gain a level without me having to do anything or do much.  Pretty cool.  I do daily GC supply turn ins, mini-cactpot at golden saucer, daily guildheist, daily dungeon when I sign in if I'm going to play a decent length session.

Now that I'm done with all the side-stuff that opened up at lvl.44, time to do Garuda and story for a bit until it jumps to lvl.49.  Probably won't get to 49 just from the story (slight into lvl.46 now), but hopefully it'll get me within a level or so and then I'll do dailies tomorrow & Palace of the Dead and hit 49, then final 2.0 MSQ stuff.  Probably finish the 2.0 MSQ this weekend and hit lvl.50.

[Bebpo]

Read up on the lvl.50 NIN rotations and got some good ideas from it even if I'm missing the last couple major attacks.  Now I just gotta figure out how to map all this shit onto 1 main hotbar since I'm playing with a controller lol

Also I want to do a special shout out for how broken PvP Triple Triad is all because it's missing one two second programming bit.  Ok so I dunno how much you all play Triple Triad, but there's basically like 3 ranks:

Rank 1 - Can use a single 1-5 star rated card, the rest of your deck has to be nothing but 1-star cards that suck
Rank 2 - Can use a single 1-5 star rated card, the rest of your deck has to be nothing but 1-2 star cards, 2 star being decent  (Rank 2 is obtained by gathering 30 unique cards which takes a bit of time)
Rank 3 - Can make your own deck with no limitations, so nothing but 5 star cards?  Sure! (Rank 3 is obtained by gathering either 50 or 60 unique cards which is a huge amount of work; also if you want the best 5-star cards deck, this rank is all about grinding and spending money to buy the best cards)

A player with a rank 3 deck will almost always beat rank 2 who will almost always beat rank 1.  And I feel like even rank 3 vs rank 3 players will come down to whose grinded & spent the most money on the best cards a lot of the time.

Ok, now if you're still with me, all you have to do to make PvP triple triad fun is when you challenge someone to a match and you're setting up the rule sets (there's a bunch) there should be a rule that says "rank 2 decks only" or "rank 1 decks only".  This way someone whose been playing Triple Triad for 10-20 hours can still play against someone whose played for 200 hours and still have a competitive match.  But from what I could tell that option isn't there.  And almost every human player you find in the triple triad battlehall is a lvl.60 player with a rank 3 deck.  So even though I've put like 20+ hours into triple triad probably and have a pretty good rank 2 deck, I have basically no chance against any of these human people since my deck of 2-star cards + a single 5-star card just can't hold up to their nothing but 5-star cards.  They've basically made human triple triad matches nothing but endgame only, and there's no one to play on a mostly fair playing ground until there which sucks because if I could play other humans on a level playing ground I would be playing a ton of triple triad.  The computer is kinda bs depending on the ai of the npc and their deck, so human players would be much more fun but I can't really play against anyone because they didn't put a rank limiting option into the rule options

[The Legend of Sunblade]

You're a little off there with Triple Triad. Rank 3 decks can have as many 3*s as they want, but only one 4-5*. If anything, people want that restriction lessened because 4* cards are utterly worthless, since why would you ever use one over a 5*?



NPC fights are where the true bullshit lies, since they don't follow these card rules and can often have as many 5* cards as they want to on top of the rules stacked against you. Bitch in Gold Saucer that has a deck with three 5* and four 4* but you have to play with Random (can't pick your cards) and Chaos (you can only play one card per turn, is also random).

[Bebpo]

Ah, yeah but still a rank 3 player is going to beat a rank 2 player almost every time.  There should just be an option in PvP to limit it to rank 1 or rank 2 decks so everyone can play everyone at the lowest rank of one of the players.  As a rank 2 triple triad player with 40 unique cards now I've yet to run into a single non-rank 3 triple triad player.  Then again I've yet to run into a single person in the battlehall that isn't lvl.60.


I'm almost done with 2.0.  Just hit lvl.48, and have 14 MSQs left, 4 dungeons, 2 trials.  Might be able to fit all that in tomorrow + daily roullettes, but might take me 2 or 3 days still.  I got Aurum Vale (which is the next dungeon I need to do) in my daily roullette but then everyone abandoned.  Not sure if people don't like the dungeon or if they didn't want to do it with a new person.  Or maybe just bad connections.

[Positive Touch]

lol aurum vale is the most hated dungeon in the game. it sucks.

[Cerveza mas fina]

I love how beps went from nothing to reading about rotation in weeks

meanwhile it took over 240 hours just to get to level 60 in wow 

[Bebpo]

Ok, got to the lvl.46->49 jump in MSQ right at the very end.  Luckily at lvl.48 by now and like 80% through the xp bar.  If I do my daily for the day it'll get me to 49 and I can do the last 8 MSQs + final 2 dungeons.

Story has gotten a lot better now, especially in presentation.  The voice acted cutscenes are definitely a nice improvement.  Story is nothing original, but it's a solid rpg endgame now compared to the first half where your'e just running around.  I think the big difference is having party members in the last 1/3rd or so with Cid and crew.  Having people you stick with who talk in the quest cutscenes over time develops the characters into characters you actually like.  Looking forward to the endgame.

One thing that's kinda dumb is how some of the major locations don't have warp points.  The Walking Sands absolutely needs a warp point.  Riding a chocobo from Horizon to Walking Sands everytime gets really old. 

[Lucretius]

Aurum Vale is a great dungeon. But everyone hates it because it's the only dungeon in the game to date that will wipe your entire party to trash mobs in the very first room unless all four players know what they're doing. And it will wipe you multiple times. The second boss also has a move that will one-shot kill a party member or your entire team if you don't know how to avoid it. Other than that, it goes by pretty quickly. I always say they should make a new Aurum Vale Savage Mode!

[Lucretius]

One thing that's kinda dumb is how some of the major locations don't have warp points.  The Walking Sands absolutely needs a warp point.  Riding a chocobo from Horizon to Walking Sands everytime gets really old.

I'm about to change your world.


-Port to Lisma Lominsa.

-Use any of the Aethernet Shards to port to the Arcanists Guild.

-Turn left and take the ferry to Vesper Bay.

[Positive Touch]

lol aurum vale was one of the few dungeons that never got a hard mode

and it never will

(i don't mind it much tbh)

[The Legend of Sunblade]

AV never got a hard mode because AV itself is a remake of 1.0's AV, which was totally different. The dev team figured that remaking the dungeon a third time wouldn't be wholly interesting.

[Bebpo]

I thought AV was solid when I did it today.  Had a good team though and before each boss they'd explain the mechanics.  I actually thought all 3 bosses were cool and had neat gimmicks.  The main thing I noticed was the tank played the dungeon very carefully, only pulling 3-4 enemies as a time compared to pther dungeons where I see the tank run through the first 1/10th of fhe dungeon pulling 10-12 enemies before stopping and fighting them.

One thing that's kinda dumb is how some of the major locations don't have warp points.  The Walking Sands absolutely needs a warp point.  Riding a chocobo from Horizon to Walking Sands everytime gets really old.

I'm about to change your world.


-Port to Lisma Lominsa.

-Use any of the Aethernet Shards to port to the Arcanists Guild.

-Turn left and take the ferry to Vesper Bay.

Oh shit, didn't think about that.

[Positive Touch]

AV never got a hard mode because AV itself is a remake of 1.0's AV, which was totally different. The dev team figured that remaking the dungeon a third time wouldn't be wholly interesting.

wow neat. I never looked up what dungeons were in 1.0

actually now that I think about it I saw people saying 1.0 didn't start to get good till Ifrit was added in, which made me think, what the hell was the msq in the box release of 1.0? i cannot find a story summary of anything besides what yoshi p added. need to go on YouTube and find some lets plays. if they had them back then.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

The Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy XIV is detailing the more general gameplay centric aspects of 1.0.

Ethys Asher did a thorough retrospective on 1.0's story, as well as a complete detailing of The Binding Coil of Bahamut's story, including the 1.0 part of it.

[Bebpo]

Took out the lvl.49 boss trial.  That was lame as fuck!  Being an 8-person trial, I don't even know if the boss had any cool boss music, I don't know if the boss had any interesting mechanics like the primal fights, I don't really know anything about the fight because all I saw was 7 other guys engulfing the one target and its HP going to 0 in like under a minute.

Comparing this to when I did my daily roulette and got the Garuda trial, and even with a party who is mostly max sync and who knew how to do the battle, it was still really challenging epic fight.  Our tank died about halfway and I made it as the DPS until like the boss had less than 5% HP and the other DPS/healer just barely finished the boss off before they died.  If that fight goes along a while and all the rocks are gone, it gets pretty rough at the end.

But then you have this dude whose one of the MAIN BOSSES of the MSQ and all you do is run up and gang-shank him in a minute.  No strategy, no challenge, nothing.  I imagine if this was a 4-person fight it'd have been doable and probably a challenge.  Like my experience with the 8-person guildheist, I'm not feeling these 8-person parties.  Just seems too easy whereas 4 person is a good setup with a good challenge.  But I'll take your word that the 8-person raids put up a real challenge despite 8 people.  From what I've read it sounds like the 24 person raids are basically like the 8 person trials/guildheists I've just experienced where there's way too many people and so it's easy because throw enough overpowered people at something and it'll make up for any deficiencies that some players may bring to the party.

So I'm running a few quest errands in North Thanalan right before the final 2 dungeons.  Halfway through lvl.49.  Might try to get to lvl.50 and do the lvl.50 class quests before the final 2 dungeons.  Not looking forward to the dungeons because it sounds like it'll just be an 8 person destroying everything no challenge speedrun.  It is what it is.  I probably do it tomorrow night.

*edit* I did like the lead up to the lvl.49 Cape Westwind trial fight.  Infiltrating the overworld base a bit and fighting enemies to get to the gate to trigger the boss fight.  I kind of wish the game had more non-ID overworld dungeons because I think the seamlessness of going into and through and overworld dungeon is pretty cool.  That stuff reminds me of how Xenoblade handles it.

[Lucretius]

24-man raids become face rolls once people start out-gearing them.  But when they first come out, they're legit challenges.  Anyone who was around when some of them first dropped can tell you they are no joke when the community is still learning them and at minimum item-level.  Hell, I still see raid-wide wipes in the first boss of Labyrinth of the Ancients (the very first 24-man raid they released) because people think they can ignore mechanics.  People still wipe occasionally on the last boss of Labyrinth of the Ancients too.  Syrcus Tower is the easiest 24-man raid, but still has some fun mechanics.  People still wipe on the first and last boss of World of Darkness.  Void Ark was painful when it was released.  And there's a reason people call The Weeping City of Mhach (the most current 24-man raid) "The Wiping City of Mhach."

[Bebpo]

One more reason to catch up then.  I can't wait to start wiping as strange as it sounds.  The most fun I've had so far have been the bosses my party's wiped on like first boss of Qarn.  It's fun wiping and figuring out the strategy.

[Bebpo]

You know I'm kinda torn as the bosses are getting more complex & interesting now.  Going in blind is cool and trying to figure it out, but since I don't want to be a burden I tell my party it's my first time in the dungeon and someone usually explains all the mechanics which helps me do fine and the team does fine but there's no learning challenge.

I probably should be a dick and just wing it and if we wipe I can apologize after :|

[The Legend of Sunblade]

All future trials from your point onward are 8 man affairs, but Cape Westwind is a special case. If you think it was a joke now, it was as much of a joke when it first came out. Complete faceroll, with no real mechanics to worry about. None of the fights that actuslly require you to be level 50 and onward are like that.

[Bebpo]

Do they actually balance the difficulty for 8 people though?  Because so far in the two 8 person events I've done there's no reason mechanically you couldn't do them with 4 people.  Although I guess the guild heist one the extra people count is because you have to defend the objects from multiple groups so maybe that would be rough with 4.  Like with 8 people parties I'd expect multiple big hitter enemies at one time that a single tank can't survive so the 2 tanks need to divide the aggro.  More adds and event specific actions all 4 DPS jobs need to do.  While healers are keeping everyone alive.

[Positive Touch]

the final two dungeons in 2.0 are my least favorite in the entire game. they put in a million cutscenes that other players expect you to skip, and then the level itself is extremely easy so you don't need to learn the mechanics. you will seriously just be running and trying to keep up the whole time. I hate hate hate those dungeons.

everything afterwards tho came after they were able to take player feedback into account  and is much better designed. the 8 player trials in the msq trend to stay easy bc they want everyone to be able to clear them (although NOTHING is as easy as poor Rhitahtyn), but they all have harder optional fights. the three 2.0 primals have hard mode fights that are also easy, but anything in the game labeled Extreme will be hard as balls. you will have to know the mechanics of you will die, and you will prolly cause your whole party to die too. that said, i still find it more fun to go in blind and learn as I go just never ever do that as a tank or everyone will fucking hate you.

[Lucretius]

3.4-3.5-ish have two mandatory MSQ 8-man trials that people still wipe on.  The Chrysalis and The Steps of Faith.

[Positive Touch]

o God the chrysalis. parties still usually abandon most of the time I get that in roulette.

[Bebpo]

Also, the music's gotten a lot better.  I really like the Garuda battle track and the overworld empire base music is good too.  Definitely feeling the improvement.

The Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy XIV is detailing the more general gameplay centric aspects of 1.0.

Ethys Asher did a thorough retrospective on 1.0's story, as well as a complete detailing of The Binding Coil of Bahamut's story, including the 1.0 part of it.

After I finish the 2.0 MSQ, if I want to avoid spoilers, can I watch those except for the Binding Coil one?  Very curious to learn more about 1.0 at this point.  I've been watching some FFXI videos to compare and yeah, uh, coming from the interface and player accessibility of FFXIV, I could never play FFXI after this.  Instead I'm gonna watch the 80 hour long "FFXI - The Movie" that's on youtube.  I've actually already started it and am a bit in. 

[Lucretius]

Definitely brush up on the 1.XX story (and rewatch the 2.XX opening cinematic) before you start the Binding Coil. Binding Coil has the best storyline in 2.XX. It explains what that giant red moon is that fell down at the end of 1.XX.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Yes, 8 man trials are balanced around 8 people, specially when doing them synced. There are some trials that are just not going to be as tough now as they were when they came out (specially the Garuda/Titan/Ifrit hard mode trio), but they don't melt in less than a minute like Cape Westwind's. That fight is just abnormally easy. Even ones you fight later as part of the MSQ won't feel as difficult as Garuda normal was, but you will still get to see their full set of mechanics and signature attacks rather than the zergfest that is Cape Westwind and the 8man guildhest (both of which aren't very good).

Also, the music's gotten a lot better.  I really like the Garuda battle track and the overworld empire base music is good too.  Definitely feeling the improvement.

That's because you're starting to get to the big shift in composers. A lot of the early 2.0 tracks, including the very vanilla dungeon theme that all the Level 1-49 dungeons and Ifrit use, are carryovers from 1.0 and composed by Uematsu. While good, they all tend to sound kind of samey and fail at giving dungeons their own flair and tune.

As you progress though, the game's true musical savant, Masayoshi Soken, starts to peek through. He did the FATE music and a lot of the new overworld tunes, and by the point you're at, the Titan and Garuda themes. As both 2.x and then 3.x carry out, he just goes balls out with the soundtrack, giving every new dungeon unique music, and changing up genres and styles for every new trial. You're in for a treat in that regard.

After I finish the 2.0 MSQ, if I want to avoid spoilers, can I watch those except for the Binding Coil one?  Very curious to learn more about 1.0 at this point.  I've been watching some FFXI videos to compare and yeah, uh, coming from the interface and player accessibility of FFXIV, I could never play FFXI after this.  Instead I'm gonna watch the 80 hour long "FFXI - The Movie" that's on youtube.  I've actually already started it and am a bit in.

Yeah, you can watch both of those. If you have any inclination of having us help you through Coil for the story, we can also do so once you reach level 60. The content is hard, but made much simpler by running it without level sync at 60 to where I've cleared the final Bahamut fight with only 3 people.