Final Fantasy XIV General Discussion Thread

I did some quick digging and can’t find the article I saw on it a little bit before, but the headline indicated it was an anonymous third party that was angry about the rocky launch. I’ll see if I can find it after some more hunting. In the meanwhile, I’m kind of stunned at how many FF14 players are convinced the DDoS attacks are just an excuse used to mask the technical issues that are the real underlying problem. I haven’t played FF14 in a minute, but is that even possible Square would do that?

It’s possible, but I don’t think that they’d do it with this game – especially since over the weekend the game director issued a letter of apology for the instance issues I mentioned above, explained what they did to help alleviate the issues, and warned of the problems that may cause as a trade-off. I think a part of why FF14 does so well is because Yoshida and his team have been very transparent in what they do to build and keep the trust after 1.0 crashed and burned so horribly.

That’s good to hear. I own this through Amazon and I’m constantly tempted to roll up a new character and sub for $15, every once in a while the urge strikes me, so I’m pleased to see the fans are still enjoying it.

Hey, since this thread is bumped…

The free trial was recently expanded to let you play up to level 35 with no time limit. With how the class/job system works, that’s one character, but that character can level every class up to the 35 limit (I wouldn’t recommend this because early game can be a bit of a grind especially with the trial restrictions).

The first “big” fight is at the level 20 story quest and things start to pick up steam from there so it’s nice that they relaxed the restrictions to give people a better taste of the game. With the old trial you were capped at level 20 and 14 days which honestly leaves a bad impression due to how few skills you have and the minimal amount of group content up to that point.

Anyways, here’s the link if anyone wants to give it a shot:

https://secure.square-enix.com/account/app/svc/ffxivregister?lng=en-us&notr=0

Worth noting this would only let you try the original classes/jobs, both expansions introduce new jobs that start at 50.

Original: whitemage, scholar, paladin, warrior, bard, dragoon, monk, blackmage, summoner, ninja (added after launch, not part of expansion)

Newer: dark knight, astrologist, machineist, samurai, redmage

If any one plays on behemoth and needs assistance send word.

Part one of Danny O’Dwyer/Noclip’s documentary about the death and rebirth of FFXIV is now live:

I meant to bump this thread last night, but I grabbed this on Steam for $15 and a free 30 day pass (rather than paying $15 to renew my existing Amazon account) and put some time into the game this morning for a bit. It’s a lot of fun, more than the last time I gave it a try (and I enjoyed it last time) so I’m going to see how far I can get with it. I figure if I can get 3 weeks worth of fun for $15 before Final Fantasy XII comes out I’ll be sitting pretty good.

Any idea what I’m missing not having the Heaven-something or latest ($40) expansion installed?

Nothing relevant content-wise that you’re likely to hit in 3 weeks. Heavensward gives you the dragon race for character creation, access to floors 41-200 of the deep dungeon and nothing else until you hit level 50 AND get through all of the content of A Realm Reborn. Stormblood (which now includes the first expansion, Heavensward for free) gives you two new classes – Samurai and Red Mage – as soon as you hit level 50, and nothing else until you get through all of ARR and Heavensward’s story content.

I’m only 46 on my character, struggling to XP up…

It is quite a great game though; Love the fact that you can pretty much play every class on one character and easily switch between them.

The biggest problems I have at the moment is the slow leveling, quest layout traveling everywhere and not being able to fly :)

Perfect, thanks!

Fueled by my ongoing FFXII campaign, I decided to give this one a try on my PS4. The trial/demo is really extensive!

I’m struggling with the controls still, though. When I’m in an MMO, I’ve come to expect myself to be able to make all my actions automatic – I gravitate to the pinpoint mouseclick to save me in tight situations – so learning the controls while dealing with this level of complexity is a little frustrating. I like it enough to persevere.

It’s so refreshing to find a helpful and polite community post-WOW. And there’s a lot here, even if the tropes that WOW consolidated aren’t exactly transcended in the systems and gameplay.

Anyone else still playing?

I am! I’ve been playing to the exclusion of just about everything else since the expansion released. One of the tips I’d throw out on controller is to enable the secondary hotbars (I forget the exact option but it gives you additional skill bars on L2+R2 and then R2+L2) – if you end up buying the game, by end game you should be just about filling both those bars with little or no overflow.

The trial was expanded a few months back (used to be limited to level 20 and 2 weeks) and I think that was one of the best things they could’ve done to drum up interest. It ends up giving you a lot more instanced content and a better feel of the story and gameplay instead of locking progress suddenly after the first major boss instance. What server are you on and what class(es) have you tried?

edit to add: Anyone who is thinking of picking the game back up, Amazon currently has the PC expansion bundle (includes both Heavensward and Stormblood) for ~20 bucks.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-XIV-Stormblood-PC/dp/B01M3SP452/

Hi @LockerK! I’m not sure what server I’m on, but I’m fairly sure I chose the Aether data center (the one that is not “Primal”). What server are you on?

Thanks for the tip on the hotbars. I was looking for something like that last night but didn’t really understand the nomenclature.

Looking into trying it out on PC to compare. A great community is so important to me. So far, it’s been a breath of fresh air.

Yea, the community for this game by and large is extremely helpful to new players. There are going to be the occasional assholes but I’ve found they’re much less frequent than other MMOs. Unfortunately I’m on the Primal data center on Hyperion.

The nice thing about 14 (and one of the missing things that’s kept me from trying out ESO) is that everyone plays on the same servers and your account is fully portable between platforms – so you can play with your same character on both PS4 and PC. It’s nice to be able to move from the PC for more ‘serious’ content and then kick back on the couch when I’m doing gathering or something that requires a little less effort. One frustration with this is that your gear sets (important when you have multiple classes) and hotbars are stored locally so they don’t transfer over. Controller support on PC is fantastic as well if you want to try it there at some point.

The only restrictions I can think of are that you can’t link trials on multiple platforms, and if you purchase the base game from Steam, you’re locked in to that as your PC platform; none of the PC retailers sell Steam keys and it isn’t compatible with the base PC version. If you do stick with it and want a PC copy, I’d recommend going with the non-Steam option for sales like the one posted above – unless you have a bunch of Steam Wallet funds lying around to pay for the sub fee.

I love this game. I’m on Mateus in the Aether datacenter.

There are two types of expanded hotbars for controllers:
RT+LT and LT+RT (called the Extended Crossbar, I believe) - while holding RT, press LT to activate it and vice versa
RT,RT and LT,LT (called the W-crossbar) - double-press LT or RT to activate it.
You can use either or both at the same time.

I have a general hotbar set up for all classes for when I’m not fighting. It has things like teleport and summon chocobo on it. When I pull out my weapon, the hotbar automatically switches to a class-specific hotbar with my skills on it. I find that two hotbars of skills, with the more situational one accessed through the Extended hotbar is more than enough.

I did not realize this! Wow, that’s great. I assume that means making the one-time purchase twice, once for each platform, and then paying the monthly fee only once? Or is it better than that? ;)

Thanks, @Wyndwraith. I saw those when I was digging into the config, but didn’t understand what exactly they were.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-05-23-final-fantasy-14-starter-edition-is-free-to-download-on-ps4

“Starter edition” free on PS4 if you get it before May 26th.

Is this the MMO that has been available on PS4 since around launch of the PS4 in 2013? Or was that Final Fantasy XI? I can’t keep these two straight. Whichever one it was, I was starved for playing any PS4 games at the time, and I remember trying to sign up for the free week trial or whatever, and I just couldn’t get the account to give me access to the game despite several days of trying.

I think the problem was that I already had a Square Enix account that I created because of Just Cause 2, so I couldn’t create a new one on the same email account, but when I tried it with that existing Just Cause 2 Square account, it kept giving me an error.

Finally I just said “fine, the grapes were probably sour anyway, you just saved me the trouble of tasting them.”

Final Fantasy XI was PC and PS2, later ported to XB360 but is currently only supported on PC. FFXIV was PC and PS3, launched in even worse shape than Anthem, was eventually shut down and relaunched in 2013. It was cross generation for a while but the PS3 version is no longer supported. Currently available on PC, PS4 and XB1.

Anyway it’s a great game now but playing through the original game and especially the patch content between it and the first expansion is a real slog. Like multiple hundred hour slog. Sadly you can’t just ignore the story and level up, you have to play through it in order to progress. There’s a rework on the way that cuts out a lot of the fat from everything before the first expansion and I’d highly recommend waiting for that later this year. Probably in patch 5.3 I think? But I haven’t been playing in a while so I might have that wrong.

Also yeah, square enix accounts are annoying and just creating one and registering the game can be a trial. It’s super hard to recommend this game to new players and I’m not trying to minimize any of that nonsense but once you get into the expansions the game is kind of amazing and the latest expansion is my favorite Final Fantasy game ever.

Yah it’s a real shame, there is a great game in here, but boy do you have to slog to get to it. That story line quest is just beyond hair pulling levels of frustration. Sooooo many freaking quests where you have to run 10 minutes, answer one question from an NPC, and then run back another 10 minutes. Waypoints you can port to are conveniently located to maximize your run times.

This game made me angry lol.

Patch 5.3 releases on August 11th after a two month delay due to WFH transitioning. This patch will include the main quest pruning as well as an expansion of the trial and starter editions. Both will now extend up to level 60 and include all the content from the first expansion, Heavensward. Free trial will still have the communication and market restrictions to combat RMT.

The story for this game is very good with some arguing that Heavensward is the best arc, so this is a big move. Combined with the change to base game’s main quest, it’s a great time to try Final Fantasy 14.