Final Fantasy XIV

Oh my god, Y'shtola fantasiaed into Viera, now who's going to be the Catgirl in the Scions?

As an aside, what do you mean Job quests are gone?

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 23rd 2019 at 11:32:11 AM

Hoo boy I have a LOT of thoughts since I've spent most of tonight catching up to what I missed.

Gunbreaker and Dancer both look awesome, though I'm very confused by how they demonstrated dancer, I definitely have to get behind it before it can make sense.

The changes to role actions/finally killing off the last vestiges of cross-class is a good riddance to me.

I'm sad to see protect go, but it was really just an extra button that didn't add anything except getting people yelled at if they forgot it.

I kinda feel like they may not have gotten their wording across well on what they expected of healers, I guess it's just a wait-and-see kind of thing. Maybe, given their wording, there'll just be more actual healing to do over the course of the expansion?

I didn't see any ability in the job action trailer I disliked, I think Black Mage got off the worst in the flashy factor, a lot of the others were either really welcome changes (all the new things monks get to manage their stacks) or things I'm VERY excited about (Summoner reworks, which I'm convinced we're missing a third trance, one for each egi to encourage rotating them out) and EVERYTHING about the changes to Machinist and Dark Knight I'm all for.

Messing around with the character creation, I feel oddly conflicted about the new races in not the ways you'd think, I love the Ronso's possible colors, though I'm sad that their hairstyles are tied to their faces and that makes it such a huge limiting factor, however their body moves with a perfect amount of weight for their frames, and for a beast race they're surprisingly expressive. Viera meanwhile have a lot more on the surface, but the more I look at them, the more I feel like they have an almost porcelain-doll like Uncanny Valley issue on all but one face.

I also couldn't help but notice that the song that plays second in the job trailer is a mix of Syrcus Tower and eScape, I have to wonder if a lingering phantom of Omega might not play a part at some point this expansion.

Edited by NaraNumas on May 23rd 2019 at 1:37:15 PM

There are no Job quests between 71 and 79. Instead you do Role Quests based on whether your role is Tank/Healer/Physical/Magic. These are supposedly tied into the MSQ somehow.

At level 80 you get your own personal Job quest though.

They implied they were cutting down on the number of Job quests so their writers could focus on making a few really good storylines instead of spreading themselves thin.

Edited by Clarste on May 23rd 2019 at 11:39:50 AM

They also didn't say how long the level 80 job quests would be, it's entirely possible it'll be one quest, but will be 30+ minutes of story, basically as a postgame thing.

That's definitely a wait-and-see.

The way they made the Role Quests sound, you'll be retracing the steps of Arbert and company, so presumably the role you are will determine which member of his party you learn about.

Edited by NaraNumas on May 23rd 2019 at 1:58:11 PM

That sounds cool. I'm curious if different classes have differences, like Paladin and Dark Knight.

I'm not a fan. Sure, adding new classes means adding more class quests with every level milestone and that would add up fast for the writers, but this is just going to contribute to the classes feeling more generic in terms of story. These quests will have to be written broadly enough that it doesn't matter at all what class you're playing - which is one thing for the MSQ, but it's another for the quests that are supposed to show us how we're growing into our classes. It's going to be a little hard to buy that my soul crystal is resonating with the deeds of ancient white mages just for doing something some nerd with a telescope and a Yu-Gi-Oh deck could also do.

I'd already basically resigned myself to a complete non-reaction from NPCs despite slinging Light magic all across the First, but...

Edited by RedSavant on May 24th 2019 at 3:04:42 PM

I dunno with more focus i think they can differentiate between classes

Why do you assume that your Soul Crystal is going to be resonating with the deeds of the ancient White Mage in the new Role Quests? That seems like a bizarre way to look at it. Your Soul Crystal goes on hold until 80 and you get resonate with some other guy for a while.

That's why I put it as "they're getting rid of Job Quests" rather than saying "Job Quests are now this other thing." This isn't meant to be an exactly equivalent, imo. They're also mandatory to progress in the MSQ so if anything they seem even more important?

I mean, I can certainly understand the feeling of "but I wanted to do White Mage quests!" but the way you're framing it seems disingenuous to me, like they're trying to water down your job quests instead of trying something completely new.

Also, from a game design perspective, spending time and effort into crafting an experience that 90% of your audience will never do (ie: the job quests of classes they don't play) is pretty much the first thing you should cut, just as a general rule.

Something I missed until I rewatched it a few times, it seems like the introduction of party shields for each tank is the start of a bit of a shift where tanks need to take more responsibility for their party than just not letting them get hit. Looking at gunbreaker skills in particular, they have a targetted shield and a targeted heal over time, with Paladin and Warrior also getting single-target shields, and DRK getting a way to mass Blackest Night.

So it sounds like every tank, ideally, is also going to shift towards being a bit of a support role.

^^That's fair, yeah. I was assuming that the job quests would be used to parcel out new abilities like they were in HW, which lorewise supposedly comes from the soul crystals. So ideally, we would be doing things that resonate with the class's lore identity in those quests, at least for the big flagship skills being added in the expansion. Just picking up new skills on level-up, while definitely convenient and a totally understandable part of balancing an MMO, has always felt kind of empty to me.

That said, I don't know if I'd put the quests that advance job storylines at the top of the cutlist. Why not sidequests? They barely give any EXP worth mentioning anyway, and doing them on your first time through a zone is a waste because you'll hit the new level cap with plenty of MSQ left anyway. Sure, they can be fun, but if content absolutely has to be a zero-sum game...

Edit: I'm sure the role quests will be interesting, too. It's just kind of annoying to enter into the expansion that looks set to deal with White Magic and Amdapor with confirmation that we won't be given any real further information about WHM.

Edited by RedSavant on May 24th 2019 at 4:20:22 AM

They've been intentionally avoiding trying the quests to the skills for a while now, lore-wise, since it interferes with their ability to cut job skills or change which levels you learn them.

Wow, so WHM won't get much lore for them? Shadowbringers is the anti WHM expac.

And looking at it, WHM doesn't seem like it'll get anything other than big dick heals and maybe some shielding and regens. Not to mention Stone getting replaced with a different spell, which means our DPS options don't change.

@Red Hunter: To clarify what I meant, I imagine we'll learn more about Amdapor and the Sin Eaters in general, but I don't think it's likely that we'll learn anything specific about how WHM works as a class. Which is consistent with how vague they are about other classes' lorewise mechanics, after all.

The dumb thing is that they openly acknowledge the fanbase's criticism of the White Mage's new toys amounting to a bigger rock and more pretty boring heals

so their response to that is to replace the rock with some misc holy something or other, add another Holy clone, and give them angel wings that they have not explained the function of in any way.

If this is the best they can do with a healer rework I'm really worried about the 4th healing job.

You still think there's ever going to be a fourth healer?

Edited by Reflextion on May 24th 2019 at 3:29:26 PM

the devs already said why we don't have one "now".

I would still like to see WHM get the Seed of Life ability that one angel boss in Amdapor has. An autoraise, even if niche in use, would be thematically appropriate, and give WHM some measure of mitigation.

They will never let us have a Reraise in mainstream content purely because WHM would then be required for everything and/or cheesing.

Question! Are the class reworks going to apply to all players or only to the new expansion?

Asking as someone who doesn't play XIV and swears up and down she'll try the game one of these days honest and thinks Machinist looks right up her alley even if you need the first expansion for it.

It's from the ground up, so it'll apply to everyone, yes.

You have to play a while to unlock Machinist though, so if that's what you've got your eye on I'd look into one of the starter classes/Jobs to at least tide you over.

There is a content boost you can get which can boost you to heavensward content to grab the machinist. I haven’t done it myself though I so do not know if you can go back and do the Main Story quests though after you do it but there is going to be a New Game Plus feature in the new expansion.

the level boosts are separate from the story boosts

even though you need to beat the 2.x storyline to unlock the HW jobs, i dont know if you can use the level boost to get a MCH before you clear ARR

Edited by MetaflarePrime on May 25th 2019 at 1:36:43 AM

As far as I know, it counts the quests as done - so it's basically paying more money not to play the game you just bought.