Expectations for a new player

[The Stig]

Well as you're switching from FFXI to FFXIV, I feel an overall high level list of stuff/FAQ like this might be appropiate here, rather than go through wiki/forum/site:

- There is no skill ups in FFXIV, and each class is restricted to 1 weapon
- Changing your main weapon, providing you've unlocked or have a class high enough to equip it, will change your class.
- Class = base class you start out with, at level 30 you can quest for your job stone which when equipped upgrades your class to a job (gladiator > paladin); although you become a PLD, you continue to accumulate EXP on Gladiator, the PLD's level is determined by your Gladiator level
- [GAMEPLAY] With the exception of healer classes, BRD, SMN and maybe BLM, kinda, each class has a sequence moves called a rotation they must do to maximise DPS; you can do them out of order, but the game won't recognise them as combos, and therefore you do the base/default damage rather than the combo "bonus" damage
- TP in this game is more or less a energy bar, physical classes use TP for their abilities, mage classes use MP

- Every class has a built in "flee" button (called Sprint) which costs all your TP. This increases movement speed for up to 20 seconds at full TP, and is on a 30s cooldown
- TP is recovered at 60-80 something odd per tic in battle, 100/tic outside of battle
- Combining these facts, it is important not to flee and then decide to engage in battle, as you might start off with only 200 odd TP and be forced to cool off a tiny bit before pushing buttons. Although TP charges up in no time outside of battle, you might sometimes be forced into one shortly after hitting flee

- Aside from dungeon (instance) enemies, everything will leash once you run out of their immediate radius.
- As a result, you can probably run a low level char through high level areas without much consequence; the environment does not feel dangerous [did you shit yourself running through valkrum dunes and into that tunnel to get to your EXP party for the first time? You won't feel like there, or anywhere]

- No stealth in this game, although the 2 (3?) gathering classes do have such a move, but those classes can't battle either, so ...

- No NMs/camping, although there are "sudden" events called FATES which usually drops a NM in the area for everyone to fight, or a horde of mobs. Anyone who participates gets EXP/gold/tokens. These happen extremely frequently and every zone has multiple FATEs. They do not drop anything.

- All mobs aside from the FATE NMs can be soloed; some NMs can be soloed if you can self sustain yourself

- At level cap [50], a level 48 mob will not kick your ass, you will kick its ass unlike FFXI where even a level 60s mob can be a threat to a level 75 (fuck you level 60s undead!!!!)

- Downtime is none existant, once out of battle you recover HP MP TP rapidly

- The game will auto level sync you for all instances/FATES to be level appropiate. This means friends can help you on stuff without much sacrifice/need for level appropiate equip

- No moon phase, face direction for HQ, clock related events (that I know of), shitty Kirin-like doors, team doors, or any dick gimmick from FFXI

- Next to no gear swaps; you can't swap gear in battle. Some people have slightly situational builds for their classes (i.e. WARs carry DPS accessories), but you can 99% most likely function without these specialise builds

- The Materia system in this game is somewhat similar to the Synergy Armor in FFXI where you can attribute the gear with some extra stats. Unfortunately it's not FF7, so don't jump thinking that

- You'll see many familiar FFXI names/models; a nice nostalgic lick in the face

- The loot system in this game has 3 buttons:

Need (priority 1)
Greed (priority 2)
Pass (pass)

If the gear is appropiate for your class, Need will be available/lit up for use. That way you only compete with other people who meet the same requirements for said gear. All other classes can only greed. If 1 person uses need and 3 others use greed, you win the gear. If 2 people use need, you compete with 1 other guy for the roll, the other 2 don't get a chance. If no one can wear it at the time of dropping, you can all greed and you'll roll against 4 other people.

- At level 20/30 or somewhere near that, you can pick a NPC Faction (out of 3) to align yourself with. Aside from the distinct look in gear (faction uniforms) available and some stat variations, there is no recommendation other than how you may want to look like in-game

- At level 20/30 (same time as you join a company) you get given a chocobo, unlimited use, no need to feed it etc, and you can also summon it as a 2nd party member (think of it like a NPC fellow) to help fight solo; note that you can't summon your chicken in instances or anything that matters currently. The company you join will determine the costumes available for the chocobo

Can't think of any off-notes an ex-FFXI player might want, but this should be a good start. Feel free to pick it apart or ask more on it.

[Kalmado]

If you're on FiOS, you'll most likely need to cough up for a VPN service, too. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Thanks for the info. I am on Comcast for now. If Fios was available I would switch in a heartbeat.

[Ksandra]

- No NMs/camping, although there are "sudden" events called FATES which usually drops a NM in the area for everyone to fight, or a horde of mobs. Anyone who participates gets EXP/gold/tokens. These happen extremely frequently and every zone has multiple FATEs. They do not drop anything.

Awesome stuff, but just a very minor correction.

Some fates drop minions (vanity pets that you can summon and they follow you. They are strictly for looks.) There are also two lvl 50 fates that drop tokens for specific gear (behemoth and odin fates).

[Kalmado]

Well as you're switching from FFXI to FFXIV, I feel an overall high level list of stuff/FAQ like this might be appropiate here, rather than go through wiki/forum/site:

- There is no skill ups in FFXIV, and each class is restricted to 1 weapon
- Changing your main weapon, providing you've unlocked or have a class high enough to equip it, will change your class.
- Class = base class you start out with, at level 30 you can quest for your job stone which when equipped upgrades your class to a job (gladiator > paladin); although you become a PLD, you continue to accumulate EXP on Gladiator, the PLD's level is determined by your Gladiator level
- [GAMEPLAY] With the exception of healer classes, BRD, SMN and maybe BLM, kinda, each class has a sequence moves called a rotation they must do to maximise DPS; you can do them out of order, but the game won't recognise them as combos, and therefore you do the base/default damage rather than the combo "bonus" damage
- TP in this game is more or less a energy bar, physical classes use TP for their abilities, mage classes use MP

- Every class has a built in "flee" button (called Sprint) which costs all your TP. This increases movement speed for up to 20 seconds at full TP, and is on a 30s cooldown
- TP is recovered at 60-80 something odd per tic in battle, 100/tic outside of battle
- Combining these facts, it is important not to flee and then decide to engage in battle, as you might start off with only 200 odd TP and be forced to cool off a tiny bit before pushing buttons. Although TP charges up in no time outside of battle, you might sometimes be forced into one shortly after hitting flee

- Aside from dungeon (instance) enemies, everything will leash once you run out of their immediate radius.
- As a result, you can probably run a low level char through high level areas without much consequence; the environment does not feel dangerous [did you shit yourself running through valkrum dunes and into that tunnel to get to your EXP party for the first time? You won't feel like there, or anywhere]

- No stealth in this game, although the 2 (3?) gathering classes do have such a move, but those classes can't battle either, so ...

- No NMs/camping, although there are "sudden" events called FATES which usually drops a NM in the area for everyone to fight, or a horde of mobs. Anyone who participates gets EXP/gold/tokens. These happen extremely frequently and every zone has multiple FATEs. They do not drop anything.

- All mobs aside from the FATE NMs can be soloed; some NMs can be soloed if you can self sustain yourself

- At level cap [50], a level 48 mob will not kick your ass, you will kick its ass unlike FFXI where even a level 60s mob can be a threat to a level 75 (fuck you level 60s undead!!!!)

- Downtime is none existant, once out of battle you recover HP MP TP rapidly

- The game will auto level sync you for all instances/FATES to be level appropiate. This means friends can help you on stuff without much sacrifice/need for level appropiate equip

- No moon phase, face direction for HQ, clock related events (that I know of), shitty Kirin-like doors, team doors, or any dick gimmick from FFXI

- Next to no gear swaps; you can't swap gear in battle. Some people have slightly situational builds for their classes (i.e. WARs carry DPS accessories), but you can 99% most likely function without these specialise builds

- The Materia system in this game is somewhat similar to the Synergy Armor in FFXI where you can attribute the gear with some extra stats. Unfortunately it's not FF7, so don't jump thinking that

- You'll see many familiar FFXI names/models; a nice nostalgic lick in the face

- The loot system in this game has 3 buttons:

Need (priority 1)
Greed (priority 2)
Pass (pass)

If the gear is appropiate for your class, Need will be available/lit up for use. That way you only compete with other people who meet the same requirements for said gear. All other classes can only greed. If 1 person uses need and 3 others use greed, you win the gear. If 2 people use need, you compete with 1 other guy for the roll, the other 2 don't get a chance. If no one can wear it at the time of dropping, you can all greed and you'll roll against 4 other people.

- At level 20/30 or somewhere near that, you can pick a NPC Faction (out of 3) to align yourself with. Aside from the distinct look in gear (faction uniforms) available and some stat variations, there is no recommendation other than how you may want to look like in-game

- At level 20/30 (same time as you join a company) you get given a chocobo, unlimited use, no need to feed it etc, and you can also summon it as a 2nd party member (think of it like a NPC fellow) to help fight solo; note that you can't summon your chicken in instances or anything that matters currently. The company you join will determine the costumes available for the chocobo

Can't think of any off-notes an ex-FFXI player might want, but this should be a good start. Feel free to pick it apart or ask more on it.

Thank you very much for this write up! A lot of great info and I'm looking even more forward to this now. So...about them servers....I wonder which to join.....

[OWS_Tonx]

Cool kids go to Excalibur

[Kelenae]

Cool kids go to Excalibur

Second

[Yukari]

- No moon phase, face direction for HQ, clock related events (that I know of), shitty Kirin-like doors, team doors, or any dick gimmick from FFXI

There's very few clock related events, like unspoiled nodes, but nothing nearly as bad as FFXI.

[Skai]

Check out this thread for a very nicely compiled FAQ for beginners in picture form. Highly recommend you to check it out.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=657017

[Limlight]

Besides gamerscape, is there any other wiki like site I can read for basic general information?

Also, Amazon has the digital copy of XIV on sale today for $15. Yesterday it was only hard copy.

ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com

has all hunting/gathering/crafting logs listed and bunches of other stuff,

there's even a linked youtube walkthrough for each dungeon. It's what I use.

and xivdb.com for info on gear.

[Silenka]

I just started playing today, goodbye life~
This thread has been helpful.
Anyone on Siren? It's the server I was on in XI and I had a few friends there, curious to know how many others may have migrated to the same-name server on XIV or who all here might've joined it.

I have one big question so far, don't know if there's a thread or a good resource to look at for this: if I wanna main SMN how should I spend my attribute points? Are they class-specific or character-wide? How important is the allocation of attribute points in the long run and can it ever be undone if you fuck it up (like merits)?

[Skai]

For SMN you wanna spend all 30 points on INT. It is class specific so as an arcanist, if you spend all 30 points on INT, you'll have 30 INT for both your summoner and scholar jobs.

How you allocate your points are not important in the long run, but if you want to optimize your performance for your job, say DPS for instance, it can mean a lot more DPS. However, if you ever change your mind and want to allocate differently, you can always spend seals from your grand company for an item to reset it.

I say not important because you can definitely complete end game content without spending any of your bonus points. Of course, there are many factors to consider when determining the outcome.

[Silenka]

Thank you, that's exactly the info I was looking for!
Another question, what's endgame party setup like right now? Are there any "loljobs" I shouldn't expect invites on, or are they all treated pretty much equally fairly right now?

[The Stig]

Equal
2 tank 2 heal 4 dps for the final instance
2 tank 2 heal 4 dps for primal battles (think of a boss-rush, you queue up to fight 1 thing)
6 tank 6 heal 12 dps for the lolcasualfinalinstance
1 tank 1 heal 2 dps for everything else

Specific setups can occur to cheese your way through certain mechanics.

[gaogaostegosaurus]

Thank you, that's exactly the info I was looking for!
Another question, what's endgame party setup like right now? Are there any "loljobs" I shouldn't expect invites on, or are they all treated pretty much equally fairly right now?

I don't know if it's because we don't have 100 percent accurate parsers yet, but all the jobs seem to be at pretty good balance points right now. On top of that, there are pretty good reasons not to stack essentially every class for anything that matters, except Bards, but they Bards have the lowest potential output to compensate. Sort of.

That said, this is a MMO so you can expect a lot of "are you a melee class? Well fuck you" mechanics.

[Silenka]

Balance in a FF MMO by SE? That's actually the last thing I expected to hear. So glad SMN won't be completely ignored this time around :D

[Ksandra]

Ya I would have to say THE strongest aspect of this game right now is how well the classes balance each other atm. Most mmos fucking fail at that.

[Ratatapa]

Ya I would have to say THE strongest aspect of this game right now is how well the classes balance each other atm. Most mmos fucking fail at that.

Correction

Most class are well balanced, but most people fail to realize that and just do range parties

[Niiro]

Class balance in terms of damage potential has little to do with fight mechanics that heavily favor range over melee.

[Karbuncle]

For what its worth, theres a lot of praise and mostly "LOVE DA GAME" opinions flying around, and it makes the game sound very rigorous and enjoyable, full of wonder. Coming from someone who did enjoy it for ~2months, I'd like to say there are a few negatives to the game that stand out >to me specifically< once you hit 50 and beat the storyline and such.

-FATEs are pretty boring. Some have nice little lore stories, but mostly its just thousands of effects going off and things die, the epitome of grindy boring flare. You walk in and see Simurgh or Ose, but there is no feeling to them, no wonder, no specialness or uniqueness... Just another nameless mob you kill for seals and exp.

-Dungeons are everything. If you're not in a dungeon you're probably following a horde of people doing FATEs for hours on end. Thats pretty much the entire game as a DoW class. FATE while waiting on a dungeon duty finder to pop up. I mean theres a few daily tasks like finding treasure chests full of Tomes/junk and/or vanity items.

-A lot of features revolve around once a week lockouts. Crystal tower - 1 loot per week, Mythology tomes - 450 a week, Coil of Bahamut - 1~5 once a week. Everything has a weekly lockout except Philosophy tomes, which are good at getting I.lv70 gear, but even thats already being looked down upon by some people.

-Crafting, while more involved than XI's by far, Is grindy and will almost entirely be a gil sink and waste of time for the majority of people leveling it, as items are generally flooded, people undercut a lot since all listings are visible and people will undercut you by 1, 10, or 1000 gil just to get theirs at the top of the list, and most if not all crafted gear, by SE's own design admission, will be worse than anything you'll see in endgame dungeons (I.E theres no Cursed armor like in XI, that could appraise or become best in slot, best in slots are strictly dungeon drops).

-I hate Summoner. Okay, Its one of my favorite RPG classes (Besides THF), and this game kills it for me. Arcanist Pets and Summoner pets share the exact same abilities (Carby/topazCarby and Garuda/Titan have the same abilities, Ifrit being a third pet has a unique set), and personally I prefer looking at Carbuncle instead of the "Summons" abominations that are Chicken Nuggets man, Stickbird, and Flamingtwig, but unfortunate to be useful I need to be on Summoner, not Arcanist, and while enjoyable in theory, the job is basically a glorified Necromancer, or If you've played any other modern MMO, a "Standard pet job", shitty half-rate pet that influences very little, with the master being the main driving force. Its not like XI where Summons had a wide arrange of abilities both offensive and defensive. For better or for worse pets are dumbed down. This is just a personal gripe, nothing bad about the game I imagine, unless you love SMN like i did.

-Zones are vast and forgettable. This one I can't put my finger on. if you were shown a picture of the Boyahda Tree, or Bibiki bay, would you recognize it? When you walk through Zi'Tah, do you get the feeling you've walked into someplace magical yet real? I never got that feeling in XIV, maybe because the ease of access means you never stop to smell the roses, you always have a mini-map and waypoints marking your every movement, theres really no real need for exploration and no sense of danger since all mobs are tethered and you can easily outrun them. So again, i can't really put my finger on this one, but the open world just feels like a vague empty memory to me, I mean the three towns seem really well done, but the rest of the zones, are just a blur. I guess i equate it to what i said above, ease of travel and etc never really gives you a reason to stop and admire everything.

As someone who enjoyed the game for the time I played, it was a fun experience, but like a lot of new-age WoW clones, if you're not accustomed to pointless mind numbing monotony to get gear that will be outdated before you can equip it and the looming ghost of "power creep" and "linearity", You're going to burn out on it within a few months. I know a lot of people enjoy the game and i know its not a 2/10, its actually a solid MMO and title all together, but its not for everyone, and wasn't for me. So yah, fun game, but I just wanted to give you another perspective... all the positive things have done been said.

[Feedmenow]

Ordered and waiting till ~Thursday to get the game and try it out.

@Stig:First, I wanna say thank you for running through some contrasts between FFXI/FFXIV.

- Class = base class you start out with, at level 30 you can quest for your job stone which when equipped upgrades your class to a job (gladiator > paladin); although you become a PLD, you continue to accumulate EXP on Gladiator, the PLD's level is determined by your Gladiator level

Soo... basically it's the class advance/awakening class changes?

The exception I'm seeing is Arcanist having both Summoner and Scholar as classes to advance to. In which case, since Arcanist is the base class, leveling as either SMN/SCH will level the other at the exact same rate. And I presume you can class change with the switch of a weapon.

Looking at the class advance requirements, it seems like the first thing I can/should do is level all the disciplines to 15+ so that unlocking classes can start as I hit 30 on whatever.

- At level cap [50], a level 48 mob will not kick your ass, you will kick its ass unlike FFXI where even a level 60s mob can be a threat to a level 75 (fuck you level 60s undead!!!!)

What's the level difference needed for an ass-whoopin'? Is there a zone/dungeon with a level [cap+10] bunny is just waiting for the day they can ruin your shit?

- Next to no gear swaps; you can't swap gear in battle. Some people have slightly situational builds for their classes (i.e. WARs carry DPS accessories), but you can 99% most likely function without these specialise builds

This is more about WAR than anything else; how does WAR fit on the tank/dps spectrum now? It was almost fully on the DPS spectrum when I played FFXI, and I greatly much enjoyed smashing things in the face with a great axe and topping parses. Is that still viable when focusing on damage with WAR, or is the class now far more on the tanking end?

At endgame, how much would a WAR focused on damage deal in comparison to other damage focused classes? How much damage would they deal in comparison to when they are tanking?

From looking around, it also seems like PLD is tankier (which, well, natch). How much tankier is a PLD compared to a WAR, assuming both are focusing on the same role?

- The loot system in this game has 3 buttons:
Need (priority 1)
Greed (priority 2)
Pass (pass)

If the gear is appropriate for your class, Need will be available/lit up for use.

Real quick question regarding this; say I were switched from my "main" class of A to class B in order to fit into a party better. If an item dropped that was "need" for A, but "greed" for B, and I'm on class B at the moment, how does the game react? Would I need to switch to "A" in order to lot Need? Is this even possible/likely to happen?

Some general questions floating around:

• Are there "Endgame"-focused groups/linkshells, or is the current endgame all PUG all the time? I can accept most of the changes stated, but I really liked having a dedicated group to meet up for endgame events.
• Does every zone have a theme, or is there just the sound of wind like in FFXI once you exit certain maps?
• "Accuracy Requirement": what's the cap on hit rate/accuracy now? Are people already finding out a precise answer to hitting accuracy cap?

@Karbuncle: Nice to get a second opinion on things. I'll ask/comment about a few things that stand out.

-Crafting, while more involved than XI's by far, Is grindy and will almost entirely be a gil sink and waste of time for the majority of people leveling it, as items are generally flooded, people undercut a lot since all listings are visible and people will undercut you by 1, 10, or 1000 gil just to get theirs at the top of the list, and most if not all crafted gear, by SE's own design admission, will be worse than anything you'll see in endgame dungeons (I.E theres no Cursed armor like in XI, that could appraise or become best in slot, best in slots are strictly dungeon drops).

That roughly sounds like the problem that consumable crafting had in FFXI, barring some very small niches in Cooking/Alchemy. I had Cooking 95 and basically all it was useful for was making my own food at marginally cheaper prices. I don't even remember if I bothered getting the apron/cape or got Raw Fish Handling for sushi.

Sounds like durables (are equipments still "durable" in the sense that they're resellable after usage?) are even more dire than they were in FFXI. I remember a lot of people complaining about how much money they burned in Bonecrafting and whatnot to have none of their high-level HQs sell.

...while enjoyable in theory, [summoner] is basically a glorified Necromancer, or If you've played any other modern MMO, a "Standard pet job", shitty half-rate pet that influences very little, with the master being the main driving force. Its not like XI where Summons had a wide arrange of abilities both offensive and defensive. For better or for worse pets are dumbed down. This is just a personal gripe, nothing bad about the game I imagine, unless you love SMN like i did.

That's kinda sad to hear; I was actually intrigued when I heard that pets get an 80% reduction to AoE damage to help with endgame instances but it doesn't sound like there's a ton worth doing with said summons at the moment. I was pretty disappointed to hear earlier in the thread that there's nothing like BST, which might have benefited from some of these changes.

-Zones are vast and forgettable. This one I can't put my finger on. if you were shown a picture of the Boyahda Tree, or Bibiki bay, would you recognize it? When you walk through Zi'Tah, do you get the feeling you've walked into someplace magical yet real? I never got that feeling in XIV, maybe because the ease of access means you never stop to smell the roses, you always have a mini-map and waypoints marking your every movement, theres really no real need for exploration and no sense of danger since all mobs are tethered and you can easily outrun them. So again, i can't really put my finger on this one, but the open world just feels like a vague empty memory to me, I mean the three towns seem really well done, but the rest of the zones, are just a blur. I guess i equate it to what i said above, ease of travel and etc never really gives you a reason to stop and admire everything.

Could be a lot of things. For one, if a single aggro'd mob can kick your ass, you tend to pay a lot more attention to your surroundings. That gets you to notice (and appreciate) small safe zones to reapply sneak/invisible, which is more immersive than just running full tilt and not giving a damn.

If you're just talking about aesthetics and impact, could it just be nostalgia/things having more of an impact on a younger mind?

As someone who enjoyed the game for the time I played, it was a fun experience, but like a lot of new-age WoW clones, if you're not accustomed to pointless mind numbing monotony to get gear that will be outdated before you can equip it and the looming ghost of "power creep" and "linearity", You're going to burn out on it within a few months. I know a lot of people enjoy the game and i know its not a 2/10, its actually a solid MMO and title all together, but its not for everyone, and wasn't for me. So yah, fun game, but I just wanted to give you another perspective... all the positive things have done been said.

I actually haven't played much of any WoW/WoW clone so hey I guess it's worth a shot. The typical thing I didn't really like about WoW and offshoots was making multiple characters to experience different classes, and then having fragmented and unsharable bound items.

Of the games that I played that had similar linearity/gear treadmill, I don't think anything is going to have parallelized gear/endgame like FFXI did for a long while. Most games seem to be going with steady gear obsolescence, which isn't nearly as fun to theorycraft about, but can (and should) let people get up to par a fair bit quicker from nothing.

I guess the question I should ask is "What's the difference between reasonable investment into being up to par and optimal gameplay". If it's a couple of marginal upgrades that let you deal 2-5% more damage overall, obviously not something to grind to burnout over.