FFXIV Random Speculation/Question Thread XI: "How you liking that Beta Phase 5?"

[Greedouw]

got bored again... damn

[Corrderio]

What's a good place to grind SP at R30?

Beastmen camp south of Haltali should work.

[Kaisha]

Picked up this turd for $10 to see what much of it has improved since the beta a full year ago.

Mainly wondering if there's a particular server for BG folks, and what nation a Thaumaturge should go far. Was thinking of either Limsa or Ul'dah, because the forest outside of the other nation made me cry with its repetitive design.

Any cliffnote guides on getting started also? Most I know is I should be taking up a crafting discipline also so I can repair my own shit, unless they addressed that over the past year.

[miokomioko]

Your starting city-state only really affects the first handful of main story missions. After that, you'll be hanging out in Ul'dah 99% of the time anyways. Luckily, that's where the Thaumaturge guild is located... and to get Guild Marks for it, you'll need to do leves from there. The Black Shroud does indeed suck as it is, but we're eventually getting map/terrain overhauls in a few patches, so it might not be so bad... eventually.

Starting tips, hmm.

• Buy dark matter (from an NPC) of the appropriate grade for a reward offer for repairing your crap, or offer a bit more gil than the dark matter costs. It should get repaired quickly.
• Outside of gathering/crafting sets, don't wear armor that's for the wrong class or beyond your level, it will wear out very quickly. For now, damaged gear still only deteriorates its base stats (def/eva/mdef/res).
• If you're going to craft, getting TAN/ALC/BSM to 10 should be a priority for their Lv.10 abilities are some of the best.
• If you're going to gather, look up disciplesoftheland.com for points that are beyond the grade that you can search for with your abilities. If they are close together enough, you'll still get way more exp for your time even when you're getting 1~2 attempts per point.
• There's a number of abilities/traits from other classes that will greatly benefit just about every other class, even when their effectiveness is reduced. Luckily, it's rather easy to get any class to Lv.20, which gets you the first tier of most of the important ones.
• As mentioned, you can only get Guild Marks from leves that are issued from the city-state that the guild in question is located. e.g. THM guild marks only come from Ul'dah leves, CRP marks only come from Gridanian leves, FSH marks only come from Limsa Lominsa leves, etc.

[Kaisha]

Is the skill system still completely open to the point that we may eventually have to lvl another class to the cap just to get access to an ability that's beneficial for our actual main? In beta the potential for the system looked like something even more of a headache than FFXI's subjob system.

Going to take up crafting so I'll look into those after I work on my THM for a bit. Probably rolling Lalafell again like I did in beta since I like the way the male's look.

Damaged gear, is the -Stats just based on the armor's current durability, or does it actually get damaged?



Hope to figure some of this out on my own, but so far FFXIV is taking the cake for 'longest game to install' that I've ever seen on the PC platform. Major facepalm when I realized they didn't use a packaging system at all for the game, there's no excuse for them creating literal hundreds of thousands of files/folders, it's hard on the hard drive. Mainly just hoping there's a cumulative patch for the game so I'm not stuck having to uTorrent 15 different incremental patches since the updater SE programmed just kills my internet connection.

[Jamison]

Is the skill system still completely open to the point that we may eventually have to lvl another class to the cap just to get access to an ability that's beneficial for our actual main? In beta the potential for the system looked like something even more of a headache than FFXI's subjob system.

Currently, yes. A player who has multiple classes ranked up to moderately high levels will have a measurable advantage over someone who is playing a simple one class r50. That dynamic will likely change with the job specialization system being implemented (hopefully) by the end of the year. The job system will allow for a highly specialized "spec" of the class, and reduce/restrict/eliminate bringing in cross-class abilities.

[Kaisha]

The game really makes me wonder if the devs have any real clue wtf they think they're doing with XIV's class system. Just feels like one big clusterfuck if that's the current case.

Anyways, not intending to play this hardcore, just going to hop on and grind with my brother every now and then. Hopefully there were performance updates so I'm not stuck with a software mouse or half-second delay on all my inputs. On the upside, seems SE beefed up their update servers? I'm getting decent speeds via uTorrent here, got 2gb of stuff to download, and hopefully no more for now after that.

[miokomioko]

Damaged gear, is the -Stats just based on the armor's current durability, or does it actually get damaged?

There's basically three thresholds of durability now. If it's above 35%, it's completely fine. If it's below 35%, it's damaged and the states take a hit. And, I think when it's below 10%, it's severely damaged and takes a big hit.

Also, to repair you either need to be within 10 levels of it's required/optimal level or recipe level (if you can craft it, you can repair it).


This is kinda' an odd time to start, with some pretty big changes on the horizon, especially with leveling and crafting. However, it's likely that not a whole lot of your low-level tasks will be throwing your effort out the window come patch-time. There are some things you might want to avoid, though. For example, I wouldn't bust my ass to buy crafting training manuals (like I did) because their effects are being temporarily removed next patch.

not intending to play this hardcore, just going to hop on and grind with my brother every now and then

Honestly, I think this is the best way to play this game right now. Leves now give substantial exp when done quickly and at higher difficulties. Even when you're in the 40's, you can pound out half a level in 8 leves solo.

There's hardware mouse now, but the UI is still so clunky that there's a delay between what you're cursor is doing and the UI reacting.

[Carraway]

The game really makes me wonder if the devs have any real clue wtf they think they're doing with XIV's class system. Just feels like one big clusterfuck if that's the current case.

Part of the reason for this is because Yoshida and the revamped dev team are basically trying to rebuild the game into something worth playing. Tanaka's team had no clue what the fuck they were doing. It's up to you if you want to get in on the ground floor while they're still rebuilding the game into something playable.

[Corrderio]

The game really makes me wonder if the devs have any real clue wtf they think they're doing with XIV's class system. Just feels like one big clusterfuck if that's the current case.

Thankfully this is changing with jobs in 1.21. However Yoshida is going to try and flesh out classes in 1.20.

Either way, as a THM I don't think there's a lot you'll need outside of CON abilities.

[miokomioko]

I don't think the traits will change too much, so I might suggest eventually working on Pugilist for Prime Conditioning and Lancer for Fleet of Foot... maaaaybe Archer for Out of Sight. It's unlikely that you'll actually use m/any melee class abilities on a mage class, though.

[Kaisha]

There's hardware mouse now, but the UI is still so clunky that there's a delay between what you're cursor is doing and the UI reacting.

There was a delay on everything for me, including movement. Will see if that's been addressed or not also given my rig barely meets the minimum specs, which is stupid as the game isn't really DOING anything special outside of shader effects everywhere, and character physics which I had turned off to begin with.

It's up to you if you want to get in on the ground floor while they're still rebuilding the game into something playable.

Well, main reason I'm bothering is because I found it so cheap. Figured I'd at least become a little familiar with the game.

It's mostly a curiosity thing for me, seeing what happened to that horrible trainwreck of a beta they had a year later. That and it's still F2P, may as well get something levelled up before I decide if I want to pay for it come the time SE does so.

Thankfully this is changing with jobs in 1.21. However Yoshida is going to try and flesh out classes in 1.20.

Either way, as a THM I don't think there's a lot you'll need outside of CON abilities.

I'm expecting there to be a lot of salt when they end up eventually overhauling some classes to streamline things for the better.

I don't think the traits will change too much, so I might suggest eventually working on Pugilist for Prime Conditioning and Lancer for Fleet of Foot... maaaaybe Archer for Out of Sight. It's unlikely that you'll actually use m/any melee class abilities on a mage class, though.

I'll look 'em up and see what ranks I need, mostly was thinking of taking up CON as mentioned above so I got some better healing capabilities.



Final question for now: What's the preferred wiki? I need something to browse through while I finish downloading these 8 patch files.

[Corrderio]

I'm expecting there to be a lot of salt when they end up eventually overhauling some classes to streamline things for the better.

We'll see what happens. Personally I say a class should be able to fill 2 roles so you're not stuck looking for "that one class" when you try to get a group together.

[miokomioko]

We'll see what happens. Personally I say a class should be able to fill 2 roles so you're not stuck looking for "that one class" when you try to get a group together.

I thought that was kinda' what they went for and everyone hated it for that reason. They want their cookie-cutter extremes.

[Arximiro]

We'll see what happens. Personally I say a class should be able to fill 2 roles so you're not stuck looking for "that one class" when you try to get a group together.

Currently you can go out and Duo and get SP as fast or faster than you would in a SP party. Typically for SP parties I duo or trio and we still wipe out all the mobs. On occasion if the mobs are like 12-15 ranks above and there is really nothing better to sp on I will go with 4. Kinda like when you are 27-29 doing Young Raptors.

When they do flesh the classes out though I can see your concern. Unless they severely limit skills or adjust mob strength I never really see if being an issue. The whole thing about abolishing AP has me curious as well. What are they gonna let us do, have one abl from each class or something? No idea how that is gonna work out.

[Kaisha]

Seems the game still runs like ass on my rig regardless of cranking everything or leaving it on lowest possible. Probably could call for a new HD and CPU, game jerks like a mofo loading anything (GG for 200k+ files SE) and music likes to skip.

Get to see for how long I can stand this performance until the inevitable PS3 port comes out that should be the key to revitalizing this MMO once everything is fixed up to modern MMO standards.

The interface is a hell lot better at least. No 3 second waits on buttons or anything to work.


[EDIT] Huh, game doesn't like hardware mouse on my PC, seems loading stuff messes with it and causes camera to skip when I'm moving around. Hooked up a gamepad and everything is dandy once outside of town.

[Corrderio]

I thought that was kinda' what they went for and everyone hated it for that reason. They want their cookie-cutter extremes.

I don't get that either. Sure the classes could use some polish, but do people want classes to have defined roles so bad there will only be one real tank/healer like in XI?

[Enygma55]

Stats wise on thm I say pump vit and mind as ur main priority. Then maybe some int. Maybe lv con up a bit to get shock spikes and cure 1 ( its like R8? ) so you have 2 cure spells on thm til you hit R20. Stick with 1hand weapons and a shield so you can lv both at same time. Maybe it'll become useful later for you.

Best site to use IMO is yg.com. Has most of the generic skill/tool/wep/recipes done in a well organized way

[Kaisha]

Alright, played for a few hours. Is it me or is this game really 2box unfriendly?

I can't seem to find any command means of having someone target the current claimed mob in the party, or any easy auto-follow other than locking targetting and manually auto-running into them. Trying to help my brother out who for some reason has a 3box fetish when it comes to MMOs. XIV just feels lacking in the command department, most I see macros being decent for at a glance is swapping gear and equipping abilities between fights and that's about it.


Perhaps we're just too low-lvl, everything dies so fast that it's quicker for us to just spam on our mains than to worry about targetting/engaging the multi-boxes.

[solracht]

What's the name of the sidequest that deals with the Garlond Ironworks and its creation? I feel like I missed a lot of things after doing the Company quests and seeing the engineers around.