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/r/ffxivdiscussion is a place to talk about the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV Online.

FFXIV Discussion is a place to talk about the video game Final Fantasy XIV.

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46,204 Subscribers

13

Did the second half twist of Dawntrail essentially being spoiled by SE before launch make the expansion better or worse for you?

Ngl, I wasn't too hyped for Dawntrail, but seeing the Solution Nine previews definitely made me want to know just how exactly we go from fantasy South America to Cyberpunk all in one expansion.

8 Comments
2025/01/04
01:23 UTC

18

Pictomancer's filler rotation might be a decent fit for a healer if the dev wants to make the gameplay more engaging by giving them more damage buttons.

What I mean by PCT's filler rotation is the fire in red and blizzard in blue combo, and holy in white and comet in black job gauge.

People have been complaining about the boring one-button + dot damage rotation on the healer forever, and quite a bit of players want this problem by making healers have an actual damage rotation, i.e. a caster with healing tools, just like tanks, which are currently melee with tanking tools.

The reason why I think PCT's filler rotation is a decent fit for healers is that this rotation isn't that far off the 1 button rotation in execution (one-button mash into two-button mash), but is a lot more engaging than the original glare spam. Since each of the "fire in red" hits has different potencies, and the cast time also varies from the subtractive palette combo, there's going to be more planning involved than the good old brainless glare spam with occasional dot/instant cast for movement/swift cast glare.

Adding a "gauge building in filler, and gauge spender on burst" rotation for healers isn't the perfect be-all-end-all solution for healers being unengaging for some, but, in my opinion, it is a good place to start if the dev ever decides to address this problem by making healers "casters with healing tools".

43 Comments
2025/01/03
23:10 UTC

0

Did the 2021 FFXIV Boom Ruin the Community

Wondering if anyone else has felt this way. The community has warped into something unrecognizable after the game exploded in popularity, and not in a good way.

Mainly in terms of player interaction, it feels like groups have become more cliquey, players have moved from interacting with the game's content in a social manner to a much bigger focus on RP in closed off venues and nightclubs, and there's generally more hostility and drama between random people you meet, I dunno. It's a much different vibe compared to Shadowbringers. That's not to say the community was a drama-free perfect paradise or something pre-2021, but the sense of being... an MMO with a healthy, sociable community has been diluted almost to the point of not existing.

I think this kind of shift in the community was only exacerbated by the lack of long-term multiplayer content in Endwalker, too.

16 Comments
2025/01/03
22:47 UTC

17

What has made Chaotic Raids launch more successful than Critierion so far?

The fact that I can still reasonably get a PF filled with 24 slots over a week and a half in is so nice. Especially compared to Criterion 4 man where I wasn't able to get any parties after a week. What can Criterion raids take from Chaotic in order to increase their longevity even slightly?

As a side discussion, the fact that all the rewards for Chaotic amount to 730 gear, a hairstyle, ans two mounts made me realize how at odds XIV balance/systems are with creating more appealing loot. There's not many options beyond just offering BiS gear bc armor/weapon bonuses add a whole new layer to the balance discussion. Can't have too many layers to balance discussion bc the team already adapts to balance slowly. Also can't have too many layers to balancing bc due to the main content being made around 8 people, an individual job's flaws or boons matter way more (less people = more responsibility). But there also should be something more than just cosmetic...

54 Comments
2025/01/03
20:32 UTC

9

EX/Hard MSQ Duties?

Just curious how others would feel about an option to set the difficulty of single player individual duties beyond "normal" to a hard or EX version for single player. More mechanics or job checks maybe?

12 Comments
2025/01/03
20:15 UTC

228

Bozja style Critical Engagements should be implemented in the Main Game’s open world

Purpose- To provide casual group content with grindable rewards for everyone to access regardless of MSQ progress. Hopefully it will get players accustomed to group content in general.

Implementation: should be implemented into every region of every expansion. You can join CEs from regions in the same expansion. For example, if you’re in the Hinterlands, you’ll still get a notification about a CE in Churning mists.

CE Encounters, Minor CEs: all kinds of objectives from bosses, mobs or straight up minigames. Every encounter should have creative mechanics to engage the players.

For bosses- Recycled and reused assets from raids and dungeons with a couple mechanics to take note of, similar to CEs in Bozja. Like bosses in field ops, mechanics should be simple and not too punishing. Newbies should be carried by players who remember the mechanic and perform adequately.

Major CEs like Castrum Litore or Dalriada- Ideally, a short themed raid that depending on the region. If you’re in La Noscea, maybe you get a Sahagin themed raid and so forth.

Otherwise, a world boss themed on that region of the map would be fine. It should be as challenging as the final bosses of Dalriada and CL.

Level sync- Every job should have their entire kit available. The amount a lvl 90 player’s ilvl should be reduced is debatable, but every class should have their full kit available NO MATTER WHAT. It really sucks to play any job at lvl 15. Please just let people play with a full kit and balance it out later, because I personally hate that more than anything else. This bullet point just goes for the game in general.

The encounters will be scaled to the highest level of that region and the major CEs will be the highest level of that expansion.

Reward ideas, one or a combination of the following:

  1. A few mounts, outfit pieces and minions per expansion to roll for or exchange currency for. The standard.

  2. Grand company seals and expanded inventory for Grand company quartermasters. Addendum: I think crafted ingredients should always be a pertinent for all relic weapons.

  3. Hunt seals plus expanded hunt items- amount scales with critical engagement. A tiny amount no matter what.

  4. Random extreme totem(s) specific to expansion. Likely only available from the major CEs. (Would you rather grind Bismarck unsynced 99 times?)

Conclusion: there are kinks to work out, but I don’t think it would be hard for Square to inflict this. The biggest benefit would be more multiplayer content a fresh player could engage with that isn’t locked behind story progression.

What are all of your thoughts on this?

139 Comments
2025/01/03
19:03 UTC

0

"The Green Role" Healers - Division

As of the Healer Strike from DT Launch, and growing division between the camps.

What factors have lead to the almost useless role of Healer given Tanks (especially warrior) can solo a majority of the bosses after Heavensward?

If you could, would you increase MSQ Damage output from Bosses to make it unfeasible to "continue on" without a Healer in the boss fight with you?

Is CBU 3 too afraid of making the MSQ require any thought from a new Healer player?

I just have a lot of questions regarding this issue since 1/4th of the dungeon group has a goal to reduce all button pressing down to 1 button, where as all other jobs are rewarded by pressing more than 1 button.
If all you did as Black Mage was cast Blizzard for 100 Levels like its 2004 WoW Frost Mage.
Something fundamentally broke in the design space of the game that created this bizarre paradigm.

No one seems to agree on what to do.
A side says you can't just give them more of a DPS rotation, another wants healer to heal more, nobody wants MSQ content increasing in difficulty so everything circles back to stagnation and it becomes almost unrecommended to play a Conjurer for new players because it is a boring job with no point in the MSQ after 50 because Tanks can now solo everything except some DPS checks.

How can you make this Role Feel Fun?

Would you also remove Bloodwhetting / Raw Intuition from Warriors and give them some other mitigation?

82 Comments
2025/01/03
14:31 UTC

6

Linkshell Question?

Hi everyone! A Linkshell question, I made a Cross-world Linkshell called Chronically ill-Mheg for Chronic pain/illness that went up fine straight away. It hand some interest so I thought I would create a Linkshell for Sephirot. I was able to add people to it in game and it's all set up. However I'm unable to add it to the community page and it's also not showing up on my profile. Is there something I'm missing? Or is it a time issue?

Thanks so much, I don't seem to be able to find the answer anywhere.

4 Comments
2025/01/03
03:18 UTC

64

Square Enix MMO Net Sales for each patch since 2.0 release (graph)

I collected a lot of data from Square Enix's Presentation Materials and after cleaning it up, made a graph showing the net sales for the MMO division corresponding to each patch of FFXIV, as well as a chart showing Square Enix's net sales with MMOs, HD games and Mobile/Browser games in the same periods.

Square Enix MMO Net Sales for each patch since 2.0 release (graph) (in billions of JPY)

Square Enix's net sales with MMOs, HD games and Mobile/Browser games in the same periods (chart) (in billions of JPY)

Square Enix MMO Net Sales for each patch since 2.0 release (graph) (in millions of USD)

Square Enix's net sales with MMOs, HD games and Mobile/Browser games in the same periods (chart) (in millions of USD)

• Why are there so many patches clumped together in one date?

The dates correspond to the date in which the financial department makes a report of the financial results. If one or more patches release in that three-month period, all of those patches will be listed in the data-point. Meaning, between the starting point and the endpoint of that datapoint, the revenue that was collected corresponds to the listed patches.

• Why not Operating Income instead of Net Sales?

Because the specific information of Operating Income for the department of MMOs isn't always available. In some years (especially from March 2024 onwards) they have very good information transparency, but in other years even the net sales information is hard to get.

• What is the meaning of Net Sales if you don't have Operating Income?

Operating Income would subtract the costs and expenses. While Net Sales shows the consumer adherence to the product (and indirectly the intent of purchase of the consumer base of the product), Operating Income takes that and subtracts Cost of Sales, adds Reversal of provision for sales returns, then subtracts Provision for sales returns, Packaging freight charge, Advertising expense, Sales promotion expense, Allowance for doubtful accounts, Compensation for directors, Salaries, Provision for bonuses, Net periodic pension costs, Provision for directors’ retirement benefits, Welfare expense, Rental expense, Commission fee, Depreciation and amortization, and Other unlisted expenses (I was never able to find what they mean by 'Other').

In turn, the important information that Operating Income could give us would be the cost of development that they had for the specific release of which that financial report pertains to. Still, however, that information is available for only a few years. If there is interest, I can provide a table or graph with that limited information.

• The numbers on the source presentations sometimes are much bigger than the ones in the Graph. Why?

Because in some years Square was sneaky and instead of providing the specific amount of revenue for that timeframe of three months, they informed the year-to-date. In some other years, they did that without even informing that they were doing year-to-date. There is a good portion of years where they also cleanly and neatly provide the specific information for that period of three months only, and not the year-to-date. That was nervewracking.

• Is there any other interesting information in the presentations?

Yes, the total sales of Digital Entertainment (HD Games + MMO + Browser/Mobile) over different regions (Americas, Europe, Japan, other Asian countries). It's possible to see in some quarters the sales growing in Japan but not growing in the Americas, or vice-versa.

• I don't like graphs and charts. Do you have a table?

Sure, here you go.

84 Comments
2025/01/03
02:57 UTC

108

/cheer on Wuk Lamat

I lost my sprout two days ago. The whiplash of instantly going from the most badass, respected character in the world to a vacuous, hollow, cheerleader is making me wish I could buy a story skip for the first time.

I know poor Wuk Lamat has been beaten to death. I know this is old news. I’m just so frustrated and, honestly, sad.

(Spoilers ahead) I don’t need apocalyptic stakes, the constant adoration of every NPC, or to be the centerpiece of every minor plot development. I was excited to “go on vacation,” to get back to good ol’ adventuring. The very first part of the endwalker post-patch quests - where Estinien and the WoL follow some rumors and an old dubious map to find secret treasure - gave me a taste of what I could have had. I struggle to believe that my WoL’s ideal vacation is being nothing more than a cheerleader for a random stranger and not, you know, actually going on adventures with my pals. The game has no shortage of characters—why must Wuk Lamat steal every single ounce of the proverbial room’s air?

I’ve only just started Dawntrail and I’m exhausted. I know I don’t have to play the game, but it’s a game I love and I wish I wanted to play it. I’m severely disabled and this game has been such a nice escape for me. This might sound ridiculous, but I felt genuinely proud of my character’s achievements. I miss my character.

Ultimately, what frustrates me most is that I don’t even know why my character likes Wuk Lamat. Prior to deciding to make following her my sole goal in life, she hadn’t really done anything to earn my character’s admiration. My character’s unrelenting, indefatigable, undivided devotion to her came out of nowhere.

I can only hope that this “new beginning” doesn’t entail the disappearance of my character in expansions to come.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who told me how they manage to enjoy Dawntrail’s MSQ. I do want to like it—as I said before, I love this game. I’ll try to learn from y’all and approach it with a better attitude. I also think I’m actually going to do a bunch of side quests for the first time ever. Maybe then I won’t feel so overwhelmed by Wuk Lamat!

120 Comments
2025/01/02
20:53 UTC

591

I kind of feel like XIV is deliberately purging its old lore for the sake of new.

edit: Since most of you will not (and clearly aren't) reading this and seem to think it's about ARR's story being concluded:

TL;DR: The writing team seems far less interested in the deep branching, underlying lore foundation as of 7.0 onward. I'm not concerned that ARR's story has ended, but rather that Dawntrail's story is already shown to be structured fundamentally differently than to what made FFXIV's narrative so good.

-------------------------

Call me paranoid, but this is a deep sinking feeling that has only gotten stronger after 7.1.

I've acquired all of the Encylopedia Eorzea books, but these days it doesn't feel as awesome having them anymore because it's obvious that the writing team is doing as much as they can to avoid referencing it for anything in the future.

I bought them in the first place because XIV has awesome lore, but also because it was clear that a world was built underneath the game itself, and the lore books existed to add to these stories that weren't really able to fit into the game. The cool thing about that though is that at some point, the story elements WOULD be referenced in RELEVANT story content going forward.

Endwalker on the other hand was the end of the 10-year Ascian conflict...but for some reason they made the very odd choice to remove all mysticism and long-running plot threads from XIV entirely**.**

  • The Primal Threat is entirely is over.
    • Not only is Tempering curable, but the general conflict between people and beast tribes seems to have ended.
    • Anima proves that there is literally no Primal threat that can contend with us
  • The Void has, miraculously, been solved. An entire planet. In like 3 patches.
    • We've killed the strongest Voidsent ever, meaning there is no longer a Void threat
    • Golbez is now our BFF. Zero is also our BFF.
    • Golbez and Zero are the strongest voidsent now, meaning we literally do not need to worry about anything on the 13th anymore.
  • Garlemald has been completely destroyed
    • Eorzea no longer has an empire threat
    • ....Eorzea no longer has any threat, really.
  • The Twelve were not only revealed, but destroyed within 3 sub-patches of post-MSQ content
    • I cannot think of a single good reason for this to have been done, other than for XIV to justify never referencing them again.
    • This is particularly bad because the Twelve were the reigning religion of Eorzea. You as a player were even meant to choose one that your character followed.
    • I get it, but this was an unnecessary removal that honestly could have been referenced and kept vague in Elpis IMO.
  • Allag plot devices have peaked. And by extension, all previous civilizations.
    • There is nothing interesting about them anymore.
    • They will inevitably return when we visit Merycidia but they are suspiciously absent on Tural.
  • Space has been solved
    • Omicrons are now pacifists
    • The Endsinger has seemingly killed most life outside of the planet, we have to wait to see if this is true or not
    • It was a cool introduction but has unfortunately killed any requirement to logically power scale villains or even keep the "Adventurer" shtick going in any interesting way.
    • The WoL is now just 100% expected to win and everyone knows it and he literally doesn't even need REAL friends to do it anymore.
    • Azem's Crystal is literally just a Dynamis Battery and dynamis is NOT held to the same logical standard as Aether is.
    • Honestly, I wouldn't even have a problem with this IF it was just the Warrior of Light and Zenos who had this benefit. But giving it to Wuk Lamat just tells me that the writing team is now using it as a crutch more than anything.
    • That crystal really should be dead by now but it's still going for some reason. It's almost like they are making it canon that XIV is a single-player game now

Here are the big ones though, that really make me feel like Modern FFXIV is deliberately trying to pull away from FFXIV's previous lore and writing habits:

  • Tural is 100% removed from Eorzea but has no real conflict whatsoever, a farcry from XIV 1.0/ARR's starting point.
    • Everyone is mostly peaceful
    • They use rubber bullets in the Wild West
    • We're supposed to be in the Americas and it's literally less dangerous in any singular Turali place than simply walking around the outskirts of Limsa, Ul'Dah, or Gridania.
    • I haven't seen a single prostitute. WHERE ARE ALL THE PROSTITUTES.
    • You're seriously telling me a new Wild West pop-up town WITH GUNS is going to HALT ITS PROGRESS to not offend a group of nomadic COW HERDERS?
    • What is this Saturday Morning Cartoon shit?
  • Politics is no longer a factor in the writing at all, nor is general realistic human behavior.
    • The majority of Tural wanted Zoraal Ja to inherit the throne, some for ideological reasons. The polar opposite of Zoraal Ja was elected instead. Nobody cares.
    • Alexandria wages war on Tural. They're defeated, but CLEARLY still exist in a dome visible right outside city limits. Nobody cares.
    • Why on earth is everyone so understanding all the sudden?
    • What is this Satuday Morning Cartoon shit?
  • Ascians for SOME REASON just never thought to bother touching Tural despite the entire continent existing in a power struggle prior to us getting here. I imagine half the planet would be useful assisting with the Rejoining efforts???
    • This just makes zero sense as it doesn't even take the attention of an Unsundered to do this.
    • The Mamool Ja would have been especially ripe for this and you cannot tell me an Ascian didn't peak into what they were doing and notice.
  • The Final Days didn't seem to affect this entire hemisphere of Etheryis.
    • Nobody even really talks about it.
    • Like, i get the celestial currents or whatever, but....seriously?
    • NOBODY was afraid of this? No talks, paranoia? Conspiracy theories?
    • It just started raining fire and people allegedly turned into body horror monsters and nobody cares?
  • Unlike 1.0/ARR, there is no real grand history of wars, conflict, perished/failed nations, or anything in Tural that suggests a deeper world than what we've seen.
    • Self explanatory -- the Yuk Hoy are kind of it.
    • Alexandria kind of takes that position understandably but....
  • Alexandria is also surprisingly devoid of real conflict. How very convenient that all its soldiers are automata and its citizens just aren't interested.
    • That means Zoraal Ja and Sphene could be Villains of the Week and we can not worry about it anymore.
  • The Tural Auspices (Vidrral's) are kind of worthless.
    • The fact we killed the strongest one on the continent as a subplot to the narrative is a bit disappointing.
    • No others were even hyped up in the lore either. So until some secret one lost to history is brought up, we have no more dangerous Vidrrals to bother with.
  • Wuk Lamat and Koana are also devoid of any conflict or pushback from the narrative at large.
    • Koana literally tried to sacrifice himself for a Cow and nobody has anything to say about it.
    • Wuk Lamat's incredibly naive worldview is almost never actually challenged in the narrative either.
    • Meanwhile, Alphinaud was completely well-meaning and competent from the start of ARR and still almost got everyone killed because, SURPRISE, some people are actually just terrible and don't care.

I could keep going, but the general idea should be visible.

Pretty much every long-running story thread from 1.0 - 6.0 has been cut in a way that honestly kind of makes them irrelevant going forward. Which was likely intentional, but it's done in a way that, to me anyway, assumes the new writing team isn't interested in building off of it anymore.

Which isn't surprising, because as of Endwalker, it seems like the writing team doesn't want anything to run on very long past its climax. I imagine this was done because Dawntrail was supposed to be a new starting point, and going forward they probably want to encourage the ability to buy expansions without having to have played all of FFXIV.

But the side effect is that the game world is starting to feel quite hollow. Unlike in earlier areas of XIV, I don't really run through areas that feel like they represent anything other than empty space between locations.

Seriously, simply running from Gridania past 2 or so maps in the Black Shroud, there are so many areas and locations and landmarks that are lore relevant, and thus MSQ relevant, and thus gameplay relevant, at least back when class/job quests cared about that sort of thing. There is a reason the Redbellies and Courelclaws are aggro mob groups there. There is a reason the Sylphs exist in that hostile area. There is a reason there are Garlemald fates that pop up near the border.

The events of Shadowbringers took place entirely on a different shard. It makes sense it was written that way. Endwalker was one massive wrap up to years of story threads. I can also forgive it being written the way it was.

But Dawntrail has zero excuse to be this way, which is why i'm starting to believe the worst of it isn't really intentional.

Just a feeling i've had.

434 Comments
2025/01/02
17:59 UTC

130

They need to go back to ensemble-led stories instead of focusing heavily on a clear NPC protagonist.

(Spoilers)

This is not just a Wuk Lamat thing, I think the trend starts as far back as 6.X with Zero. It’s been a trend of the current writing team the past few years to have the WOL “assist” an NPC in their journey who is the actual protagonist.

The most well received MSQs in the game’s history have had the WOL itself as the protag and focus more split between the scions and friends. Playing an RPG and not being the main hero is just always going to feel weird. In the well received MSQs you instead have one NPC who gets more focus than others and goes through a character arc but they aren’t overpowering the WOL (Estinien in HW, Graha in ShB, Zenos in EW). Lyse also follows this rule to an extent but she had writing issues and this was the first time we had an NPC that was maybe taking too many of the protag story beats to herself. It’s just not fun to be a passive observer, as a player we want agency to be the main hero.

Then a few patches into EW they started giving Zero more focus in response to her popularity. They gave her a major character arc but it started to feel like we were just passive observers to her story instead of having our own. And the other scions/etc just felt like they were there to fill a quota (except for Vrtra I guess). By the end of 6.x I remember people starting to sour on Zero. In a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 the NPC party members are obviously way more fleshed out and well written than your silent created character, but Larian was still wise enough to have the player fill the role as the main hero. Your PC always takes the lead while the “real” characters stand behind you.

The Void MSQ laid the groundwork for the problems that persisted into DT but on a larger scale. Having an NPC be the protagonist while the WOL and scions are just the “helpers”. This is approach clearly isn’t working with players and they should go back to the ensemble cast with the WOL being the clear hero of the tale.

89 Comments
2025/01/02
16:32 UTC

2

Nier Raids: Yorha Dark Apocalypse

So I unlocked the Nier raids and played the first one, the Copied Factory, and quite like it, and this is one of the few raids I'm excited enough to pursue the storyline further, thinking I'd get to interact with 2p and 9s. However as the quest goes on the only people I'm getting to interact with are the two dwarvern brothers, is it going to continue this way? I also heard that people generally really don't like this raid, does the story suck that much? Should I just stop playing it if I'm only in for the story?

41 Comments
2025/01/02
12:29 UTC

20

In your opinion is it ok for the game to take a break from certain types of content for an expansion, such as Deep Dungeon and exploration content or should they be standard at this point? What about things like a new trial series, if it were skipped this expac?

130 Comments
2025/01/02
11:40 UTC

51

Discussion: Did Endwalker ruin the perception of difficulty in the community?

With the recent releases of FRU and CAR I see often discussions about the difficulty of the game and whether content is too hard or too easy and I was wondering if Endwalker is the main culprit regarding this because I personally feel that the difficulty in Dawntrail for all content so far is fine. Endwalker got a lot of criticism for easy content being too easy and certain cases of hard content being too hard which ultimately widened the gap of the difficulties.

Now with the current leveling dungeons, alliance raid, savage raid, FRU and CAR I saw people who claim that savage and FRU are too easy and that Dawntrail leveling dungeons, the alliance raid (mostly Shadowlord) and CAR are too hard.

I can't speak for FRU in this case because I didn't do it but from what I have heard it's more in line with TEA which sounds fine to me. This tier I only had the chance to do the first two savage bosses, CAR and the ex trials and even their difficulties felt fine to me. I certainly don't have the same negative feelings as I did with Endwalker content, where I thought that most content was insanely disappointing. To me it currently feels more like a return to form (Shadowbringers/Stormblood/Heavensward) where they try to make the gap smaller.

I wonder if I am the only one that feels like this and was wondering how you guys feel about the difficulty right now and whether Endwalker had a negative impact on the reception of difficulty or not.

Also how hard do you think the new field operation should be? I already see a lot of deaths in p1 of CAR which is arguably easier than most mechanics we see in field operations.

Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who took their time to make posts. I think it's currently healthy and necessary to talk about this topic.

140 Comments
2025/01/01
20:07 UTC

90

Chaotic, one week later (the ups and downs)

Now that things have somewhat started to settle down a bit (plenty of people are still trying to clear and basically nobody has earned all the rewards yet but the fight is basically solved at this point), I’d want to go over what really went right and wrong with this sort of content. I can only talk about my experience as someone who cleared it on the second day and has boughten the shroud mount with materia (I’ve played it a lot more than most), but I do think this is content has been both pretty enjoyable and future iterations could become genuinely my favorite content in the game.

The Upsides: Healing actually matters- as a healer, having to pay attention to 24 people and trying to raise/heal/esuna just gives there more to do than with only 8, but there’s a lot of room to also prevent deaths if you can react quickly to someone getting hit by a laser during tiles or helping heal the sole tank in an alliance taking more and more vulns during diamond phase. Vulns from missed towers also make tanks start to feel the pain, and with how spread out everyone is range of all the heal abilities is something that is relevant. With the dps check where it’s at (talking about that later) it feels actually rewarding to focus more on healing.

Looming Chaos- Swapping everyone’s position that constantly go wrong because someone is usually dead helps make a fight with an otherwise fixed timeline feel a lot more dynamic. I think it’s really fun to try and fix/make it work and rewards figuring stuff like towers on the spot instead of memorizing the fixed positions. Really makes the fight feel chaotic and would like to see more of this (even in 8 man content)

Social aspect- 24 people means it’s harder to get a group to stick around, but 24 people also means a lot more people to talk to. It feels a lot like 8 man Prae where people are actually talking in game and can actually have a conversation. I hear that things can get pretty bad for others but in my experience it’s been fairly pleasant as long as you’re not struggling to stuff like enrage in a farm party.

The downsides: “Body checks”- Honestly the actual body checks are fine but it’s more the combination of multiple things that makes something like first towers a hard wall. Part of it is that it’s the first mech you can’t really limp through vs diamond phase where you can just lay on the floor the entire time, but tbh that type of body check is fine so that people actually learn the fight and you aren’t limping through it for 10 minutes. The fact that right before you have the platform people doing basically the hardest mech of the fight (putting P8s fire partner stacks in this fight at all is kinda gross) directly into towers is the main issue. Also the fact that getting back into the middle can be pretty difficult, and you’re relying on 1/2 healers on the outside (lucky if you have a SMN/RDM out there) to handle a lot of the raises adds a lot of what I’d call artificial difficulty stopping you from being able to recover as much. With a different arena design or mechanics planned out better a lot of these issues shouldn’t reappear in the future though, it’s mostly a problem with the particular fight design.

Dps check- as a fight for savage raiders who have savage gear (and can do their rotation at a baseline) the dps check is fine where it’s at, you can really recover from a lot and still kill the boss in those groups (and like savage a clean run with minilvl seems it’d be fair enough although you’d want a static for that type of thing). A large majority of the playerbase trying to clear isn’t that good and doesn’t have that type of gear though, which makes clear parties even just now complete rng nightmares of either hoping people just don’t mess up enough or that there’s enough good players (or not many players that struggle to 1-2-3) to recover the deaths. Ideally you pull from something like omega savage where they spam raidwides at the end, or ultimates where they trap players one at a time, just so there’s some extra time at the end to lower the dps check without skipping any big mechanics being possible for the better groups (this might also involve ilvl sync to something everyone should have like Unreals, or some kinda of unlock requirements so that players have some expectation of competence). I’ve seen so many low % enrage runs (and 3 kills right when enrage casts), if they were clears it’d be a much better experience.

First time rewards- Possibly maybe if dps checks are fixed this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but as it stands it just rewards people clearing early a ton and dries up rewards as time goes on. If you lower the overall materia cost of items, give a bigger personal reward, and the extra rewards for everyone scaling not on each individual but for every 2-4 new people or something it’d help normalize things so you won’t have the current scenario of the sellable mount taking some people only 2 clears while others will buy the unsellable mount before the sellable one. Lot less of a problem than the other things because with enough Gil it’s not an issue (and the materia 1 prices seem fine esp with bonus) but it should also be an easy fix.

TL/DR: the fight is really good conceptually and I would love to see them do more of them instead of it being a one time thing, much of the pain points can be fixed relatively easy for the next one if it comes out. I hope that sentiment moves towards it being a pretty good fight instead of the first couple days were it felt somewhat of a disaster. Would love to hear what other people think/disagree with me about.

142 Comments
2025/01/01
19:39 UTC

146

We need some kind of activity to do with new players.

Sorry if this is something that has been posted a lot, it’s not exactly a controversial opinion, but we really need something to be able to do together no matter what stage in the game we are at.

I understand that it cannot be traditional combat content but so many times I’ve tried to get my friends into this game and at first they’re super excited but then it quickly devolves into them feeling like they’re playing a single player game with a story that doesnt interest them (start of ARR) and a main gameplay loop that is simple fetch quests.

If there was SOMETHING we could do together rather than just being able to accompany each other on low level dungeons they might want to stay.

132 Comments
2025/01/01
05:46 UTC

25

Is there a chart that shows downscale gear to keep Max lvl but low iLvl to Min ilvl on conent of the raid?

I remember seeing one before for example bringing some friends to try eden raids but downscaled but I want them to practice lvl 100 rotations. Like taking off all right sides and take certain left side gears.

7 Comments
2025/01/01
05:15 UTC

16

When is DT getting its content?

As the New Year approaches my mind has drifted to the big ticket releases are down the road for DT, the ones that some will claim will spin thread into gold and "save the expansion"

The major content in question is:

Shades Triangle, some sort of Exploration Zone. The only thing we really know is it has something to do with some classes from FFV, based on a single slide from the Korean Fanfest.

Beastmaster, a limited job. We know absolutely nothing outside of one interview, but I'd guess It's either a pet job (sincerely doubt this) some sort of Feral Soul user (much more likely) and/or BLU but different.

Cosmo Exploration, which we don't actually know anything about besides the fact that it appears to involve an Electrope Mecha, once again from a brief slide in the Korean Fanfest. It might be Diadem 2 but that's an assumption AFAIK.

Deep Dungeon 4, and some sort of Deep Dungeon Rework (maybe? Some of the infographs implied as much but then Yoshi-P just talks about it like it's just a new DD)

Relic, because we need to get another pile of glowing weapons. I hope this time PLD gets a blue glowing sword!

So, when exactly are these coming out? I have my own guesses, but I'm far more interested to hear everyone else's predictions and hunches.

111 Comments
2025/01/01
03:11 UTC

0

Chaotic Cloud of Darkness - Maximum Recoverability

TL;DR in 2 pictures, explanation below

I've seen a lot of arguments about optimal PF farming strats for the Chaotic alliance raid and they all seem to miss the mark. I feel bad for my friends who want to farm this fight so I'll explain how to make it less painful.

Tank LB3

The biggest pain point are inside towers exploding after the Chaotic Loom swap (the outside ones deal significantly less damage), and the only thing that's realistically saving you from those is tank LB3. So if you want your farm parties to be less painful, you have to arrange for every alliance to be within LB3 range. The second image showcases the LB3 range (red, orange, blue) overlaid on top of an exact recreation of the arena.

The orange dot is your worst case on the inside, where you have to stay on the corner tile to take a tower. As you can see, a tank LB3 from there will reach everyone as long as the tank stays close to the middle of their tile and their party members aren't too far out. However, if you're on the outside, you have to stay as close to the middle as possible (blue dot) to reach most of the opposite platform. If people are dead, there's no party split that guarantees there will be a tank from each alliance inside.

Towers and Spreads

Using this knowledge makes it pretty obvious that the primary issue with most strats out there is the outside tower soak, spread assignment, and add facing direction. Tanks and people who can raise should always take the tower closest to the middle, if they spawn horizontally. Everyone should try to be as close to the middle as they can, regardless of the tower configuration. It's possible to have vertical towers on one platform and horizontal towers on the other, in which case either let the closest tank LB3, or, if your co-tank can't be trusted, ignore your tower, run to the optimal spot, and press the LB3. My recommendation is for inside tanks to press their LB3 slightly early so the outside tank knows it's been handled already.

One issue you'll naturally run into is the tanks pressing the LB3 too early and missing people who are busy dodging the cleaves or spreading. This is why the PF strat where the add is faced north and the spreads are all handled on one side is awful - on top of causing way too many deaths to people clipping each other. You should make the tank and healer from the same party aim the inner beams because it's crucial that they always get the LB. The least important players - sorry, melee and ranged, that's you - should aim the outside beams, and the north and south ones can be handled by either healers or RDM/SMN depending on the party split you're using.

Healer Placement

Lastly, strats where healers aren't within comfortable range of people who need healing aren't going to work with your average healer. Yes, you can focus target the lone alliance member, place the fairy on top of them, use Kardia+Soteria, or even go out on the bridge to heal them, but the average PF healer will either fumble the healing or the DPS will take unexpected damage. This leaves you with one of two options: Either put all healers outside, including after the Chaotic Loom swap, or make sure there's a tank, healer, and DPS from the same party in each corner.

While I can understand why some people like the idea of putting all healers outside, the reality of PF is that most players struggle to get back inside using the teleport, kill someone in the process, or simply can't take the teleport because the Dark Dominion cast has made the outer ring unsafe, which happens right before the second towers. So, while it theoretically allows for maximum recoverability, healers out also causes a lot of issues for average players. I think it's better to just put an RDM/SMN outside.

Body Language

Place a waymark in the north-inner corner of both platforms so people can oriented based on that. After the swap, pre-position between the towers you intend to take, by either standing next to the corner waymark or opposite of it, as a body-language indicator in case of unexpected chaos. Standing left or right of the pre-position spot can indicate where you intend to go for the laser spread.

Caveats

Why place alliance B diagonally instead of North like the PF strat? Because in my experience diagonal swaps are quite rare and only happen when there are deaths inside (if you have a log where everyone is alive and a diagonal swap takes place, please comment with a link), and this configuration makes it more likely to have tanks from each alliance inside for the LB3. If you want to keep it similar to PF, feel free to exchange the NE and SE corners, just place the ranged from B north instead of south for laser spreads. As a caveat, this can potentially make it more annoying for alliance B healers to AoE heal their ranged DPS.

Happy New Year!

18 Comments
2025/01/01
01:31 UTC

18

How powerful are people of the Source compared to the reflections?

Forgive me if this is explained in story as I haven't played in a while, but given the multiple rejoinings by the start of the game, the Source is naturally more powerful than the reflections, right? If so, by how much?

69 Comments
2025/01/01
01:05 UTC

2

Modding and Third-Party Tools Megathread - 7.1 Week Eight

Nothing in the way of this one until the weekend this time.

14 Comments
2024/12/31
07:39 UTC

15

High-End Content Megathread - 7.1 Week Eight

275 Comments
2024/12/31
07:37 UTC

0

A solution for "soft body checks"

This sub (and the greater raiding community) has long been vocal about their dislike of the body checks in high-end content (see: TOP, Anabaseios), where a single player minor mistakes leads to immediate unrecoverable wipe.
With the release of CAR, as the discourse in the recent days has shown, we are equally as upset about what comes to be known as "soft body checks" - i.e. situations in which multiple people need to make mistakes, the combination of which would lead to a wipe.

This is understandably frustrating - it sucks to be held back by baddies and be unable to carry even if you were playing absolutely perfectly.

So I think I have a wonderful proposal that fixes this problem (if only Yoshi P would listen to me, but we all know that would never happen):

Trusts.

High-end duty trusts.

Trusts exist as a system as an alternative for queues, to make the content "evergreen" (in a certain sense), and allow people to experience it at their own pace, without pressure or being held back. We can adopt this for 8- and 24-man savage and extreme raids.

It is perfectly tailored for our use case actually! With trusts you can prog at your own pace, you don't need to spend 8 years of your life sitting in pf, and you are absolutely not held back by the "whoopsie, mb" idiots who refuse to learn in/out for the 15th time (or whatever it is that they refuse to learn). As a bonus, the high-end teams won't need to do splits for gear which are notoriously rather exhausting.

The only downside is that SE needs to actually implement this, and we all know that they would rather not. But it doesn't hurt to dream!

31 Comments
2024/12/31
06:19 UTC

0

Ff14 mobile pvp?

Hi, anyone seen pvp showcase from the beta? Or was pvp released in ARR or later in pc client? Super hyped for ff14 mobile which may release next yr, but also cuz of pvp n it may be gear equalized

12 Comments
2024/12/30
20:18 UTC

136

In Asura, 55.2% of players that cleared Normal Arcadion have cleared Savage. It's more common to find a player that has cleared both Normal and Savage than one that has only cleared Normal.

From the Lucky Bancho data: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckybancho/imgs/b/f/bf3752c9.png

In Asura, 55.2% of players that cleared Normal Arcadion have cleared Savage. It's more common to find a player that has cleared both Normal and Savage than one that has only cleared Normal.

For JP as a whole, the number is at 42.02% (77662 divided by 184838).

For NA, conversely, the number is at 24.13% (47316 divided by 196101).

The majority of the playerbase is outside Japan (however JP's 36.4% is quite sizeable), but at the same time the developers are Japanese themselves. The developers make a game that they enjoy playing, and the likelihood that their tastes and preferences will align more with those from the Japanese players rather than the American or European players is quite likely.

The percentage of clear rates in the Japanese server could even mean that, not only Savage can be seen as midcore content for the Japanese playerbase, but also any investment in Savage or Savage-adjacent content will see high engagement rate in Japan.

Another important factor to consider is that Japan is where the brand was born and where the franchise is nurtured to grow before expanding overseas.

For discussion, the following question:

How is it possible to convince the feasibility of having battle content that diverges from Savage and Extreme developed, produced and deployed earlier?

As an example, Field Operations. I would love to have Shades' Triangle / Occult Crescent on expansion release. I would really love to. That would require a lot of development from the battle content team to be diverted to that project, so it would be in priority. Because of pipelines, other projects would have to be delayed.

What battle content could be delayed so the Field Operations could happen earlier? Arcadion? But Arcadion is seeing 32% to 55% completion rate in Japan, it's immensely popular. The Chaotic Raid? It's Savage-adjacent, it caters to that high participation rate playerbase.

One could say they could hire more teams. But as it stands right now, Creative Studio 3 is working on at least two unnanounced games. https://gamer.nl/achtergrond/achtergrond/preview/interview-square-enix-vestigt-alle-hoop-op-final-fantasy-14-maker-naoki-yoshida/

249 Comments
2024/12/30
15:26 UTC

133

Is Chaotic really overtuned, or are the current PF Strats just bad?

I had this epiphany while going through the Healers Out raidplan.

I'm not going to defend the 24-man body checks, but outside of that, Chaotic really isn't a difficult fight. (NA) PF is just making things way, way harder than they need to be.

Placing all healers out offers much greater potential for recovery. Compare that to CODCAR or the Aurelia raidplan, where healers are basically sitting ducks if they're mid because they 1) are forbidden from rezzing anyone on the outside 2) can only effectively reach half their party, never mind the other alliances, and 3) have to navigate the shitty UI/tab-targeting to babysit players outside of their alliance.

I feel like so many pulls could've been saved if healers could actually rez people as needed and kept things moving, instead of watching a pull slowly unravel because someone across the arena from you dies and stays dead for like a full minute. Maybe people also wouldn't be utterly confused by pair stacks as well. If PF started adopting this raidplan, perhaps the fight would actually feel farmable.

269 Comments
2024/12/30
13:39 UTC

49

What's going on with P3 apoc/enrage in PF

A friend just totally broke down pleading for help to get P4. They've been at it since the 20th so 10 days of trying to get past that. I've been doing the ultimate with a static and are at CT and atleast to us P3 just doesn't stand out.

We gave them 5 runs to make it past and they did it on the second one making it all the way to CT (they were prepared for darklight). For those brave souls in PF is apoc that bad for P3 enrage parties?

74 Comments
2024/12/30
06:00 UTC

0

Is there an app or database with all the hunts/recipes/etc in it?

I'm looking for something with a complete list of all the hunts, plus a complete list of all the crafting recipes. It would be ideal if it was an app, but I'd be willing to settle for a spreadsheet!

I just want to be able to look at them and check them off. Yes, I'm crazy. :)

6 Comments
2024/12/29
23:50 UTC

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