This morning I got my 500th player commendation. I’ve kept the Battle Mentor requirements in the back of my head and knew it would be impossible to get there until Endwalker launches, but I have all the quests (1 each of Tank, Healer, DPS), 500 of 1500 commendations and 590ish of 1000 instances down, so it’s more than 1/3 but not yet 50% done. Not that I’m working towards this goal, but I’ve found it a good benchmark to measure your experience against.
When Endwalker releases this will almost surely be bumped up again, so you need to finish some max-level quests – either role-based again with 3 of 4 role quests needed like now or like it used to be in Stormblood and earlier (afaik), where you needed to e.g. finish the 70 WAR/WHM/BRD quests if you played my main classes.
When I first read that BlizzCon/BlizzConline was cancelled I shrugged and didn’t really think about it. But then I saw Wilhelm and Redbeard and a few more people comment on it.
The idea of a studio-owned (gaming) convention has always been a bit weird to me. Sure, we had the Games Convention here in Germany and I even attended once, but it was overall video game show, maybe comparable with PAX East, but bigger? No idea, that’s not the point. Even though I pretty much exclusively played WoW between 2006 and 2014, the thought to go to a WoW convention never even crossed my mind. I mean, I’m no stranger to tech conferences and more than once I went out of my own pocket, not just on my employer’s budget. I also know (know as in direct personal friends, or guildies) zero people who ever went there, but I guess that’s because it was in California. Maybe would’ve been different if it was in London, Paris, or Berlin.
I also never went to anything WoW-related in particular, I guess that comes with playing on EU servers and having people from all over Europe, from what I heard German guilds did more meetups, or if you had a lot of people in close proximity, say in the UK or the Netherlands (both countries where I had a ton of guildies). Only now I’ve been in a German WoW guild for a few months, and I was onboarded by real life friends.
I’ve entertained the thought of going to an EVE meetup if the pandemic allows, and I guess I’d go to Amsterdam or London for that, maybe it’s a little different if you can potentially meet anyone you’ve ever encountered ingame, thanks to a single server.
This rant was neither here or there, but I guess for most of us Europeans BlizzCon was never a real thing anyway, because there was no chance to attend. And by the time the virtual tickets came, most people had lost interest in the game anyway. EVE Vegas is a bit of the same, I don’t think there are a ton of Europeans attending, but somehow again the draw is bigger and EVE seems to have a generally older population who might just decide to put their vacation budget on this.
My plans seem to have changed a bit since I wrote about hitting 80 on Dancer last week, as I did start to level all the jobs I hadn’t started, at least for a bit:
All the jobs? Barely.
So Paladin is moving towards 70 with daily MSQ when I feel like it and Kojin/Ananta dailies when I have spares. Red Mage is working on Vanu/Vath rep. Scholar/Astrologian got a few dungeons in, mostly Leveling roulette and then whatever is the highest available dungeon. Machinist is doing the Pixie dailies and Alliance Roulette, Summoner is getting cheated by Scholar, as usual. Pugilist and Lancer are doing some dungeons, and finally I’m doing the Hunting Log on all the lowbie classes.
The “plan” is to get everything that is below 50 to 50, mostly to be able to get rid of all the gear and because I was actually nosy how they play. When that is done I will unlock Samurai as well, then it’s back to focusing on the higher jobs. Prio right now are Machinist and Paladin.
Also the mount farming went well, but we spent quite a few hours:
Four wolves: Lakshmi, Susano, Tsukuyomi, Suzaku
After our 50 odd kills to get everyone the Suzaku wolf we went to Tsukoyomi today and were kinda lucky, after 6 runs we had the few missing ones. Then we went to Lakshmi, where 13 runs where enough, then off to Susano, with 8 kills for the missing ones, and then to Shinryu where we didn’t get a single mount drop in 12 kills, so that will be interesting.
Week 14 was unexciting, a few more tries on Sylvanas, a little progress, but no kill.
Week 15 Sunday saw us a few people and a raid leader short, so we started a fresh instance and cleared 7 bosses. Tuesday wasn’t good, we spent 2h wiping on Fatescribe (would’ve been our 2nd kill), with the best try being <1%.
On top of that, and not because of recent events our raid lead stepped down, didn’t sound pissed or burned out, simply being in a rut about the game in general and not wanting to raid. I think he had cleared Heroic in a non-guild group and in general is one of our best players and one of the few? ex-Mythic raiders. Bit unfortunate timing, in that we didn’t kill Sylvanas yet, but we actually had enough time. Oh well, I think we will manage to get over that. I personally would be a bit disappointed if this was the second tier of this expansion where I’d be just shy of clearing Heroic.
As I wrote I was talked into farming the Wolf pets from Extreme trials and we managed to get a few tries in while learning (it’s fascinating that you still need a few tries for a 70 trial even on unsynced 80 chars, but we weren’t a full party). The first 3 kills yielded 1 flute. Last night we actually did around 4 hours and I’m sitting at 35 Suzaku Totems, which means we did 32 runs last night, I guess. We were 7 people and we’re at 5 flutes, so just 2 people missing. If the drop rate continues like this, that could be another 14 runs, but we’re hoping it’s less.
Anyway, the fight is pretty fun, and we can do it in 4:40 to 4:50 most of the time now. Sure, sometimes someone messes up and dies, but for the most part it’s a simple dance that you learned. The others already got their Tsukuyomi drop but we’ll probably do a few more runs to get us 2-3 latecomers the mounts.
I’ve now also done the 3 NieR raids. They’re… interesting. And weird. Not bad, but if this was a normal fantasy MMO they’d look very much out of place, but it doesn’t seem to be too weird in a Final Fantasy game.
I managed to get to 80 on Dancer, that makes 4 jobs, and I’m focusing on Machinist, Paladin and Red Mage now, although not sure I can really call it focus for the latter two. Playing them, ok. Also trying to do some healing on Scholar, but mostly just the Leveling dungeon roulette. I’ve been diligently handing in my Wondrous Tails diaries and bought some Level 80 gear upgrades.
I love the 80 Dancer set, but I also really like pants. Would’ve loved to dye it blue as well.
Also the people I’m running with are planning to do a more casual raid static in Endwalker and I might join. I’m not sure yet if on Bard or Warrior, but as much as I like having one character, in a funny twist currently it’s actually easier for me in WoW to switch between DPS and Tank than it is in FFXIV.
In WoW, my DPS gear is iLvl 236 and my Tank gear is iLvl 233, the major difference is the iLvl of the Legendary, 262 vs 235, most of the slots are shared, only MH+OH are different of course, and a few pieces (rings, trinkets) where I have better defensive stats on them, but I did tank Heroic SoD (and Nathria before) just fine with my DPS gear + 2 mandatory pieces changed + nice to have Legendary changed.
In FFXIV, my iLvl on Bard is 496 now, and Warrior is only on 456 – they don’t share a single piece of equipment (as you hit 80 you may still have the same earring). So in Endwalker that will mean leveling and gearing up 2 classes on their own.
We’ll see. Bard is fun, but I’ve seen my first parse from one of the NieR raids – 3 grey and 1 green. Not that I would’ve expected a lot more when I didn’t know the fights and just got some pointers via voice midfight, and died a few times, of course.
I’ve avoided writing about Amazon’s New World and the reason is pretty mundane – there’s nothing in it that sounded enticing, which is a bit weird for a new MMO launch. I mean, not that I’d have a time right now, being in full swing in FFXIV, still raiding in WoW, and playing EVE in between. Also I’m paying for too many MMO subs already. But wait, New World is Buy To Play, like Guild Wars 2 – so that wouldn’t be the problem. No, I’ve watched a few people play it and I am simply not feeling it. From what I’ve heard the story is as exciting as the trailer, gameplay should be fine, but I don’t see a goal. Also doesn’t help that I have hardly any immediate friends who started to play. Only some internet friends where I wouldn’t be joining their server/guild/faction by default. So in the end? I’m a little bummed out to be not excited about an MMO launch, but it is what it is. I’m not ruling out to look at it whenever I develop interest and it’s still alive. Maybe next year?
Not-so-ninja-edit: Bhagpuss wrote about transmog/glamour/looks, a point I hadn’t even thought about or only unconsciously noticed that I don’t like the bland looks of the chars I’ve seen, but it’s another point.
Yesterday I got roped into grinding Hell’s Lid for a bit to get someone their last drops for the Resistance Weapon upgrade (I think) but it was an awesome way to practice WHM healing and in the end I managed to ding 80 as well (after they helped me get the Four Lords quest line done). I might have been conscripted to Hells’ Kier Extreme now, but as they’d already wiped for a bit I’m kinda excited to do something that doesn’t simply fall over when you look at it the wrong way.
Also the plague has hit me (no, not the bad one, just the normal one) and so I piddled around a bit in the evening and this morning and finished all 8 Level 50 crafting job quests instead of doing something that needs attention, reflexes, or a clear head. So I don’t exactly know how much is missing, but boy do these take a while if you do 16-18 quests. Maybe I should’ve done them before I sold off all my spare mats. But I don’t think it cost me that much. Still a bit of Gil wasted. Guess I’ll do the full round until Level 60 then in one sitting another time.
Caught up until Endwalker
And I finally finished the Shadowbringers MSQ, so technically I am ready now for Endwalker. I have a Tank, a DPS, and a Healer job at 80, all three have their basic Resistance Weapon, the MSQ is done. Everything else now are just personal goals that are nice to have. Well, except a good White Mage glamour, that’s prio #1 now.
Had a little discussion on Twitter lately and maybe it’s time that I write down the things that annoy me with FFXIV, as of course not everything can be great. I guess all my posts in the last two months were mostly positive and showed how much I like the game, so here’s a bit of the other side.
First of all, I’m 78.8 ish on White Mage and I don’t see any feasible way to level quickly now until I can do MSQ duty roulette again tomorrow. I guess I could manage the 3 Pixie dailies as well, been doing them on Dancer at the moment. I also did my dungeon “Leveling” roulette today, but there’s no real way to do anything but heal dungeons. Not even for a missing 20%. Mayyybeee FATE spam, but even those are hard to solo. Why o why do those damn side quests not give at least “ok” XP, I’m not even saying they should be good XP. Just enough to be worth doing. But the same is really true for Dancer. I seem incapable of finding activities I like that get me some XP. I don’t like PotD/HoH, I don’t want to spam dungeons. I like dailies, but there are never enough for a given level range, etc.pp.
While I am a fan of the Armoury Chest, it drives me nuts that I can’t filter in there and of course there’s not enough space to separate stuff in the four courners or whatever. I am honestly so annoyed right now, if this was WoW, I’d be writing an addon this weekend to just finally solve this problem.
If there’s a way to cancel a cutscene and be able to restart from the beginning, I’ve not found it (mostly when getting a pop). So either it’s not there or it’s one of those undiscoverable things.
Many people are saying they like how it encourages people to do old content, for example with poetics. But from the other perspective, why is it worth to me running the MSQ duty roulette every day, but only on the role that has the benefit. On my data center it’s feasible to check it every few minutes while playing and always queue as tank or healer, depending on the bonus. So much that it feels not worth doing it with the wrong role, and basically never as a DPS. I could use some variety here.
I’ve had a lot of fun healing for the first 70 or so levels, but the meta seems to have changed and the higher towards “current” content you get, the more tanks are doing the wall-to-wall pulls. Yes, even the tanks you have to absolutely spam heal. Not sure who like this, but it’s completely not enjoyable for me. Also you don’t actually learn to heal because I hardly can use a variety of spells or even dare to try to use them. I need to use the 5 buttons that I know will keep the tank alive, no clue if it’s optimal. No chance to learn, just run and spam. I’d actually say for me there’s currently no middle ground between “terribly boring” and “painfully difficult”. Maybe the only way is to read up more and talk to a White Mage main, but learning by doing with medium difficulty? I don’t see how.
The ingame map. Why does it have to be so horrible? Again, I don’t love the WoW map, but would it have been so difficult to let me zoom out three times via right click? Zooming in via left click works! And I get that not all major zones are connected, but why do I have to select Norvrandt or Othard from the menu every day? Why could I click on the Yanxia map to get to the Doman Enclave a while ago and now I have to use the Teleport menu?
Why are the Gathering Job Quests so horribly boring? Port around 5 times, then collect 10 of some HQ materials. Some are more terrible than others, but only the first one or two were “good” in a sense that they were at least new?
Why is it so hard to deglamour a piece of equipment?
Why am I a Storm Captain of the Maelstrom and the highest 8 ranks have never been put ingame, but also not removed from the GC ranks tab?
So yes, a lot boils down to maybe being spoiled by switching specs and being able to get some XP on Healers and Tank as DPS, like in WoW. But I sometimes like to do solo stuff and still progress. And yes, the last few points were a bit petty, but I didn’t even have to think hard about any of this.
Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing all the things to WoW, because overall I think the systems are implemented in a better way and WoW has structural problems, while FFXIV mostly has annoyances and systems that are badly explained. But many of WoW’s small annoyances can be fixed with addons.
And yes, overall I’m still pretty happy. I think I have one thing to finish for the last quest of Shadowbringers’ 5.55 patch, I’m very close to 3 jobs at 80, I am 90% ready for Endwalker and looking forward. But some things could be so much better, especially if you want to level in bursts and not trickling every day. WoW may waste a lot of my time, but I have the feeling I can optimize a few things a lot better.
To end this post on a happier note, I visited the FC house for the first time today
After finally finishing the Ivalice raids (not a huge fan of the story, we’ll see on repeat clears about the raids themselves, but wasn’t impressed so far) I went to unlock Bozja and got my first Resistance weapon, the 485 bow Brilliance.
Brilliance
Then I actually had enough Poetics left to also grab the 485 Axe, Skullrender.
Skullrender
White Mage is very close to 77 and Dancer is nearly 76 so I guess I can start buying mats for those 2 as well. It’s nice that you can get those so easily, even if they are “only” 485 iLvl.
