Final Fantasy XIV

Not sure what it is with FFXIV and me not really vibing for long stretches. This time it lasted for 4 days + 1 month but I find myself just grinding away at duty roulette and checking boxes, having some amount of fun but not really. I have about 36h more to decide if I should unsub again, but I’m leaning towards it. I’ve done zero “endgame” content and I’m not missing it one bit. With me checking in and out of the game it feels like grinding gear (even if it’s fast) is pointless. Maybe I just suck at being a normal casual player. Either I go raid and give 100% or I’m so ultra casual that I level stuff and do (easy) achievements and not even do the raid at max level.

But I guess it’s better to pull the plug now and just… come back when I feel like it, even if it’s in 2 weeks or 2 months and not when the next big patch hits.

Also WoW’s 11.1 patch should have launched this week and I guess we’ll be raiding again, not that I’m particularly enthusiastic about that, but I’m looking forward to playing with my guild and seeing the new content, at least.

I’ve been playing FFXIV since February 2019 now – and 95% was spent on a single character, my Miqo’te. At some point (probably 2022) I got nosy and started a Lalafell on Cerberus (same DC) and played him for a bit, Level 30 Summoner/Scholar and Level 30 Warrior, but have not really played him since.

Some time ago they changed how characters and realms work though, so with the cheaper subscription I can now have several characters on my main realm – so I deleted a Level 1 Viera I had made (and never logged in) at some point and remade her on my main realm (the Save Character thing is so handy!) and played a bit, in like 3 sessions. Pugilist to Level ~8, then Pugilist to Level ~14, and today Gladiator from 1-16 and Pugilist to 16.

All in all just like 2 hours, I think – but it just feels like a completely different game at those low levels.

I mean, most MMOs work like this that you start out as a complete noob, have mobs around you that aren’t even aggressive, you get a level up every couple minutes… and yet it feels even more different in FFXIV. I think it’s because if you get some bonus XP (even before the 30% XP earring), and so some quests, you really need to pay attention to not completely overlevel everything – much more than in WoW. I’m talking “do 1 quest, kill 5 mobs, new level” at Level 14, not at Level 2.

And on the other hand once you’re past 50 (or even after your earring expired at 70 or 80, as I don’t have the 90 one)… all I do is trying to minmax my leveling time – like 5 random duties here, three good dailies there, hand in some stuff for Crafting and Gathering (usually 2-3 per day, whatever is cheap) – and then the weekly chores like Deliveries and Wondrous Tails. But it feels pointless to go out in the world and just do all zone quests, you need to like 50 of them for a level (at least it feels that way) – even if you include FATEs.

Yeah, sometimes it’s nice to just start a new WoW character and also rush through levels, but I think the band is much narrower. It’s the same game, just quicker. You would still either chain run dungeons, or in my case blast through zones questing and doing World Quests.

I don’t know, it’s kinda weird. On the one hand it feels close enough and yet completely different, on the other hand it feels a little pointless, as I’m happy with my main, but I have no jobs under 50 left.

I think I’m just glad I don’t even like the looks of most FFXIV races, so I’m not even tempted to have many alts, or meaningful alts at all. I just wish I could do more things in one 4h block and less “I could spend 2h every day”, but I guess that’s the way it is if you don’t enjoy doing all the things that give good XP.

While I wouldn’t say I’ve been really productive ingame, and I’m still a bit wary tanking and healing right now, but I least I managed to make some progress in regards to levels.

Paladin hit 100 yesterday, Machinist some time this week – Dragoon has slowly crept up from 56ish.

I suppose my next goals would be Reaper to 100 (once I grasp this rotation again) and Sage to 90, and dragging Dragoon further along as well.

I’ve been diligently doing the Pelu daily quests, and also working on Moogles, and Sylphs if I have 3 spare for the day. Weekly deliveries are also back and I’m close to hitting 100 on Carpenter – so I can meld the Dawntrail materia, not really pushing the rest, except for Miner.

One thing I’m completely skipping is grabbing endgame tomestones, although I’m at least 695 iLvl on one job now, so I could.

With some elbow grease I managed to get Summoner (and thus Scholar) to 100 last night and make a little progress with the Pelu and Moogles, and Dragoon is 58. I’ll be away for the weekend so I didn’t instantly resub, but I plan to next Monday – why waste like 5 days?

Not so sure about goals. There’s the 3 tank jobs at 90, the 3 healer jobs at 90/90/80 and then all the dps. Ranged at 90/90 and yeah ok, the casters at 70 and yeah, the melee are a mess at 3*50, 58, 90. Also not focusing on the gathering/crafting jobs this time, I’ll see if I can wait out the 7.3 patch with the Allied Society that focuses on that (or maybe even 7.2 and 7.3 – like in Endwalker, where I had them all at 90 before that already). Also MSQ to catch up and the Allied Raid I haven’t unlocked… I think. I’m just not in the mood to grind endgame gear, the gear treadmill is not as bad as with WoW, but I don’t enjoy farming gear that is old next patch. Much better to complete all the missing Poetics gear sets, because I love the concept of e.g. getting one Level 80 healer gear set and then I can use it on 4 jobs for 10 levels. Perfect.

I’m not hyper enthusiastic about the game at the moment but it’s good fun and I hope I can put in a WoW break of about a month after tonight’s raid. I’ve been playing constantly since the expansion came out in… August? Although only been raidlogging for the last month or so.

FFXIV has another 4 days of free game time and I checked back in. Apparently there was a 7.1 patch I’d missed and the new Alliance Raid is in. As those seem mostly for gear catch up and I’m not really interested in that… nah.

But I did some of the usual duty finder roulette dance and SMN/SCH is 95 (up from 92 or so) and I got 2 levels in Mining and 2 on Dragoon. It’s decent fun this weekend. If you did lose track, there’s quite a bit to catch up though. I mean, I have 8 jobs at 90 that I didn’t touch when Dawntrail launched and then the lower ones, and have not even unlocked the two new ones at 80.

Ah well, with WoW winding down, maybe a month of not only playing EVE would be something?

I just clicked the button and thus have only 4-5 days left on my FFXIV subscription. One month was enough time to finish up the old MSQ, play through everything MSQ-related in the new expansion, take a 2nd job to 100, craft a few things, hand in the Wondrous Tails once, and in general I am happy with the outcome.

I was on the fence if I’d stay subbed but atm I am not interested in the raid or grinding gear. Leveling a couple more jobs would be interesting, but right now there is so much to do. The WoW expansion, a new Diablo IV season, and I’ve not really done anything in EVE for a week.

No, 2 MMOs at the same time are simply my limit, and I’m kinda curious about WoW now.

In the past I’ve said that FFXIV doesn’t waste your time and maybe I am unfair here because I opted out of raiding and gearing, but I’ve hardly ever felt that I had achieved “enough” after a month of a WoW expansion, especially if I was playing so relatively little. One job got to 100 with 90 of the MSQ, another job was swiftly pushed up with the sightseeing log, daily duty roulette, and a couple more things. In WoW I am faster at max level, but I don’t get handed a set of pretty nice artifact gear that is totally fine to start raiding (or going expert, if you want to compare to Heroics). But right now I just don’t want to spam dungeons to level every day, and that’s the quickest method for alternative jobs.

I will try to make an effort to resub for a month when the Alliance Raid comes out though, and play for a month again, but we’ll see how that will work out when the time has come.

After a day off I just finished the Dawntrail MSQ, I think it was a bit anticlimactic. Basically after you enter the last hidden zone there are a couple of neat things, but nothing major anymore. I wouldn’t say boring, but those 4 subzones were a bit much. The Level 100 trial is kinda hard if you’ve not seen it before.

So Warrior is 99 as well, I’m about to continue on the tank role quest because I want to hit Level 100 as well.

Other plans? Get a couple of levels in on Scholar/Summoner with duty roulette, level my two retainers, and unlock flying in the penultimate zone (did the 5 others). Oh, and I’ve kinda did the sightseeing log for the first time, just missing one zone there as well, that’s some good XP.

The “I want to do all the things” seems to have kicked in now.

I’ve not finished the MSQ, but my Bard is Level 100 and I just got my Artifact gear. I still have a couple of 99 MSQ steps left so I investigated if I could get the Warrior to 99 “quickly” and do that on that class. Grabbed the Wondrous Tales, did some duty roulette, and was 93. Also finally had a look at Aglaia, the first of the Endwalker Alliance Raids. After a second day of duty roulettes it’s 96.

Spent my Poetics on healer gear for Scholar (I prefer White Mage and Astrologian, but this gives a free caster job, and vice versa) and also did a bit of Mining in order to be able to level my Mining Retainer.

10 days of sub left.

I think I’m close to 2/3 done with the Dawntrail MSQ (looking at the length of the quest list on the wiki), at level 96.6.

I’ve only had the big reveal a bit ago (at least that’s what I think it was).

Overall I like it, but either I’m just not in the right mood or it’s absolutely not as great as Shadowbringers or Endwalker. Not on a quality level, really. It’s fun, it well-made, but it feels… a bit like a generic MMO expansion and not like an awesome FFXIV expansion. Maybe the last two were actually too good to be surpassed that easily.

The first two zones were fine, but a little forgettable.

My main gripe is the music. Again, it’s not bad, but I’m missing the bangers of the zone music. I didn’t play SB or EW for very long and yet I instantly recognize most of the zone music with the first few notes. DT doesn’t have that.

Anyway, continuing on and wondering if I will make it through the MSQ and whether I will have enough time to level a second job, because with the looming WoW expansion I doubt I’ll play more than a month.

Being down to 6 steps in Endwalker MSQ left, digging it at slowly whenever I had time this week.

Had to actually buy a couple of pieces of gear now to clear the 620/625 threshold for some duties.

Today I finally checked my currencies tab and to my delight I noticed I could still convert all those Tomestones (Causality and Comedy) and White Scrip.

Also if I can finish the last raid duty of the expansion as a random without dying, maybe it is too easy?

Anyway, with this done I can now decide if I want to buy Dawntrail or do some other stuff for my 3 remaining weeks of the sub.