Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Dopey Cunt]

Eh...maybe a spicy take but I don't really care how the WoW fags play the game. The fact that they are playing it and at least bothering to put effort into playing to some degree it is still supporting the game in some way. I'd only have a problem with it if they started trashing the game for things they skipped or didn't bother experiencing or looking at.

While it's a shame they come into a new game with a WoW mentality instead of accepting it as a new and ultimately different game and they hyper focus on only one tiny aspect of the game because like all the other faggy raiders in the game, have an obsession with being the best to wank off their egos, I say let them play how they want. There's always New Game +, they can still do their due diligence and actually study the endgame mechanic tells and maybe over time they'll get better.

All the autistic speds attacking them for skipping the story is dumb and yeah, it sucks that you have these guys trying to muscle their way into the scenes because they just want to turn 14 into another WoW for themselves, but leave them alone. Getting MATI at them is just giving them ammo to martyr themselves on twitter and cry about how the toxic FFXIV community is harassing them or whatever dumb bullshit they'll come out with. If they don't want to play the story, then they don't want to play the story. That's just how it is. No use malding yourself over it.

 

[Gravemind]

I'd only have a problem with it if they started trashing the game for things they skipped or didn't bother experiencing or looking at.

I mean, that's what Quin did, so it sets a precedent.

Only thing that gets me a little MATI is that they're being handed i510 HQ pentameld gear for free by a bunch of sycophants. And I'm gonna get a little spiteful in my criticisms when you have dumb cunts trying to talk from any place of authority whatsoever just because a bunch of nobodies on the internet are shittalking them for being skippers. If you don't like what they have to say, you and your mods can just ban their asses and ignore them. It's just as much on them for making a big stink that people say mean things on the internet about things they don't like. Nobody wants to get lectured at by some grandstanding internet shitter.

Me, I'm gonna keep mocking them in the contained shitbox of this thread while I await more news. I fully anticipate failure and filtering, but if they end up successful, it's most likely gonna cause more drama.

I hope you all are ready for the actual, full tidal wave of "THINGS WERE BETTER BEFORE THE WOW PLAYERS CAME OVER".

 

[Overcooked Raccoon]

People should be allowed to play the game however the hell they want. If they want to boost then boost, it's your money and you're allowed to do whatever you want.

But be known, if you act like a fucking idiot you're gonna get called an idiot. Quin or whoever hell that moron was that boosted on Sam and went right into savage only to then complain (about healers let alone standing in stupid shit) and say the game was just ok is a moron.

There are people in the XIV community who have a hardline "BOOST BAD" and those people need to consider others and not mandate that you MUST enjoy msq to enjoy the game.

Does it help you enjoy game fully? Yeah, but you can still enjoy the game for what it is on fights/progression/growth alone.

I have a person in my static (we cleared TEA btw late update to that yaaay), but they didn't give a care about the Alex story. Meanwhile shit like the true heart mechanic in TEA was like "Whoa what is this cat doing here?" and they got an explanation and they were just generally interested. Would they have the same experience had they not known the plot significance for it? Yeah totally it's just a mechanic. Knowing why it's happening just adds the context, and can at times make a person more invested which should be taken as an extra bonus, but shouldn't be shunned for not reaching that person the same way it does for an invested person.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I mean the WoL as in the Seat of Sacrifice which is required to continue on in the story. I'm being a little vague on it to avoid too much spoiling, Seat of Sacrifice slaps a whole lotta new players, especially boosted ones.

I obviously didn't do it myself, but reading up on the benefits tab there, it looks like when you buy the SB skip, it puts you right at the beginning of ShB. You don't have to do Castrum Fluminis as a trial, you don't have to do that dungeon with the easy-as-piss twin boss at the end. The equivalent SHB skip would then hop over SoS and dungeons like Relict or Pagl'than.

SoS mostly slaps my ass because retards refuse to mash buttons even when told, then try to come up with excuses for why they failed an easy-ass mechanic twice in a row between dropping aoes/cones on the group and standing in the sword triangle.

So is it common for boosters to go straight for the latest content? Do they know or did someone tell them that older content is still valid?

Well, part of the whole reason I personally think that boosting is retarded is that FF14 does a shit-ass job of explaining any of its systems. There are so many of them, so many of them are arbitrary, and a fuckton are things you just don't learn unless someone tells you. The time it takes to level is plenty of time to learn the systems. Like upgrading 510 gear to 520 through the use of crystalline rain - how would you know to turn the 510 gear in for these stupid scrips, then buy crystalline rain, then use those to buy the 520 equivalent? Nothing tells you. Much the same, nothing tells you that you'll forever be doing the older content until you realize you will.

Of course, a boosting retard is going in completely blind and is probably assuming it works just the same as it does in other MMOs - ie, they're skipping boring content that they'll never need to do again.

Eh...maybe a spicy take but I don't really care how the WoW fags play the game. The fact that they are playing it and at least bothering to put effort into playing to some degree it is still supporting the game in some way. I'd only have a problem with it if they started trashing the game for things they skipped or didn't bother experiencing or looking at.

There's kindof two camps of WoWfags, and the camp that actually respects ff14 is chill. The problem isn't so much that the story's being skipped as that most of the people doing storyskips then refuse to learn the game and expect other people to carry them. Like, "I'm playing this lesser MMO, I am a guest, treat me like royalty." I couldn't give a shit less if they don't care about the story - half of it's retarded and comes off like it's written by some fifth grader that stumbled in half-drunk after getting fucked in the ass by their father on 'bring your kid to work day' (the other half is HW and non-lahee SHB). I care that they get lippy when other people get tired of them wiping the group because they keep dropping AOE markers on everyone after being expressly told not to. So not much different from the FF14 regulars I despise.

The other camp tries to learn their shit. The camp that skips and then tries to learn their shit I mostly feel bad for, as the whole of that early leveling process basically gets you used to how FF14 on the whole works; individual classes are mostly pretty easy to pick up. Not that DRG is terribly hard to get down pat, but within around ten minutes of boosting one to 70, I came to understand the rotation and how to juice it. Took a while longer to get the muscle memory in, but it wasn't so bad; someone who has never seen a class build up or felt what a rotation means in FF14 might have a tougher time.
But I have faith that the ones who genuinely want to learn will get with the program. It's just hard to get through to the good wowfugees beneath the haze of NEVER USING YOUR AOE SKILLS IS TOTALLY VALID enablers. I'm getting better at playing the passive-aggressive game to make those people fume, at least.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

It takes a lot of patience to play the game, for sure. I agree 100%. The game is designed around gradually teaching you things rather than just kind of slapping a "FFXIV for Retards" book at your face after a boost. The boosts were mostly also designed for alts and they weren't really implemented in mind for people who just want to skip everything and get to endgame.

I think their problem is that they are always rushing, rushing, rushing. Because they are so used to it in WoW, no one ever stops to take the time because WoW has basically conditioned them into rushing to end game ASAP because literally everything else about the game is shite. Endgame is all that matters to them.

In the end though, there's no real "correct way" to play the game. Just play the game, take the time to learn and not be shit so you don't drag everyone else around you down. That's basically it.

 

[zettalow]

It takes a lot of patience to play the game, for sure. I agree 100%. The game is designed around gradually teaching you things rather than just kind of slapping a "FFXIV for Retards" book at your face after a boost. The boosts were mostly also designed for alts and they weren't really implemented in mind for people who just want to skip everything and get to endgame.

I think their problem is that they are always rushing, rushing, rushing. Because they are so used to it in WoW, no one ever stops to take the time because WoW has basically conditioned them into rushing to end game ASAP because literally everything else about the game is shite. Endgame is all that matters to them.

In the end though, there's no real "correct way" to play the game. Just play the game, take the time to learn and not be shit so you don't drag everyone else around you down. That's basically it.

That's definitely been my experience with the game, but it's not too bad in practice. Aside from a little bit of bloat in the MSQ, it seems like there's always something new to do even 40-ish levels in because they don't frontload all of it. It's definitely refreshing coming from other multiplayer titles.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

People should be allowed to play the game however the hell they want. If they want to boost then boost, it's your money and you're allowed to do whatever you want.

But be known, if you act like a fucking idiot you're gonna get called an idiot. Quin or whoever hell that moron was that boosted on Sam and went right into savage only to then complain (about healers let alone standing in stupid shit) and say the game was just ok is a moron.

There are people in the XIV community who have a hardline "BOOST BAD" and those people need to consider others and not mandate that you MUST enjoy msq to enjoy the game.

Does it help you enjoy game fully? Yeah, but you can still enjoy the game for what it is on fights/progression/growth alone.

I have a person in my static (we cleared TEA btw late update to that yaaay), but they didn't give a care about the Alex story. Meanwhile shit like the true heart mechanic in TEA was like "Whoa what is this cat doing here?" and they got an explanation and they were just generally interested. Would they have the same experience had they not known the plot significance for it? Yeah totally it's just a mechanic. Knowing why it's happening just adds the context, and can at times make a person more invested which should be taken as an extra bonus, but shouldn't be shunned for not reaching that person the same way it does for an invested person.

Something I've noticed a lot is that people don't know how to advise new people at all, they merely know how to instruct how the game is "intended" in their limited scope opinion.

The amount of "Don't like the story? This game isn't for you, you shouldn't play it" is insane to me, especially if these new people come from other (especially older) MMOs. A lot of FFXIV people are MMO casuals who got into FFXIV because it was a big deal within the FF scene, probably because FFXV was delayed for the 500th time so they likely just wanted to try a new FF. So they think because a quest takes 10 minutes, it must be the most terribly thing in the universe even if said quest gives you like 20% of a level. If you mash skip through the MSQ it takes no time for a true MMO veteran to get through really because you don't even need to grind anything, you just hit like 3 mobs every few quests, teleport around, skip cutscenes, do a 4 man dungeon once awhile, repeat until you reach 80 in a few weeks.

FFXIV's initial leveling experience only feels like it takes forever is because its MSQ cutscenes last longer than all the Star Wars movies combined, I'm pretty sure I could watch most if not all of the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy faster than I can get to past ARR with just the cutscenes playing back to back, ignoring all the non-cutscene dialogue, dungeons, queues, and teleporting, etc.

I personally try to give people rough estimates based on what I know about the story, its length, if you skip vs no skip, and because I recently replayed the free trial portion of the game on an alt to follow some new players around, so I have a pretty fresh experience as someone who mostly skipped everything. If I just soared through the MSQ I would have been at Stormblood in about...maybe 1-2 weeks? Depends on how hard you no life obviously, but you can blast through ARR in a week these days if you just smash through all the story assuming you play a good few hours a day. I want people to make something of an informed decision and I always mention "hey you can use new game+ if you ever want to see the story for real" so they understand their options and can choose what matters for them.

Too bad GCBTW says if you skip cutscenes the entire game is RUINED and you should just not play because apparently the only good part of the game is watching cutscenes. (congrats on clearing TEA btw)

 

[Lammy]

why Titania inflicts horror when it pops up in roulette

That totally explains why Titania was the first story dungeon/trial that actually came across as challenging when I was playing through the story. Given that was around April or so, before this surge of 9.1 refugees, so I can't imagine what hell it is right now.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

The amount of "Don't like the story? This game isn't for you, you shouldn't play it" is insane to me,

It's a defense mechanism, because these shitters want to preserve the "culture."
If you're not coming up with excuses for why drawing porn of the Levallieur twins is actually totally okay and not skeevy at all, you ain't welcome.

FFXIV's initial leveling experience only feels like it takes forever is because its MSQ cutscenes last longer than all the Star Wars movies combined,

It doesn't help that sense of scope in the world is extremely hard to grasp, which makes it feel a whole lot like you're just being strung from point A to B and kills your immersion. They need a quest that lays out the map of Eorzea plain and simple and takes a little moment to explain to you where the countries all are in relation to each other, if only because you're being told all of this information but the zones are... as video-gamey as possible until Western Coerthas Highlands. You get told so much about the calamity and the various nations and characters and blah blah blah really early on, but I didn't have any sense of the world itself until I was nearly done with ARR.

That totally explains why Titania was the first story dungeon/trial that actually came across as challenging when I was playing through the story. Given that was around April or so, before this surge of 9.1 refugees, so I can't imagine what hell it is right now.

Yeah. Most of Titania's mechanics we've seen before... but a straight booster hasn't. The rings in a circle and center? That's from Shiva and Tsuki. Big blue fuck you knockback? Sephirot. I think it's the first one where you need the offtank to not jerk off the entire time and in which there's a kill order that matters in the MSQ. I'm sure some of her other mechanics are from savage/ex stuff I've never touched, too. It combos together with people who've gotten carried through Holminster/Mheng alongside folks that just haven't seen the mechs to create a real mess at the level range, since the design makes it hard for just one or two on-the-ball people to carry it.
It fits neatly into my theory that they make great musical tracks for things where you'll be wiping or otherwise annoyed.

 

[Peasant]

It doesn't help that sense of scope in the world is extremely hard to grasp, which makes it feel a whole lot like you're just being strung from point A to B and kills your immersion. They need a quest that lays out the map of Eorzea plain and simple and takes a little moment to explain to you where the countries all are in relation to each other, if only because you're being told all of this information but the zones are... as video-gamey as possible until Western Coerthas Highlands. You get told so much about the calamity and the various nations and characters and blah blah blah really early on, but I didn't have any sense of the world itself until I was nearly done with ARR.

The world map is shit. Utter shit. It doesn't convey where you are or where you've been at all, and I think fixing this could really help new players get their bearings. I don't know why there needs to be all these different map screens when just one that you can zoom in and out on would suffice.

 

[Tachibana]

Agreed. Skippers/Boosties have gotten badmouthed and maligned (often rightly so) since they were a thing added to the game, they've only gotten worse as the game continues along. I 'look forward' to seeing how many people get their faces torn off by Titania and the WoL when they're boosting up to Shadowbringers in the future. People already get bodied by them so its just going to get worse.

I made the life mistake of joining a Trials queue and had to explain why sprinting away from the party when you get a stack marker is a terrible idea. It was on Susanoo, all but two (and that includes myself) were very blatantly boosted.

This is the game developer's problem. I received a promotional email from Square Enix today promoting boosts.

It takes a lot of patience to play the game, for sure. I agree 100%. The game is designed around gradually teaching you things rather than just kind of slapping a "FFXIV for Retards" book at your face after a boost. The boosts were mostly also designed for alts and they weren't really implemented in mind for people who just want to skip everything and get to endgame.

I think their problem is that they are always rushing, rushing, rushing. Because they are so used to it in WoW, no one ever stops to take the time because WoW has basically conditioned them into rushing to end game ASAP because literally everything else about the game is shite. Endgame is all that matters to them.

Game still has plenty things it doesn't teach you, and some people are only interested in raiding or endgame pve content. Doing the story in FFXIV is a drastically different experience from doing savage raids.

Too bad GCBTW says if you skip cutscenes the entire game is RUINED and you should just not play because apparently the only good part of the game is watching cutscenes. (congrats on clearing TEA btw)

The story isn't that good, it's standard JRPG fare often bound to MMO conventions. The game will suddenly introduce primals or elements inside the MSQ because it needs to meet its primal quota for the expansion. The game needs to have excuses for you to go inside a dungeon or do a trial.

The story is overrated by people who have never played other video games or read other works of fiction.

The world map is shit. Utter shit. It doesn't convey where you are or where you've been at all, and I think fixing this could really help new players get their bearings. I don't know why there needs to be all these different map screens when just one that you can zoom in and out on would suffice.

The game has a lot of bad bearings from World of Warcraft.

If you want to spend certain currencies, you just have to know exactly where to spend them because the game doesn't tell you.

If you want to meld materia, you just have to know that not only it exists, but exactly what quest you need to complete, and also how to navigate the melding interface.

The glamour system is a mess and pretty much "You need to know how". Have to navigate through a bunch of obnoxious interfaces.

The grand company system is somewhat confusing and a lot of its rewards just aren't relevant. It's one of those Blizzard(tm) systems that end up being abandoned in development.

The game doesn't teach you at all how to use certain abilities as part of job quests. It just doles them out as a reward and expects the player to figure it out, instead of having said ability be used in the job quest.

These are all things I've noticed from people who are new to the game and asked me about those things. While I get that it's a MMO, and that it's a social experience, the game itself needs to do some of the leg work.

 

[JektheDumbass]

I was level 72 and 3/4 through Stormblood before I did my first tank swap. And that was because there was a partyfinder looking to do t6 while synced. It's not really a thing unless you look for it through most of the msq. I've never seen anyone doing Alexander or Warring Triad raids ever so Sephirot might as well be a fart in a windstorm.

 

[John Titor]

Well, part of the whole reason I personally think that boosting is retarded is that FF14 does a shit-ass job of explaining any of its systems. There are so many of them, so many of them are arbitrary, and a fuckton are things you just don't learn unless someone tells you. The time it takes to level is plenty of time to learn the systems. Like upgrading 510 gear to 520 through the use of crystalline rain - how would you know to turn the 510 gear in for these stupid scrips, then buy crystalline rain, then use those to buy the 520 equivalent? Nothing tells you. Much the same, nothing tells you that you'll forever be doing the older content until you realize you will.

I really hope they add a Hall of the Novice section for markers because I had to look up what half of them actually do through an imgur gallery.
I also just got to the part of the gear augmentation stuff and admittingly, they weren't very clear because at first I thought they were crafting materials.

 

[Vapewizard]

As a casual who is here for the story and characters and doesn't care about savage/ultimate content I always just accepted being a mediocre player, but some of the shit I've seen lately is actually making me feel better about myself. One of the alliances in a syrcus tower run from roulette was being tanked by a gladiator, and then during a shiva from trial roulette a ranged dps kept spamming LB1s.

 

[FencePost]

If you want to spend certain currencies, you just have to know exactly where to spend them because the game doesn't tell you.

If you want to meld materia, you just have to know that not only it exists, but exactly what quest you need to complete, and also how to navigate the melding interface.

---

These are all things I've noticed from people who are new to the game and asked me about those things. While I get that it's a MMO, and that it's a social experience, the game itself needs to do some of the leg work.

Knowing where to use specific currencies can be confusing, mainly because there's so goddamn many in the game now. Mor Dhona still has 50 different currency turn-ins that could be consolidated. They could also not just glance in the general direction of the tomestone vendors when they're first unlocked if there's going to be several next to each other. They could also include the source of said currency if you find something you like while window shopping. I'm mainly just thinking of ways to avoid saying "Just look at the wiki" because that's what happened to WoW, it's quests, and Wowhead.

Materia and melding is the biggest ball drop of the game. The fact that spiritbond and materia extracting are taught at the same time but spiritbond grows so slowly that people forget that extracting is a thing by the time it first happens is just bad design. The form of suffering known as pentamelding is worthy of a discussion all its own.

The glamour system is a mess and pretty much "You need to know how". Have to navigate through a bunch of obnoxious interfaces.

The quest to unlock the glamour system could at least be not put in the armpit known as Mor Dhona, I'll give you that, but there is a tutorial in the game specifically for navigating the system once you complete the quest.
The system used to be infinitely worse. Items were split every ten levels and each split needed their own prisms to store, apply, and dispell.
Also, obligatory "Gibe bigger glamour chest plz, YoshiP."

The grand company system is somewhat confusing and a lot of its rewards just aren't relevant. It's one of those Blizzard(tm) systems that end up being abandoned in development.

The GC system is still nice for gear for leveling jobs. It was left behind because ARR content was left behind, just like clan centurio, whatever SB's clan was, and clan Nutsy will be. It's still nice to have a fat stack of GC scrips because it's free glamour related prisms and aetherite tickets.

The game doesn't teach you at all how to use certain abilities as part of job quests. It just doles them out as a reward and expects the player to figure it out, instead of having said ability be used in the job quest.

I can see where you're coming from with this, seeing as I'll never be able to verbally describe the SAM rotation to someone, but if you don't at least read the tooltip of every spell you get in the doldrums between 35-50 and/or practice with it, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[StuffedBallot]

I appreciate the fact that my korean grindfest buddy came in, said the story wasn't for him, skipped the story, but now has been autistically reading every single tooltip and leveling every single class while keeping the balance up on his secondary monitor as a guide.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

The story isn't that good, it's standard JRPG fare often bound to MMO conventions.

People praise ShB's story a lot, but that's because it pays attention to detail and is well-paced at the beginning and end. Yet from prettymuch the moment that you kill Titania up until Crown of the Immaculate, it's shit. Random factions introduced for no reason, shitty side-stories like WOW THANKS WOL YOU CURED MY ALCOHOLISM, characters dying only immediately to go lol jk, complete 180s on established motivations, manners of speaking, and belief systems, etc. Yshtola gets like a third complete character re-do during this period and is endlessly more annoying than she was in HW because the arc's writer thought OMG SHE'S SO COOL while writing everything, Thancred gets fucking Gosetsu'd and similarly denied a real character arc so we can have him sit around being useless, and Vauthry goes from an absolutely captivating villain to your bog standard JRPG antagonist.

The greatest curse of writing in MMOs is that there really isn't a coherent creative vision, so FF14 manages to be the best of the worst if only because sequences like Aumarot are genuinely cool. Whoever wrote Aumarot and the beginning arc of ShB should be given full control over a non-MMO game, and whoever wrote the middle should stick to writing shounen for seven-year-olds.

I've never seen anyone doing Alexander or Warring Triad raids ever so Sephirot might as well be a fart in a windstorm.

They don't do it in savage or ex much except to unsync farm drops, but they pop up in normal mode plenty often in the roulette. Alexander does have at least one tank swap boss I can remember, but most people are so stupid it's generally a better idea to keep your stance off and let the other guy start tanking. Only once the gorilla-bomb boss starts doing the kill-y move do you provoke, which 9/10 times will lead to the other guy provoking back and immediately dying, because insecurity and DF blues go hand-in-hand.

I really hope they add a Hall of the Novice section for markers because I had to look up what half of them actually do through an imgur gallery.
I also just got to the part of the gear augmentation stuff and admittingly, they weren't very clear because at first I thought they were crafting materials.

I'd have never known about the 510->520 stuff if someone hadn't told me about it. It's completely unintuitive, made worse by the fact that 510 pentamelded is probably better (but why would you tho). It was by chance I figured out how you augment Cryptlurker shit with the Nier raid coins, since the game also doesn't tell you about that. If I didn't read the patch notes mentioning you could get Crypt Ester with just nier coins, I probably wouldn't have a 530 weapon, either.

One of the alliances in a syrcus tower run from roulette was being tanked by a gladiator, and then during a shiva from trial roulette a ranged dps kept spamming LB1s.

Why SE hasn't forced job stones to be equipped for anything over 30 is beyond me. It doesn't help that there's that stupid 5-minute no-kick window, since hitting 'o' and tabbing over to the vote dismiss should be the first instinct of anyone who spots a base class in that content.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

People praise ShB's story a lot, but that's because it pays attention to detail and is well-paced at the beginning and end. Yet from prettymuch the moment that you kill Titania up until Crown of the Immaculate, it's shit. Random factions introduced for no reason, shitty side-stories like WOW THANKS WOL YOU CURED MY ALCOHOLISM, characters dying only immediately to go lol jk, complete 180s on established motivations, manners of speaking, and belief systems, etc. Yshtola gets like a third complete character re-do during this period and is endlessly more annoying than she was in HW because the arc's writer thought OMG SHE'S SO COOL while writing everything, Thancred gets fucking Gosetsu'd and similarly denied a real character arc so we can have him sit around being useless, and Vauthry goes from an absolutely captivating villain to your bog standard JRPG antagonist.

The greatest curse of writing in MMOs is that there really isn't a coherent creative vision, so FF14 manages to be the best of the worst if only because sequences like Aumarot are genuinely cool. Whoever wrote Aumarot and the beginning arc of ShB should be given full control over a non-MMO game, and whoever wrote the middle should stick to writing shounen for seven-year-olds.

Personally those little side-stories are part of the adventure if you want to better define what is worth fighting for and to me are important to ensuring people care about the 1st as a whole with how little relative time we are there. For like 6 years I've gone back and forth about how much I give a flying fuck about Eorzea/Othard as a whole because I swear almost everyone that runs anything important is varying degrees of petty asshole, selfish asshole, effectively useless, or some politician who spouts a bunch of shit and acts like their shit don't stink. So just seeing people be fucked over and it not somehow be their fault (unlike say...Limsa who made the majority of their own problems) is strangely refreshing. I pity them and I find giving those people hope meaningful even if it isn't that important overall to the overarching plot. Especially after Stormblood where I kind of didn't give much of a shit about much (especially with just 4.0) because I hardly understand what I was fighting for besides "freedom" and "liberation" of people I barely know besides Yugiri and Raubahn. Maybe I'm just a sap for this sort of stuff, but I liked the majority of the 5.0's MSQ.

Thancred being a trust npc and the only tank there really hampers what they can do with him, I pretty much knew he wouldn't go anywhere because of the trust system. Hopefully the fact we should be getting an all rounder trust npc for EW means we don't have to be stuck with a healer/tank trust at all times. Y'shtola's fake death is more for Emet than Y'shtola herself, it was the first time Emet genuinely helps instead of being passive aggressive in a corner, so that doesn't bother me at all.

I don't think Y'shtola gets redone more so that she was just a really bland sassy female character from the start and her progression from ARR > ShB is them very slowly trying to add bits and pieces to her character while not breaking the visage of "Y'shtola waifu queen uwu". Y'shtola is by far the most boring Scion though because she's just stuck as the token waifu that they barely need to try anything with to make her popular. Even freaking Urianger has more going for him because at least he takes his conviction to doing the best thing possible in an even remotely different direction due to his tendency to mislead people than just fighting things and talking politics.

 

[Disc]

I'm just going to carefully step around the reeing here.

FFXIV's initial leveling experience only feels like it takes forever is because its MSQ cutscenes last longer than all the Star Wars movies combined, I'm pretty sure I could watch most if not all of the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy faster than I can get to past ARR with just the cutscenes playing back to back, ignoring all the non-cutscene dialogue, dungeons, queues, and teleporting, etc.

You don't even have to guess. Here's a list of all quests for each expac, including .0 and .x total cutscene length.

According to google, the runtime of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is 11 hours and 42 minutes. That makes it slightly longer than 2.0 or 4.0. 3.0 is significantly shorter, and 5.0 is longer even if you add in the hobbit.

In other words, by the time the whole lord of the rings trilogy ends, you're either gearing up to kill Good King Moggle Mog or confronting that worthless marauder about Leviabeetus.

 

[Gravemind]

I really hope they add a Hall of the Novice section for markers because I had to look up what half of them actually do through an imgur gallery.
I also just got to the part of the gear augmentation stuff and admittingly, they weren't very clear because at first I thought they were crafting materials.

Do you not read tooltips?

Knowing where to use specific currencies can be confusing, mainly because there's so goddamn many in the game now. Mor Dhona still has 50 different currency turn-ins that could be consolidated. They could also not just glance in the general direction of the tomestone vendors when they're first unlocked if there's going to be several next to each other. They could also include the source of said currency if you find something you like while window shopping. I'm mainly just thinking of ways to avoid saying "Just look at the wiki" because that's what happened to WoW, it's quests, and Wowhead.

A lot of this complaining is really feeling like it's boiling down to "I wish they'd give me more ways to play this game completely independently of having to socialize or do any external looking of my own".

Why do you guys want your hands held so badly? It's not even a matter of skill at this point. This is just getting to the point of being too lazy or too incompetent to realize you may need some form of outside help to figure something out. And once you learn how the fuck Tomestones and the various tokens in the game work, not to mention where to unlock various optional functions like glamours and dyes, it's a one-time thing. You either always know from then on out who to talk to in order to spend/trade for what, or you've permanently unlocked some function of the game that you don't have to worry about anymore.

That'd be like me holding it against the game because I didn't take the time to figure out how the Glamour Dresser worked until recently. I never understood it very well and avoided it for as long as possible until I finally decided to give it a try, and then I realized that the game really isn't that esoteric with explaining its functions – I was just being too dumb and negligent to understand it until I started actively using it.

The quest to unlock the glamour system could at least be not put in the armpit known as Mor Dhona, I'll give you that

It's in Western Thanalan though, right next to the Waking Sands. The very same NPC also unlocks dyes as well.

Thancred being a trust npc and the only tank there really hampers what they can do with him, I pretty much knew he wouldn't go anywhere because of the trust system.

I mean, they could've just as easily included the Crystal Exarch as a Trust more frequently instead. He can already be every single role, including a Tank. It'd just take some narrative tweaking so he isn't stuck sitting in the Crystal Tower all day and has even more of an active role in the proceedings of things.

and Vauthry goes from an absolutely captivating villain to your bog standard JRPG antagonist.

Just about any disagreement to most of that paragraph could boil down to a difference in subjective preferences, but for this, I honestly have to ask:

Since when the fuck was Vauthry himself ever captivating? He was always as generic as generic gets.