Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

The problem with the ARR dungeons is that they're designed with a different era in mind. The maze-like, winding passageways with optional loot boxes for rewards would matter a whole lot more in a game with just fifty levels - and where those dungeons were the bulk of the content. Issue is, there's just no reason to ever explore the incorrect routes - you replace gear in the blink of an eye. I still remember the names of certain items from the original World of Warcraft that you'd be thrilled to get - like Corpsemaker or Cruel Barb - because you'd be using them easily for 5-10 levels that took a good, long, meaty while.

And that's just not the case in ff14 - even your first time leveling through, the main bottleneck is the MSQ throwing you around. The gear gets invalidated extremely fast, so there's really no point in trying to max it out.

Of course, all that changes once you get to the ARR->HW quests. The dungeons become largely more linear, which... is a good thing, honestly. In older designs of games, the trash mobs were supposed to make for a decent challenge that required some amount of strategy here and there - like wanting a certain class with a certain type of crowd control for a dungeon teeming with the relevant enemies. But... well, that just isn't how it works anymore. The trash in every dungeon is a laughing stock that never does anything interesting, and mostly just serves to waste your time. A competent tank realizes that all they have to do is gather them up, rotate through cooldowns, and hope that the DPS isn't completely fucking braindead... every single time. The only halting consideration to this is if you're leveling and your gear isn't great, in which case you might try to slow down - though even then, any competent healer should be able to just spam the good heals on you if they note that your health is ping-ponging.

There are a few dungeons that have actually-fun trash pulls where you can pick up like five different packs of mobs and have them all whacking on you - a good tank will indeed grab the group, and once you experience the difference in how long it takes to kill someone pulling each one by one and gathering up the whole lot, you'll see why folks just scoop them up. Boss mechanics are also usually pretty intuitive, so even if you croak, you'll normally be able to go 'ahhh' and figure out what to do for next time.
 
The fact everything is just a mind numbing speedrun where the tank pulls 100 enemies at once and you're expected to know boss patterns because this should be your 300th time through the dungeon just like everyone else. It would be nice to actually take time and explore.

I know there's nothing that can really be done about it, but it still sucks.
For the most part, you're only really missing some absolute trash loot and optional puzzles which everyone just outgears anyway. Although if you tell the people in your party that you're new and want to look around a little, they'll normally slow things down without any issue. The reason why everyone speedruns dungeons is because it's become sorta the de facto protocol to do so unless someone objects due to endgame players spending so much time in them to either farm tomes of xp for alts.

You should always open with the customary, "o/ first time here" greeting when going into a dungeon for the first time in any case.
 
2027, FFXVII is coming out, XIV is being put in maintenance mode.
The last ultimate is released.
The Symphony of Good King Moogle Mog - Ultimate.
The first transition phase spawns three bees for every moogle.
Truly the final test of the WoL's power. Giant dragons, diabolic god-wizards, and a big fuckin' birdface was just a stepping stone for this one moment.
 
The entire ARR experience at this point is pretty bad all around tbh. Aside from the issues with dungeons and instances, the level scaling is wonky as fuck. I just got the first Scion mission and sent to eastern Thanalan at level 28. And it's not like I've been doing any grinding, I've literally just followed the main plot line and done the side quests wherever it takes me. There's no challenge in the gameplay when you're overleveled. I'm also still riding the gear I got for doing the role tutorial at the beginning of the game. I think this is why I've started and stopped the game so many times. You just get to a point where it's not an MMO anymore and it feels like you're playing a mediocre single player game.

I'm still hell bent on pushing through and finally getting to the end of ARR, but it's tough sometimes.
 
The entire ARR experience at this point is pretty bad all around tbh. Aside from the issues with dungeons and instances, the level scaling is wonky as fuck. I just got the first Scion mission and sent to eastern Thanalan at level 28. And it's not like I've been doing any grinding, I've literally just followed the main plot line and done the side quests wherever it takes me. There's no challenge in the gameplay when you're overleveled. I'm also still riding the gear I got for doing the role tutorial at the beginning of the game. I think this is why I've started and stopped the game so many times. You just get to a point where it's not an MMO anymore and it feels like you're playing a mediocre single player game.

I'm still hell bent on pushing through and finally getting to the end of ARR, but it's tough sometimes.
Square Enix realized no one wants to level grind through 8 year old content so they made the MSQ just overlevel you so you basically never stop to grind dungeons like I had to do 8 years ago. If you are doing side quests except the blue + marks, there is part of your problem with overleveling. You were basically never overleveled back in 2013 unless you went dramatically out of your way to be overleveled. I used to have to stop every other level in the MSQ to grind a dungeon or three to continue on with the story which added hours of playtime back then (nowadays you can get through ARR in about 40 or so hours probably with cutscenes and a good reading speed), and SE dramatically fixed that issue and made it extremely streamlined and simple with the objective being "do MSQ until the MSQ ends, then you can play endgame if you want".

FFXIV is basically a JRPG with MMO elements for its leveling experience which is what draws the typical FF crowd into the game and creates a seasonal category of players who solely play this game for the MSQ and leave when no MSQ exists. The tried and true endgame MMO experience is there at each expansion's level cap more or less, while retaining lore context if you care about context for the raid beyond "big thing inside, go kill it for treasure". As far as single player JRPGs go, I've played worse then FFXIV but ARR is a very weird experience for sure. I know you've played the Trails series, pretend ARR is like a slower paced build up to the Trails games. Like Trails of the Sky is like ARR and Trails of the sky SC is like Heavensward. If you aren't into it at all by Heavensward, then I'd probably cut your losses because the expansion after Heavensward is very hit or miss as a story (though gameplay wise it is better).

I wish you the very best of luck getting through ARR.
 
I'm still hell bent on pushing through and finally getting to the end of ARR, but it's tough sometimes.
There's two ways to significantly speed it up. One, the most obvious: skip the cutscenes. This is an obvious problem if you think you might actually care about the story later on, once they start to tell things in a reasonably coherent manner. You will generally be clueless, as the approach is to rarely pull you aside and explain much about the politics or geography of the world, so missing context clues will make a lot of sequences come off rather strangely indeed.

The second way, though, is simple: take ARR's terrible storytelling and turn it into entertainment. Make your character look as ridiculous as possible. Turn the long, boring, winding, rambling, questionably-meaningful cutscenes into a fun and amusing adventure of your stupid-ass character looking like a fucking mook next to a bunch of self-serious types. Given how much time you spend nodding along silently or otherwise just looking stupid, you'd may as well just embrace it - and then once you maybe warm up to the story and get a little more invested, clean yourself up and look as normal or as serious as you like.

I don't think I could have made it through all that fucking boring drivel and utterly uninteresting gameplay if the cutscenes weren't a treat with this dude as the apparent savior of the planet:
bodacious.png

And eventually, the story became decent enough that it was actually a negative to have a ridiculous disco-daddy in all the cutscenes.
baldandpigfaced.png
 
There's two ways to significantly speed it up. One, the most obvious: skip the cutscenes. This is an obvious problem if you think you might actually care about the story later on, once they start to tell things in a reasonably coherent manner. You will generally be clueless, as the approach is to rarely pull you aside and explain much about the politics or geography of the world, so missing context clues will make a lot of sequences come off rather strangely indeed.

The second way, though, is simple: take ARR's terrible storytelling and turn it into entertainment. Make your character look as ridiculous as possible. Turn the long, boring, winding, rambling, questionably-meaningful cutscenes into a fun and amusing adventure of your stupid-ass character looking like a fucking mook next to a bunch of self-serious types. Given how much time you spend nodding along silently or otherwise just looking stupid, you'd may as well just embrace it - and then once you maybe warm up to the story and get a little more invested, clean yourself up and look as normal or as serious as you like.

I don't think I could have made it through all that fucking boring drivel and utterly uninteresting gameplay if the cutscenes weren't a treat with this dude as the apparent savior of the planet:
Ver archivo adjunto 2811490
And eventually, the story became decent enough that it was actually a negative to have a ridiculous disco-daddy in all the cutscenes.
Ver archivo adjunto 2811496
Was it worth the $15 delivery?
 
Is this reliable for farming that world boss?

Yes and no. It can pop any time in the 48 hour (?) window, albeit a VERY low chance.

I usually only start hanging around when it gets close to 100 percent on the progress.

That being said it popped 3 times on Tonberry in one day. I was leveling gatherers in the zone so I just had to watch out for chat going mental and ask for a party invite.
 
The entire ARR experience at this point is pretty bad all around tbh. Aside from the issues with dungeons and instances, the level scaling is wonky as fuck. I just got the first Scion mission and sent to eastern Thanalan at level 28. And it's not like I've been doing any grinding, I've literally just followed the main plot line and done the side quests wherever it takes me. There's no challenge in the gameplay when you're overleveled. I'm also still riding the gear I got for doing the role tutorial at the beginning of the game. I think this is why I've started and stopped the game so many times. You just get to a point where it's not an MMO anymore and it feels like you're playing a mediocre single player game.

I'm still hell bent on pushing through and finally getting to the end of ARR, but it's tough sometimes.
ARR vomits XP and gear at you because everyone wants to get past it as soon as possible. Once you complete the 2.0 questline, you'll be stuck doing at-level content for a while without much avenue for overgearing.
 
I think I got lucky in that I came into ARR just viewing it as a extended starter zone. Gridania, Thanalan, and La Noscea really do give off early level RPG vibes, and I found it kinda endearing to have an RPG experience where things didn't become extremely serious in the first few hours.

I don't think it was until starting Crystal Tower and Coils of Bahamut that I regarded the story as becoming more than being a simple adventurer doing adventurer stuff
 
Well, I made it to 33 PUG, ~20 FSH, MIN, BTN, and GSM in just about three days, so I think I'm going to be able to complete my goal of finishing ARR before mid-January. This is the furthest I've made it since the game launched.
 
FFXIV is basically a JRPG with MMO elements for its leveling experience which is what draws the typical FF crowd into the game and creates a seasonal category of players who solely play this game for the MSQ and leave when no MSQ exists.
that's fine and all, but starts to get retarded when you just stack more shit on top, thus forcing people having to play through content from years ago (but hey, you can buy a skip!). imagine you buy the latest FF or tales but need to play all other parts first or pay more, how many people would stick with that?

don't get me wrong, it does filter some of the more tryhard sweaties, but also a good chunk of other players. worse, there's really no "need" to have everything tied to the MSQ, sure you'll see some stuff out of order, but at least there would be a choice and even a smoothbrain would figure out in time how it all relates (worst case he can just read it up).

sometimes you just want grind and level, not read/watch dozens of dialogs and cutscenes.
 
that's fine and all, but starts to get retarded when you just stack more shit on top, thus forcing people having to play through content from years ago (but hey, you can buy a skip!). imagine you buy the latest FF or tales but need to play all other parts first or pay more, how many people would stick with that?

don't get me wrong, it does filter some of the more tryhard sweaties, but also a good chunk of other players. worse, there's really no "need" to have everything tied to the MSQ, sure you'll see some stuff out of order, but at least there would be a choice and even a smoothbrain would figure out in time how it all relates (worst case he can just read it up).

sometimes you just want grind and level, not read/watch dozens of dialogs and cutscenes.
I don't really agree as you can already having finished ARR participate in all the types of content that is available, it's not as if you have to reach lvl 90 to do raiding, but the game sections off raids and trials behind the expansion where they are relevant

Personal experience is that when a MMO just requires you to be at a appropriate level to do raids you give birth to a very vocal playerbase that is just there for the endgame content, and who view the story content as an obstacle

That playerbase doesn't work with an MMO where there isn't even a raid for the first month of launch, and what you would see happen is demands that story content be sacrificed so that the "endgame content only" crowd has something to do at launch
 
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