Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

It's irrelevant because I think skipping the story in a story driven game is absolutely stupid but this isn't how it works. It wouldn't cost you $150. It'd cost you about 30. You only need the latest story skip as it skips every expansion up to and including the one preceding the current expansion. Shadowbringers skip skips every MSQ quest and the necessary side quests from ARR to the starting quest of Endwalker. Endwalker skip will come out when Dawntrail drops and will be $5 more. To skip the entire Hydaelyn Zodiark arc you'd need the Endwalker one. Dawntrail will have no ties to the first 10 years of story aside from the most ground level lore bits that I'm sure they'll see fit to reexplain again anyway.

This would not however level your job to 80/90.

Ah OK I thought I'd have to buy each expansion skip individually. But I do agree 100% that in a game whose narrative is supposedly its selling point, spending any amount of extra money (on top of buying the game and expansions and paying the subscription) to completely skip it is utter nonsense.

Don't have to buy all the expansions either. It's $30 for the whole thing. Again largely irrelevant since you're not going to anyway but yeah.

FINAL FANTASY XIV 50% Off Until January 17!


$19.99

20 is just for the starter edition; complete edition with all the expansions is 30

Can always YouTube the cinematics if someone wanted to save themselves all the busywork in old msq, but last I heard they were trying to streamline it so it’s less painful

Part of the problem is that ARR has a very different job to do than the expansions do. The expacs get to tell a relatively focused story, around a handful of locations at most, with a ten level gap. ARR, meanwhile, has to do all the world-building heavy lifting, around multiple major locales, and introduce all of the game's systems and world's lore (what is tempering, etc) with a fifty level gap.

That's not to say it doesn't fall into fetch-quest ruts; it absolutely does, but honestly, it's no worse than any other MMO. There's a lot about ARR I would probably change, given the chance! But it's not really fair to judge it by the standards of Shadowbringers or Endwalker, where all of the buildup is done and it's time for payoff.

One of my Thumper acquaintances kindly offered to live-stream the entire game, just to me, so I could experience the story vicariously. But I had to politely decline by saying that it wasn't necessarily the gameplay that I have issues with. The reality is (and I didn't go into this because they were being nice about it), the only thing I can imagine being more boring than playing through A Realm Reborn is watching someone else play through A Realm Reborn.

I've tried several times now. I've both tried immersing myself in the world and the characters, as well as tried rushing through everything. I've tried every class, several different races and characters. I've tried with my IRL Thumper friends, I've tried with my online group of friends, and I've tried to do it solo. I've tried going into it with a positive mindset, and I've tried going into it with a neutral mindset.

I want to like it, I really do. But not only does it not click with me, I genuinely can't figure out its appeal. I'm like one of the adults in those Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials from the '90s.



"It's got, duhhhh, tan lines??"

Ow damn…

Im royally screwed now.

The compliance teams criticized my system control, and my team induced me to say something untrue to them.

Now im not sure how to fix things

A friend asked me to give it a genuine shot, so I started back at square one and got current in all MSQ progress (at the time, it was the end of stormblood) And defeated Zenos right before Shadowbringers launched; it has it's charms but definitely not a game for me either.

I did like blm and smn high end rotations back then though.

I've done all the stories up to end of Shadowbringer and couldn't stand most of it. Most of Stormblood was decent for me, but I just couldn't understand all the hype for shadowbringers honestly. It doesn't help that each expac is literally filled to the brim with fetch quests that are literally "go here, click 3 glowing dots, then go back to NPC." World ending threat is arriving, please get me a sandwich. Then someone sacrifices themselves and you move on (Yshtola literally does this like 3+ times)

Then you get the rigid cutscenes, where literally every cutscene consists of extremely rigid running/stopping and then gasps or head nodding. There is probaby very few cutscenes where your character doesn't nod their head, like they couldn't come up with anything more expressive than that. Even comparing it to XI, which is the easiest other MMO to compare with, the cutscenes are so damn rigid. I had done WoTG a while back for a mule and just the amount of animations they used for an old game compared to XIV is staggering. The combat for me is always the worst part, super simplistic and really boring. Just hitting the same combos over and over with no variation, just makes the story feel like a slog too. I did enjoy some unique fights like the Diamond weapon and some others, but those were very rare. The music was always nice though.

My ff14 experience summed up

Not much else to do while waiting for content

The true end game as my friend calls it

Back in the mid-2010's, I used to roll my eyes every time I saw about half of the Letter from the Producer being dedicated to what I considered "fluff", like player housing and glamour. Little did I know that a lot of players really cared about these "Second Life" aspects, and it helped keep them subbed. People spend patch downtimes hunting mounts, glamour, music records or furniture to decorate their precious houses with. It gave rise to communities centered around these activities (my friend really got into interior design), and some other kinds of communities that I won't get into

I actually like that a lot about the game, the housing stuff is neat (not really the method to get houses tho.) I used to do that stuff a lot in SWG back in the day

Is it worth taking shield to stage 4 or should i get sword from stage 1 to 4. Than get shield from 3 to 4? Hmmm

https://out.reddit.com/t3_191rzbr?app_name=ios&token=AQAA2SKdZa58buxOo_1liDR3BKycrScOGyIDWfGfQYCqBFcTVNdt&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwistedvoxel.com%2Ffinal-fantasy-ix-animated-series-still-in-development-release-with-remake%2F
Ff9 remake news?

Those options are kinda opposite to each other thats like asking if you should eat apple or banana.

Aside the obvious "what you like more", I would say thet AFAIK the shield has very unique traits that would place him in the best category.

While any weapon I suppose it fits in the category of increase dps at most.

I would certainly do shield, unless it was some mule that is kinda locked in being a single job DD. For that mule fulltiming a job, I would do its weapon type prime. If that char plays more than one role, then shield brings more to the table IMO

Fk man i wanted the new wep so bad?

"Unique" is a stretch. Seeing as you already have Ochain and Aegis, and presumably already have Duban Stage 3, you already have everything you need. Caliburnus doesn't really do anything for you on PLD though.

we need people like him to review FFXI

Posted it already on the screenshots page, but my partner bought me this for my birthday. It's so nice. It's 3D, the details are burned in. It's so high quality, oil painted. It's such a meaningful present from a game that formed a lot of my early life experience.

I love Vicenarian. I found his channel back in like November. So far it's all XI reviews and vids, and he's almost to 1000 subs.

Guy's voice is hella soft/soothing, and he has a great review style and high opinion of XI, though he doesn't sugar coat some of the things he doesn't like.

Exactly. What I like is that since he's new to the game, he has no nostalgia clouding his judgment. It's one thing to hear a decades-long veteran say "you should try this game", it's another to hear it from someone who only recently discovered it. As flawed as it is, the sum of its parts average out to a really good game.

It helps too that it really fills my own personal tastes. Even though its story is poorly-paced, the world it builds is awesome, and I care more about worldbuilding than narrative. Even though its gameplay is antiquated, it's really deep and strategic, and I care more about mechanics than actions. It sucks to think I'll probably never get all of the gear I want in the game, but how cool is it that it means I'll have stuff to do and reason to play until the servers shut down!

Oh ***Palworld Jan19. Unironically hype for this one

I'm definitely curious to see it, but I'm waiting to maybe watch a couple streams and read a couple reviews before I consider buying it. If anything, it might be a "Steam Summer Sale" kind of purchase for me.

how tf that did not get sued by nintendo?

I suppose under the same "sufficient differences" that prevented Pokemon/Nintendo from suing Digimon/Bandai.

But yeah, when I first saw that, I immediately thought "cool, pokemon with guns".

Holy guacamole... Now that's a Zidane I could actually enjoy.

Eh, i hate when i find an interesting channel, sub it, then couple of weeks later, it dies (kinda)



But spoilers spoilers, its less a death but more like the main guy going to backstage, so its not as impactful like a true farewell