**OFFICIAL** FFXIV:ARR Thread

[pathos]

At least from what I can remember, Ul'dah seems to be the starting city for the most classes, and it's the starting city for Gladiator, which is the default choice. I haven't checked to see if most of the spammers are Gladiators though.

Yeah, I think Gridania and Limsa Loma has 3 starting classes, and Ul'dah has 4?

If you asked me what starter town was most popular, I'd have guessed Gridania though. Mostly cause thats where lancers and archers start

And I'm only half joking

 

[darkewaffle]

Off the bat as I perform my own search for a solution, IS there any way to save local character data (skill slots, equipment lists and loadouts) onto Square Enix's servers and transfer them to another computer?

Or is it like 11 back then in moving manually those files?

You can't 'sync' them through the game as far as I know, but you can transfer them manually. I just did it from my PC to HTPC last night so I could craft before maintenance while waiting on Civ turns.

Character data is something like c\users\user\my documents\my games\ffxi arr. There will be a folder for each character in there, just copy and paste them over and it'll transfer character settings/ui/keybinds/etc.

Also to avoid patching I have also been successful moving the entire game installation between PCs, however it's been between x64 Win7 and x64 Win8, YMMV.

Stupid emergency maintenance this morning, I just needed like 10 more minutes to get my auctions in order and to get to the inn lol.

I hadn't noticed these items available before, but there are crafting and gathering XP buffs available from your GCs. For 2300 seals (I think you need to be in the second rank 'tier' to purchase these) you can get a +50% xp buff worth up to 40000XP while crafting or gathering for three hours. With this buff/food/rest XP active I was getting over 7K XP per Acorn Cookie last night. I haven't noticed much else that's actually worth spending seals on personally but I'll gladly burn them on these.

 

[PowerYoga]

yeah, I was going to log on and check auctions but now I'm at work early so I can go home early to play.... >_>

I still have a lot of stuff I want from the GCs (mainly low-mid level tanking gear) so I won't be spending those seals anywhere yet. I can see how this is useful for people with maxed out (currently) GC seals that have nothing to burn then on though.

On to the patch notes! Biggest thing is the auto-logout and the repair costs IMO.

-An auto-logout feature has been introduced wherein characters that are inactive for 30 minutes will be automatically logged out of the game.

The following adjustments and countermeasures have been implemented:

-Changes have been made to the behavior and mechanics of the enemies found within the “The Wanderer’s Palace” and “Amdapor Keep” dungeons to counteract instances of players running through the dungeon without engaging enemies on the way to bosses.

As advancing through dungeons without defeating enemies is not an intended strategy, we plan to continue making further changes in the future to discourage this type of behavior.

-In instance dungeon “The Wanderer's Palace” and “Amdapor Keep”, we have increased the amount of AllaganCoins that can be obtained from a treasure chest.

-Reduced the amount of gil required for repair fees and materia removal as follows:

Equipment levels 1-10: 10 gil -> No Change

Equipment levels 11-20: 50 gil -> 30 gil

Equipment levels 21-30: 100 gil -> 60 gil

Equipment levels 31-40: 210 gil -> 120 gil

Equipment levels 41-40: 500 gil -> 200 gil

-Reduced the price of Dark Matter as follows:

Dark Matter G1: 5 gil -> 4 gil

Dark Matter G2: 30 gil -> 12 gil

Dark Matter G3: 70 gil -> 24 gil

Dark Matter G4: 150 gil -> 48 gil

Dark Matter G5: 350 gil -> 80 gil

A temporary countermeasure has been implemented for the following issue:

-For the issue wherein the “Manor Sentries” found within the Haukke Manor dungeon could become stuck and prevent players from progressing through the instanced dungeon, we have changed the original location of “Manor Sentries” to the second floor.

The following issues have been addressed:

-The server would crash under certain conditions during instanced dungeons.

-Characters would sometimes get stuck in the “Binding Coil of Bahamut” dungeon after the party was wiped out.

-Bomb Boulders would sometimes fail to appear in “The Navel (Hard)” battle.

-Certain monsters would sometimes get stuck in the “Amdapor Keep” dungeon.

-The option to return to Home Point would not display when completing a primal battle while being KO’d.

-The entry point for the “The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak” dungeon was shown in the field in the “Stinging Back” guildhest.

-The “Steel Reign” FATE would sometimes fail to appear.

-Completing the “Behold Now Behemoth” FATE would sometimes cause the server to crash.

-If the player was disconnected during the “Lady of the Vortex” instanced battle, the Duty List, Journal, and Journal Map may display incorrectly.

-The “Notorious Biggs” quest could sometimes be progressed without completing the instanced battle.

-There were occasions where it was impossible to target the snowman in the “Speak Softly to Me” quest.

-The cutscene was canceled if the player was attacked during the “Lord of Crags” cutscene.

-If a player logged out while being bound by duty within an instance, and logged back in after conclusion of the instance, the free company chat would not work.

-Mog Letters were not sent properly in some instances.

-Certain conditions would sometimes cause the server to crash while interacting with the free company “Company Chest”.

-The “Reach” gauge was sometimes not selectable when in a new, unknown gathering point.

-In some instances, the specified items to collect were incorrect in the “A Relic Reborn” quest.

-In some instances, the specified enemies to defeat were incorrect in the “A Relic Reborn” quest.

 

[tedrodai]

Yeah, I think Gridania and Limsa Loma has 3 starting classes, and Ul'dah has 4?

Uldah has 1 more guild than the other 2 cities. Grid has 1 less DoH, Limsa has 1 less DoW (so is the only one with fewer starting classes). Uldah's geographically in the middle though.

I remember in 1.0, you'd see full parties of tarus with stupid names and wearing nothing in a big auto-follow chain going off to get power levelled.

 

[PowerYoga]

those would be gilsellers.

 

[darkewaffle]

I have to repair my craft gear pretty often but I never felt like the prices for it (very nearly BIS for my 50s at this point) were bad. Though at the same time I'm pretty sure it's never approached 500g per piece personally, I think my max bill has been like 2.5k for "equipped".

Oh well, more gil for them to spend on my market board postings then

 

[tedrodai]

As advancing through dungeons without defeating enemies is not an intended strategy, we plan to continue making further changes in the future to discourage this type of behavior.

This ain't a bad thing, but it is interesting considering every dungeon they added to 1.0 actively encouraged this very "strategy". You literally couldn't obtain certain dungeon chests without rushing through and skipping the majority of the dungeons. Personally, I'll be glad to see that type of speed run disappear.

 

[pathos]

I have to repair my craft gear pretty often but I never felt like the prices for it (very nearly BIS for my 50s at this point) were bad. Though at the same time I'm pretty sure it's never approached 500g per piece personally, I think my max bill has been like 2.5k for "equipped".

Oh well, more gil for them to spend on my market board postings then

My usual repair bill, for all gear, is usually like 200-800 a night or so, and I'm level 44. If I'm following story quests, plus all the side quests, that fine, I still make plenty of money.

But, if I spent the night in dungeons, or farming fates or doing grand company leve's, it's not so fine, I'm usually bleeding money (especially when I'm in a dungeon, which is where the higher end of the costs come up).

I'm glad the costs are coming down, myself

 

[TheUnk]

This ain't a bad thing, but it is interesting considering every dungeon they added to 1.0 actively encouraged this very "strategy". You literally couldn't obtain certain dungeon chests without rushing through and skipping the majority of the dungeons. Personally, I'll be glad to see that type of speed run disappear.

They are going about it the wrong way imo. They need to encourage clearing the trash rather than discouraging NOT clearing it by making it harder to do so.

Give the players good reason to spend their time killing garbage that takes no skill and gives no reward. Maybe randomly award 5 tomes, or have them drop 100gil instead of 1gil.

 

[PowerYoga]

that's the biggest complaint, although I'm not rushing to the dungeon since I'm taking my time. There will always be some fine tuning to the end game dungeons, which is why you should never rush to an endgame in a MMORPG when it first comes out. You'll be the white lab rats and that's never fun. It's starting to look like my crafting classes will dictate the speed at which my main levels: once I need to go to a different camp to pick up leves my main will move along to unlock the leves.

I'm just hoping by the time I get my character to 50 they'll have tuned it out so that the trash mobs are dropping gil and/or tomes.

 

[KaOTiK]

Glad they are adjusting stuff but they aren't fixing the reason why people skip the trash in Wanderer's or AK. The trash doesn't drop gil or items (once in while you *might* get a crafting item to drop like a bone chip lol). So taking time to kill, and losing durability on your equipment for nothing is rather meh when this is just a 50 dungeon and not a raid. I'm glad repairs look to have come down some, it cost me around 3k a day for repairs and I don't make anywhere near that amount back.

 

[robvp]

i love this game but im having the same problem that i had with ffxi, cant concentrate on a single class to level, also the story quests are such a huge burden

 

[tedrodai]

i love this game but im having the same problem that i had with ffxi, cant concentrate on a single class to level, also the story quests are such a huge burden

I had that same problem with XI, but there was too much to hate about the game on top of what I loved about it.

For me, I'm worried about how useful these fun crafts will end up being in XIV...as a DoH, I can craft pretty good ilvl70 gear that can really shine with expensive materia melds. But, 2 weeks into the game's launch, people are already obtaining ilvl 90 gear from end game (relic weapons +1, upgraded AF armor, & allagan gear), and not just on legacy servers. And that gear doesn't rely on DoH at all...just dungeon runs. And they're separated from the materia system as well.

At this point, idk how difficult it is to obtain the ilvl90 gear...maybe the masses truly are gonna be unable to shoot for it. Guess we'll see how things shake out as we get more info and new updates.

I spent most of my cash melding my weaver gear, but now I'm wondering if I should focus on making food instead.

 

[robvp]

i think the only truly useful craft will be culinarian, unless they put really good recipes hidden in certain dungeons

 

[PowerYoga]

if it's like FF11 they'll add rare ingredients that you'll need crafters to make into good gear.

 

[robvp]

the only difference was that in ffxi the player had no knowledge of what materials made what at first, in here the game presents you with what you can make in brackets

 

[PowerYoga]

I don't see the two as being very different.

In FF11 they added the recipes to everyone's libraries when new drops were released, you just didn't know about it. That's why crafting in ff11 had such a mystique around it because they never released the mechanics and is all based on testing over thousands of hours collaboratively. Hell, you can try making rainbow cloth at lvl 90. You'll just fail and lose the mats.

In FF14 they can make a quest, or recipe drops, or whatever to teach you these new recipes. Or hell, they can just add another tier or just give it to you when they patch it in. Even if they show you the cool new items you can make, if the drops are in dungeons or from bosses then there's absolutely no difference.

You still need someone to make that thread, that lumber or that ingot.

 

[darkewaffle]

Ultimately I think whether crafting becomes marginalized at this tier depends on materia availability and whether there is a significant difference (for better or worse) between the "pve gear" and the "crafted + materia" gear. Even if the latter can become superior, if people cannot obtain/afford the materia required to make it so, it's going to be a tough sell, but we won't really know for a few weeks/months imo as people are playing more at 50, creating more high grade materia, and crafters are start to output some of the ilvl 70 gear.

I'm unsure how crafting will progress in the future. It seems likely that they'll probably make a 3* tier, but I'm not sure how the requirements for that would scale without, again, being extremely materia intensive OR creating "2* crafting gear". The former could get ugly (and requires no small amount of luck while melding) while the latter is kind of a cheap/bandaid solution.

 

[PowerYoga]

Let's face it: in a year all that will matter is which endgame gear you have. The game's still moving towards an end-game based economy which is really nice for the time being.

I hope they move away from luck based melding. The rest of the crafting system is such a treat it would be a shame to have all of that trivialized and dumbed down to a dice roll for "real" gear. (This is assuming crafting gear + materia will be equivalent or better than dungeon gear).

Let's not forget that they plan to raise level cap come expansion time, so I'm assuming this means more tiers for crafting and we shouldn't expect lvl 50 to be the end. I'm interested to see how they hand this...

any ideas on how raising the lvl cap in FF11 affected the players in all the endgame gear? I was not around for that.

 

[robvp]

Let's face it: in a year all that will matter is which endgame gear you have. The game's still moving towards an end-game based economy which is really nice for the time being.

I hope they move away from luck based melding. The rest of the crafting system is such a treat it would be a shame to have all of that trivialized and dumbed down to a dice roll for "real" gear. (This is assuming crafting gear + materia will be equivalent or better than dungeon gear).

Let's not forget that they plan to raise level cap come expansion time, so I'm assuming this means more tiers for crafting and we shouldn't expect lvl 50 to be the end. I'm interested to see how they hand this...

any ideas on how raising the lvl cap in FF11 affected the players in all the endgame gear? I was not around for that.

a lot of the gear became upgradeable but now with SoA it became obsolete again

 

[pontifex]

took up weaving today. damn, only can craft 1 item at a time and have to click multiple times to craft it? unless i'm missing something, that blows....although I've never been into crafting in a MMO, so probably won't spend much time on it.

question about learning other classes...can you use class a abilities while playing as class b or how does that work?

this game makes my laptop super hot and causes it to shut down. never had this issue before with other games (its a gaming laptop).

 

[pandemonium]

Once you craft something you can use quick synth and craft multiple items (up to however many are in your bag). The big downside is you only get about 1/6th the exp as opposed to manually do each synth. Best way to level crafting is to do leves AFAIK. Crafting in FF games is no joke and will require a lot of attention and research. Actually, this system is tremendously easier than V1 or FFXI; which I'm kind-of mad about. Everything in this version is straight-forward and there isn't any mystery or much theorycrafting involved.

This game does require a pretty nice computer to run at full. You'll probably want to reduce a lot of the settings or play it on another machine.

 

[darkewaffle]

I'd rather see more classes than more levels. I think FFXI was at it's best prior to the level cap increases, though without true subjobs and with people (I think) less inclined to level multiple jobs (and levelling much faster), that might be taking content creation in the wrong direction. I think most people playing want a gear treadmill; levelling was huge part of the experience in XI (and fun to me) but "levelling as content" is extremely out of style these days. I think most people treat it as nothing more than a means to an end.

Personally I can't wait to hit 50 bard and find some time to start into either Gladiator or Marauder and re-do some of the dungeons/play a tank/level in some different places, but all I hear from my friends is bitching that "I have to level lancer/thaumaturge/etc? fuuuuuuck" and then as soon as they start it's "god this is so slow im so tired of fates i dont have any quests this class sucks" lol. Maybe it's more to do with them being so burnt out from hitting 50 in a couple days or feeling obligated to get some "must have" sub abilities rather than just playing what they want.

 

[PowerYoga]

crafting is fun, unless your idea of crafting is like wow's "find mats, click button" system. I'll agree making the raw mats (threads, cloths, etc) gets dull but I get a kick out of being able to HQ things properly if you have the HQ mats, which is very nice compared to FF11's dice rolls.

Most of my misc crafting classes are hitting 30~ now, I think I'm going to start turning low tier things into materia soon. I should really catch my culinarian up (still @ 15) but I have so little desire to level that other than steady touch 2, and maybe the ability to make cp foods for myself.

 

[TheUnk]

I'd rather see more classes than more levels. I think FFXI was at it's best prior to the level cap increases, though without true subjobs and with people (I think) less inclined to level multiple jobs (and levelling much faster), that might be taking content creation in the wrong direction. I think most people playing want a gear treadmill; levelling was huge part of the experience in XI (and fun to me) but "levelling as content" is extremely out of style these days. I think most people treat it as nothing more than a means to an end.

Yeah sadly it's gone from "leveling as content" to "gearing as content".

Remember "hell levels" in EQ? Getting through one of those was a reward in itself. There were generally lots of areas you could obtain gear and level at the same time.

Now we are just stuck in a grind for gear. Grind for level 50 gear, grind for level 60 gear, grind for level 70 gear.

It's the same thing, but with the leveling aspect removed and to me makes it feel more "grindy" than ever. At least when you did both at the same time, if you didn't get that lucky drop/roll you would still come out with some XP!