Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn

[Martz]

Hey All,

Martz here, and it's definitely been awhile. Put up my pokes on the shelf for another hiatus a while ago but like to check back into the community from time to time.

I have a question though, is anyone playing Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn? This game is absolutely amazing. It's the best MMO I've played since WoW Wrath days. The graphics are good, the dungeons are challenging (you will wipe, but it's fun), and the class system is pretty sweet as well.

I'm just curious. The digital downloads are currently disabled with all the issues with the servers they had at launch but hard copies are still available. Everything seems to have settled down unless you are a hardcore endgame player, in which, there are still a few bugs with those dungeons.

I'm Martz Blitz in game on the Gilgamesh server and run an FC. Shoot me a tell if you play on there or create a toon =]

~Martz

(FYI: Wasn't sure if I should have just added this to the Final Fantasy discussion but I figured it deserved it's own thread anyway.)

[deoxys]

Interesting. I'm looking into it, I hear it's quite a bit of fun. I'd basically given up on MMOs since WoW stopped being fun for me once I hit 85 in Cata, I didn't enjoy the Old Republic as much as I thought I would (just another WoW clone, too), and Guild Wars 2 was... good, but it wasn't for me.

I hear so many great things about A Realm Reborn, that it's a 180 from the disaster it was when SE launched it initially and such, and it looks really nice. I'm not sure I want to pay a sub fee monthly again, but... I may just have to. It looks very entertaining. Might wait for a free trial or something, I don't know.

[Loki]

From what I've been hearing, it doesn't differentiate from WoW enough for most people to really consider unique. It then becomes whether you like the Warcraft setting or the Final Fantasy references (since they never keep a continuous setting) more.

Since I didn't play this new game or WoW (although I did play FFXI), I can't give a proper critique of the game. Care to enlighten us Martz?

[Martz]

Well, I'll make a mini-review then =]

Combat:
FFXIV plays and feels like any current western MMO, most comparably WoW. However, unlike WoW, FFXIV adds a TP meter on top of the MP pool. TP is mainly used for physical damage classes while the casters obviously use the MP pool. The problem with TP though is that it is set at 1000 and can not be increased so you have to manage wisely. Some classes have skills that can regenerate TP while others rely on the bard class.

Another notable difference is the 2.5 second global cooldown. This makes for a little slower paced rotation and it will feel sometimes like it is taking FOREVER for a skill to come up. There are only skills (from a bard's perspective at least) that have their own cooldowns and do not cost tp. These have a larger general cooldown than the GCD however. Combat feels fluid with this system though and I have no complaints.

This game also has a built in Deadly Boss Mods, which was an Add On for WoW which had pop ups and letters showing the mechanic of the dungeons or bosses you were facing. They show who the boss/adds are targeting and while also making it completely obvious where their area of effect abilities will land. The only issue with this however is the server lag they are having. As of this writing, you can be clear outside of a red area and still get hit. This is also happening to various skills if you are still in your previous skills animation and ability increase cooldowns as well. It's not a game breaker but it is pretty annoying.

Dungeons:
Whether you into the lore of this game or not, the Dungeons are absolutely beautiful and amazing and get gradually and sometimes steeply harder as you progress through the required story quests to unlock these. Once you get past 2 of the 3 starter dungeons, most bosses have a particular mechanic to them. With 4 player parties, communication is key in this game and it is hit and miss sometimes depending on who you are running with. For example the third dungeons, Copperbell Mines, second boss has a mechanic that makes you keep exploding a fire bomb add within the range of the big flem boss to break it down smaller and smaller until you can defeat it. It blew my mind the first time I did this as I've never seen anything like it.

You will also be facing the primals (summons or aeons) through you story as well. These are some of the toughest fights I've ever played and can get very frustrating if you do not communicate. Wiping is normal on these fights and expect at least 3-6 times if you are running with a pug. Luckily for me, I've been running with folks all the way up the latter and still have trouble but we can communicate on mumble to let each other know what is going on.

Story and Quests:
Don't expect the voice acting of SWTOR with this game. Unless it's a main story quest, there is no voice acting and even then, it's limited to cut scenes. The main story is pretty good from what I hear but I was getting used to the actual game and burning through content during Phase 4 beta weekend that I skipped most of it and have been skipping it ever since. There is an option to go back and look at the cutscenes but I have yet to do that.

Quests are pretty straight forward and the same as other MMO's, Kill x mobs and collect x items to turn in. They mix it up a little bit however with the FATEs which are random events throughout the world that takes groups of people to finish. With those, it's either kill x mob (there are swarms of them), kill one big monster, or collect said items and turn them in with only a certain amount of time to do so. You'll see a horde of PC just roaming the world and these are what they are going after. They give great xp and if you are in a group (up to 8 people, which they consider a raid group), you get the xp for the kills of your party members which makes this a great way to gain experience.

Guildheists are another type of way to gain XP in which you are practically doing a scenario type thing from WoW and these also introduce you to dungeon mechanics. I've only done up to level 25 (I've lvl 47 currently) but some of these are pretty tricky and your group is key once again.
Hunting Logs are another occupy your time while leveling. Each class has a certain mob per level that they need to kill to fill their hunting log. They are broken up into 5 parts (1-9, 10-19, etc) and you get XP for killing said mob for your hunting log as well as completing a part of your hunting log. Most of the time you get a very large chunk of XP for this so it's worth doing.

Guildleves are your "Dailies". While they are not true dailies, there are various quest givers that only give out these type of quests. What happens is every 12 hours your guildleve count increases by 3 with a maximum of 100 being able to be stored up at any one time. These quests are typical quests but you can do them over and over again for XP. While not so great to use these on your battle class, awesome to use for your crafting classes to gain XP.

Class System:
The class system was carried over from FFXI as well as FFXIV 1.0 where you only need 1 toon to be able to do everything. All you need to do is equip a different weapon and your class changes. This is tied into your Gathering and Tradeskills as well and can level everything to 50 if you so desire.
Now this is going to get a little confusing, but there are base classes that you choose at the beginning. Once you get your main class to level 30 and another associated class to level 15, you can do your quest to acquire your Job, which the advanced classes in this game. Your stats gain a large increase based on your job as well and can only equip the end game gear to it.

Now skills are interesting as to you can use them for different jobs depending. Have a maurader to level 15 and you want Cure I, you can do that. Have your archer to level 23 but want the Pugalist's 20% crit rate cooldown skill, you can do that. There is a limit to the amount of skills you can cross class however. Classes can cross skill 10 skills while Jobs can cross class 5 skills once they reach level 50.

Other Things:
The UI takes a little getting use to but you can resize it and move around as you wish. They will be adding addon support later from what I heard but can not confirm when. (They need a DPS meter). They also need to add an easier way than copy and paste to add people to your blacklist with all the goldfarmers spamming the shout chat (General chat).
The game is sometimes unstable with all of the people in one area killing a world fate boss. As of Friday night, it brought Gilgamesh down for a good 20 minutes. Issues are still being addressed from the bad launch they had as well with no enough service capacity to house the player base they had. Emergency maintenance are a common occurrence but they try to address issues at offpeak hours.
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That's all I can think of. Personally I give it a 93/100 and I'll be playing it for years to come. It's actually really addicting with all the things you can do in game.

[Roglef]

Do you still play, Martz? I recently joined and am loving it.

[Roglef]

Streaming it now!
twitch.tv/roglef