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Pleads posted:-Bards can play music? Should have been a bard Switch to Bard then! IIRC you only need to be a level 30 Bard to unlock the Performance action, so it's something that you can do fairly early.
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Aug 1, 2021 20:58
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The FFXIV UI, much like WoW's, requires a good deal of tinkering to get to an aesthetically pleasing, uncluttered, and functional state. Fortunately a lot of that functionality is baked into the game itself, compared to WoW which requires third-party add-ons. The default setups in both are utter garbage
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Aug 1, 2021 21:21
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I've never minded the default UI. The only element I move is the class guage
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Aug 1, 2021 21:23
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It's traditional once you get more than a few abilities to rework your HUD into some bizarre abomination that makes sense only for you
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Aug 1, 2021 21:30
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Pasha posted:Switch to Bard then! IIRC you only need to be a level 30 Bard to unlock the Performance action, so it's something that you can do fairly early. I would, but I was just given a free set of dressup clothes while idling in Limosa and also just discovered fishing so now I have a few hundred hours of that before I can do anything else.  I've looked into some of the UI stuff and will definitely make my own abomination at some point.
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Aug 1, 2021 21:39
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I don't even mean just the layout. Lots of the suggested settings were mentioned in the op, but there's also all the nameplate colours, hp bar visibility, etc. I now have macro buttons set up to add/remove ui features, quickly adjust the volume, and to swap my primary three hotbars with the gamepad cross hotbar for whenever I feel like using one. It's a pretty flexible system and aside from the DPS meter I haven't really felt like I needed any third party stuff.
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Aug 1, 2021 21:45
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Pleads posted:I would, but I was just given a free set of dressup clothes while idling in Limosa and also just discovered fishing so now I have a few hundred hours of that before I can do anything else. Fishing can easily eat up all your time since fish catching is dependent on a lot of factors like weather, what fish you just caught, time of day, various other things. It's a deep rabbit hole to get lost in, especially if you want to catch the rarest of fish (the Big Fish).
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Aug 1, 2021 21:56
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YES bread posted:as someone who had the same issue, if you ever do get the patience to mess around with it the UI is super customizable. it might take a frustrating amount of time to get everything to where you want but you can do some pretty neat stuff with it. personally a big fan of nested hotbars, which involves copying hotbars from unused base classes to give you access to way more bar space than you'd normally have Well, this is super neat and I'm going to be spending the rest of the evening emulating
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Aug 1, 2021 22:21
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Tulip posted:14 is the game all my friends play so I just treat the MSQ as a bit of a tax and do it while listening to podcasts and then do roulettes when other people are around. It's not I think the intended play but my options for MP are that, pubbing, or nothing. It's such a bizarre choice. Why on earth make a game an MMO if you're going to do this? Single player games can do this so much better, making an MMO is a trade off where you knowingly sacrifice certain aspects of play so the game can fit around the always online world constraints. Why impose those constraints on your game then not take advantage of any of the potential of the medium? I mean I know some people play WoW basically exclusively solo, but I've never understood why or what they could be getting out of it. I'm utterly baffled that the game is set up like this, I'd never even considered it could be a possibility that I wouldn't be able to level with friends in an MMO.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:27
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Because it's a Final Fantasy game that is also an MMO. You level up alts with friends by loving around with roulettes, Palace of the Dead, Heaven on High, and Bozja, but your first character you play the story with because it's a Final Fantasy game so of course it's going to have a beefy story.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:30
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Ouroboros posted:It's such a bizarre choice. Why on earth make a game an MMO if you're going to do this? Single player games can do this so much better, making an MMO is a trade off where you knowingly sacrifice certain aspects of play so the game can fit around the always online world constraints. Why impose those constraints on your game then not take advantage of any of the potential of the medium? I mean I know some people play WoW basically exclusively solo, but I've never understood why or what they could be getting out of it. I'm utterly baffled that the game is set up like this, I'd never even considered it could be a possibility that I wouldn't be able to level with friends in an MMO. You really did all your leveling quests in WoW in a group? Not just instances and end game content?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:31
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Because as well as a story focused experience, they also wanted it to be a game with a big persistent world filled with players and have 4-8 players going up together against bosses?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:31
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There are a lot of ways to play together, especially at level cap, but it is still a final fantasy game. I'm sorry you feel misled
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Aug 1, 2021 22:32
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Ouroboros posted:It's such a bizarre choice. Why on earth make a game an MMO if you're going to do this? Single player games can do this so much better, making an MMO is a trade off where you knowingly sacrifice certain aspects of play so the game can fit around the always online world constraints. Why impose those constraints on your game then not take advantage of any of the potential of the medium? I mean I know some people play WoW basically exclusively solo, but I've never understood why or what they could be getting out of it. I'm utterly baffled that the game is set up like this, I'd never even considered it could be a possibility that I wouldn't be able to level with friends in an MMO. I don't understand what you think you can't do with your friends. You can group up with them, you can do quests together, you can chat with them while doing this, there's tons of dungeons and trials that are mandatory for the msq that are designed to be run with your friends. I mean you'll have to drop group a handful of times for a few solo scenarios but that's it. You can just group back up again when those are done.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:36
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Yeah tbh if all you want to do is do quests side by side you can do that. Solo instances come maybe 5-10 times per expansion, they aren't exactly common
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Aug 1, 2021 22:37
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Ouroboros posted:It's such a bizarre choice. Why on earth make a game an MMO if you're going to do this? Single player games can do this so much better, making an MMO is a trade off where you knowingly sacrifice certain aspects of play so the game can fit around the always online world constraints. Why impose those constraints on your game then not take advantage of any of the potential of the medium? I mean I know some people play WoW basically exclusively solo, but I've never understood why or what they could be getting out of it. I'm utterly baffled that the game is set up like this, I'd never even considered it could be a possibility that I wouldn't be able to level with friends in an MMO. Didn't huge sections of Legion require you to leave your group to do your class story? Doesn't Shadowlands do something similar with the faction choices? Yes, FF leans much harder into it because it's a Final Fantasy game, but let's not pretend WoW allows 100% pure group experiences just for the sake of winning your argument. I'm very sorry this isn't the intro experience you wanted; I really do think if you can push through it to the endgame you'll experience some of the absolute best group content in any MMO.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:37
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Pug Rodeo posted:You really did all your leveling quests in WoW in a group? Not just instances and end game content? In WoW most quests are kill x things where x is not a quick and easy number and there is competition for the mobs. A group can help make that much smoother. Not really needed here but it's still something you can do if you want company leveling.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:38
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Ziddar posted:First impressions! Let's break it down Yeah, it looks like there's not a lot of disparity with the attribute (a +3 or -3 for any stat at most). I guess playing games like Baldur's Gate have just conditioned me to try and min-max when making a character. I had considered a Hyur Highlander or Roegadyn, but I thought to save those for melee archetypes. Only one I was against taking was the Au Ra, because they can't wear (or don't display) certain headgear pieces. I'm happy to hear that I picked something uncommon. I guess I need to focus on doing MSQ stuff to start unlocking, since I mainly did side-quest stuff yesterday. the thread posted:the ui I was put off by the UI at first, but part of the issue was that I set it to scale up, and stuff was overlapping. Once I set it back to normal, all I had to do was move the elemental gauge. I imagine once I get further in, and need to monitor more stuff, I'll have to reorganize again. Pleads posted:-Bards can play music? Should have been a bard That was something neat I noticed while playing yesterday. There was a bard (or someone with an instrument) playing the FFX theme near the Aetherium teleporter. It made me wonder if there's a way you could set up a macro or something to record certain songs to play automatically. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 22:40
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Even then you can technically 'do' most MSQ quests in a group, it's just that most MSQ quests are 'go to this location and talk to this person' so the actual gameplay isn't great. You do have to separate for solo duties, though I'm fairly certain that's also a thing in WoW. EDIT: Au Ra can wear all headgear. The ones that don't display all headgear are the Viera and Hrothgar, which aren't available on the free trial.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:40
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That said I can definitely see wanting the chill experience of just dicking around with friends in the field blowing up random crap to level up. Bozja is basically that experience to a tee, but it's also the only place in FFXIV where that experience is delivered ever since ARR, when they made running dungeons more optimal than grinding FATEs for XP. Eureka does this too but it's its own closed loop so it doesn't really count imo.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:43
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Pug Rodeo posted:You really did all your leveling quests in WoW in a group? Not just instances and end game content? Yeah, I played it with a friend and we only logged on when we were both available. That's how I do the majority of my gaming these days, it's a social thing to catch up with my friends and MMOs have usually been a pretty good bet for that. SirSamVimes posted:Because as well as a story focused experience, they also wanted it to be a game with a big persistent world filled with players and have 4-8 players going up together against bosses?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:43
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Pug Rodeo posted:You really did all your leveling quests in WoW in a group? Not just instances and end game content? Yeah the only time I ever did this was during the beta stress test when MMORPG fans all over were poopsocking to their heart's content and I ended up in a static from Deadmines till like Zul'Farrak. I mean that's great if you've got buddies with the same schedule and interest but man most of my MMORPG time since the halcyon days of 2004 has been playing old content with my lower-levelled friends. acumen fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 22:44
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I level with friends all the time, we queue up and do roulettes whenever we're all on. It's doing the msq that isn't particularly party-friendly unless it's time for a dungeon or a trial boss. Also it's super easy to just switch classes and having a friend to help you with dungeon queue times by queueing up as a tank or healer makes speeding through the leveling process extremely quick and easy. If you've outpaced your friends on one class you can swap over to another pretty trivially, especially if you've beaten ARR and can fly in pre-Heavensward zones. Armoury bonuses make the process even faster.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:44
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Man what single player RPGs that you play that are entirely voiced text and no canned animations? Especially for a game put out in 2013?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:45
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Hellioning posted:Man what single player RPGs that you play that are entirely voiced text and no canned animations? Especially for a game put out in 2013? I mean just off the top of my head, Mass Effect was entirely voiced through all player conversations and cutscenes iirc, and that came out in 2007? To the other people asking about always grouping, yes you absolutely can do it in WoW and I have. I didn't play legion but I levelled through Shadowlands without ever having to drop group or do anything substantial solo, you are forced to pick one of 4 covenants at max level but we just made sure we picked the same one. I'm not demanding this as an absolute requirement, I know probably most people play MMOs at least partially solo, it's not like I've never done it. I have no problem with MMO content that is soloable as an option, or occasionally even enforced as long as it is not too prevalent. What I do think is insane is that the only reasonable way to level your first character is entirely or almost entirely exclusively solo content (and if this is not the case please enlighten me because I'm not sure, I'm just going off what I've been told in this thread).
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Aug 1, 2021 22:54
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On some level, it being a final fantasy is part of its business model. Before Blizzard got increasingly on fire, the way FF14 stayed competitive in the MMO market where WoW towered over everything was by being a FF game and drawing in that fanbase.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:55
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Ouroboros posted:I mean just off the top of my head, Mass Effect was entirely voiced through all player conversations and cutscenes iirc, and that came out in 2007? You'll start unlocking dungeons and trials as you do the story which are done only with groups, just the stuff between it is solo.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:57
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Hellioning posted:Man what single player RPGs that you play that are entirely voiced text and no canned animations? Especially for a game put out in 2013? Hell, name me one that came out this year. Canned animation is prevalent through the industry.
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Aug 1, 2021 22:57
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There are many ways to level your first character, though going through the MSQ is probably the best idea to open up more activities. Hell I went through the MSQ at my leisure and whenever my buddies were on we'd play through dungeons, trials, pvp, or whatever we both had unlocked then I'd go back to Ishgard. You could theoretically just level to 80 running the first dungeons over and over again if you really wanted to (and are insane probably?) but the point of FFXIV isn't getting to max level, it's to play through the story.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:02
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acumen posted:You could theoretically just level to 80 running the first dungeons over and over again if you really wanted to (and are insane probably?) but the point of FFXIV isn't getting to max level, it's to play through the story. i mean, this could be disputable. when i first signed up my goal was to raid, and that remains my primary activity, but paying attention to the story and doing side content HAS kept me engaged with the game at points where i otherwise might have quit. so rather what i'd say is that it's totally valid to have whatever goal in the MMO so long as you accept that the story is a component of anything you want to do. with that in mind it's a little more open, in the sense that the theme park that is ff14 has a LOT more rides open at one time than the theme park that is wow, but the lines are longer, except the lines also have story bits in them like a lot of rides now do but some people would just rather without Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 23:05
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Kwyndig posted:Hell, name me one that came out this year. Canned animation is prevalent through the industry. Fine, forget the canned animation thing, you know what I mean. My point being if you bought a big single player RPG today, in 2013 or 2007, that consisted of the Final Fantasy 14 main questline, just lifted in its entirety from the game, so you had to do the same series of fetch quests, running between NPCs in the same world, doing the same combat set pieces with the same mechanics and got the same cutscenes, it would be dogshit.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:16
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Raids still require MSQ completion (at least for that particular expansion's content). But yeah, for the most part everyone has a thing they're interested in, but it is typically gated by how far through the MSQ you are. If your goal is to collect bear asses with a friend as your primary route of going 1-80 it's not really that kind of game. But you can still go through the same quest steps, watch the same cutscenes simultaneously, battle through dungeons and trials and raids of all types as you get to them. You'd just have to split up for the occasional solo duty.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:17
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I feel weird, because I did all of the MSQ with a friend, by just like walking next to them and helping them kill stuff and shoot the poo poo while they talk to all the NPCs, then when they got to the solo parts I just... waited? Like it doesn't ever take that long.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:18
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Ouroboros posted:Fine, forget the canned animation thing, you know what I mean. My point being if you bought a big single player RPG today, in 2013 or 2007, that consisted of the Final Fantasy 14 main questline, just lifted in its entirety from the game, so you had to do the same series of fetch quests, running between NPCs in the same world, doing the same combat set pieces with the same mechanics and got the same cutscenes, it would be dogshit. acumen posted:There are many ways to level your first character, though going through the MSQ is probably the best idea to open up more activities. Boba Pearl posted:I feel weird, because I did all of the MSQ with a friend, by just like walking next to them and helping them kill stuff and shoot the poo poo while they talk to all the NPCs, then when they got to the solo parts I just... waited? Like it doesn't ever take that long. Ouroboros fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 23:18
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The solo instances are far less common than the group content. They just appear earlier to ease you into it. That said, I still don't think you'll be happy. The main quest isn't part of the leveling experience--it is the leveling experience. If you somehow grinded all the way to 80 without progressing it you'd have absolutely nothing unlocked and be unable to do anything of note. I'd just say that this game unfortunately isn't what you're looking for and move on with your life.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:21
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Oh yeah if you haven't unlocked your first dungeon yet then you're in the extremely early game, you want to beeline MSQ to get out of it and start unlocking actual content and features. Everything is gated by your MSQ progress in some way. Everything.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:27
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Ok I mean that doesn't sound so bad. If we say, agreed to play the MSQ independently until we both got to x dungeon part of it, then ran the dungeon and maybe another one or two as well (can you do that?), what sort of time split are we looking at? Including watching the cutscenes vs skipping them.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:29
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Ouroboros posted:Ok I mean that doesn't sound so bad. If we say, agreed to play the MSQ independently until we both got to x dungeon part of it, then ran the dungeon and maybe another one or two as well (can you do that?), what sort of time split are we looking at? Including watching the cutscenes vs skipping them. The progression of each expansion is a full-length JRPG, in the 30-60 hour range depending how much you gently caress around and how fast of a reader you are. If you skip cutscenes it's probably half as long, though I'd really recommend just playing another game if you don't care about the story at all. In that 30-60 hour period, there will be 10ish pieces of group content in the expansions. More like 15 or so in ARR, since it has a higher dungeon density. The story in between expansions tends to have higher group content density, but still probably only one mandatory piece every few hours--but with a metric shitton of optional content you can do at any time once you finish the MSQ through level 50/60/70. If your friend is really enjoying the game and you're just trying to make it work, you probably can. But it really sounds like you yourself want something that this game isn't. e: to clarify, my 30-60 number is per expansion. So multiply by four for the total length. cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Aug 1, 2021 23:34
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If you're not skipping cutscenes, I would maybe peg the MSQ from the start of ARR to end of the Shadowbringers patches to be between 100 to 200 hours? Maybe? Each expansion is a full JRPG, then there are the quests that come from the patches between expansions, which aren't as long but each patch might be around 5 or so hours.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:43
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It took me 80 hours only doing the MSQ watching every cutscene to go from level 1 to the beginning of Heavensward.
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Aug 1, 2021 23:46
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