Endgame Viable

I reached Bard level 70 Sunday afternoon. Yay! But that’s not all that much of an achievement in FFXIV. You can’t do much of anything with the endgame until you finish the Main Scenario Quest. And… I finished the Main Scenario Quest Monday night! After reaching level 70, you need to do the Ala Mhigo 4-man dungeon and the Menagerie 8-man trial. I finished Ala Mhigo with a relatively uneventful PUG Sunday night. Then I tried a PUG for the Menagerie, which immediately follows-this has become a tradition of sorts in FFXIV. A final 4-man dungeon followed immediately by a final 8-man trial. I think both ARR and Heavensward ended this way. In those cases, the final 8-man trial was a pushover. You just showed up, dodged a few AoEs, and won the game. Roll credits. (1042 words.)

I saw someone somewhere (FC chat maybe?) mention that they wished FFXIV would make their dungeons 5-man instead of 4-man so that DPS queues would go faster. (Belghast also recently lamented over the problems of leveling DPS.) It’s an interesting idea but I don’t think going to 5-man would significantly help the problem of slow DPS queues. I’m quite sure the ratio of DPS to tanks and healers in any given MMORPG is probably something like 25 to 1, if not 100 to 1. They would have to make dungeons into 10-man affairs with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 8 DPS to have any significant effect on DPS queues right now, in my opinion. (404 words.)

I didn’t intend to weigh in on @Sypster’s post about side quests, but apparently I did. :) In An Age and GamingSF also had some good responses. I think the basic argument Syp made is that side quests distract him from the main story, so he would prefer to eliminate them and boost the experience gained from the main story. I can understand that perspective. I’ve forgotten what’s going on in the main story of MMORPGs plenty of times. (In those cases I might argue that the main story isn’t worth remembering, though.) Syp didn’t mention which games were problematic for him, but I’ve had trouble keeping up with the main story in the later expansions of Rift and of course WoW, in which I never have a single clue what is happening story-wise. ESO used to have a main story issue, at least prior to One Tamriel, when you could only do one piece every 5 levels. (750 words.)

Puffy sheep with rat tails! Wait I thought there weren’t supposed to be any horses in Eorzea? Wait is Eorzea a continent or a planet? I don’t know this game very well apparently. *scratches head, looking puzzled* (134 words.)

I see a lot of people on Twitter and at least one person on a certain MassivelyOP podcast mention that they keep trying to play FFXIV but they just can’t get into it. I consider myself a pretty jaded MMORPG player, and I can certainly understand the reasons people don’t like FFXIV. But I thought I would try to document here how I personally overcame the biggest criticisms people have with the game. (3029 words.)

I won’t try to summarize the entire Main Scenario-I’ll just say that I’m completely hooked and invested in the story as of level 66 in the Azim Steppe. The hokiness and stiltedness of the FFXIV-style cut scenes that most people complain about are completely unseen by me. If canned emotes and stoic nods-essentially the 3D equivalent of a puppet show-is what they have to do to deliver quality storytelling at a consistent pace, I’m fine with it. (573 words.)

Still too busy playing to write anything. I’ve reached the Azim Steppes and level 65. Here’s some more screenshots. :) The picturesque part of The Fringes. Not sure if floating or crucified. There is a very tall stack of rocks in The Ruby Sea. UFO sighting in Yanxia. (87 words.)

Too busy playing to write anything. As of now I’m about 3/4 of the way to level 65, plugging away at the Main Scenario Quest in Yanxia. (See YouTube for excruciating detail.) Here are some screenshots. This anonymous lalafel photobombed my shot of the Kugane market. Arriving in the underwater village of the Kojin (I call them ninja turtles). (120 words.)

That’s a dragon, not a xenomorph from Alien. With the release of Stormblood, Final Fantasy XIV returns to become my most-played game of June. The hours below are padded a bit because I frequently left the game running while I was AFK. Final Fantasy XIV - 70 hours Dark Souls III (The Ringed City DLC) - 9 hours Secret World Legends - 3 hours (64 words.)

I officially started the Stormblood Expansion on Monday night, by which I mean that I’ve finally started into the Stormblood Main Scenario Quest. I’m trying something I’ve never done before: I’m recording my MSQ adventures. I very rarely record MMORPGs, because frankly I find MMORPGs are among the least interesting kinds of games to watch. I constantly wonder why people stream them. (Most of what you see on the screen is just the UI.) The only thing I can figure is that there is so much idle downtime that it leaves the streamer plenty of time to chit-chat with the audience. New zone is new! (1063 words.)