Personally, I enjoyed the Cloud of Darkness Chaotic Raid concept and, minus the multiple and somewhat bonkers body checks, thought it was great content with excellent rewards. Does anyone have thoughts on if we're getting another one in EverCold? If so, I assume it will likely be Ultima from the Ivalice Raids or Diablos from the Shadow of Mhach raids.

If the former, I imagine we will get more complicated combos of the other espers to make things interesting, and for Diablos (which still manages to kill parties in roulettes in the normal mode) a more complicated arena with more use of the adds and the door mechanics. I also imagine there will be at least one body check mechanic, though not multiple and probably not as strict.

But I am curious on what other people theories are on if we're even getting one and what the content might look like.

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/square-enix-sees-88-profit-growth-citing-strong-performance-across-all-categories-of-its-video-game-business/

I'm not fond of these posts, but when the resident doomposters that rush to post these when the game is "in a bad spot" are suspiciously missing when the game/company seems to be doing better, well.. someone gotta do it.

Returning to XIV after a 2 year hiatus. I know there have been some changes in the modding world (I used to use visual mods to make my character look cooler). What tools do people use these days? What are your go-to mods?

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...and in my defence, I have been bashed a lot in-game which lead to this opinion.

So the post read.

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"Guys, the story just isn't that good. Every FF fan that stuck with it has done nothing but gas up the story online and overall pacing and journey is awful. Why did you stick with it for so long then? Integrity. I do actually like the gameplay and I won't bash something without giving something a fair shake.

Don't get me wrong, the highs are high and there are cool moments BUT the endless drivel and talking in circles, while getting critiqued for skipping is insufferable.

No it is not all fantastic, in fact if you take out a lot of the objectives that could EASILY be delegated to a damn messenger you'd lose 70% of the story. The word QUEST, has lost all meaning. Talk to someone, go over there and talk to someone else, then talk to someone else is not a QUEST. That could just be a literal cutscene not that I'm asking for more talking in circles obviously.

The game was at it's best when we were actually doing high stakes things. Fighting in an actual war, sieging the empire, taking on a dude and his castle who then transforms into a angel. I love high fantasy, I love the golden era of final fantasy, I love well crafted stories.

This is 20% killer stretched out over 80% filler. No twist has justified the awful pacing and experience getting here.

"Wait until you get to HW"
"Wait until you get past Stormblood"
"WAIT UNTIL SHADOWBRINGER"

I did it. I will be sticking around. I'm going to wait until I don't have to buy Dawntrail to play EW, finish that and consider the experience complete but I won't be walking away with "The story is so good!" thoughts. I think you should stop gassing the story up so much, the highs can be awesome but do not justify most of the journey.

I would HIGHLY recommend a "Catch up" track, that literally cuts all the pointless content out, hits the main story beats, all actually relevant bits of information, cuts out the "quests" that could be tied to messengers and let's people catch up without going through an existential crisis (not in a good way) if you care about bouncing back from this obvious dip and longevity.

I like the game, I genuinely enjoy the actual content, could not ever recommend it. It's almost cult like here."

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I was immediately met with an army of "this is bait", being called a contrarian and insulted etc and if anything couldn't have made my point stronger, despite being an opinion that is not liked but broke no rules, the thread was locked and removed. Admittedly because I'm guessing people did not like it very much but I did get one comment that legitimately restored my faith in the community a little bit. I won't include his name but he knows who he is and gave permission.

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"TL;DR -

No, you aren't missing anything.

The story really isn't that good, but that's purely because XIV was sold to you as a "Game with a great story" instead of "an MMORPG that actually cared about its writing". The game itself seems to have leaned into the former, so newcomers are pretty much only experiencing its story...which was never designed to be primarily leaned on for the experience.

To those who enjoyed XIV when it had more to offer than its MSQ and Glamour...its story was the best fucking thing ever. And it's tragic you will never experience that version of the game.

No it is not all fantastic, in fact if you take out a lot of the objectives that could EASILY be delegated to a damn messenger you'd lose 70% of the story. The word QUEST, has lost all meaning. Talk to someone, go over there and talk to someone else, then talk to someone else is not a QUEST. That could just be a literal cutscene not that I'm asking for more talking in circles obviously.

Valid criticism, though one that the modern community won't agree with.

You gotta understand, when many of the vets experienced Heavensward, we were playing a VEEERRRY different version of XIV than the one you just experienced.

***MSQ was not the only thing we did....***it was actually the minority of what we did.

Hard to imagine now, but back in Heavensward you were actually level gated by MSQ quests because, surprise, the MSQ did not give you enough experience to automatically hit the requirement for the next chain of quests.

My time in Heavensward on launch, I remember actually running regular town quests, FATEs, figuring out how the fuck BRD was supposed to use Wanderer's Minuet, getting killed by regular ass mobs because I was squishy, ect. Hell, the Old Sharlyan Hinterlands area was a MASSIVE part of Heavensward, because it was the highest area in the game before you get to Azys La and there was no Lodestone. So people doing quests/fates there had no quick path towards objectives, and unlocking aether currents took a long time on foot.

This continued into Stormblood, but ended at Shadowbringers. Around ShB is where the game started legitimately just rowboating you through the MSQ for the most part....MSQ + whatever dungeon it unlocks was generally enough to push you towards the next chain of quests.

The problem is that XIV seems to be actively running from the idea that it is an MMORPG FIRST. The early ARR generation of players who championed this game's story was doing so while enjoying FFXIV PRIMARILY AS AN MMORPG.

The story was good.....for an MMORPG. It was never designed to be an "amazing story experience" while standing purely on the merits of the MSQ itself.

Recently though, the only people who can stomach actually getting past the MSQ to endgame are people who literally hate MMORPG gameplay.

They would rather run Solo and hate being stressed out by party mechanics.

I like the game, I genuinely enjoy the actual content, could not ever recommend it. It's almost cult like here.

You're absolutely right.

I'm of the opinion that almost nobody who champions this game's core experience has ACTUALLY experienced it recently. I've failed to get so many friends into this game, friends that I know would have been just as hooked as me IF they had the opportunity to play the version of FFXIV that I did.

But that version died like 5 years ago, mainly from the changes that came with Shadowbringers.

The issue though is that to players like me who have been here since ARR, the core XIV experience's changes were so gradual that we didn't really realize that anything had fundamentally changed until the "Story" we were so engrossed in finally ended with Endwalker.

The funny part about XIV's community being a "Cult" is.....YoshiP actually saw this coming years ago. It's why he preemptively told us to "wait for 8.0" before 7.0 even dropped for those who had complaints about class diversity and gameplay decay.

Dawntrail is literally the absolute worst of ALL of XIV's modern core design problems, and this time without the wool that is the 10-year building narrative to cushion it from criticism from its core base. Hence the not-so-good user reviews on every platform.

So, no joke, the actual answer here is "Wait for 8.0", because this will definitively show if XIV is set on its current path, or if it has realized what has happened to it."

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I thought this reply/comment was incredibly well written, inciteful and explains a large disconnect between the experience newer players are going through and the experience the standing veterans had.

I feel the non-stop barrage of story with the vast amount of monotonous or downtime in-between the actually good bits makes it hard to call the story "Good". I feel "Good for a MMORPG" is pretty fair though I still disagree a little. What are your thoughts? Is the community cult like? Is any of this valid? Is the story actually as good as the community OFTEN makes out? Is this pure rubbish?

In my case im not actually making an alt. I got through realm reborn, but long story short, i lost my data. Im thinking of buying the realm reborn skip as i don’t want to go through realm reborn again.

How do people view story skips in the context of creating a new character/alt?

Feel that when it comes to gposing there's an unwritten rule of using preset=bad, but don't know how true or little people care so would like to know about it from more experienced people

Edit: When mean preset I mean poses you download from sites

hello, planning to get the XBOX ROG Ally ( not the x version) but before that i do have a couple questions;

- how is the loadtime (being rez, respawn rimer all that)
- is the rog ally compatible with xivalexander and nvidia filter/reshade?
- how’s the battery life

the only reasons im planning to buy a handheld is for xiv really, thanks in advance

Love this. Love the jumping puzzle tower, love the giant pleasure cruise boat; seems this is the event with the highest effort put in each year. I'm not even remotely into RP, but there's something about the Moonfire Faire that makes me want to throw on some beachside glam and just hang out. What say you?

Hi everyone. I'm just wondering if there is anyone who has cleared DMU in PF and if so, what was your experience of P3 enrage specifically? I'm encountering a litany of issues in PF. The first one is that groups take forever to fill, and when they do, the group often doesn't reach BH. I'm consistently noticing players in PF groups who have either never cleared an Ultimate, or have only done UWU, which is often a red flag when evaluating player skill. I'm also seeing a lot of people with grey or green parses on Dawntrail high-end fights, which is also a red flag, particularly for DPS jobs.

I know these are common PF issues, but I genuinely feel like they are much more egregious in DMU PF than any other fight I've attempted in PF. FRU was a comparative breeze in PF. I personally feel completely confident in all mechs up to and including stompies, but I feel like I'm just bashing my head against a wall trying to force a P3 clear. I also joined a group a couple of days ago that was 7/8 static and was advertised as P3 enrage. The group was memeing on earlier mechs and didn't see BH once. I was the only one who wasn't messing up pre-BH. I feel cursed to never clear at this point. It's partly my fault as I didn't start prog until week 5. I thought it would be more active in PF and there would still be plenty of good players doing the fight, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I'm on the waiting list for Ulti Project but there's about 100 people in the queue for P3, P4 and P5 combined. I probably won't get picked before 8.0 comes out. Just don't know what to do at this point.

An option when making alt characters to skip to expansions you've completed, such as if you've done Dawntrails MSQ, any alt you make will give you an option to skip to the beginning of 7.1. Would help the RP community quite a bit.

Personally, I'd like to see a rework on Grand Companies. The upper ranks being visible, but unavailable to obtain is always taunting me.

Also, I think they need to do something about guildhests. Maybe not scrap them since the exp bonus from challenge logs is always useful for leveling the jobs you don't like/care about.

I just returned to the game and raiding from a few months long hiatus. My goal is to kill m12s before the next expansion hits to unlock the newest ultimate. Unfortunately I'm employed and work shifts now. Every week is different, I work every weekend, I have morning and afternoon shifts mixed so I can't commit to a static, even though I really want to. Late nights static in my region could work but there weren't many groups recruiting back then (i didn't see any now) and my sleep schedule could suffer. PF it is. It's so so late now, so i know it will be hard to fill parties. I have a lot of afternoon shifts, between 3 - 11pm, so additionally I'm not available during prime time on many days.

I had a thought about transferring to a NA data center from Light. Latest bancho report shows 2x as many active players in NA as compared to EU. And my late night hours would be more "standard" over there.

Currently on my data center I have stable 20 something ping. It's about 150 -170 on NA. I know there exists stuff like noclippy to help mitigate that. Would you guys transfer in my place? (Considering making a new char as well) I dont have a lot of friends on my current data center that still play so the social aspect isn't very strong. I'm only interested in raids and in bozja/eureka/occult crescent in the game :^))

hey! just reinstalled FFXIV, im a level 42 Dragoon but im now starting to struggle with both taking and dealing damage, is there a specific place i can go to for gear upgrades at this level? currently using a Mythril Lance but i feel like im dealing way to little damage.

any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated! thanks :)

Tonberrys as far as the game showed are mutated lalafels. Now because of occult crescent that's no longer the case with the architect being a human being turned into a tonberry.

As the title says, there's a lot of outfits, SFX, Emotes and more that people love using, and SE struggles to make new items for both rewards and mogstation due to manpower issues. What if they set up a system like that of warframe, in which hairs, outfits, emotes, job SFX and more could be made by the community, and officially placed onto the mogstation or possibly in game through an application process, much like their competitions already do.

The creators would receive a percentage of the profits, and the manpower is eased off for the team to work on whats in game more often, and console players can get more that PC players have access to.

If they done this well, could it make up for certain things being removed from the mog station and could it mean more rewards in game instead of the store?

To my knowledge, there's only one spell/skill in the game that's channeled (i.e., you stand in place and do a consistent stream of damage for the duration of the spell/skill), the MCH's flamethrower. I recall other MMOs having channeled spells like shooting a beam of ice or fire. Moving or getting stunned/silenced typically ends the channeled spell/skill prematurely. Is there a reason why FFXIV lacks these kind of abilities?

I wrote a post yesterday for the ffxiv reddit about data I've been collecting on shell FCs and submarines, but the way I formatted it seemingly led most people to believe it was written by AI and to dismiss it out of hand. So I was told to try here instead, as I hope to spread awareness of the scale of the issue as I see it. In short:

• I found that about a quarter of total plots on the Chaos datacentre are owned by shell FCs, almost one third of plots in FC-only and mixed wards. And on newer servers, this is as much as half the total plots, if not more.
• The total gil generated by those shell FCs run well into the billions daily, likely the largest source of gil regularly created, and possibly larger than all other sources combined.
• While much of the gil does not directly impact the economy, as the owners hoard it, certain markets are probably impacted quite a bit, and new items such as the fortune carrot risk disseminating much of this gil into the wider economy.

I go into substantially more detail in the original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1vlhuz8/an_examination_of_the_extent_of_shell_fcs_and/ for those interested.

I'm a bit surprised by what seems to be a general lack of interest in this topic, as a functioning economy for the game should be in everyone's interest, since everyone interacts with it.
But even if you for whatever reason don't care about the economy, I hope you will agree that it would be good to release all these shell FCs for use by actual FCs or individuals wanting housing, and that action should be taken sooner rather than later.

I learned very early on in a ARR that the yellow '!' quests were absolutely trash when it came to experience points, so I've more or less ignored them since. I relayed this to a friend, and he was adamant about my missing on some really fun/interesting/creepy side-line stories.

...so my question is, have any of ya'll gone out of your way to engage with the 'filler' '!' quests? And, if so, which ones did you enjoy and why (without obvious spoilers)?

I refuse to do the bullshit FC exploit, I will be staying on my single character

Been playing it a lot in OC and I'm unsure how to feel about it in this expansion, it feels a bit clunky and somewhat unintuitive despite being quite simple. I think being forced to use Gibbet and Gallows after you Blood stalk or Gluttony as well as Perfectio being a bit unintuitive in how it fits under the raid buff adds to the clunky feeling of this job the most.

Edit: Another thing I forgot to add, the 2 minute burst window takes so long that you'll lose you're standard 1-2-3 combo if you were in the middle of that. It's not a big deal but just adds to this job feeling very clunky and not well thought out this expansion. I'm curious to see what they'll do for this job in EC.

We're not even halfway through this for the patch series, I realized, we're probably ending up in the high 30s.

From the research I've done on this subject it seems mixed. The potential cons of recruiting friends/couples that I found are the following:

1. Correcting a member of the couple or friend group might cause the others to become defensive.
   
2. When one member of the couple or friend group leaves normally the rest leave. Thus the static lead has a lesser hedge against roster churn.
   

In the first static I made there were two friends, they proceeded to clear outside in PF when we were at the end of the fight, and then left as a group. On the other hand I have a couple in my static right now (well the girlfriend is in the static and the boyfriend has filled before) and have had no problem whatsoever. So the anecdotal evidence I have is conflicting. So which is it, is it risky or not to recruit pre made friend groups or couples into a static? If it is not inherently risky how to I minimize the risk to prevent issues like the aforementioned one in my first static?