The game is Final Fantasy XIV. I had a friend wanting me to give it a try, and he bought the standard edition. So my hand was kind of forced. Here’s a screenshot i took of the city i started in, Limsa Lominsa, after it started raining. You can see the tail of my Carbuncle there peaking over the top.
I’ve got family members that have loyally progressed through this game over the course of years and they absolutely love it still. Great music throughout.
After playing it I went through the soundtrack and added a few songs to my “Background Music” playlist I use when trying to focus. It has a ton of great tracks.
I’m playing since the 2.0 days, I almost grew up with this game and its characters. Top tier game, be it as an MMO or a single player game, it is worth it.
I was dating a girl that sold me on 1.0, and I was going to play it with her. We broke up, and 1.0 released, and I just said fuck it. It wasn’t until Heavensward that I came back. It kills me that in that time I lost my original key, so I don’t even have my swanky 1.0 survivor rewards.
I’m so glad I came back, though. It’s been my only MMO since then, and it just gets better with every new release.
I still have my 1.0 disc, given how useful it is now, it horrifies my friends when they find out I’m using it as a coaster. I stopped playing before I could get the rewards too, so seeing people with the tattoos always makes me sigh.
My friends and I started with the 2.0 beta, and it’s wild to me that I’ve now played one game in three decades of my life (started when I was 29 and we are now into year 11).
Gonna be in a retirement home grinding to level 250 or whatever.
The game kind of lost me eventually, but I’ve had some amazing experiences with it and it has a lot of good qualities. The music is fantastic, especially the parts where Soken is riffing on themes written by Uematsu like Coils and Stormblood.
Despite my reservations about the game of late, the stretch of post-ARR into Heavensward into Stormblood and post-Stormblood patch quests was amazing. And the community is unreasonably lovely for being an MMO.
I’m in love with the base game (haven’t touched any of the expansions yet). I love the music, it’s graphically gorgeous for a game of its age, and I like the characters. I will say I don’t personally care for the combat, that’s mostly because I don’t really care for MMO combat in general. But my issues have been somewhat alleviated by using a PS3 controller to play
The combat gets better, FFXIV has a massive issue of most classes only playing the way they’re supposed to on max level. I guess that’s common for many MMOs, but it’s especially bad here imo. I also stopped playing during Endwalker, so I don’t know what’s been revamped since then.
Even if they’ve continued to simplify and homogenise the classes, the dungeons and raids will get better. Once you get into the expansions you’ll start having more fun mechanics to play around.
Only mmo I have ever played with music on constantly
I’d recognise Limsa Lominsa anywhere. I’ve been playing since 1.0, with some breaks here and there. FFXIV is one of my favourite games ever, for story and gameplay.
I hope you enjoy it and have a great experience. Feel free to join us at !finalfantasyxiv@lemmy.world as well.
There’s a community at !finalfantasyxiv@lemmy.world if you guys have any questions.
I’ll also say that if you are using KB/M to try a controller for a little bit, too. You’ll be surprised at how well it works. I can’t even play this game with a KB/M setup it’s so foreign to me.
I played 2.0-7.0 on KB/M, and now I’m learning to play on Steam Deck (so a controller is mandatory). It is surprising easy for DPS and tanks, but I’m still struggling with Healers.
Healing is definitely its own little animal. My main job is Scholar, so I’ve had to create a couple of mostly healer specific things to help out. (You may already do some of this, so forgive me)
I don’t really use any macros for casting spells or anything like that, but what I have found helpful are three really simple ones that help with targeting.
The first being simply a focusTarget one that lets you set up, well, a focus target:
/focustargetSince as a healer you are most oftes worried about the tank, I generally set them as the focus target. By itself that doesn’t do a whole lot, but then……I have two others that help. One that when you use it it selects whatever your focus target is:
/target <f>So no matter where you are, you can get to the tank (or other focus) super quick for heals.And the last one is one that jumps to whatever your current target is targeting. Kind of a mouthful, that, but pretty helpful:
/target <tt>So in practice if you are doing damage to the boss and just need to quickly swap to whatever the boss is targeting, you can hit this, swap to a party member, heal them, and then press it again to go back to the boss.Along with these are some settings that you might look into if you haven’t already. Control Settings -> Filters -> Filter Customization. In this section you can filter target groups by hitting LB + [one of the face buttons]. I basically 100% of the time use one that targets only enemies because you can always hit up and down to select party members. That lets me always use right and left for bad guys and there’s no confusion.
Lastly for targeting, pressing LB + up/down will select just enemies on your enemies list (this is obviously super handy for tanks). And LB + right/left will target Alliance members on other parties. So if you see that some healers are down on another team, that’s the shortcut to cycle through those members to help.
And then lastly lastly: there are some extra crossbars you can put up on the screen at all times under the Custom tab of Hotbar Settings. You may already know about these at this point, though.
So anyway, again, if you already know these things, then obviously feel free to ignore. But I hope at least some part of that helps a little.
Steam Deck was how I chose to play it too for my first time yesterday (though I played on the dock with PS3 controller). I chose arcanist, and it’s really smooth sailing for me.
I started with the Arcanist too, then Scholar. I really liked the gameplay.
Then I changed main class almost every expansion, starting with the Dark Knight, then Dancer, Sage, and now back to Dancer. None of the new classes caught my fancy this time 😅.
Do you use XIVLauncher?
Yeah. XIVLauncher was the only way I could get it to boot on Steam Deck
I ended up choosing to play with a PS3 controller for my first time. My friends all say I’m crazy, but honestly I love the controls more than the standard MMO “Hit this numpad key and then switch hotbar, then hit this key”
I have 3,400 hours in this game. What I enjoy is that I’m not expected to dedicate my life to it. I pay for 30 days at a time and play when new content is released every 3 months.
I know the last expansion Dawntrail is being slated on Steam reviews, but gameplay wise it was great. The music was solid as always, the Arcadion content was fun and the new zones looked great. Given how good the story has been in the past expansions I can understand how hard it must be to write a whole new story arc and make everyone happy. Some people want something entirely new, while others want to keep it all the same.
I can understand how people can sink 3,400 hours into it. I alone sank 14 hours into it yesterday. I will say I personally don’t like the idea of paying a subscription for my time after buying the standard edition, but I do understand they need to make income somehow and for live service games like this that is hard without a subscription.
The subscription fee imo is warranted given they release new content every 3 months, which includes voice acting, new dungeons, and new raid content. If it was a monthly sub with nothing released between expansions it wouldn’t be acceptable imo. Highly recommend not having a recurring sub
Don’t forget the servers cost. Those things cost a lot. I have a pretty good gaming setup, 2k€+, but my home server costed me more in the end.
