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Well, I went and done it... Hi All!Follow

#1 Apr 01 2017 at 3:51 PM Rating: Good
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Just wanted to say hello! Long story, very long story, short... I went and ordered a new gaming rig and I have purchased FFXIV. I was a long time FFXI player, since about 2003'ish. Walked away from it in August 2014 but the itch is back. I would consider returning to that world, but I gave my account away and just not worth the hassle or trouble to get it back. Plus, looks like who I gave it to is still active in it as the are still selling items according to FFXIAH.com. Wouldn't be right to take the account away from him/her now. Pride to know my character still lives in FFXI.

My alter ego will be reborn into FFXIV. I am pretty excited and looking forward to it. Yes, I have tons of questions about the game, but my rig wont be in until late next week so I will be diligent and research the game.

But wanted to say hi to the ZAM forum, has been my FFXI forum home ever since I discovered it in my FFXXI days many many years ago. Its good to be back.

Gonna be a long week lol!

jay

#2 Apr 01 2017 at 3:54 PM Rating: Excellent
Welcome! Be prepared for a game that is nothing at all like FFXI. As you'll see from this small forum community, you'll either love it or you'll hate it -- but either way, you'll keep playing! Smiley: lol
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Thayos Redblade
Jormungandr
Hyperion
#3 Apr 01 2017 at 7:06 PM Rating: Good
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Indeed I have prepared myself. I followed FFXIV prior to the 1.0 release and when they pulled it down to relaunch it. I have been reading a lot on it and watching videos and it has my interest. A different take but I am down for it. Passing time for another game to come out that goes back to the party/co-op style.
#4 Apr 01 2017 at 7:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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Welcome to FFXIV, or at least, to this forum lol.

FFXIV is not a hard game to pick up and play. You'll get the hang of it very quickly, the game has excellent tutorials that are not in your face (they show little popup windows that explain things, but you can easily close them and they won't come back unless you go into the Help menu), and the game itself is not difficult to learn.

But yet there's enough complexity that there's challenge to master it.

Unlike FFXI, getting groups for the Main Story Quest (MSQ) content is not hard at all, you simply tick a checkbox and click join, wait, and viola. Group.

In all of my time playing the game (I'm just shy of Heavensward, the first expansion), I have never walked away from a group without actually completing the content. I have done 150+ dungeons/trials according to my achievement tracker, and not one of those was a total failure. Wipes, yes. But you get back up and try again.

Earlier today, my group wiped 4 times on Keeper of the Lake's last boss.

We got it on the 5th try, and that's the closest that I've ever gotten to failing to complete a dungeon.

This is, of course, excluding Palace of the Dead.... if everybody dies, it's Duty Over but that's only happened a couple times and those are rather quick runs anyways, so I don't count those. They're not normal dungeons and you'll see why when you get there.

Also, I find the economy is much more reasonable to work with, both in the UI department (you can SEARCH for items!) and in the actual mechanics of how it works, just...

So many improvements over XI. I think you'll love it unless you are a m*soch*st that absolutely loves pain and grind. This game hits a sweet spot for me: Not too easy, not too hard. Right there in the middle. If I want challenge, I can find it. If I want to relax, I can do that too and still make progress somewhere. If I just wanna log on for an hour and do a dungeon, I can do that. If I wanna play all day, there's so many quests left for me to do, and other jobs to level up. Or I could go farm... I haven't farmed in forever, lol.

Edited, Apr 1st 2017 9:35pm by Lyrailis
#5 Apr 01 2017 at 8:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'm glad you're doing research so the shift in gameplay between FFXI and this won't hit you like a ton of bricks, but let us know if you have any questions.

Ironically I can't play FFXIV right now because my internet is a potato. But FFXI works fine (handles the bad connection better I think) so I've been playing that a little (leveling PLD... go divine magic skill, go!). I'm hoping the NA data center move will help, but I'm still expecting an ugly series of conversations with Comcast trying to convince them that I've done a bunch of troublshooting on this already and it's them... not me... that'll be fun.
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#6 Apr 01 2017 at 8:49 PM Rating: Good
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Thanks all! Sucks I gotta wait for a new rig but it has been long over due. Tower I have that I ran FFXI would not handle this game probably even at low settings. Plus, I want to enjoy great visual game play with no lag and pixels. Right now, just grasping my head around classes and jobs and cross job abilities and what not. I loved my FFXI, but ready for something new.
#7 Apr 01 2017 at 9:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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Callinon wrote:
I'm glad you're doing research so the shift in gameplay between FFXI and this won't hit you like a ton of bricks, but let us know if you have any questions.

Ironically I can't play FFXIV right now because my internet is a potato. But FFXI works fine (handles the bad connection better I think) so I've been playing that a little (leveling PLD... go divine magic skill, go!). I'm hoping the NA data center move will help, but I'm still expecting an ugly series of conversations with Comcast trying to convince them that I've done a bunch of troublshooting on this already and it's them... not me... that'll be fun.


I don't know if it is still that way, but FFXI was originally designed to be run over 56k Dialup. Indeed, I used to play on Dialup. There was occasional ability delay, but it didn't matter much. Now, come 2017 and all of the expansions later, I don't know if they ever "uncapped" or modified how much data gets sent back and forth, but the S/R numbers are almost never above 1200 (same as it was back in the day). Not sure what that is, bytes/sec? That's probably why it runs on your internet when XIV won't.

Stucco wrote:
Thanks all! Sucks I gotta wait for a new rig but it has been long over due. Tower I have that I ran FFXI would not handle this game probably even at low settings. Plus, I want to enjoy great visual game play with no lag and pixels. Right now, just grasping my head around classes and jobs and cross job abilities and what not. I loved my FFXI, but ready for something new.


I wouldn't worry about trying to cram every little detail into your brain -- there's no telling how much of it you will actually remember, and by the time you get there, the game will make sure to teach you (or give you the opportunity to learn), though basic concepts might be nice.

If you've never played other similar games (WoW has a very similar setup), then some of the group mechanics might be a good read, though there's even an in-game Grouping Tutorial that does reasonably well at explaining how groups work (though sadly, it doesn't mimic the UI, for example, healing the Tutorial is harder because you cannot select your AI teammates with the party window like you could human players).

Also, job abilities are sparsed through the levels like they were in FFXI -- you will start out with most likely 1 and only 1 ability you can use. Then a couple levels later, you get a new one, etc. The tooltips are very good in this game, they tell you exactly what an ability does, or at least what potency it has. This won't tell you exact damage, but it should give you a good idea... for example, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack... I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like SA does a Potency of 500 from the front, and TA does a Potency of 400 from the back but has an Additional Effect: 10% physical vulnerability for x seconds. etc. The tooltips are very candid about what each ability does, right down to actual numbers and even ability ranges/AoE range. So if you got another ability that does about 400 potency and you know what that does... then you'll know what TA will do if it also does 400, etc etc.

Edited, Apr 1st 2017 11:39pm by Lyrailis
#8 Apr 01 2017 at 9:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
I don't know if it is still that way, but FFXI was originally designed to be run over 56k Dialup. Indeed, I used to play on Dialup. There was occasional ability delay, but it didn't matter much. Now, come 2017 and all of the expansions later, I don't know if they ever "uncapped" or modified how much data gets sent back and forth, but the S/R numbers are almost never above 1200 (same as it was back in the day). Not sure what that is, bytes/sec? That's probably why it runs on your internet when XIV won't.


It's not a bandwidth problem, it's a packetloss problem. I've got plenty of bandwidth, but somewhere down the line my ISP or something they're connected to is dropping packets randomly. Most of the time this isn't that big a deal (wide-area network protocols are built to deal with this because it's expected that this'll happen). But when playing an online game like an MMO, a lost packet or two here and there is a problem. In FFXIV in particular it causes a ton of problem because the game actually handles this quite badly.

Let me give an example of the type of thing that was happening pretty regularly:

I main BLM right now, so juggling Enochian is pretty important for me. Enochian has a base 30 second duration and 60 second cooldown. It enables the use of Fire 4 and Blizzard 4, which resets the duration to (previous duration)-5 seconds. So 25, 20, 15, etc until you just recast Enochian itself back to 30. But if the button press for Enochian is dropped (lost packet), something strange happens. The server won't give me the buff. So no Enochian buff, no Fire4 or Blizzard4. But the game client still puts Enochian on cooldown as though I'd successfully used it. So yes to a 60 second cooldown and no to any ability to do anything about it. I can't even tell you how long it took me to figure out what the problem was and why this was happening.

I recorded a random dungeon run and split off some examples of what I'm talking about. I wanted to show SE what was happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7znmg1En4w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcTT-I2GIyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpC8U_xVRTg

The video descriptions have a brief blurb about what the clip is supposed to be showing.

The reason I no longer think this is an FFXIV-exclusive problem (and so why I'm not yelling at SE about this) is I started to notice it in other games. WoW, SWTOR, Overwatch... all of them would demonstrate some form of this behavior. But they all also handle it a lot better and it's not as big a deal in those games as it is in FFXIV.
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svlyons wrote:
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#9 Apr 01 2017 at 9:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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That's kind of weird that they would have the client triggering the cooldown instead of the server telling the client "hey, this ability is now on cooldown".

I mean in WoW, I've been DCing before and attempted to use something and it won't actually go on cooldown until I get a response from the server.
#10 Apr 01 2017 at 10:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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Lyrailis wrote:
That's kind of weird that they would have the client triggering the cooldown instead of the server telling the client "hey, this ability is now on cooldown".

I mean in WoW, I've been DCing before and attempted to use something and it won't actually go on cooldown until I get a response from the server.


Yeah that's part of why it took me so long to nail it down. It didn't make any sense. But there it is, it couldn't be more clear what it's doing.
____________________________
svlyons wrote:
If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.
#11 Apr 01 2017 at 10:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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Callinon wrote:
Lyrailis wrote:
That's kind of weird that they would have the client triggering the cooldown instead of the server telling the client "hey, this ability is now on cooldown".

I mean in WoW, I've been DCing before and attempted to use something and it won't actually go on cooldown until I get a response from the server.


Yeah that's part of why it took me so long to nail it down. It didn't make any sense. But there it is, it couldn't be more clear what it's doing.


Now that you mention this, I remember one time I was DCing and I noticed something very similar and I was like "wut....?"

It took me a sec to figure out I was DCing because of an ISP reset (like a once a week thing, random time of the day), and I couldn't use any abilities, nothing was hitting me, but I think I remember using a cooldown and it... got put on cooldown.

Probably a huge oversight on the devs' part, but easily missed order of operations mistake.
#12 Apr 02 2017 at 10:16 AM Rating: Excellent
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Now that's something I forgot to mention: The game will actually warn you if there are lots of cutscenes coming up, and advise you not start them unless you have ample time.

Doesn't happen often, but when major cutscenes do happen, they are usually very well done.
#13 Apr 02 2017 at 11:47 AM Rating: Good
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All great info. Sucks you are having ISP problems. I have played my fair share of WoW. Actually, I gotta cancel my account as they just billed me the other day. I tried to get back into it several months back but my laptop I currently have couldnt play it. Played WoW with my bro as it was more casual for his schedule. Really cant wait to get into the game.

Plus, I have just been reading up on the game to have a good base understanding of the game and concept. I like to be prepared and all.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2017 12:52pm by Stucco
#14 Apr 02 2017 at 3:14 PM Rating: Excellent
Which server did you start on? If you haven't picked one yet, I'm a big fan of Hyperion. We've got a large population, but without being overcrowded. Plus, I've got a great FC you could join.
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Thayos Redblade
Jormungandr
Hyperion
#15 Apr 02 2017 at 3:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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There's also a ZAM type FC on Lamia too, lol. That's the one I'm in.
#16 Apr 02 2017 at 5:57 PM Rating: Good
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Haven't gotten that far yet as far as creating character and choosing server. CPU just shipped out today. Says it will be here between 6th and the 11th, hopefully the 6th. I gotta download game as well, but that shouldnt take too long. I will definitely be looking for a FC once I get up and going.

Edited, Apr 3rd 2017 12:17pm by Stucco
#17 Apr 03 2017 at 6:15 AM Rating: Excellent
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Thayos wrote:
Which server did you start on? If you haven't picked one yet, I'm a big fan of Hyperion. We've got a large population, but without being overcrowded. Plus, I've got a great FC you could join.


I can concur with Thayos here. Him and I are in the same FC (I actually introduced him to it). Obviously, this also means we're on the same server, Hyperion. Our server is one of the Legacy servers, which means a lot of the people on there used to play in 1.0. Not everyone or even most, just a lot. What Thayos said about it (in addition to our FC) is spot on.

Of course, I know there are other FCs and servers that people on ZAM can recommend to you (like Callinon just did).

I hope you have fun, and welcome to the game!
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Primary World: Hyperion
Free Company: Jormungandr
Legacy Member
Main Character: Fialas Dawnren: Level 60 BRD/AST/MNK/DoL, Level 16-50 On Everything Else
#18 Apr 03 2017 at 4:54 PM Rating: Good
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I will keep you two in mind for the FC. Definitely wouldnt mind a populated server, and I dont want to feel too alone and solo. Wouldn't mind joining a FC out of the gates, no one i know personally plays these games so it is just little ol me.
#19 Apr 03 2017 at 6:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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I know how that is. I don't really know anybody and I'm not really the social type, so the guys here on ZAM are the only people I really got to know when I got into XIV.
#20 Apr 03 2017 at 6:08 PM Rating: Excellent
XIV is still very much a social game, just like any other MMORPG. The game has a huge active playerbase, and Hyperion is among the several with healthy populations even between patches.

However, XIV makes it much easier to go through the game solo... which is great, but the side effect is the world can feel lonely because you're not forced to group with (and depend on) others. So there's less of an incentive for social interaction. Also, unlike FFXI, nobody really uses linkshells in XIV... it's all about the FC system. And because FCs are tied to housing, you have a lot of really tiny FCs with people who don't want to leave BECAUSE of their houses. So it's a very splintered social community.

Get a good FC, though, and (just like any MMO) the game is way more enjoyable. Just like FFXI, I couldn't imagine playing XIV without my Jorm.
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Thayos Redblade
Jormungandr
Hyperion
#21 Apr 03 2017 at 9:37 PM Rating: Good
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You guys are making a strong case for Hyperion, sorry Callinon. Just really looking forward to getting in the game. Should be active by the weekend or so.
#22 Apr 04 2017 at 9:01 AM Rating: Excellent
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Stucco wrote:
You guys are making a strong case for Hyperion, sorry Callinon. Just really looking forward to getting in the game. Should be active by the weekend or so.


I'm honestly glad my problem isn't widespread. It sucks.

If I may make a suggestion though: Hyperion is a server that is usually locked to new character creation because it's so populated. If you want to make your character there, you'll want to do so early in the morning when it's not locked (like 5am or earlier).
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svlyons wrote:
If random outcomes aren't acceptable to you, then don't play with random people.
#23 Apr 04 2017 at 9:11 AM Rating: Excellent
Quote:
If I may make a suggestion though: Hyperion is a server that is usually locked to new character creation because it's so populated. If you want to make your character there, you'll want to do so early in the morning when it's not locked (like 5am or earlier).


He speaks the truth. Best times I've seen to make characters are early morning and at night. Took me a day or two of being patient to get a character here.
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Thayos Redblade
Jormungandr
Hyperion
#24 Apr 04 2017 at 6:15 PM Rating: Good
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Oh wow! I know it was mentioned earlier also but it wasn't super emphasized so I didn't think much of it. I will definitely make a mental note of that. I might be able to do character creation Friday night, if the estimated delivery time is accurate, as that is what FedEx is indicating. By the time I download the game and my account all set up, it will be pretty probably.

Thayos, if your FC is excepting/recruiting, my name is in the hat.
#25 Apr 04 2017 at 6:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'd also ask around if there are anything like queues to log in. I remember at a high point, Lamia even had queues to log on, and it isn't exactly the most populous server either.

One doesn't want a dead server with hardly anybody on it, but IMO, queues suck even worse. Nothing like sitting down, with 2 hours to do a quick dungeon run or two and end up spending 30+ minutes waiting in line just to log on, lol.

These days, I've not seen any queues on Lamia yet and I'm glad for it. There's easily enough people around that the world feels alive, but yet not so many that I can't log on either.
#26 Apr 04 2017 at 8:44 PM Rating: Good
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I'd imagine the only servers with serious queues are Balmung and Gilgamesh. Cerberus sometimes has a short queue but it never lasts more than a minute or so.
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