Board 8 > It's time. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Matsya is one of the greatest heroes in the story.

Dude is a fisher with no combat skills, no leadership experience, none of it -- and how many people did he save not just from death, but from their souls becoming annihilated? All from how pure his heart and his faith are. He was just as scared as everyone else, but he held firm, even as he faced becoming a blasphemy himself.

It's easy to be a hero when you're an unstoppable juggernaut who can take down sin eaters and Convocation members. It's a lot harder when you're just some guy. Matsya stepped up when nobody else would or could.

TomNook7 posted...

It's kinda crazy to me, like is the average joe mmo gamer really keeping track of all this? Because I'm a crazy person who obsesses over lore and takes notes, and I can barely keep track lol

I'd definitely say that the average FF14 player is wildly different from the normal MMO crowd on this.

Like when I played WoW (launch to end of WotLK) I was known in my guild as the "lore guy" and I was literally the only person I ever spoke to in-game who really knew the backstory to raids and dungeons, major npcs etc and why any of them mattered. In FF14 that's kind of just the baseline - it definitely feels like people who are just there for the raiding gameplay are in an incredibly small minority.

I only play FFXIV for the story and music. I like playing it, but it's like 90% those first 2 things. Even the fights I like are primarily due to spectacle, there's very few instances in this game where I care about a fight for it's mechanical quality.

The scenes with the Scions the night before we board the ark are legit great. Drinking with Yshtola and Thancred, Alphinaud and Estinien having a bro moment (theyve come so far from HW ;-;)

Looking at some of what you are saying - I personally dont want to dog FF14s gameplay too hard. Its not like traditional jrpgs were ever the pinnacle of interactivity. And I generally stand by 14s combat (even if it doesnt click for me personally a lot of the time), because when you get 8 people going hard and working together on a tough boss, its awesome

And i think the story is great all around, but it was that 8 hour stretch of nonstop running from npc to npc just to watch cut scenes that killed me. So I looked it up, and EW only has like 8 dungeons in the entire game? Thats insanely low compared to some of the others. And that was my main problem here - not enough of a gameplay to story ratio. Especially considering this is a multiplayer game, the excessive storytelling just felt jarring. And about halfway through Elpis everything just started to feel like a tedious slog.

Luckily it seems like its picking back up now though so well see

i think you miscounted the dungeons. all the expansions have 6 dungeons in the msq and 7 optional/patch ones. biggest difference is the hard mode dungeons which HW had 5 and SB had 2.

i dont think there was any unusual stretch between dungeons in EW though. i guess elpis may have had more cutscenes than other areas but considering how important it was to uh everything i think it gets a pass there

TomNook7 posted...

The scenes with the Scions the night before we board the ark are legit great. Drinking with Yshtola and Thancred, Alphinaud and Estinien having a bro moment (theyve come so far from HW ;-;)

Looking at some of what you are saying - I personally dont want to dog FF14s gameplay too hard. Its not like traditional jrpgs were ever the pinnacle of interactivity. And I generally stand by 14s combat (even if it doesnt click for me personally a lot of the time), because when you get 8 people going hard and working together on a tough boss, its awesome

And i think the story is great all around, but it was that 8 hour stretch of nonstop running from npc to npc just to watch cut scenes that killed me. So I looked it up, and EW only has like 8 dungeons in the entire game? Thats insanely low compared to some of the others. And that was my main problem here - not enough of a gameplay to story ratio. Especially considering this is a multiplayer game, the excessive storytelling just felt jarring. And about halfway through Elpis everything just started to feel like a tedious slog.

Luckily it seems like its picking back up now though so well see

Every expansion has definitely has the same amount of dungeons.

In fact, Heavensward and Stormblood had an optional one during leveling so Shadowbringers and Endwalker could possibly have more depending on if you did those optional ones while going through the MSQ or not.

And yeah it feels like a slog, they don't wanna pull another "and then we freed Doma well, back to Ala Mhigo I guess" with little fanfare. Seriously, the Lochs is such a cool location but it is not endgame-appropriate- I wonder how it felt being a player when Stormblood was new, rather than the tail end of it like when I joined.

I guess dungeons arent a good example. Id be interested in finding some quantifiable comparison to shadowbringers on cutscenes vs gameplay though, because i swear endwalker seems excessive

Ive seen a lot of people hate ala mhigo, but at least you had to fight stuff. At least we got Lakshmi and snake ladies

Meanwhile I just got to Ultima Thule in Endwalker, and there were two fights in the cut scenes - Meteion beating us in the ship, and Estinien fighting a dragon - and neither of them actually had any gameplay. Its like endwalkers story is too cool to let me play, and it doesnt want me to cramp its style

Ultima Thule is beautiful tho, endwalker is 5 for 5 on locations

I took so many screenshots of Ultima Thule.

found a list of total cutscene time from a quick google.

ARR
2.0 = 11:54:14
2.1 - 2.55 = 9:30:24

HW
3.0 = 8:15:18
3.1 - 3.56 = 16:33:50

StBl
4.0 = 11:32:49
4.1 - 4.56 = 8:58:25

ShBr
5.0 = 15:28:25
5.1 - 5.55 = 12:58:44

EW
6.0 = 23:37:44

assuming this is accurate yeah EW is notably longer

Lol those Heavensward numbers. Totally checks out.

whoa the Ea are cool

So were there any significant changes to the core game with endwalker? Was this the first time they introduced pvp? Also any cool side quests / raids i need to do like in shadowbringers?

Made it to the final msq quest, but gotta sleep for now. Tomorrow... I beat Endwalker

My favorite part of Endwalker is the part where you walk at the end.

TomNook7 posted...

So were there any significant changes to the core game with endwalker? Was this the first time they introduced pvp? Also any cool side quests / raids i need to do like in shadowbringers?

PVP has been in from the start!

But Endwalker launched the latest PVP mode, Crystalline Conflict, which came with a big PVP rework and I think was intended to revitalize PVP since it previously wasn't considered very relevant, but this mode was a "big deal". I don't play PVP so I don't know much about it. (Oh, but it seems to have been mostly a success in that regard - people do play it and PVP seems relevant nowadays)

The trials like Ruby Weapon and etc this time are actually part of the post-patch storyline so you don't need to go find them off in their own blue quest anywhere.

The raid series (like Eden) is called Pandaemonium and is in Elpis somewhere, though I think it starts from a blue questline in Sharlayan...? (Or Maybe Labyrinthos) I actually like the story in this, despite being a story-hater generally. It's basically just as important to the plot as Eden was and follows up on some major side-characters.

The 24-person raids are beautiful as usual. They start in... maybe Mor Dhona? They're about the mythology of the world and the 12 Gods or whatever, like the one you picked at character creation and always appears on your character select screen. Highly recommended, and the music is amazing.

I think there's a huge sidequest series about Tataru or something. I didn't do it.

...Oh and there's the Island Sanctuary. Right. If you like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley I guess, and want a much more watered-down version of that... (I don't think you want this)

Oh and there's Criterion Dungeons. These are dungeons that can take anywhere from 1 to 4 people, so you can solo them, and each one has various choices you can make (some hidden) that lead to different paths with different bosses. I think they're all started from the counter down south by the pier in Sharlayan. I don't think these are particularly important, but technically they were a big new feature of the expansion. (They have harder modes too for raiders)

To tick each of these off:

• Crystalline Conflict is a quick 5v5 capture-the-moving-flag, and it lets you learn the PvP rotations on the fly since matches are short, if you don't want to bother being in the Wolves Den. You can also Frontline to see them, which is nice for levelling classes (queue as class you want to level, then switch to class you're good at... or don't, and just screw around as a "wtf am I doing on aggressive gunbreaker"
• The post-MSQ trials are the best part of the postgame. The dungeons are... meh.
• Pandemonium starts in Labyrinthos, if I'm not mistaken, in the Ragnarok's hangar.
• Myths of the Realm, the alliance raid, is very pretty, and it says a lot when the biggest disappointment of it is the final fight (which just plays out like a final exam of mechanics you've seen in all three wings.) It's also better than the Nier ones for both duration and story.
• I still haven't done Tataru's Grand Adventure beyond like, one step.
• The DoH/DoL relic quests this go-around are in the Crystarium and have a cute story with the First's version of Rowena and Gerolt.
• Island Sanctuary is... meh. It's self-sustainable once you put some effort into it, but starting it from scratch is going to blow. Decent money, though, since you can buy the Ishgard restoration dyes there eventually with surplus, and tradable mounts.
• Criterion Dungeons are a bit too long for my liking, since finding a four-man party is gross, but if you clear all 10 paths of them, you get a mount relevant to the dungeon. "Another" version of each dungeon also unlocks, which is basically a Savage Criterion - I'd rank their difficulty between Extreme Trials and a full wing of Savage Raids. Fuck the bubble mouse.
• Eureka Orthos exists - it's the level 80-90 version of Palace of the Dead/Heaven-on-High, but it is much more punishing to begin than those two (things WILL one-shot you in floors 1-10 until you start getting your armor/weapons up.)
• This is the first DoW/DoM Relic grind that is... uh... just a timegate, really. You pay 1500 of the lesser tomestone to advance your relic. That's it. The only requirement for it is going through Hildibrand quests, which you should have done anyway by that point.
• The EX fights this time bridge the gap between really fun and "fuck everyone in party finder" quite well. EX Zodiark was my first on-level clear, which is belittled a bit by the "danger dorito" strat (one person who knows what they're doing can guide you through basically the entire fight sans the tankswap, since the week one DPS check is way easier to hit now.) EX4-6 though, they're all flavors of hectic. I have not tried EX7 yet. Not spoiling what they are yet, but it should be pretty obvious once you get a few post-patch quests deep.
• Beast tribes/tribal quests this go-around are the elephants in Thavnair (combat - gives a cart and hippo mount,) the Loporrits in Bestway Burrows (BUNNY RAVE - crafter quests that give a robot supporter mount and a disco floor,) and the Omicron in Ultima Thule (gatherer quests that give an electric jellyfish mount.) Maxing all three gives a dance emote this time.
• You might not have hit this back in Shadowbringers, but in Idyllshire, there is a side-quest of sorts called Faux Hollows that challenges you with Unreal Trials - basically, older EX trials scaled up in stats. With each patch or so, the fight changes; currently, the Unreal trial is Thordan EX. The past has had Shiva, Titan, Leviathan, Ultima Weapon, Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan, with the only major patch break being Endwalker's release. Presumably, it will be on cooldown for Dawntrail's release, so give it a go before that if you want to try it out.

Thanks for your input guys. I ask because ive been working on an FF ranking on board 8 for years, and its gonna be tricky ranking Endwalker.

Bold predictions for when i play the final mission tonight: I really hope zenos snuck aboard the ship and just completely fucks everything up at the end

Him switching bodies with Meteion and projecting the non-emotions of a sociopath across the universe would fucking rule. Just completely derail the Hermes/Meteion subplot lmao

Hype!

Also hype for the liveletter tomorrow. Getting up at 9 eastern which should hopefully mean I'll be able to skim over the the Dawntrail Job Action Trailer even if the show is still going.

Job Action Trailer is almost as big an event as the expansion itself!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Hype!

Also hype for the liveletter tomorrow. Getting up at 9 eastern which should hopefully mean I'll be able to skim over the the Dawntrail Job Action Trailer even if the show is still going.

Job Action Trailer is almost as big an event as the expansion itself!

As a DRG main I am quite on edge

Oh yeah you guys are supposedly getting a major rework, huh?

Well it worked out for Monk!

I quit playing DRG when they took my badass aura away so I'm ready for whatever they've got!

I'm sticking with Sam because I'm a basic bitch.

Would level Viper right away, but as someone who queued into MSQ Roulette at 4:05 AM on Endwalker release morning to level reaper along with 3 other reapers and 2 Sages, I ain't doing that again.

God bless those 2 tanks.

I'm interested in Viper but I have to see what the Dragoon rework looks like first before I decide what to main.

def gonna check out picto but ill probably end up staying as dnc

odds of three more summons for summoner post-phoenix???

Looking forward to Ninja's requisite tiny incremental changes

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

Dels posted...

odds of three more summons for summoner post-phoenix???

3 fusions summons with each combination of the 3 elemental primals, ie Furor.

KamikazePotato posted...

Looking forward to Ninja's requisite tiny incremental changes

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

i mean, that's where most jobs are at right now. endwalker already, for some of them, just said "AoE version of an old skill, upgrade of an old skill, one new button".

or, as the memes often said, yo dawg i heard you like finishers so i put a finisher after your finisher so you can finish after you finish

I know Astro is getting an overhaul (again) so I haven't been leveling it at all beyond the occasional walking wasteland in frontline. Dragoon, though, is my second most recent maxed job (I just finished Dark Knight last month.) Didn't work on gearing it up at all- sort of put all my tome focus into Aiming, Striking (for Monk,) and Healing.

It is done.

The Dead Ends was dope. Everyone in my party was either new or rusty, and we really struggled for a bit, which honestly made it more thrilling because i actually had to learn from my mistakes and learn the mechanics

Endsinger reminded me of Cloud of Darkness or Ultimecia, but like actually fleshed out ad a concept lol. And the actual fight itself was great too. Awesome music as usual. And of course gotta love the fight with my boy Zenos

Zenos: you just do all this for the thrill of it, dont you?
Me: yeah you got me

So yeah, good shit. Im gonna let it digest and spend some time thinking on where I wanna place EW in my ranking. There were a lot of highs, but the excessive amount of talk to npc, trigger cutscene really took its toll on me, so well see.

Also im going on vacation for a couple weeks, so i wont be able to get to patch for a while, but ill try to keep this topic bumped till then. Should be able to start patch in early June. Till then, feel free to use this topic to keep discussing ff14, and thanks everyone for your help!

"That, I can't deny."

Probably the most popular dialogue choice in all of FF14. Glad you got to fight an Endsinger after she was made a bit tougher.

My personal favorite detail from Endwalker is that the prayers that the Scions give you in the final fight mirror the prayers to try and stop Bahamut years earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOOFCltZuc&t=4m30s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Hz4RyvEuk&=12m

(I timestamped each video, but if that didn't work: first video is 4 minutes 30 seconds in, second videos is 12 minutes in)

Thancred and Yshtola even have the exact same poses.

Job actions trailer is up.

https://youtu.be/zx2vW0TAJKQ

Also i find it silly Zenos approached the fucking Grand Company of Eorzea, and was like can i go too

And Krile was just like: ok.

REPOSITIONING LEY LINES

Screw Pictomancer, BLM back on the menu for me.

Everyone anticipates Dragoon rework.

"We removed a positional"

Meanwhile Monk and Ninja get new bars lol.

What the ever loving Christ is going on with Pictomancer.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/18b5c56d.png

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a2e1b8a2.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a7f5fb0b.jpg

well that picto sure is a job that does some things

I still haven't been able to go back for all the finer details, but it sounds like they're finally eliminating any situation where you're using your gap closer during your burst window across the board?

Sound effects for Viper are exactly what I wanted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/EaPZhGF9Ch

After all of that I still don't know if I want to stick with DRG or switch to Viper. Honestly I'll probably just do both. DRG to do the MSQ then work on Viper after.

Also new artifact gear can be seen:

https://imgur.com/a/dawntrail-artifact-gear-D8IRymJ

Light Party

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bad11855.jpg

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Light Party

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bad11855.jpg

I tank and love Voltage AMA

Okay so for endwalker, i dont think ff14 has dipped below 9/10 for the last nine years or whatever (compared to all other games). I fully admit im not the biggest fan of the excessive cutscenes or casual gameplay, but a lot of people are, and it wouldnt be such a worldwide phenomenon if it didnt bring a lot of people value. To me ff14 is kinda like smash bros or animal crossing - its intended to be lighthearted, casual fun, but it can also get as intense or hardcore as the player wants. Which isnt an easy balance to strike, and is a testament to good design. Endwalker is probably like a 9.2/10 or something around there

1. FF7 - 10
2. FF6 - 10
3. FFT - 10
4. FF10 - 9.5
5. FF14 SHB - 9.5
6. FF4 - 9.4
7. FF9 - 9.3
8. FF14 EW - 9.2
9. FF14 STB - 9.1
10. FF5 - 9.0
11. FF14 HW - 9.0
12. FF8 - 8.8
13. FFX-2 - 8.5
14. FF16 - 8.4
15. FF3 - 8.4
16. FF14 ARR - 8.3
17. FF1 - 8.3
18. FF11 - 8.3
19. FF15 - 8.1
20. FF7 Remake - 8.0
21. FF2 - 6.0
22. DoC FF7 - 5.5
23. FF13 - 3.0

The only ones left i still wanna play are ff12 and dawntrail, and then i can finally be done with this silly series for 2-3 years lol

Also if ivalice takes place in ff14, does that mean they had to worry about the archadian empire AND the garlemald empire? Did garlemald just copy archadias vibe?

TomNook7 posted...

Also if ivalice takes place in ff14, does that mean they had to worry about the archadian empire AND the garlemald empire? Did garlemald just copy archadias vibe?

Ivalice-XIV is just a very similar place to Ivalice-Prime.