FFXIV Ultima Server FC Gaijin

[lecompte]

Hey guys,
Not sure how many are playing FFXIV or if any are on JP Ultima server. We have an FC with 350 English speaking players and we could use some other EQ super gamers to tackle challenge material. So far in the core group we have a 50 PAL, 50 WAR, 50 WHM, 50 BRD. I'm sure people in the FC will get up to speed eventually but I'm impatient and EQ gamers can power to 50 in 40-60 hours of play time.

Now then: How have others been enjoying it so far? It was fairly boring until about level 32 when I lost my first time (I play eq, I'm not in TMO, I like challenge). I'm having very few connection issues.


EDIT: If you want to check me out on Lodestone I'm Lecompte Dusang, Warrior on Ultima.

[spoils]

I made a toon on Ultima...i forget which name i used since i tried making toons anywhere and everywhere...i'll send you a message sometime...

[lecompte]

Do it, I'll be online in 4 hours grinding for Tomestones of Philosophy on storyline missions. Final fight in temple of qarn is the hardest non 50 fight and good practice at dodging attacks and such.

[SamwiseRed]

heh i got a guy on ultima, my early access key expired. waiting for my damn cd with code in the mail

[spoils]

heh i'm only like lvl 4 or 5...

[lecompte]

Start leveling now... Hit all the storyline missions and do hunting logs will get you to 15 in about 4-8 hours, then queue for storyline missions and while that queue is running exp.. When you get to 30, let me know and we'll rush you through the dungeon so you can get your job then grind fates to 50 and do storyline mission. The storyline mission will take (just in running around) about 15 hours. The fate grind will tak you to 50 in 20 hours I think.

You'll also need to do the second class for your job, which is another 4-8 hours. When you hit 50, between queues for farming seals, you want to get all the cross class skills you need/want by leveling those classes up.

[Millburn]

I've got a 50 summoner right now and working on getting a warrior up there as well now. Depending on how they handle server transfers I might be interested in coming over with my fiancee to join you guys.

[lecompte]

Nice. You'd be welcome ;p

[JonathanHancock]

This is the "rerelease?"

Does it feature the "classic" final fantasy shit like FFXI did (the classic spells, jobs etc?) in any way?!?!

[lecompte]

Hmm? Yes.. White mage is Conjurer + arcanist, they can Cure I, II, III, Medica, etc.

[lecompte]

The 2.5 GCD because of console support is absolutly brutal if you've played any MMO in the past 10 years. So damn slow paced. The Final Fantasy theme is in full force though if that's all you care about, diversity however is not.

End end game the 2.5 GCD is still a little borked. My GCD is reduced to 2.4 but I don't think it is actually reduced correctly. And... I have a lot (9?) instant abilities that aren't on the GCD so I still end up doing some mad button mashing.

Lower levels it is very painful, higher levels necessary.

[lecompte]

Update: Gaijin FC has 470 English Speaking members. We are the largest Free Company on a Japanese speaking server. Kind of funny that.

We are trying to get a group of people with respectable gear to pound on Titan Hardmode, taking a couple of weeks but it is a lot of fun because the fight gets absurd towards the end.

Notes:
Consoles can very rarely compete with PC users in terms of dodging ability and DPS. I don't know if it is the ability to mash buttons fast enough or they get system latency because the PS3 isn't sufficient to meet the needs of the game.

Bards are super easy DPS because they can dodge, run around, etc and still do their full damage -- it is tempered by the fact that their limit break is crap.

Paladins are the best tank because their damage mitigation cool downs are at least twice as good as the warriors.

[Masq]

about to pickup this after work. Any suggestion for classes?

[lecompte]

Shortest duty finder queue times with a tank or healer and duty finder is required for completion of the storyline on your first class. Queue times are only an issue if you are up and down because:queued for an hour, get up to go to the bathroom, come back the queue popped, timer ran down and you have to requeue. Can always pick up a DPS as your second class and level that easily. Second classes have a 50% xp bonus as long as main is above current level.

TL;DR:
Conjurer or Gladiator

[Masq]

Playing with 4 people so I don't think queue times should matter much

[lecompte]

I'm sure you made by now but if you already have people who want to be healer and tank, play a bard or dragoon or blackmage.

[Masq]

Ended up playing guardian, got to level 18 in about 5hrs.

Pretty surprised at the leveling speed and I've yet to try that dungeon finder (just did levele quests or whatever they're called)

[lecompte]

Ya, leve quests are fast. I think you get 5-10 per 6 hours? Once you have a second class, fates are even faster. Your storyline and class quest are required for character/content advancement so be sure to tackle those. When you get to Temple of Qarn, you'll either love the game or hate it.

[Masq]

How do you get a second class? Can you eventually unlock all classes?

[lecompte]

Once you hit 15 in the storyline or class quest you can take on other classes by visiting their guild, then switching weapons. In your character menu, you are able to make gear sets to quick swap between classes. You can't change classes in combat or in instances and when swapped your abilities are all on my 1 min cool down.

You can drop gear sets unto a hotkey bar too.

[Masq]

Nice, did some lfg dungeons and worked on my off classes a bit. Got to 11conjurer and 10pugilist. Back to grinding on my guardian to UB
Unlock paladin now.

The game is a lot better than I was expecting

[lecompte]

When you get to Temple of Qarn, you'll either love the game or hate it.

All I can say :).

[Masq]

Haha hopefully its more difficult. Game is way too easy atm

[SamwiseRed]

i thought tmple of qarn was easy, only wiped to last boss twice. the dungeon before it tho was a son of a bitch.

game is great tho, not power gaming this one. almost lvl 40. im with a few RL friends on Faerie, we have a rank 4 guild working on rank 5. seriously good game so far. i love FATES and i love multiclassing. i hope eq next somehow improves on these things.

[heartbrand]

Ff14 end game blows currently with AK being really the only instance and the instance servers taking sometimes 2.5 hours to get you in it only to have an awful tank or healer or dps and the group die. It also takes like 75 minutes to run in an average group and you need to do it 1000x to gear up.

[lecompte]

? Make friends heartbrand. I run it 7 times on mondays after work on Mondays even without the speed runs. 40 minute a shot to knock out Tomestones of Mythology then I spend the rest of the week farming CM for ToPhilosophy. I also don't have any problem reserving an instance cause I play on japanese servers and they aren't packed full until about 6AM.

Other end game is Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, Coil, Wanderer's Palace.

Samwise: I'm glad your enjoying it. For some reason the only dungeon that gave me a hard time leveling up was Temple of Qarn. I think it may have been because it was in early access week and no one quite new the mechanic on the bees with their final sting. That thing got us quite a few times.

[SamwiseRed]

? Make friends heartbrand. I run it 7 times on mondays after work on Mondays even without the speed runs. 40 minute a shot to knock out Tomestones of Mythology then I spend the rest of the week farming CM for ToPhilosophy. I also don't have any problem reserving an instance cause I play on japanese servers and they aren't packed full until about 6AM.

Other end game is Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, Coil, Wanderer's Palace.

Samwise: I'm glad your enjoying it. For some reason the only dungeon that gave me a hard time leveling up was Temple of Qarn. I think it may have been because it was in early access week and no one quite new the mechanic on the bees with their final sting. That thing got us quite a few times.

i still dont get the bee stings, it may be dumb luck. the first time we wiped was because i died instantly. 2nd time was because we didnt know how to take doom off (lol we didnt ready strat before going.) all in all it was fun learning the encounters without google. seriously tho so far best mmo to come out in a long ass time. its just fun.

[heartbrand]

? Make friends heartbrand. I run it 7 times on mondays after work on Mondays even without the speed runs. 40 minute a shot to knock out Tomestones of Mythology then I spend the rest of the week farming CM for ToPhilosophy. I also don't have any problem reserving an instance cause I play on japanese servers and they aren't packed full until about 6AM.

Other end game is Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, Coil, Wanderer's Palace.

Samwise: I'm glad your enjoying it. For some reason the only dungeon that gave me a hard time leveling up was Temple of Qarn. I think it may have been because it was in early access week and no one quite new the mechanic on the bees with their final sting. That thing got us quite a few times.

You're missing the point, im in multiple linkshells and have pre made groups and it still can take over an hour for the instance to be reserved, I'm glad you're on some Japanese server but for us on American servers it fucking blows. Also, there's really no reason to run primals again after you got your relic shit and WP sucks compared to AK. Stop trying to cover up for a game being ran like shit with "play on Japan server"

[heartbrand]

Basically, the only way to gear your char in this game is through what's essentially JP and valor points and the only way to get valor is through one dungeon that takes upwards of an hour to queue for because of the shitty instance servers and takes way too fucking long to complete and the JP come from doing CM over and over and over. That's the end game. Uninstalled game yesterday after getting relic.

[lecompte]

Huh, Guess I'm just more wiling to grind content -- I do play EQ, after all. Sorry you uninstalled but sounds like you got your money's worth.

[SamwiseRed]

HB started a week after me, already 50 and epiced lol. im almost 40 and still playing. this game is new, its not going to hold the attention span of power gamers like hb. i play about 1-2 hours a day at most so itll be awhile til im bored.

[Millburn]

I ground my first 50 asap through Fates, which was my Summoner. Decided to switch out my role to Scholar since it's insta 50 anyway with it being based on the Arcanist. I've been having a blast every time I log in. There's a ton of stuff to do, it's just Heartbrand wants to progress progress progress and that's the wrong approach. Is that his fault or the game's fault? A bit of both I would hazard a guess. SE has always made for a slow grind so it comes as no surprise that they do the same thing in FFXIV, only thing different is how fast you reach max level.

I've got almost full darklight in all my slots save for a ring and earrings, also have my garuda weapon. So how is it that I still have fun logging in each day? Well mostly because there's a giant fucking world to play around in and at least 15 other classes to sink my teeth into.

The point here is if you're gonna power game to the end in a week, set your expectations to a realistic viewpoint. Otherwise, take your time and do the slow roll on a different class while content is made available for the one you're maining.

[heartbrand]

Shrug, there's a huge world but like most games nowadays there's no real reason to revisit most places once you've gone through them on the theme park express leveling ride. Eq still seems to be the only game where zones are revisited constantly. If the instances were fun it would be one thing but they're just a bunch of brown dark corridors completely linear with shit loot, and at the end game it's literally just one over and over. Shrug, I feel like there's so much FF lore they could pack in this game and non linear type dungeons and what not but they aren't taking advantage of it. Playing multiple classes just doesn't really appeal to me especially since you have to fate grind and hunting log the third time around. To each their own.

[Millburn]

Yeah man I agree on the dungeons, there's plenty of interesting ones, but the nature of how you explore and complete them is a very linear experience. The atmosphere is there, but it needs to be a little less of a guided tour and more of a let's sit down and eat some Neapolitan ice cream.

About the use of the IP though, I've seen a metric shit ton of references pulled from all over the spectrum out of pop culture, current events, and a tooooooon of Final Fantasy stuff from previous games. I mean just look at the Crystal Tower that's coming out, that's straight out of FF3 isn't it? Supposedly the final boss there is going to be none other than Cloud of Darkness itself.

I'm looking forward to the content updates, but I don't feel like SE is at fault for the level of content they currently have.

[lecompte]

PS, Bahamut's Coil is really hard -- for my group anyway.