Past the far edge of fate
Ring blades of dark and light
Tolling the coming of the end
Cinematic trailer, some spoilers if you're not caught up to the end of the current expansion:
https://youtu.be/9sEINMGorTE
Job action trailer, shiny ability graphics for the... 19? combat jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCVcgZ8dtD0
Final Fantasy 14! It's an MMORPG. It plays a lot like WoW, with a much greater focus on a JRPG-style linear main story with what I think is relatively good writing.
MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV now has a free trial consisting of A Realm Reborn plus the award-winning first expansion, Heavensward, with no time restriction. Unfortunately you lose access to the free trial if you have ever subscribed on that account, so returning players still have to pay.
Endwalker won't be the final expansion, but it is the end of the current main story arc that has lasted since the start of A Realm Reborn, or really since the original 1.0 back in 2010. Whatever they're doing with the story next will be explored in the post-release patches over the next 2 years.
The expansion also features male Viera and two new jobs:
Sage is a healer which fights with independently flying magic bits that shoot lasers and shield allies.
Reaper is a melee damage dealer that fights with a scythe and uses a summoned demon as a Jojo stand.
Benchmark/character creator preview, with male Viera:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/
Posts
with our pants always falling down too
i pay them money to escape reality damnit
Edit: Oh, they also have a 15s cooldown that pops their other shield to turn it into healing. Handy.
I don’t get the point of that. Like, it would make sense if they had no GCD pure heals, but they do.
Steam: pazython
... everyone was dead but the tanks, but I'll take it!
All pants are now 2B glamours.
All of them
You can even "solo" most dungeons 1-60/71-80 with an NPC party, although the 1-60 system isn't really made for that and has some huge gaps where they couldn't be bothered to program NPC behavior vs. mechanics.
Also, you still need to do all the 8v1 boss fights with other players.
FFXIV is very solo-friendly in general, though. You don't even really need to communicate with anyone to party up for dungeons, the server will just match you up automatically and IME like 90% of dungeon communication is just a "o/" at the beginning and a "gg" at the end.
I have hundreds of hours in this
well i never
I'm starting to understand the game enough that proposed changes and the leaked tool tips aren't total gibberish to me, and...this all seems extremely drastic.
6.0 Patch Notes: released a different game
balance changes are definitely at their highest when a new expansion launches, which is what 6.0 will be.
Generally speaking, expansion launches are when they iterate on class changes/balance the most, either due to player feedback, quality of life changes, or more general shifts in design philosophy. For patches in between expansions (6.1, 6.2 etc) you will often see numbers tweaks, and sometimes wider changes depending on how important they deem the changes to the overall health of the class, but are less...impactful. Aside from pretty dire circumstances, they're very unlikely to change how a class plays from patch to patch, but will often happen in between expansions, to varying degrees
BRD and MCH were basically turrets during Heavensward, and now they're incredibly mobile. MCH also got a huge rework for ShB. DRK had a bunch of big changes going into ShB.
The Job Gauges didn't exist before Stormblood, so each job got some pretty big changes just by getting a Job Gauge.
I'm sure there are many more examples, but those are the ones that spring to mind.
also girls will be watching
You get to look at the new actions and wildly speculate about what that means for how each job will change in the new expac.
and boys!
I really like the look of the AST changes. Separating Divination from the cards is a big improvement and the new self-buff stuff looks really cool. Hopefully they're good enough buffs to justify paying attention to the suits. SGE looks... really cool, but as @I needed a gnome to post. hinted at I think a lot of long-time FFXIV healers are going to bounce off it hard.
I've mostly stopped playing WAR because it got boring, and unfortunately these changes seem to make it worse. The only interesting part of WAR was tracking gauge so you didn't delay an Upheaval, making sure you had Upheaval and Onslaught both up for Inner Release, and timing Inner Release so you got a full five Fell Cleaves off of it. Now... not a single one of those is relevant? Ah well. I love the style of WAR -- big axe tank > all (big sword tank is good to, but it's distant second) but I doubt I'll play it much in EW.
Feels like I'm glamming nothin' at all
Nothin' at all
Nothin' at all
I don't think you can actually use the squadron system to do dungeons for the story, it's all separated off in its own little ecosystem. And not all dungeons are available for squadron runs. And you can't even unlock it for quite a while in the story.
I'm glad I picked Astrologian as my new healer to level. Their stuff actually looks fun overall. Top players are going to be absolutely furious at damage being tied to RNG, so get ready to hear a ton of that debate until Redraw gets buffed.
Paladin's rotation appears to have gone completely unchanged beyond replacing one Goring Blade combo with three extra Confiteor presses, but they get tons of incidental self-healing and Shelltron is a lot more impactful, so those are good changes.
I don't understand Warrior or Gunblade well enough to be able to tell what changed there. Doesn't look like much beyond the Shelltron equivalents? Paladin and Gunblade getting extra self-healing while Dark Knight, who already struggled in that area, gets none is bumming me out.
Bard gets the thing! Also the new raid buff is the literal furthest possible thing from lining up with raid timers, so that's kind of hilarious.
Your resource pips being separated into 3 dps and 3 healing ones sweetens the deal a fair bit and a gap closer is a nice bonus.
Really leaning towards it, but It'll depend on how the job actually feels.
(technically DRK already has "bonus for well-timed mitigation" in TBN)
I at least like that DRK has some sorta-flashy new attacks, in Shadow Bringer and Salt And Darkness. I'm not too miffed about them not getting much new in the "using mitigation skills at the right time" thing, because DRK kinda... started that trend, didn't it? Ever since Stormblood, we've had The Blackest Night as a cooldown that rewards you for using it only when you're actually gonna break the shield.
I'm admittedly a lot happier with Dark Knight's current state than Scholar's, so a lackluster expansion isn't exactly ruinous, but still, there's so little unique flavor to it. You get 60-90 second OGCDs largely indistinguishable from the numerous 60-90 second OGCDs you already have every buff window, and then the most boring possible targeted mitigation ability just to keep you from falling too far behind the other tanks getting their TBN-equivalents buffed. None of it feels like it's actually new. If, say, Shadowbringer or Abyssal Drain was a non-charge 30-second OGCD to adjust your tempo, Salt and Darkness had a big self-heal component, and Oblation had any sort of kicker to it at all, I'd have felt better about it.
I'd have liked something a little flashier, but I'm going to wait and see how that Broil cast time reduction feels too - SCH has a mountain of oGCDs that are going to flow so much better.
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