Here’s some more detailed reactions to FFXIV after a few more hours playing the trial.
I’ve played all the classes available to the Trial except Rogue and Pugilist. None of them seem over powered, but they all survive fine to solo the content up to about 20 – which is as far as I’ve played. This content contains lots of quests, solo instances and several dungeons, so the game play is quite varied early on as you level.
After sending Tank, DPS and Healers through the Novice training, I found it quite useful. It concentrates on party play, which prepares you for the four man dungeons. So not only do you get nice looking gear from the tutorials, but you get some valuable lessons too.
After all, could you pass up meeting with this little cutie? Well she’s the healer trainer, the Tank and DPS trainers are buff dudes. But never the less, you get that sweet outfit that I’ve been seeing around.
I’m finally getting around to trying this game and I waited too long.
FFXIV was released in 2013, so it came along after the other titles, which means it can be better looking and doesn’t have a low rez legacy. Wow was released in 2004, but got new models for characters with Pandaria in 2012. Tera was released in 2011. As you can see from those character creation screens, the models are beautiful and varied.
After the nonsense with Level Scaling showed up in Wow PTR, I looked around for something else to play and FFXIV has a free trial. The trial is limited in the standard ways: no cash shop – not clear why Trial’s shouldn’t spend money on the game -, no mail, no making parties, no private chat unless they chat you first, no friending unless they friend you first, and so forth. But you can play as long as you like with up to eight characters up to level 35. So here I am.
I don’t need to do a full-on review. There is plenty of youtube footage out there and plenty of detailed reviews. But here are my general impressions.
I’m sick of playing it and sick of hearing about it. Here’s an example of a 97 Mage in the area near Kahdgar’s hangout in Talador. I’ve played through this area with every class, and taken out No’losh, the Elite swamp walker, every time on Live. But in PTR, he’s a 99 – level scaled up above my 97 mage and he can’t be solo’d even with the Mage helper Serena. And another thing. Notice the fight with the Shambler and Bloodpetals.
They almost got me again since they gang up on you outside the cave. But notice the Bloodpetals give the same XP as the Shamblers? Huh? Those little guys were weaker in Live. Supposed to be since there is a gang of them. But not in PTR and likely not in 7.3.5 either. The level scaling has so many issues you would not believe.
I just found a neat feature. /played which is a chat command that displays the time played for the current character since creation and in the current level.
Update: See below.
Since I reupped in May, I’ve been leveling some toons pretty efficiently. I typically used dungeons to level 60, then quests through Outland, Northrend, Vashj’ir and Pandaria. Some dungeons were played after level 60, but primarily quests were used to level. At this point, they continued with Quests and Treasure Hunting through Draenor. Treasure hunting gives about 1.5 times the XP of a quest in the area, so using a Treasure Hunting AddOn can be a very efficient way to level, especially if you can fly through Draenor.
The goal is to get to 101 before going to Legion. All the characters have 4 Heirloom armor pieces, an Heirloom weapon and a necklace. At level 101, there is a jump in Heirloom item level, which will help a lot when starting Legion. Here are the play times for some of these characters leveled this way to about 100:
Leveling to 100ish
Before taking these characters to Draenor, I took a Demon Hunter through the DH starting area, and then directly to Draenor to most efficiently get Draenor Pathfinder. So all other characters could fly in Draenor. As these characters reached Level Cap of Outland, and Northrend they moved on to the next area. Before moving to Draenor, some of the classes were taken to 91 to boost the Heirloom Item Level, but in general this is not that necessary. The Pandaria and Draenor starting areas are quite friendly and reasonable even with green level gear.
I’ve been playing the PTR [ Public Test Realm] to see what Level Scaling looks like. So far I’m not a fan. Update below.
It’s a real drag.
Classes do better that have self heal – Priest, Paladin, Shaman, Druid, Warlock, Demon Hunter obviously. Mages are going to be at a disadvantage with no good tank pet and no self heal. Shaman and Balance Druid are under powered and will do a lot of self healing. With their pet, Hunters are fine in 10-20 areas that I’ve tried.
Priest and Paladin and Warlock do all right, but it’s a real drag. Lots of healing of course. Each major quest gets you 7.5% of a level. And higher repair bills too. Why isn’t repair gone or zero cost? The problem with it taking longer to kill mobs is that they have time to gang up on you.
During the Introduction Event you get a 14 day pink costume and gun skin. Here are some examples of early armor. Looks a lot like the Castanic / High Elf skins we are used to.
Don’t worry, she’s overpowered like previous gunners.
I usually run around on my mount to round up some mobs and then blow them all away with Burst Fire, which gets charged up as you kill the mobs.
I have completed the quest chain to obtain the Grand flying faction mounts from Pandaria. Whew. It took a month or so to get Exalted with the Dominance Offensive faction and then a few hours to grind through the quests to finally Ring the Bell and get the mount. Of course you can get the Armored version of the mount for Gold when you reach Exalted, but I prefer the non-armored versions of the mounts. For the non-Armored version, you need to complete the quest chain, the last few of which require Exalted with your faction Rep in Pandaria. The Guides know all.
Ok. Ok. While she certainly doesn’t look it, I admit that the recent changes to the Mystic don’t reduce the ability to solo level. In fact, it appears that, at least in levels from 1 – 40, the Mystic is now Over Powered like the other classes in Tera.
One of the ways that I judge being over powered is to take on a BAM – Big Ahem Monster – at the same level and see if I can solo it. When Ninja came out we were shocked at how over powered it was. And then Gunner came out and it was Over Powered. And then Valkyrie came out and we saw the pattern. The recent changes to mystic, while changing things around quite a lot, actually make the class more powerful than it was. And it was fine before.
The Thrall of Vengeance – while it operates like a totem, and looks like something from the Ghostbusters movie, actually has a lot more aggro and health than it did before. So if you give it a couple of glyphs to increase power and length of time it survives it’s quite a good BAM killer. I actually used it to solo a BAM all by itself at 32. You might have to drop another one during the fight, but the cool down is short enough that this is no problem.
The Thrall of Wrath has been Nerfed a little at these levels. While it is a good opener for a BAM, it’s not powerful enough to finish off a BAM the way it used to be.
Windy Weather 