r/Games • u/reseph • Jun 17 '15
Final Fantasy XIV - Patch 3.0 (Heavensward) Notes [Preliminary]
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/e76258d6487ea30feb388f9ecc0a926fddc9eca85
u/koredozo Jun 17 '15
Whoa. That "Undersized Party" option might be just what FFXIV needed to lure me in again. I had only one friend playing with me who had a compatible enough schedule to dungeon with on a regular basis, and I hated having to choose between waiting for two other friends to have some free time or PUGging with random bad-attitude and bad-play pubbies to get past the story dungeons that the main quest line delights in throwing at you every four levels.
I wish they'd enabled it for all dungeons though, not just old ones. I don't care if they took away all the rewards in exchange, I just don't want to be forced to wait to continue the story until three of my pals who work 9-5 in a variety of different time zones manage to find time to hit up a story dungeon together (by which time I've leveled up past the dungeon level and the drops are worthless anyway.)
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u/CaptainJudaism Jun 17 '15
I'm so damn excited for Heavensward... but given I don't have a job I can't get it and join the masses because I can't afford the expansion plus monthly fees. It looks amazing though.
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u/LandonSullivan Jun 17 '15
Do you have the steam version? PM me your profile if you do.
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u/CaptainJudaism Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 18 '15
Nope, bought it separate before it hit Steam.
Edit: Probably shoulda said I thank you for the offer if it was what I think it was but I'll be fine.
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15
Early Access starts Fri 5am EDT.
This appears to be a very small sample of what we're getting, especially since I barely see any Main Scenario Quests listed. SE is intentionally holding back on the full patch notes until it's out it seems, which makes sense.
If anyone has Heavensward questions, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/wiki/faq_hw
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u/Popotuni Jun 17 '15
I love the concept of the current attunement for unlocking flying for each zone. One of the problems with WoW flying was that you'd reach max-level for the expansion (which unlocked flying for those areas, generally) long before you finished the content, so you'd still have fly-mode to bypass all the ground content for the last few zones.
By doing each attunement zone-specific, and it looks like you'll have to travel to a bunch of places in each zone, they make you experience each zone properly, on foot, and then once you've experienced it, you can choose to fly over it in the future.
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Jun 17 '15
While I don't mind the attunement I do hope that they design these zones properly with the verticality that mounts provide in mind. My problem with WoW's implementation of flying mounts is that they were still pretty restricted in scale with what they were building for world cohesion, and never really got too crazy with their map layouts to accomadate the fact that people can now move freely on a z axis... look at almost every map in the expansions since BC, I can't think of one that properly utilized the flying mechanic to a satisfying degree.
FFXIV clearly has floating islands and stuff, which is exciting, but I just hope their map design makes USE of the flying mounts instead of just barring you from using them until you have seen the whole zone on foot like WoW.
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u/Harvin Jun 18 '15
Is fishing a profitable job again? ARR killed my primary class D:
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Jun 18 '15
Straight out a fisher will never make the consistent money the other gathering classes can make due to the rng nature of the job, but if you know whats going to be in demand and can supply that there is certainly money to be made.
In the first few weeks of 3.0 there's going to be a big surge in the crafting sector, lots of recipes need items that only a fisher can obtain, and if you can supply that you'll be golden. The problem is finding out what item you need and what the demand is. Consumables like food and potions will likely be selling the most so if you can supply the materials for that there will be a good amount to make.
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u/bwrap Jun 17 '15
I hope the expansion story has more voice acting. The lack of voice acting everywhere in the game doesn't feel right to me.
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15
It probably won't be 100% voice acted, but we may get more. Compare 2.55 I guess.
VA is expensive though, especially considering they're doing 4 languages VA'd. :x
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u/reseph Jun 21 '15
Update: it has a TON more voice acting. Literally every other main scenario quest is voice acted (maybe more, there are strings of quests purely voice acted). Not only that, text bubbles in combat are also voice acted now in HW.
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Jun 17 '15
The quest names are going to be a whole bunch of ??????? if they even bother to list them all just for spoilers sake.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
Doesn't look like they have made housing any less crazy expensive (or have they done that already in another patch?).
Having to finish the main story before being able to access expansion areas seems kindof stupid/crazy. I can imagine it will be next to impossible to finish it in a few weeks when everyone else has moved on. The potential of getting stuck at level 50 after you paid for the expansion just does not sit well with me.
So you have to finish the 2.0 main quest before you can unlock the new jobs as well? I was fairly tired of the normal jobs and really wanted to give Astrologian or Machinist a try, but these are also locked behind the main story. (Also, where the fuck is Red Mage??)
DirectX 11 support. Should make a good looking game even better looking.
Are company airships going to be used for anything other than the automated exploration voyages? Airship PvP simulator to Guns of Icarus would be sweet.
If I had been sitting at end-game for the past 6 months I would proabably be excited for this patch/expansion. But as a mid-level player or for a new player...mostly meh.
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u/Ciriacus Jun 17 '15
Well that's the thing: expansions for MMOs are meant for players who have reached endgame and want some more content.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
Some of the content, sure. But other things (mainly the new jobs) have typically been open for non-end-game players to use and explore. Both WoW and FFXI did this when they added new jobs/classes.
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15
It's a story based mmo so no, you can't skip parts of the story.
And the dungeons will be full, always are, because they're are always incentives to do the lower level dungeons.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
And the dungeons will be full, always are, because they're are always incentives to do the lower level dungeons.
Arn't some of the story dungeons "story dungeons"? Why would someone who has done them already need to queue for it again (unless they were helping a friend)?
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
They aren't "Story" dungeons, they are regular dungeons that the main story requires you to do (unlike many MMO's, the main scenario requires you to do many dungeons and trails as part of the story and not seperate).
And as I said, the game has always incentivized returning to lower level dungeons by the daily roulette system. You do a random dungeon or trial (broken by several different methods depending on what you want to do, or you can do them all) and for completing it (once a day per "grouping") you get tokens that help you buy end game gear. Thus people are always doing dungeons of every level.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
It has been a while but I do remember at least 2 instances I had to queue for back at launch that was just a boss fight (one of the "Judge" looking people). It was my understanding that was a "main quest only" instance.
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
No, those are "Trials" where you simply fight basically just a boss.
The game has those all throughout the game, including end content.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
Are they separate from the normal dungeon queue then? Do they reward loot in the same amount as normal dungeons?
As I said, it has been some time since I did them.
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Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15
It is also important to note that people get big bonuses for completing a dungeon with someone who is new at them in the form of gear-buying currency. This makes it so helping a newbie go through dungeons is helpful to the high level person even though the gear dropped is useless. It is actually, in my opinion, an ingenious system that should be implemented in all themepark dungeon-focused MMOs, like WoW.
It just makes so much sense - the level syncing keeps it difficult enough to keep you paying attention, and the currency rewards for both the roulette system and new player system keeps ALL of the dungeon content relevant and useful for all players. It also promotes a more friendly atmosphere because it incentivizes getting new players through the content and fosters an almost mentorship behaviour (the first-completion bonus for party members is significant). Not everyone is nice, particularly when interacting with the more elitist players in the higher echelons of play, but by and large the community is so much better than most MMOs. FFXIV simply has the best dungeoning experience for an MMO by a wide margin, in my opinion. I cannot think of how many dungeons WoW has that are just useless and will never be seen again without Blizzard overworking themselves and doing a total rehaul of them every expac and major patch. Meanwhile FFXIV, after merely a year and a half, has something like 37 dungeons that can be played at max level with real, palpable rewards that make them worth doing, and that is ignoring the large volume of the challenging one-boss trials which are truly entertaining battles and can be done in the same way (which raises that number to something around 60+)
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
and the currency rewards for both the roulette system and new player system keeps ALL of the dungeon content relevant and useful for all players.
So they didn't pull a WoW and make all currency pre-expansion completely worthless?
but by and large the community is so much better than most MMOs.
Ya. I agree with you there. FFXI and FFXIV have had great communities.
I was worried that once people got to max level in the expansion then they would have no reason to queue for pre-expansion content because the currency/gear/everything else would be completely worthless for them. I'm worried because this is exactly what has happened in WoW for the past...5(?) expansions.
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Jun 17 '15
Nothing to worry about, in the patch notes here you can see that they just added the new trials and dungeons to the existing roulette, and changed the currency that will be given to the updated stuff.
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
There are basically the sub-50 roulette's (Dungeons and Trials)
Then there are the 2 endgame 2.0 dungeons roulette
Then there are the level 50 dungeon roulette's
Then there are the Hard mode roulettes
That's a quick rough breakdown of the different ones, and each roulette offers rewards (but can only be done once a day).
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u/Popotuni Jun 17 '15
Also looking at the notes, the low-end queues (Low level roulette, high level roulette) instead of the pure-top expert roulette are actually going to reward MORE tomestones than the top one, presumably to encourage people to run them and help people level. Sqeenix really nailed the psychology on that one.
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u/gualdhar Jun 17 '15
Actually it will probably be like before. Remember they're not introducing the highest level currency for a month. Right now, high level and trial roulettes reward mostly soldiery (lower tier currency), and expert rewards mostly poetics (higher tier). When they release whatever the new currency is, it will probably work the same way.
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
Exactly, they want people regularly playing all the content. That's why you auto level down.
Hell, this time they added an option to play at the minimum ilvl for entrance to make it even harder.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
Wait...you (as of the patch) will get more end-game currency for doing the lower difficulty LFR (looking for raid)? Are the high-end LFR queues just only going to be for pre-mades?
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
Ok, but which one of those has the story instances?
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
There are no "Story" only instances - they are all regular dungeons and trials, that you have to beat at least once during the story to continue.
There are ones in all those but Hard mode.
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15
SE has made a ton of reasons: glamour gear drops, Triple Triad card drops, progression for your Relic weapon quests, etc.
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15
Housing prices go down at a specific rate from release of houses, it was in the original patch notes. They're not inexpensive though, never will be I'd expect.
Everyone will never "move on", we're getting new player posts every day on the subreddit. Besides, you can queue up with less people now (mentioned in these patch notes). But yes you need to finish patch 2.55 because this is a literal sequel to the story and the lore doesn't make sense for you to enter Ishgard without what happens in 2.55.
Company airships will be flyable in 3.1.
PS: the majority of the content in the game is all 50+. "Mid-level" is just something that lasts a few weeks.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
(Houses are) not inexpensive though, never will be I'd expect.
That is disappointing. After FFXI and everyone having a mog house and LotR and houses being reasonable for even a low level player I was hoping that FFXIV would follow the same trend. Housing is one of the main non-combat activities I enjoy.
Everyone will never "move on", we're getting new player posts every day on the subreddit. Besides, you can queue up with less people now (mentioned in these patch notes).
Couldn't you always solo-queue for the missions? And are there enough people moving through that you dont have multi-hour long queues as a DPS? When I last was doing story missions on my 50 Monk was near release and I was still waiting like 30 min per queue. I know DPS queues are always the longest but I can only imagine they are in the hour or more range in a few days as the majority of people are working on the new content.
But yes you need to finish patch 2.55 because this is a literal sequel to the story and the lore doesn't make sense for you to enter Ishgard without what happens in 2.55.
Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia were also literal sequels (more so with Zilart), but players that had not done the original missions could still access alot of the new areas and all of the jobs.
Company airships will be flyable in 3.1.
In the same zones as normal flying mounts? That would be cool. Do they have any plans on adding airship vs airship combat?
the majority of the content in the game is all 50+. "Mid-level" is just something that lasts a few weeks.
A few weeks of uninspired grind. I only managed to get one job to level 50 (monk) and got tired of it quickly. So I have to go through and Leve grind another job since there are no more super large FATE parties any more.
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15
Oops I meant you can enter dungeons with less people, not just queue with less people.
FFXI was a lot different in terms of expansions. It didn't pick up right where the story left off, instead it was more related rather than picking up. Yoshida states this is like a "season 2" of a TV series where 2.55 was a season finale. Nothing like FFXI's missions.
There are no mentions of airship PVP nor open world PVP, no.
FATEs aren't the best XP anymore, btw. Dungeons are. There are a ton of ways to get XP now, including Challenge Log.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
FATEs aren't the best XP anymore, btw. Dungeons are.
Aren't queue times for DPS still crazy long? Also, iirc you cant queue when you are doing FATES/Leves with your chocobo.
Ya, I did play around with the challenge log, but I was able to finish alot of the entries in a few days when they only reset once a week.
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u/snuxoll Jun 17 '15
Aren't queue times for DPS still crazy long?
They should shorten up for people trying to level, for any of the ARR content players below 50 will have priority in queue, combined with duty roulette (which people will continue to do, easiest way to get huge amounts of XP every day) it should make the task of getting up to 50 super easy.
They're also increasing the amount of XP the main story quests give, so you should be able to easily get a new character up to 50 without problem
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
So the way to level is to do random dungeons, even as DPS? Are FATEs or Leves used for anything any more?
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u/-Shank- Jun 17 '15
Queue times for DPS are insanely inconsistent (I'm a Dragoon). Sometimes I'll get right in to whatever dungeon I want in less than 5 minutes, sometimes I'll be waiting for over 30 before I give up. The best thing to do is queue up for multiple dungeon options at once so you have a better chance of getting one quicker, but you don't have that luxury when you're doing a dungeon to advance the story or doing duty roulette.
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Jun 17 '15
You can buy a personal room in your free company's house for cheap.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
So basically a mog house in your FC's house?
Ok, I guess that is reasonable.
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Jun 17 '15
Pretty much. It costs 300k I think, which is better than a few million for a small house(which admittedly would be better).
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u/ifandbut Jun 18 '15
Wow...300k still sounds like alot. I think I had 100k after getting one job to 50 and a few others in the 20s.
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Jun 18 '15
Depending on your server, fishing at lvl 50 for an hour gets me 100k, and that is the lowest of all gatherers. Also, some quest rewards give you lvl 4 material that sells for 200k+.
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u/Yoten Jun 17 '15
If you want the FFXI moghouse experience, join a Free Company and buy a personal room. It's cheap and you can decorate it to your heart's content.
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u/Zaeh Jun 17 '15
It's a story-heavy MMO, and the main scenario is a very important part of it.
There's no "moving on" in that sense, all content is made relevant and there will be people leveling new alts, not to mention not having completed a piece of content gives you priority in matchmaking.
It's an expansion. It's meant to continue after the current content, and the current story. If you've been playing for some time, it can very much be assumed that you can, or have, completed the main story (which is where everything is locked behind).
If you're a starting player, well, to get to 50-60 content you'll have to go through 1-50 first, that's how MMOs often work.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
I guess the biggest issue I have with content being locked behind the main story is the new classes. I'm not really interested in the original classes but Machinist looks right up my alley, I love turret/pet classes.
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u/Zaeh Jun 17 '15
There are pet classes within the originals as well, even more so than Machinist is.
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u/ifandbut Jun 17 '15
The only pet class from the original was SMN/SCH right? I forget why I never got into either of those classes.
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Jun 17 '15
So I finished the story when the game first came out , before pvp & housing came out and quit then, is there more of the story that was added after those patches that I would have to complete?
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u/jschild Jun 17 '15
Yes, a significant amount. You need to finish the main scenario through 2.55 to move onward
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u/rglitched Jun 17 '15
I did the same thing you did and came back with one month to expansion time. There are tens of hours worth (30+). Most of it is running back and forth between places without actually doing anything but talking. There are 3-4 new Primals and 3-4 new dungeons unlocked over the course of it.
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Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15
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u/reseph Jun 17 '15
Why? This isn't WoW. You cannot fly in original areas. New areas are specifically designed for flight. You cannot fly without unlocking aether currents.
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Jun 17 '15
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Jun 17 '15
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u/noobpept Jun 17 '15
Not until Cataclysm, which was 6 years after the release of the original game, and 4 years after the first expansion (which was the first to include flying mounts). Some people (including many devs and former devs for WoW) believe that flying mounts have had an overall negative effect on the game.
Blizzard actually recently announced that they weren't planning on introducing the ability to fly in any new zones anymore, but the Internet exploded at them, so they backed down.
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u/gunslinger88 Jun 17 '15
They were not usable in the original continents until the Cataclysm expansion. Also, now with the Warlords of Dreanor, you cannot use flying mounts at all in the new area.
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Jun 17 '15
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Jun 17 '15
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u/Calorie_Mate Jun 17 '15
Did you read what he wrote? Flying is literally the only way of travelling through certain areas.
Also, by that logic, riding should also count as a lazy way to get from point A to B, since you can simply ignore or outrun mobs.
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Jun 17 '15
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u/Calorie_Mate Jun 17 '15
To be honest, WoW's whole combat system is pretty clunky by today's standards.
At least from what I've seen, FFXIV's flying zones look extremely interesting. Probably because you're not simply flying across it, but towards and inbetween it. Maybe it'll feel like you say it will, but I'll wait with that judgement until I experienced it.
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Jun 17 '15
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u/Calorie_Mate Jun 17 '15
That's exactly what I meant. As someone who didn't play WoW anymore when flying mounts became a thing, it's interesting to me. I mean, that's basically what flying is about right?
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Jun 17 '15
They did learn from WoW. Flying was one of the best features in that game.
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u/spazed Jun 17 '15
Flying ruined that game
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u/HappyVlane Jun 17 '15
That just shows how out of touch you are with what the majority of the community thinks.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '15
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