Cassandra

Cass: oatmeal and hope She finds this funny.

It all depends how things are handled. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if we fail to liberate one of them or some other misgivings happens along the way that carry into 5.0. Heavensward did an excellent job portraying the difficulty in changing dogmatic beliefs. I, for one, would love to see us fallible-- that even the ever vaulted Warrior of Light can objectively fail. But better to take a wait and see approach. I have plenty of concerns with Stormblood from a content and gameplay perspective, but after Heavenward, story is not among them.

So incredibly generous. :love:

I don't disagree. Hence why I suspect we'll be given one for free with the expansion. The cost aspect will likely be more for people who want to level multiple jobs/alts and to prevent RMT abuse, all while making a profit. Even if they didn't offer a free one, you'd be surprised just how many people are willing to pay just to avoid the horrible grind to endgame. The number of people I've come across both in game and on Reddit basically saying "I'd pay anything to skip those god awful fetch quests," is a little... surprising.

Kilieit Maybe the implementation of the level-jump potion to the rest of the regions will imply the creation of level 30 / 50 entries to the Hall of the Novice like I've wanted since the Hall of the Novice was introduced... :Ic (My hopes aren't high, but I'd really love that to be a thing. 30 and 50 are really the places where the complexity and difficulty of both your abilities, and the situations you use them in, step up. At sync from 15, Novice Hall can't teach you about so much stuff - aggro dumps, tank swaps (+ xclassed Provoke), combat resurrections (+ xclassed Swiftcast)...) They actually have considered a Hall of the Intermediate, which would specifically focus on learning your rotation. While I doubt they teach a raid equivalent one, it'd at least be better than what we have now. With any hope, they do something similar to WoW's Battlegrounds. After using their version of a skip, you're immediately tossed into an area and unlock your skills by using them. You're then shown how to execute them properly and have to do so or you've allowed to start playing. This. If the problem is quest bloat and just overall game design, charging people to 'skip all that' is stupid as all hell. Doesn't even matter how expensive they are - 5, 10, 20, nobody should have to pay to get past the drawn out and monotonous parts of the game. Condense the MSQ and cut out all the filler fetch quests (this would take a crap ton of work though so that will never happen). Lock expansion content behind level and not MSQ progress. Remove MSQ requirements entirely. Or, alternatively, gate stuff behind only the x.0 MSQ. Allow people the option to do x.1 and on MSQ if they want, but a quick summary and an option to bypass slogging through 10 extra hours of drawn out story. I don't know. Something. Anything. Anything but 20$ jump potions. Because they can. No company will ever provide something like this without a cost. It effectively allows you to skip potentially months of progress. In some sense, Square is ensuring they collect a sub free equivalent to what someone might have paid had they leveled the slow way. Nonetheless, I am against any adjustments to ARR and Heavensward due to the cost involved. They have a finite amount of resources and I'd prefer the majority goes to new content in Stormblood, not improving to stuff I'll never even see unless I level an alt. More than likely, they'll gift us a free one with the expansion similar to Legion.

To be perfectly honest, I feel the MSQ does very little to actually teach people how to play their jobs, especially given the rotation you'll eventually need for most DPS. Not to mention, with PotD, fates and general EXP boosts, getting a job up to 60 doesn't require much more than time. In fact, I had Dark Knight at 60 before I even bothered with Provoke. I just dragged it through Vanu and Gnath fates and the occasional Leveling-- basically any content where I wouldn't actually need Provoke. I learned how to play the job entirely through Youtube guides. As for only allowing people to use a skip potion once they already have a job at 60. That effectively defeats the purpose. People want to skip the MSQ due to the sheer amount of fetch quests, not the leveling process. Another thing to consider is by trimming quests, they devs would need to rewrite and reanimate whole scenes to maintain a cohesive narrative. Whatever work they do on ARR and Heavensward comes out of Stormblood's budget. Essentially, they'd be tweaking content most of us will never even see. And that's more or less my reasons for supporting a jump potion. Allow people who aren't interested in the story to play the game as they fancy and for those who are to take their time. Will it affect Duty Finder? Initially, yes. But things will inevitably sort themselves out once people who couldn't care less about improving move on to the next "big thing." FFXIV doesn't have the same luxury as WoW to wait four or six expansions. The market has long since changed and people nowadays want to consume content immediately. Most new players are not going to slog through nearly 600 quests just to access Stormblood. They'll pick up the latest MMO or move to another game genre entirely.

1. Mogstation outfit 2. Fenrir Pup 3. Sophic Barding 4. Tier 2 Aquarium As always, thanks for doing this, Rini. <33

1. Tier 4 Aquarium 2. Ramie Poncho 3. Shaggy Shoat

I suspect the reason they don't is because they hope to encourage less people from transferring off other servers to Balmung and Gilgamesh. Blocking transfers as a whole could backfire, since people may up and quit if they wanted those particular servers for whatever reason. Making it slightly inconvenient though won't drive them fully away. It boggles the mind why they decided to allow people who own houses to also buy apartments.

Definitely look into commissions, mate! You do excellent work.

Welcome! FFXIV can feel a little overwhelming at first, especially on Balmung, but don't worry too much. The game does an excellent job weaving you into its story despite some fetch questing lol. Anywho, if you ever need help or fancy striking up RP, feel free to poke me anytime. IGN: Cassandra Solidor

Tumblr has a few bopping around, usually on Jenova, I think. If I may ask though, what struggles are you having with Balmung?

1. Moonfire set (Female) 2. Largely Woven Rug 3. Bluebird 4. Wind-up Tonberry Thanks as always, Rini! <3

If you're still up to draw more

I'll admit, unless otherwise notified beforehand, getting a healer who doesn't contribute any DPS can be incredibly frustrating. In my experiences, you can generally tell between those giving an honest effort but are merely nervous compared to the lazy players. What usually gets me is when said healer is jumping around or using emotes because they clearly have nothing else to do. It'll forever baffle me how they find this fun, but to each their own, I suppose. The part that irks me though is whenever you hear the "that's just their playstyle" arguments. Oh, so your playstyle consists of ignoring half your abilities? I sincerely doubt those same players would appreciate if the tank and DPS did the same.

1. Regal Mailbox 2. Oriental Bridge 3. Oriental Deck 4. Shishi-Odoshi 5. Head of the Dreadwyrm As always, thank you for doing this, Rini! :love:

More or less sums up my stance. I find the weapons far too cartoonish to even warrant as glamour. That said, the collector bug has bitten. So I at least want the minions/mount/achievements just to have them. If I can't toss the weapons in the Armoire immediately.... I may just toss them period. >.>

I believe it was me. Therefore, I feel shunned now. ;-; Fun aside, welcome to the RPC!

Gotta say, this amused me in the "it sounds pretty cool" kinda way. If you still need models, I'll happily sign up Cassie here.

My going theory is cost. We know FFXIV has essentially funded both FFXV and FFVII: Remake in one manner or another. Therefore, the dev team for FFXIV would only have a very limited budget and implementing instanced housing would require a massive infrastructure and resources better allocated to new raids, dungeons or other such content. That being said, the original intent had been to build a community-- a flawed designed from the get go. You can't have a hub consist of only thirty people. If they wanted that, then they should have split FC and Personal housing and made less wards but increase the lot space of each to accommodate. Imagine we were getting only a single ward, however it had all 240 plots. Doing so might have fostered the whole community feel. Otherwise, why not just hang around Ul'Dah or Idyllshire?

I turned down all my settings to limit background loading, have XIV on a SSD and am right where I need to be with some backup options if I miss out on my first attempt. Thanks for the Busy tip though, Gegenji. I never thought of people going to those lengths. So I'll have to type that super fast as I make my dash.

Might do another run through of Life is Strange, or just play Sims 4, watch some movies or work on my very neglected wiki.

While the RP aspect has more or less been covered, in terms of gameplay make sure to both complete the Hall of Novice and use a Recruit a Friend code. The game points you directly to the former while the latter can be given by anyone and entered on your Mog Station account should you choose to buy the base game. Doing so nets you two items that boost your EXP a massive 55% until level 26, then 30% until 31. This will let you breeze through early leveling and possibly get a feel for multiple classes/jobs without having to grind much at all. Also if you're willing to wait, patch 3.3 will be released on June 7th. Due to this, all servers will be shut down a day prior and reopened around 6am EST. This is a rare time Balmung may allow new characters if you're up at that time to spam the refresh option. Might let you save $18 on a transfer.

1. Lesser panda 2. Morpho No need to roll on stuff I already have otherwise. Best of luck to everyone. :love:

That fight with Nidhogg looks amazing. The hype is real gdi!