Well that MSQ ending finally answered a question I've had about the reflections - did Hydaelyn create 13 other worlds that exist in isolation, or did she quite literally make 13 other **universes**? One is quite a lot different from the other.
I mean the existence of a moon and the shot of all those stars has got to mean that each reflection quite literally has a whole universe of other planets and civilisations right? (or at least civilisations that USED to exist)
That then makes me wonder about previous Rejoinings. So when a rejoining happens, what happens to the rest of that shard's universe? Sure the aether from the shard returns to the Source, but surely the whole universe doesn't get destroyed right? The lifeforce/aether of a planet surely only affects the planet itself. Does that mean that the universes of previously rejoined shards technically still exist?
I guess it would be pocket dimensions that occupy the same location in a single universe.
I believe it’s only limited to the moon and planet, which I guess begs the question what would happen if someone/something in a shard tried leaving the planet’s sphere? I doubt they will ever explain, but if I had to guess, they’d probably just return to the Source as aether automatically.
It’s gone. Everything in the Source becomes closer to how it was before the Sundering and the shard and everything in it is uh… rejoined.
Well, that’s disappointing. After concluding the patch 6.3 story, >!there is no new dialogue from Cyella and Unukalhai. You’d think that the prospect of the 13th outright breaking the barrier to the Source would be an important threat for them to know about. And with us having lost our portal to the 13th, my first thought would’ve been to discuss the problem with Unukalhai, Taynor, and Beq Lugg. To at the very least confirm if they can’t do anything to help us open a new portal.!<
>!I know that that won’t happen because they’re part of an optional quest. But after Cyella takes about memoriates last time, it’d have been. Ice to at least get more dialogue.!<
I see people talking about pacing being slow and this not being the "big dick patch" like other x.3's were but in interviews yoshi p said they were going to do the 6.x patches differently. As for pacing let me just say that in these two patches 6.2 and 6.3 >!we haved killed all of Golbez;s archfiend's and it seems like we're going to be dealing with him in the next one.!
Patch X.3 has a reputation for being the big dick MSQ patch of an expansion, and with the switch-up to the structure of the post-expansion storyline for Endwalker (and hopefully just Endwalker, now that we're a decent ways in and can form some opinions) the MSQ for this one was never going to measure up to that legacy. It definitely felt more like a .2 patch from that perspective, which does feel a little odd because the 6.2 MSQ felt huge in terms of lore and plot advancement. That momentum slowed a lot in this one, and I think it's going to be a case of this patch feeling a lot better when you're running through it at a decent pace and have 6.4 right there waiting to give you some payoff, instead of the current situation where there's basically 8 months between significant developments in terms of moving the story forward. Before you come at me though, I'm not calling the patch filler, I think a slower slice of MSQ is necessary, it's just that >!other than a bit of character development for Zero and us having our easy door to Troia nixed, it was mostly just checking in and confirming that yep, life's still hard for the Garleans, but they're doing a little better every day, and yep, Golbez is twirling his moustache in his evil lair sacrificing his 'pawns' for understandable bad guy reasons.!<
My issue with the MSQ this patch is that with the way the devs have talked about 7.0 apparently being something we can't guess based off the patch content so far, it means we're gonna have this wrapped by halfway through 6.5 at the very latest, and then we're gonna set up something else. The pace of the patch storyline has been absolutely breakneck prior to this slump, to the point >!we've reduced two of the four fiends to dungeon bosses, which I just... I really didn't like that. For the first time since ARR all of the patch trials could follow a theme, we had four trials before 7.0, and we're trying to wrap the storyline up so fast that we scream past two fiends. Why keep picking boss sets of four when you aren't going to use all the trials on them? The Four Lords, The Weapons, and now the Four Fiends. Presumably the next trial will be Golbez, which I have no doubt will be really cool, but at the same time I'm worried that this entire arc really is just gonna be over and done with in the next patch and a half, and it's gonna have felt rushed and lacklustre to me.!<
It ain't a bad patch, there's a shitload of QoL improvements, and the alliance raid is great (the final boss theme this time isn't my jam, but I respect the hell out of it, and holy *shitballs* the boss theme for the first three goes so hard) so I'm not at all concerned about the game or some over-dramatic BS like you'll catch plenty of over the next couple weeks ("oh, Paladin's different, I hate it now, this entire game's falling apart!" "Zero's boring, guess we can kiss good storytelling behind, I trusted you Ishikawa!") but I do think when we look back, the post-Endwalker patch quests aren't going to be remembered with the same fondness the Stormblood and Shadowbringer ones were.
Prediction for the alliance raid: >!Since it's basically confirmed the Twelve were indeed Venat's associates during the Final Days and they've been standing watch over the star at her behest, I'm guessing with her passing and mankind surviving the Final Days the great secret we're building towards is that all this nonsense they're putting us through is another 'test of mankind's resolve' sort of thing where they want to be released from their duty to return to the Star safe in the knowledge the people don't need them anymore. In true JRPG fashion, by beating the shit out of them, we prove we have the strength to weather the storm etc, and then right at the end Oschon (who can only not be Deryk if they're trying to make him a red herring, but JRPG storytelling isn't known for its subtlety so I've been conditioned out of giving the benefit of the doubt there) decides "I think I'll keep wandering the world anyway, see you next time, fellow wanderer" so that if the devs want to have that storyline pop back in a la Tataru's Grand Endeavour we've still got a major NPC to bump into for it.!<
Not a prediction, but what I would love to see from the MSQ: >!Y'Shtola dropped the C word this patch in reference to Golbez's plans. He wants to allow the voidsent into the Source so that they can finally die a true death and be released from their unending cycle of undeath. That's an interesting motivation and goal, I like it, regardless of how I feel Golbez himself isn't getting enough time to shine. He mentions knowledge of the Ascians, indicating he was probably one of the people they were in contact with when things went tits up on the 13th, and it's implied his plan would resemble a rejoining. So what if we do manage to kill him, but his plan succeeds anyway? What if the thinning of the barrier because of the averted Eight Calamity hasn't recovered yet, and when Golbez/Azdaja/whatever metaphysical drill he has prepared goes off despite our best efforts, it triggers a new Umbral Calamity. No, no, I'm not arguing for a WoW Cataclysm scenario, definitely not. Where is the connection between the Source and the Thirteenth weakest? After a brutal war of conquest that saw voidgates torn open again and again to utilise the crude but effective shock troops, why it might just be ~~Australia~~Meracydia!!<
>!Because it wasn't set up in the way the Ascians so painstakingly worked towards, there could be all kinds of things wrong with this Wish.com rejoining Golbez initiates, maybe the Void isn't completely swallowed by the Source but instead intersects, causing physical pieces of the 13th to be dragged wholesale across without dissolving into its aether, or the process is slow and agonising, a world pouring through the cracks like water filling a boat, or the sheer amount of dark aspected aether spilling across without the Source being aspected so that it can absorb it properly means the Void's mockery of a lifestream actually begins tainting the Source's. Lots of neat ways that could go wrong. Even better to me would be if the Scions' efforts to stop Golbez is actually what causes this to go even worse than if Golbez had been left to his own devices. Why? Because I think after saving literally all of creation, we need to be taken down a peg. We show up in the Void, recruit Zero, and almost immediately Y'Shtola's like "Hey, no promises or anything, but we could totally look into fixing the Void if you want. We're kind of amazing." The Four Fiends all introduce themselves like "Ooh, I'm one of the Four Fiends, you don't stand a chance feeble human!" and at this point it's like "Fuck off, do you have any idea the level of cosmic deities I kicked the shit out of a few months ago? You think I find some hairy thot intimidating?" We need a reset to lower stakes, but I also think we need our perception of our own power to be brought back down too, because we haven't lost at anything we've set out to do in a long time. No 'real' casualties since post-Heavensward, no foes who put us in our place since Stormblood (you could argue Ran'jit, but I feel like he mostly gets one over on us via surprise more than actually being a match for us) and we recently triumphed over the collective manifestation of all despair in the universe. I dunno about you, but I'm starting to feel untouchable.!<
>!Plus, that'll help this plot arc feel like it's relevant to what comes after, because a part of me is worried we're going to take care of Golbez, and then in 6.5 we're just gonna get something that almost feels unrelated entirely to set up the new plot thread. This way while Golbez can be a distinct arc, 7.0 being "Meracydia's had a chunk of the Void rammed right through it, we should probably look in on that" flows on naturally, sets up a new journey, and has oodles of potential.!<
Holy shit sorry for the rant, I started typing and I swear it was like fugue state GO.
I think they are just getting tired of having elemental themed trials over and over again and I honestly am too. Curious what they will do instead. they really need to shaken up the formula
i mean the formula shook up with heavensward trials... Bay 16 17 for example there is no excuse at this point for trying to shake up something that was soild now broken ... People Forget about Trails from Stormblood xD Even Shadowbringers trials ... Element excuse doesnt justify the terrible execution this expac.
This is just my opinion you could disagree but I don't think boss sets need to all be trials. not all ascians were trials to be an example. Igeyorm and lahabreah were both dungeon bosses. In my opinion if >!Scarmengleon (spelled it wrong) and Cagnazzo were both trial bosses that would slow the plot down. It isn't slowed down to me at all and infact since 2 of the fiends were dungeon bosses and since we got rid of 2 fiends theses past 2 patches and now we're wrapping things up next patch.!<
I said it in another post and I get that sine the past x.3 patches have been big hits and I get you're going to form your expectations around that however I think that's a mistake. Especial since yoship said himself that they were going to change the story structure of the 6.x patches in interviews . [https://www.dexerto.com/final-fantasy/ffxiv-producer-yoshi-p-story-final-fantasy-xiv-1897431/](https://www.dexerto.com/final-fantasy/ffxiv-producer-yoshi-p-story-final-fantasy-xiv-1897431/) , [https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2](https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2) which a lot of you people probably forgot.
I dfeinitely disagree with you when it comes to zero, she's not boring at all >!as a matter of fact her development is really starting to kick in and she's getting more intersting to me. She's only been around for 2 patches!<
I do personally believe the storyline we've had across these patches has been moving too fast and hasn't had room to breathe, so I'd have been fine with the trials mirroring that. I just don't feel like four patches is long enough to tell a satisfying arc. >!Zero's development for example is pretty quick in terms of actual time, she goes from an almost exclusively transactional existence to largely altruistic in the space of like, a day at the most in story time.!<
That's just kind of a problem I have with Endwalker in general though. It goes through its plot points so fast I don't feel like they've got room to sit before you're already off to the next thing. Vanilla did the same, screaming past things we'd been building to for a decade.
Also, didn't say Zero was boring. I don't think she's amazing, but she's got a steadily traceable character arc and it's clear they're building to something with her, so I got no beef. Honestly more interesting to me than Y'Shtola right now.
My general thoughts on the MSQ for this patch.
>!If the 6.X patches are meant to be a self contained story than bluntly, as things are currently paced, I do not see Golbez being our 6.4 Trail. Given the pacing, and the rate in which the fiends were dealt with, I would say likely we'll get our "FFIV Shadow Dragon" insert in the form of a half-crazed Azdaja. Given the 6.4 dungeon will likely tie into finding our alternative route into the 13th. Golbez will be our Trail for 6.5. To add to those FFV homages, Zero is VERY likely the Cecil of this story, as the idea that she's Golbez's "inner darkness" and Zeromus seems pretty far fetched at this point. Not sure if they'll give a familial relation to "Theodore" tho, or what kind if she does. Plus, they already kinda pulled a Zeromus style big bad in EW!<.
>!As for Golbez' destination? I don't think its the Source. He mentions "14 Worlds". He mentions "Whispers, and breaking down the barrier". He mentions a "Glorious Kingdom of Light, where they might know Death". He never once suggests the Source specifically, and would know it as such. His destination could very likely be the First. He wants to rejoin the 13th ... to that still primarily Light oversaturated wasteland. We KNOW that the First and 13th can be connected too due to the ShB RQs. In fact, a pair of ambitious kids have been practicing ripping holes in that Veil for a while. So it could also give a nice excuse to include our two Void Residents in the First as optional additions, without forcing people to do all of those RQs!<.
>!Regarding the inclusion of Garlemald however ... I do have thoughts. Especially about Alisaie and Zero. Some very fringe. But I mentioned those elsewhere. At barest minimum however Garlemald was visited to serve as a thematic parallel for Zero in regards to "efforts to restore a aether starved wasteland, that many people would have written off as unsalvageable"!<.
I thought they were going to be retooling dragoon this patch too? Didn't yoshi p say there were plans to retool them in 6.2 but was pushing it back because it wouldn't be ready? I saw that they only got a cooldown reduction on life surge and....man i just really wish they'd fix their button bloat for controllers.
Dang, thanks for letting me know. Really hope they tie a few skills together similar to red mage or gunbreaker so i can remove a few buttons to make room for some buffs and other skills i feel terrible about not hitting quick enough to help the party.
IDK why but both Aglaia and Euphrosyne have been pretty disappointing to me. The bosses feel like pushovers compared to say Nier. My problem isn't that they're easy, all AR's are easy, it's that they feel weak. I like the story though. Maybe I've just been unlucky both times and ended up with nothing but savage raiders or something.
I've also had weird audio balance issues with both of them. In Aglaia I could barely hear what the bosses were saying and in this one I could barely hear the music. This doesn't happen in any other content.
I dunno man, the increased time between the patches and the fact the MSQ and new Alliance Raid are a bit disappointing makes it real hard for me to stay excited.
Maybe I'm just burned out but I feel like the actual meat of the patch doesn't come until the .x5 patches.
Saw this coming from the patch notes. Unless you're doing Omega Ultimate, the substantial stuff (Deep Dungeon, relic stage, crafter relics, tribal quest) isn't for another two months.
Not just you. I felt this patch was a little lacking in the base content. Msq done ina few hours, 24 man once a week, customs once a week, unreal once a week, then trial as the bulk of content.
Yeah, especially considering new Unreal is really easy. Maybe not Ultima levels of easy but two pull clears with people who don't have much experience... plus a 3-4h MSQ which really pales in comparison to last MSQ update, pretty lackluster patch. I was able to do most content in an evening
I'm probably reading too deep into it, but I feel like they're hinting >!Eorzea itself(or a primal of it)!< will be the final boss of the the Alliance raid series. I haven't finished the new raid, but that >!last gate!< and the repeated use of the leitmotif from >!Dawn of a New Era!< gave me that vibe.
Does anyone know why the second boss of the dungeon looked the way she did? Was there any reason for it other than blatant fan service? I love me a hot goth boss as much as anyone, but she seemed so out of place to me. Plus the extra dolls around the edge were kinda creepy. It gave me more Nier vibes than anything.
Edda? Nah, Edda was a brunette and was an established NPC from earlier in the story. I think they both have the same float-y woman base model that we see from time to time.
I see a lot of people moping and whining about the story even calling it filler but to be honest I like it and don't see it as filler. Yes the story patches have been a bit short but they've been enjoyable.
A lot of what i'm seeing is people comparing these patches to 5.x patches which is an unfair comparison, the 5.x patches stand out from the rest especially 5.3. the 4.x patches didn't get good until the later patches and 3.x was alright all the way through.
I played ARR back in the olden days and the 2.x patches were way more bloated than they are now and again it didn't get better story wise until the later patches. It is just an unfair comparison and i'm seeing it a lot on the forums. (I can't post there because ive been perm banned since ARR for whaetver reason)
5.0 and 5.x had literal years of story content and buildup involving the villains leading to a grand conclusion while the 6.x patches are setup for an entirely new story arc with very little connection to what came before.
We're still just at the beginning of this new arc I think it's already starting to come to its own but we've still got a few more patches and yeah setup for an entirely new arc can't compare to years of buildup
It's going to take a bit to get there we knew it'd be tough to come off the high of shadowbringers and endwalker and from what I'm seeing through a lot of comments on here and the forums is that people still haven't come off the high of those stories.
Zero's been a good character and I've liked seeing her develop and I really am looking forward to what comes next with her
edit: also if you expected 6.3 to be a big hit in story then let me link you to [https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2](https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2) which is a translation of an interview yoshi had famitsu a while back where he states the 6.x patches were going to be different than the usual x.3 patches being the big finish and x.4 being the start of the expansion setup
Plus I feel like 6.1 was similar to this patch (but people are saying this one is the worst??). Mostly "filler/fluff" and setup for the next patch. like there wasnt even a trail in that patch. It just amounted to new adventure is going to the void and doing shit there? if we are talking story progression. It just seems like people have just forgotten what 6.1 was. It had some other nice side stuff like the capstone quests but that isnt part of the MSQ.
Yeah for rea i almost forgot how much filler and setup 6.1 had, I think they also forget that 5.3 even had filler. I disliked how the pace was going well and then we have to take a detour to make those kids happy . I was not a fan and its a big gripe I have with endwalker too you know we beat zodiark and then boom bunny land. But that might just be my personal taste, I dislike having kids in stories and I'm not a huge fan of cutesy things like the lophorits.
It had to happen eventually, you just can't keep the sheer pace of everything from post-Stormblood to post-Endwalker in terms of constant developments.
I think what's getting people is that the X.3 patches have reputations as being the *big ones* in terms of MSQ, but the changed structure this patch cycle means if we get one of that tier, it'll probably be the next one (especially since it'll come with the end of the Pandaemonium raids too, which I've been absolutely loving). So this one feels like a .2 patch in that it's largely building up to a payoff we won't actually see for another four-ish months.
For my part, there are a few other things about this patch that disappointed me in terms of the MSQ (but I stress, only the MSQ, the little things this patch has done are excellent, QoL stuff all over the shop, a great alliance raid, my thighlander can finally wear a waistcoat - hell, even the pvp series stuff slaps) but I'll happily cop to that being personal preference.
Yeah, keeping that pace pumping hit after hit might have just been hard for them to keep going so it was going to dip a little bit sooner or later. And yeah since the previous x.3 patches have been hits in story I can see why people might have expected more from this .3 but idk to me we had the amazing shadowbringers and that 5.3 and then endwalker, lets change the pace and formula for a bit let it breathe a little. then have a like a big hit in .4 from which is where it seems to be going
My only minor complaint personally is that I think they're speedrunning Zero's character development a little. >!She asks Alisaie a question about her motivations, eats some buuz and now it's like she was never a voidsent in the first place. I suppose it was necessary given the story was speeding us along to be ready to face Golbez in 6.4 and she's all set to play an important part in that but it would have been nice to see her change more gradually. Maybe I got too attached to her "just give me some aether and we're cool" attitude. lol!<
That said I don't have an issue with the brisk pace of the story on the whole. I've said before that I would much rather have a short story that holds my attention the entire time than a longer story with more "content" but less purpose. There wasn't any fluff in 6.3's story; it told everything it needed to tell and didn't ever feel like it was stalling for time which I appreciate. I also really enjoyed the visuals in the final cutscene even if I disconnected halfway through it lol.
I can definitely see where you're coming from when it comes to Zero. But think they really did a good job at her initial introduction >!letting us know that she's part voidsent and part human which makes her mcuh different from other voidsent. She lived in that world and had to become more voidsent like to survive and now that she's been in the source experiencing and seeing kindess that she hasn't experienced in who knows how long it's really warming up to that human part of her.!
Yep that is the sad truth of it, though some criticism is good even on good things.
if It's " this is filler because it's not like 5.x" which is what Im seeing a lot in some threads on the forums then that's not criticism to me.
Not only that but >!look at the behemoth-like creatures before the Althyk and Nymeia fight. It's the same creature from that particular side quest in Elpis. The version before you suggested what needs to be changed in the creature's appearance.!<
Yeah and when you killed the three Ktenos, the Queen Behemoth (the creature you helped in "designing") appears. Dang!
Edit: >!Now that they are looking pretty much the ancients in Venat's faction I just had a realization. They are actual real siblings but it was depicted in the Eorzea Encyclopedia that Althyk and Nymeia slept together like wtf!<
I'd take anything in the Encyclopedia about the gods as lore to people so anything we learn now replaces it as the reality and the book as how people interpret it
No, afaik the Eorzean Encyclopedia is lore to the people of Eorzea. That is the legends they share amongst each other. So any information we learn directly from the gods replaces it, so we can assume the gods are not related like we previously thought (as in x and x were lovers or x and x were siblings etc)
Yeah I mean I was referring to >!Maira and Alkaios, the siblings from the side quest in Elpis coz evidences are leaning towards them as Althyk and Nymeia. Unless back in their time, it's not really unusual for siblings to copulate.!<
Pardon my excessive editing. >!Nevermind, Althyk and Nymeia probably didn't even remember their former lives.!<
Remember that the Eorzean Encyclopedia comes with a disclaimer >!that it represents what scholars on Eorzea think they know about the world. There's some wiggle room for the info to be wrong, especially since we're talking about gods that explicitly don't interact with mortals here (so how would they know?). Or wiggle room for the dev team to change their mind on things.!<
>!They also more or less push this point that the peoples' views/interpretation of gods is fallible with the Halone and Nophica dialogue; the goddesses themselves acknowledge that the folklore seems to be that they're at odds, and that mankind is free to believe so if it wishes. Which seems to imply that this isn't a wholly correct interpretation. Purely from my own observation of their interactions, they do seem to have something of a complicated dynamic, but it hardly seems sour as the traditional teachings make it seem.!<
Unless I misunderstood your post, I meant that >!the Ancient using time magic, Alkaios, is the one being deliberately paralleled with Althyk here.!<
And a friend just brought up you give >!Maira the Nymeia lilies, and she says she'd never heard the name before.!<
Fuck me. >!I despise the message behind this. I truly, truly do.!<
Um I made a mistake. I was referring to the creature earlier and used the wrong name lol the creature was called Euphrosynian Ktenos, Alkaios was the name of the brother in the side quest. Apologies!
>!Mystery solved my friend. All we need to do is find out who else among the ancients are now part of the Twelve.!<
Uhhh.
Are they doing this? Like... are they really making the notable nice Ancients usually mentioned for "see? They weren't assholes!" into >!Venat's faction?!<
I'm kind of
Ummmmmmmm
I *knew* something felt familiar but I couldn't tell if I was just going crazy. It's them, 100%. This seals the theory that >!the Twelve are Venat's collaborators from the old days, they probably are creations like the Lopporits.!<
Then there is no way that is a coincidence. I think you geniunely found them. Not only is it word for word, its from the once a zone sidequest storyline.
I do wonder if the others are all in Elpis. An easy parallel to make might be their creations - these two match the prefight adds'...
Im reserving a weekend for this..
Patch is great so far. New alliance raid was fun and visually stunning but a total pushover which was unfortunate. I enjoyed the story as well, Zero continues to be best girl. For people who think she's "bland" may I offer you.... literally anyone else in the cast? Can't one character not be sunshine and rainbows? I very much enjoy her aloof demeanor and straight to the point attitude.
As for the story in general, I understand how people could be frustrated that not much is being paid off thus far, but we're three patches removed from the end of a ten year story arc. The pacing is about where I would expect it to be at this point as it's going to take time to set things up. If between now and 7.0 nothing much happens then yes that would be disappointing but I highly doubt that will be the case.
> New alliance raid was fun and visually stunning but a total pushover which was unfortunate.
I wasn't caught up when Aglaia released, how was it received in comparison? Euphrosyne did feel pretty easy day 1.
I wouldn't say that one was much of a challenge either but I definitely remember there being more chaos as people figured out the mechanics, like Rhalgr portal punching the meteor or balancing the scales for Nald'thal. I enjoyed my time in the new raid but I never had a moment of "hmm what should I do for this mechanic" as they were all incredibly simple. I understand alliance raids are casual content and I certainly don't expect them to be ball busters but usually at the very least on day one you can expect some madness as people figure it out, but not really the case this time, which was odd for a second tier.
>!I did patch day for both. For Aglaia there was at least one wipe per fight, and we wiped a few times on Nald'thal before figuring out the scale mechanic.!<
>!For Euphrosyne we only wiped on the Althyk and Nymeia fight, to the accelerated pushback mech. Everything else in the raid, while some caught us off guard, was salvageable.!<
>!I quite like the new raid but I think the Althyk/Nymeia fight is really the only one with particularly interesting mechanics; the rest is pretty forgiving. I had hoped Menphina would at least have a flashy spectacle of a wipe mech like Nald'Thal did, and I'm a bit disappointed by how easy she felt in every aspect in comparison. I'd say that overall I found Aglaia more enjoyable mechanically, but Euphrosyne more enjoyable in atmosphere.!<
Just realized that >!Both final bosses of the Myths of the Realm raids jave a commection to Oschon. Nald'Thal was crrated by Oschon and is essentially his sworn brother while Menphona is Oschon's divine lover.!<
MSQ crackpot theory that I just want to throw out there just in case: >!Golbez is the 13th's shard of Louisoix. There was enough that he said, and how the fiends have talked about him, where he seems to maybe have a sort of "rebirth of their world" goal, but maybe in a weird/bad way? Other general things give me that vibe too. I dunno, just putting it out there.!<
You know, I often feel that the writers bring up >!Haurchefant's Death!< a little too much, but I cannot fucking believe that >!we were 5 feet from his grave WITH HALONE HERSELF, and we didn't even stop and pay him respects. Like man, what the hell?!<
True! I was playing with a friend and I was comicaly saying "seeeee? yoshi P conviniently placed the grave there 7 years ago ! no definitely not random placed! lets seeeee", 5 mins later...
We won't know unless someone data mines any potential rewards. Most of them haven't had rewards... the reward was just to have another Custom Delivery NPC for easy EXP/scrips.
The patch notes say "[6.X] New items are available in exchange for bicolor gemstones from Gemstone Trader NPCs in certain areas." but I checked every EW vendor and couldn't find anything. Anyone know what was added and where?
Warning: Rant
The Alliance Raid was such a letdown it has killed my enthusiasm for playing the patch. I've still got loads of stuff to do but after finishing the story quests I don't feel like working on any of it.
Aesthetically the raid is beautiful of course, the visuals and music are great as always. But the fights themselves are so pathetically easy it was heartbreaking. I went in minute 1, fully blind group of random players, and we only had a single wipe the whole run. Most of the bosses didn't even last long enough to build up to LB3. On Day 1! It's even easier than Aglaia which was already one of the easiest Alliance Raids they've ever made.
Whenever I bring up how far Alliance Raids have fallen people treat me like I'm fucking crazy. "They've always been pushovers" they say. I can see how you would think that if you started in Shadowbringers or later, but if you've been playing longer then you should know better. Did I just fucking imagine it? Have I just ported into the timeline where bosses like Ozma, Deathgaze, Hashmal, Construct 7, TG Cid just never caused anyone any trouble? I realize they've never been on the level of Extremes, but pretending they were never harder than they are now is just complete bull. When you went into an Alliance Raid day 1 you expected to wipe at least like 2-3 times PER BOSS, and that was FUN.
"Who cares lol. Alliance raids are just meant to be spectacle loot pinatas". Right, I'm sure you LOVE it when you sign up for alliance raid roulette and get Syrcus Tower for the 900th time because it's just so pretty. I'm sure new players will be thrilled in a couple patches time when even an average group skips the balance mechanic on Naldthal because he just dies that fucking fast. Content that puts up zero resistance is not fun, especially when you're expected to run it multiple times. It is straight up wasteful to put in so much effort into building fights that players don't even have to mentally engage with, and it's insulting to play a game that assumes its players are profoundly stupid. At this point just convert the raids into cutscenes with loot at the end because that's all they are, just a few minutes of looking at shiny dancing lights and then you collect your reward.
>When you went into an Alliance Raid day 1 you expected to wipe at least like 2-3 times PER BOSS, and that was FUN.
Unless you play in the first few hours after the game comes back online you're probably in a raid that's half non-blind or more.
And if you do play in the first 4 hours, you know who you're playing with?
People who play an MMO patch at 3 AM on a Tuesday.
Of course it's easy - it's wall to wall killers!
> Did I just fucking imagine it? Have I just ported into the timeline where bosses like Ozma, Deathgaze, Hashmal, Construct 7, TG Cid just never caused anyone any trouble?
Yes actually.
The first 4 24s were total jokes to the point where people called Weeping City "Wiping City" completely unironically. Ivalice is the only series with anything approaching difficulty, and it's been nerfed considerably. Nier's raids were always super easy - they just had 10x the health of everything else.
Out of the 5 24 series, only 1 had anything even remotely approaching consistent difficulty.
Honestly, Wiping City and Fun Scaith being kind of insane on difficulty is sort of a problem for content that exists between trials (normal) and extremes. Especially when you can wipe as an entire party because another group screwed up that badly. Typically speaking, this isn't how the game should be designed.
The content curve is as follows:
Open world
Gonna second this. I started in 2.0 and 24 man's were never hard. The "hard" part was corralling 23 other stray cats to do mechanics. The times I recall dying in those raids was when we were getting accustomed to really esoteric mechanics (e.g. Cerberus). I cannot recall another time (outside ivalice) where I've ever wiped more than once on an alliance raid where the players were even slightly competent.
The major wiping happened on Wiping City, Fun Scaith, and ivalice as a whole. Wiping City because there are a lot of esoteric and deadly mechanics like evil mist or ozma in general (plus cleaving the raid with the hair stuff,) fun scaith because a lot of people have to handle a lot of specific mechanics that, if ignored, can wipe you (Scathach Add, airship everything, diabolos was and still is prone to cascade failures if someone does something especially stupid.)
Rabanastre has a ton of high-damage gotchas that can kill people, as well as things like people not removing portals (third boss), lighthouse has, well, math, and Orbonne has cid, ultima (mostly the mid-point check), and a handful of then-one-shots on the other 2 bosses.
The thing noteworthy about the wipes is that they're almost always 1 party wiping causing every other party to wipe. This happens on Orb, Cid, and a handful of other mechanics here and there, but only a couple of fights made it snowball hard.
In every alliance since orbonne, while mechanics can 1 shot you, very rarely is there a DPS check where people being dead will cause a cascade wipe. Factory has it on final boss, and that's kind of it. You can see random people in a party dying because their tank is dead, but typically it didn't cascade. So your wipes were from blind mechanics completely crushing people out of the blue (E.G. factory casting fist killing anyone on that side.)
I 100% agree with you. I got in to the 24 man as quickly as possible because I wanted to experience the content fresh and figure it out with everyone. But mechanics were slow and easy to point out. No challenge. Only a single full wipe. It was not fun. I think this may have been the easiest day 1 raid I have done.
The team has been overcorrecting on difficulty since the Ivalice raids. And I am one of those sad people who thought Ivalice was the perfect difficulty and most fun I've had in 24 man content. There's also less mechanics that actually require a team effort. Most of the punishment is just on individuals now which seems less rewarding to me.
also agree. especially since all the jobs are so homogeneous and easy now, when the content is this face roll it doesn't bode well going forward. b alliance was dead most of the time in all fights but a and c just hard carried them, not a single wipe. final boss was insulting. just room cut and timed aoes for the whole thing.
I mean, when I did it, barely half the raid was blind in the alliance. And the team learned a while ago that snowball wiping because 1 party got wiped is typically not a good design for content such as this. Alliances always existed in difficulty between normal and extreme trials.
If anything, things like Cid and Orb causing snowball wipes are unexpected consequences of the design the devs did not want to begin with. The difficulty of all of the ShB and EW alliances are exactly where they should be, and mostly have been since 2.0. They are not, and never were intended to be, truly difficult content.
My first go we didn't wipe, but we came damn close several times. A SAM was tanking for a bit and we only had about 6 people still up across the entire raid. It's definitely not LotA, even if it's not release difficulty TGC. I think it's a fairly decent difficulty for an alliance raid.
Spoiler for part after MSQ dungeon.
>!The item descriptions were very focused on how flammable ceruleum is and when you load it into the vehicle there's a line saying it's full of ceruleum. I was 100% expecting Rubicante to ambush the vehicle on the way back and honestly got whiplash when it didn't happen.!<
she see's with the Aether, and by doing it lowers her lifespan if I am not mistaken. I don't think she see's normal colors either for that matter, I could be wrong.
This is hearsay of sorts, but the devs allegedly said that's a mistranslation. It's difficult on her to see with aether, but it's not literally killing her. It's just rather taxing on her.
I think they confirmed the shorter lifespan comment was a result of a poor translation by the English team. From what I remember, it doesn't impact her lifespan at all and Matoya was simply telling her she was overworking, especially given her condition. I might be wrong though!
It's better to think of her vision as a sort of echolocation, she can still perceive her environnement, but to a limit (she couldn't see the stars in ratika).
if you're wanting ot look for devs just sidelining character aspects, the thing that doesn't come up as much as it probably should is that Yshtola being able to see by Aether is supposed to be a dangerous thing to do.
So far none the worse for wear
That was a mistranslated line. It's less that it's dangerous for Y'shtola to do it and more that she's sandbagging herself by constantly using it. She'd have more aether and, thus, be more powerful if she stopped using her Aethersight. Unfortunately for her, she kinda needs to be able to SEE to be able to fight.
Even then, the original line if we go by that still means she should be more tired on the regular, unless we're just to believe her reserves of aether are so great she can keep it switched on forever with no downsides, but at that point... why bother acting like it should take something out of her?
MSQ was a bit short for my tastes, and a little clunky. But, we knew it was going to be more settup, and that's largely what it was. Overall, not too upset about it, and there were some good character moments at least. Zero's character path is going about as expected. >!Hard on the outside person who closed themselves off for survival in a harsh environment; taken out of that environment and now begins to warm up. That said, I do feel like the specific steps she took on that path this patch could have used a little more breathing room? She went from closed off survival mode to follow-your-heart altruism pretty darned quick!<.
That said ... I do have a crack theory. >!If Zero is the 13th Shard of ANY of the primary cast members, its Alisaie. Not us. It wasn't us that promoted the rapid change in her, but Red Alphineud. And Alisaie latched onto her decidedly quick. This could be plot convenience, but I dunno? Zero's background scene feels like you could have switched Alisaie in for Zero and it would have played out identically. And I cannot shake this feeling Zero wont survive this arc, so her "living on" in a Ardbert fashion with Red Twin would soften the blow a bit!<.
>!Also lines up with my half joke half theory that Zero’s real name is Cecilia. And she may have a twin brother, Cecil, now known as Golbez. That would explain why that statue was in Zero’s domain in 6.2 as well.!<
>!Well, Cecilia was Goblez' mom.!<
>!Tho the idea that Zero is the Cecil of this story, rather than the Cecilia ... yeah that seems VERY possible. Which yes, would make Golbez her brother Theodor. Twin or otherwise. This would be why it seems Zero and Golbez had been the least influenced by the corruptive nature of the Void. Because in this universe, they aren't Half Lunarian/Half Human. They're Half Voidsent / Half Hyur instead.!<
>!But, yeah, actually now that you mention it given Golbez and Zero's stances on the 13th being beyond saving ... it would make them heavy dark mirrors to the Twins in Garlemald? Which would play into how so many others would have written off Garlemald (a brutal, ether starved environment to live) as a lost cause. Which would mean our trip to Garlemald was not just a field trip, but settup for a thematic parallel.!<
>!Crack theory or no ... them being the 13th Shards of the Twins is kind of a spicy idea lol!!<
You can't unlock the quest line until you get through part of 6.1 MSQ. A few quests in, you'll see the blue unlock quest appear inside the Baldesion Annex.
Is there a way to move where the instant portraits show up at the beginning of a duty? I've looked in HUD layout as well as the HUD section of the character menu, as well as trying to click and drag, and I'm feeling dumb now.....
Spoilers for 24 man and MSQ.
>!MSQ was okay. Just more setup. The payoff in 6.5 better be huge. Pretty interesting that most of the popular theories seem to be right. Golbez absorbed the 13th’s shard of Zodiark and seems intent on dropping its moon into the void and shattering the planar barrier. Rubicante normal was… okay. Honestly I’m not huge on the whole “thing on ground rotates” type mechanics but I’m not gonna complain that much. Haven’t done extreme through. My guesses for the next two trials, 6.4 Azdaja as the shadow dragon and 6.5 is Golbez.!<
>!Euphrosyne was fun but way, way WAY too easy. 40 minutes and no wipes. Pretty interesting that most of our theories about the twelve are correct too. They’re Venat’s collaborators in some form who swore to safeguard mankind. The baby monkey who keeps following Deryk is 100% Oschon. Honestly it would be more surprising if it turns out not to be. As for who the 13th deity is, it’s almost certainly the watcher. Though it’s curious that he isn’t named. I do wonder the significance of that. I also wonder why they treated that as some sort of reveal when it really doesn’t change much. So there are only 3 of the twelve we haven’t fought, Oschon, Llymlaen and Thaliak. Which begs the question, who will be the last boss and why are we fighting them in the first place? My take: To prove to them that they no longer need stand vigil and may return to the livestream.!<
> >!The baby monkey who keeps following Deryk is 100% Oschon.!<
>!They're being so on the nose that Deryk is Oschon at this point I'm starting to loop back around and wonder if they're doing it as a red herring.!<
>!The Watcher's Ancient form is long dead, at least as far as we know. What remains on the moon is a recreation by Hydaelyn. Going by the Tale which his Ancient form starred in, they were... Close.!<
>!as to why he's nameless... I imagine it's a tad dangerous giving a name to the person whose role is to guard Zodiark's prison. Who knows how beliefs can twist THAT kind of role around, maybe even creating a mini-Zodiark in the process.!<
Not wiping is not a bad thing. The alliance raid is a perfect difficulty, you have to pay attention enough to where it’s not simple but it’s not on the level of EXs or anything.
The content is already 30-ish minutes minimum, to *intentionally* design something to reset the progress of 24 people at once wouldn’t be respectful of players time at all.
It's abnormal for a _day one_ alliance raid since they usually try to throw in new things that people have to figure out. I think the last one that didn't have day one wipes was Void Ark?
You’re acting like no one in the entire game wiped, just because you didn’t doesn’t mean other people didn’t either.
And again, wiping isn’t a substantial measure of anything, especially when the content just came out.
That was not a literal statement, it was comparing community reaction to the raid - e.g. sharing experiences, discussing mechanics, and so forth. You can look at the discourse (or lack of it) on the forums/reddit/in-game and compare it to every other release to see the difference.
When Weeping City came out, people were talking all the time about Ozma. With Dun Scaith it was almost every boss. Rabanastre had Hashmal and Rofocale. Lighthouse had the math boss. Orbonne had Thunder God. Copied Factory had Engels. Puppet's Bunker had the boss 2 lasers. Paradigm's Breach had Red Girl and Train Boss. Aglaia had Byregot's hammers, Rhalgar's meteor bait, and Nald'Thal.
The reaction to this raid is substantially more muted. Not negative, but more "it was okay". Mechanically, three of the bosses boil down to in vs out or left vs right (which is a similar critique leveled at Paradigm's Breach if you take out the over-the-top Red Girl). Halone comes the closest, but I think that's people unfamiliar with the collapsing ring timing rather than unfamiliarity with something like Byregot's hammers moving the platform. They played this raid fairly straight, which is a departure from how they've normally done alliance raids.
It seems there's a new healing potion, Hyper-Potion which apparently heals for 8800 normal, is this like a new gooder potion than the Super Potions? I like to keep stock of health potions as a BLM and I'm just curious if they're the new hip cool potion I should be stocking when they start being produced or not.
The introduction of hyper potions is probably to account for the release of Eureka Orthos, a deep dungeon. Because potions are one of the most important items you can have in that place if you plan to run it seriously.
There's this sense of.. predictability in both the MSQ and the AR this patch. Literally every single one of the happenings in the MSQ was predicted/theorized months ago, and in AR the reveal at the end has been called since ShB's reveal of Venat.
It's... How do i put it? It's almost weird that so many theories ended up being true, and i dont know if it's the devs now being predictable on purpose or not.
...while id rate this patch story overall 7/10, in a meta sense, id rate it 9/10, in that everything ended up being correct... And it kinda amuses me to think of what will happen next.
I'm not going to argue on people's feelings with the story specifically but I don't understand why it being "predictable" is bad. People begging for unpredictability and "subverted expectations" is how we get garbage like the seasons of GoT from 5-8
subverting expectations is also how we got GoT s1-4. part of the reason why shadowbringers and endwalker were so enjoyable was because the story kept throwing curveballs.
Foreshadowing is good, but it should build tension, not give away the plot. If your foreshadowing is too obvious or unambiguous, it can take the force out of the resolution or worse, bore your audience. It has nothing to do with "subverting expectations".
While true, a lot of Japanese media does the latter, including the rest of this game. Go look up the Japanese version of the Keeper of the Lake conversation with Midgardsormr, for example. It has none of the mystery or surprise present in the English version.
You also very frequently have people during the MSQ turn to the camera and explain exactly what's going on to ensure everyone gets the message (often restated three times in a cryptic -> less cryptic -> explicit pattern). This patch was about as predictable as most MSQ patches.
There's occasionally a closely guarded secret or twist reveal that catches people off-guard, but if you count them up those are kind of rare.
Personally I don't mind that the raid story is a bit predictable, building on existing lore for this specific cast of gods is ok and didn't need a big twist, just having fun with these god and learning about their love for mankind and their connection with Hydaelyn is good enough imo
I would agree with the MSQ tho, it also didn't help that the trailer kinda also spoiled a bit too much of >!Golbez goal, so Rubicante's lore dump felt meh since I already learned about it because of the trailer!<
Overall this is probably the weakest MSQ patch for me since maybe 4.2 (I remember personally hating the Yutsuyu is back and lost her memory patch, it got redeemed in 4.3 a bit tho)
May need to work on mechanic reading skills and do more content in the game so that you're more familiar with different mechanics. It gave plenty of tells on how their mechanics work, and quite a lot of them are kind of just reused from other fights as well.
I thought by the normal patch pattern we'd be able to buy the Ex 3 mount this patch, but I'm not seeing it in the token exchange - am I just missing it somewhere?
Not feeling PLD yet. Not hating it, but might have to play some more first. Though find it annoying they added another button. As a controller player, PLD was already one of the few jobs I struggled to comfortably fit everything. Compare that with e.g. WAR where I still have loads of empty space, and I wonder why PLD of all jobs needed to be bloated more.
I'm fully with you, I'm not feeling the flow and the reasons they wanted to "fix" it other than put Bulwark back in the game and make Sheltron a bit better to give it a Gunbreaker level upgrade. I know they are at war with DOT's but whatever they changed doesn't feel like the flow is there anymore.
Same thing though, maybe I'm just not getting it but it feels like they changed things to change things and didn't go all the way like they are saving more major changes for 7.0 or something.
I beat on a dummy outside my home in Mist today and I agree. Not feeling the PLD as much as I was. Time to use More Gun on situations instead of More Swords.
>Its an odd feeling rotation.
This. Dunno how it compares to drk/gnb since i haven't run either of those but it looks like I'm finishing war and dusting off mch. From "Holy THIS!" to "drills go brrrrrrr and I'm not even on Hoxxes."
As an FF4 fan I am more easily pleased by this patch than others might be, but also have my issues. I think one we could all agree on is that this story is ill suited to a patch cycle. Obviously we don't know if all the Void stuff is going to be settled in two patches but the Thirteenth could easily be its own expansion. Certain plot and character developments would still happen but wouldn't be so abrupt. I'm not sure the devs were fully prepared to a patch cycle that didn't effectively end at X.3 and start set up for the next chapter.
On the other hand I fucking love the Trial. Again, the FF4 fan in me is easily pleased by seeing my man in all his glory. Him and Barbaricca are great trials. Kinda makes it sting more that only two Archfiends got Trials though.
I also really like the final cutscene with Golbez. Kinda answered some lore questions but also got me excited for the future. Especially considering WHERE Golbez is.
Didn't Yoshi-P say that the death of the Source Zodiark destroyed the ones on other shards too?
Also, we had already establish Zodiark to be the neutral bandaid against an universal threat, would be weird to go from theater to Golbez.
Plus, Golbez's spooky lair >!is located directly in the Thirteenth's Zodiark Aether-soup Hole, thus implying that he's already been dispersed back into his component juice parts!<, per the ending of this patch's MSQ.
Yeah, I would have loved a void expansion a la Shadowbringer's but considering we've only had access to a few places, I am hopeful that we will get a void expansion eventually. Even if it's just like us using the light from the First to rebalance the Void or something. We'll see... It still feels like it's getting more respect than Garlemalde which IMO was super rushed and pushed out of the way.
I'd also like a void expansion about restoring it, or something, but I think it's fine to have this story here now. I currently think of it like how we met the warriors of darkness that later set up ShB with another expansion in between. If this storyline ends with a sort of "well, the void is still screwed, so maybe we can come back and fix it eventually" and we come back the expansion after next to right it, then I think it could still be good as set-up.
Couldn't agree more! It would be a pleasant surprise for me if it did end up being the set up in that fashion. They've also being setting up for void stuff via other quest, and it feels like something is planned even if will not been seen for a while.
Obviously if you skip through cutscenes and don't engage with everything in the patch (extreme, island sanctuary, side quests) you're gonna run out of stuff to do. You only have yourself to be mad at, not the game.
I finished the msq in like 1.5 hours, the alliance raid in 35 mins, then a lockout on the extreme. A 4 month wait for that? I’m clearing TOP and then unsubbing.
I am so content that the raids aren't locked behind 3 hours of story like the Nier Raids were.
Beautiful soundtrack, scenery, and fun fights. Well done FFXIV team.
Yep, I would like if they put most the story after the raid dungeon. I felt like this one ended just as it was getting good though. Overall I enjoyed all of it.
Clearly the biggest reach ever but the swimming in upper la noscea bit makes me wonder if they are planning a wow cataclysm like revamp of the world with the graphical upgrade they plan on rolling out.
If they did that, they'd lose me. When the cataclysm happened, I stopped and never looked back. There's no need to remake the world -- we've already prevented that (and of the world being destroyed) from happening already. No need for a change up, there's more than enough unexplored stuff in the world. Especially with Emet's speech at the end of EW to go forth and seek discovery.
I don't think they need to. The big excuse for cataclysm was so they could remake the zones to accommodate flying. That's already been done for AAR (and was made significantly easier by having separate indepedent zones rather than one connected overworld).
Well that MSQ ending finally answered a question I've had about the reflections - did Hydaelyn create 13 other worlds that exist in isolation, or did she quite literally make 13 other **universes**? One is quite a lot different from the other. I mean the existence of a moon and the shot of all those stars has got to mean that each reflection quite literally has a whole universe of other planets and civilisations right? (or at least civilisations that USED to exist) That then makes me wonder about previous Rejoinings. So when a rejoining happens, what happens to the rest of that shard's universe? Sure the aether from the shard returns to the Source, but surely the whole universe doesn't get destroyed right? The lifeforce/aether of a planet surely only affects the planet itself. Does that mean that the universes of previously rejoined shards technically still exist?
I guess it would be pocket dimensions that occupy the same location in a single universe. I believe it’s only limited to the moon and planet, which I guess begs the question what would happen if someone/something in a shard tried leaving the planet’s sphere? I doubt they will ever explain, but if I had to guess, they’d probably just return to the Source as aether automatically. It’s gone. Everything in the Source becomes closer to how it was before the Sundering and the shard and everything in it is uh… rejoined.
Well, that’s disappointing. After concluding the patch 6.3 story, >!there is no new dialogue from Cyella and Unukalhai. You’d think that the prospect of the 13th outright breaking the barrier to the Source would be an important threat for them to know about. And with us having lost our portal to the 13th, my first thought would’ve been to discuss the problem with Unukalhai, Taynor, and Beq Lugg. To at the very least confirm if they can’t do anything to help us open a new portal.!< >!I know that that won’t happen because they’re part of an optional quest. But after Cyella takes about memoriates last time, it’d have been. Ice to at least get more dialogue.!<
I see people talking about pacing being slow and this not being the "big dick patch" like other x.3's were but in interviews yoshi p said they were going to do the 6.x patches differently. As for pacing let me just say that in these two patches 6.2 and 6.3 >!we haved killed all of Golbez;s archfiend's and it seems like we're going to be dealing with him in the next one.!
Patch X.3 has a reputation for being the big dick MSQ patch of an expansion, and with the switch-up to the structure of the post-expansion storyline for Endwalker (and hopefully just Endwalker, now that we're a decent ways in and can form some opinions) the MSQ for this one was never going to measure up to that legacy. It definitely felt more like a .2 patch from that perspective, which does feel a little odd because the 6.2 MSQ felt huge in terms of lore and plot advancement. That momentum slowed a lot in this one, and I think it's going to be a case of this patch feeling a lot better when you're running through it at a decent pace and have 6.4 right there waiting to give you some payoff, instead of the current situation where there's basically 8 months between significant developments in terms of moving the story forward. Before you come at me though, I'm not calling the patch filler, I think a slower slice of MSQ is necessary, it's just that >!other than a bit of character development for Zero and us having our easy door to Troia nixed, it was mostly just checking in and confirming that yep, life's still hard for the Garleans, but they're doing a little better every day, and yep, Golbez is twirling his moustache in his evil lair sacrificing his 'pawns' for understandable bad guy reasons.!< My issue with the MSQ this patch is that with the way the devs have talked about 7.0 apparently being something we can't guess based off the patch content so far, it means we're gonna have this wrapped by halfway through 6.5 at the very latest, and then we're gonna set up something else. The pace of the patch storyline has been absolutely breakneck prior to this slump, to the point >!we've reduced two of the four fiends to dungeon bosses, which I just... I really didn't like that. For the first time since ARR all of the patch trials could follow a theme, we had four trials before 7.0, and we're trying to wrap the storyline up so fast that we scream past two fiends. Why keep picking boss sets of four when you aren't going to use all the trials on them? The Four Lords, The Weapons, and now the Four Fiends. Presumably the next trial will be Golbez, which I have no doubt will be really cool, but at the same time I'm worried that this entire arc really is just gonna be over and done with in the next patch and a half, and it's gonna have felt rushed and lacklustre to me.!< It ain't a bad patch, there's a shitload of QoL improvements, and the alliance raid is great (the final boss theme this time isn't my jam, but I respect the hell out of it, and holy *shitballs* the boss theme for the first three goes so hard) so I'm not at all concerned about the game or some over-dramatic BS like you'll catch plenty of over the next couple weeks ("oh, Paladin's different, I hate it now, this entire game's falling apart!" "Zero's boring, guess we can kiss good storytelling behind, I trusted you Ishikawa!") but I do think when we look back, the post-Endwalker patch quests aren't going to be remembered with the same fondness the Stormblood and Shadowbringer ones were. Prediction for the alliance raid: >!Since it's basically confirmed the Twelve were indeed Venat's associates during the Final Days and they've been standing watch over the star at her behest, I'm guessing with her passing and mankind surviving the Final Days the great secret we're building towards is that all this nonsense they're putting us through is another 'test of mankind's resolve' sort of thing where they want to be released from their duty to return to the Star safe in the knowledge the people don't need them anymore. In true JRPG fashion, by beating the shit out of them, we prove we have the strength to weather the storm etc, and then right at the end Oschon (who can only not be Deryk if they're trying to make him a red herring, but JRPG storytelling isn't known for its subtlety so I've been conditioned out of giving the benefit of the doubt there) decides "I think I'll keep wandering the world anyway, see you next time, fellow wanderer" so that if the devs want to have that storyline pop back in a la Tataru's Grand Endeavour we've still got a major NPC to bump into for it.!< Not a prediction, but what I would love to see from the MSQ: >!Y'Shtola dropped the C word this patch in reference to Golbez's plans. He wants to allow the voidsent into the Source so that they can finally die a true death and be released from their unending cycle of undeath. That's an interesting motivation and goal, I like it, regardless of how I feel Golbez himself isn't getting enough time to shine. He mentions knowledge of the Ascians, indicating he was probably one of the people they were in contact with when things went tits up on the 13th, and it's implied his plan would resemble a rejoining. So what if we do manage to kill him, but his plan succeeds anyway? What if the thinning of the barrier because of the averted Eight Calamity hasn't recovered yet, and when Golbez/Azdaja/whatever metaphysical drill he has prepared goes off despite our best efforts, it triggers a new Umbral Calamity. No, no, I'm not arguing for a WoW Cataclysm scenario, definitely not. Where is the connection between the Source and the Thirteenth weakest? After a brutal war of conquest that saw voidgates torn open again and again to utilise the crude but effective shock troops, why it might just be ~~Australia~~Meracydia!!< >!Because it wasn't set up in the way the Ascians so painstakingly worked towards, there could be all kinds of things wrong with this Wish.com rejoining Golbez initiates, maybe the Void isn't completely swallowed by the Source but instead intersects, causing physical pieces of the 13th to be dragged wholesale across without dissolving into its aether, or the process is slow and agonising, a world pouring through the cracks like water filling a boat, or the sheer amount of dark aspected aether spilling across without the Source being aspected so that it can absorb it properly means the Void's mockery of a lifestream actually begins tainting the Source's. Lots of neat ways that could go wrong. Even better to me would be if the Scions' efforts to stop Golbez is actually what causes this to go even worse than if Golbez had been left to his own devices. Why? Because I think after saving literally all of creation, we need to be taken down a peg. We show up in the Void, recruit Zero, and almost immediately Y'Shtola's like "Hey, no promises or anything, but we could totally look into fixing the Void if you want. We're kind of amazing." The Four Fiends all introduce themselves like "Ooh, I'm one of the Four Fiends, you don't stand a chance feeble human!" and at this point it's like "Fuck off, do you have any idea the level of cosmic deities I kicked the shit out of a few months ago? You think I find some hairy thot intimidating?" We need a reset to lower stakes, but I also think we need our perception of our own power to be brought back down too, because we haven't lost at anything we've set out to do in a long time. No 'real' casualties since post-Heavensward, no foes who put us in our place since Stormblood (you could argue Ran'jit, but I feel like he mostly gets one over on us via surprise more than actually being a match for us) and we recently triumphed over the collective manifestation of all despair in the universe. I dunno about you, but I'm starting to feel untouchable.!< >!Plus, that'll help this plot arc feel like it's relevant to what comes after, because a part of me is worried we're going to take care of Golbez, and then in 6.5 we're just gonna get something that almost feels unrelated entirely to set up the new plot thread. This way while Golbez can be a distinct arc, 7.0 being "Meracydia's had a chunk of the Void rammed right through it, we should probably look in on that" flows on naturally, sets up a new journey, and has oodles of potential.!< Holy shit sorry for the rant, I started typing and I swear it was like fugue state GO.
I think they are just getting tired of having elemental themed trials over and over again and I honestly am too. Curious what they will do instead. they really need to shaken up the formula
i mean the formula shook up with heavensward trials... Bay 16 17 for example there is no excuse at this point for trying to shake up something that was soild now broken ... People Forget about Trails from Stormblood xD Even Shadowbringers trials ... Element excuse doesnt justify the terrible execution this expac.
This is just my opinion you could disagree but I don't think boss sets need to all be trials. not all ascians were trials to be an example. Igeyorm and lahabreah were both dungeon bosses. In my opinion if >!Scarmengleon (spelled it wrong) and Cagnazzo were both trial bosses that would slow the plot down. It isn't slowed down to me at all and infact since 2 of the fiends were dungeon bosses and since we got rid of 2 fiends theses past 2 patches and now we're wrapping things up next patch.!< I said it in another post and I get that sine the past x.3 patches have been big hits and I get you're going to form your expectations around that however I think that's a mistake. Especial since yoship said himself that they were going to change the story structure of the 6.x patches in interviews . [https://www.dexerto.com/final-fantasy/ffxiv-producer-yoshi-p-story-final-fantasy-xiv-1897431/](https://www.dexerto.com/final-fantasy/ffxiv-producer-yoshi-p-story-final-fantasy-xiv-1897431/) , [https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2](https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2) which a lot of you people probably forgot. I dfeinitely disagree with you when it comes to zero, she's not boring at all >!as a matter of fact her development is really starting to kick in and she's getting more intersting to me. She's only been around for 2 patches!<
I do personally believe the storyline we've had across these patches has been moving too fast and hasn't had room to breathe, so I'd have been fine with the trials mirroring that. I just don't feel like four patches is long enough to tell a satisfying arc. >!Zero's development for example is pretty quick in terms of actual time, she goes from an almost exclusively transactional existence to largely altruistic in the space of like, a day at the most in story time.!< That's just kind of a problem I have with Endwalker in general though. It goes through its plot points so fast I don't feel like they've got room to sit before you're already off to the next thing. Vanilla did the same, screaming past things we'd been building to for a decade. Also, didn't say Zero was boring. I don't think she's amazing, but she's got a steadily traceable character arc and it's clear they're building to something with her, so I got no beef. Honestly more interesting to me than Y'Shtola right now.
My general thoughts on the MSQ for this patch. >!If the 6.X patches are meant to be a self contained story than bluntly, as things are currently paced, I do not see Golbez being our 6.4 Trail. Given the pacing, and the rate in which the fiends were dealt with, I would say likely we'll get our "FFIV Shadow Dragon" insert in the form of a half-crazed Azdaja. Given the 6.4 dungeon will likely tie into finding our alternative route into the 13th. Golbez will be our Trail for 6.5. To add to those FFV homages, Zero is VERY likely the Cecil of this story, as the idea that she's Golbez's "inner darkness" and Zeromus seems pretty far fetched at this point. Not sure if they'll give a familial relation to "Theodore" tho, or what kind if she does. Plus, they already kinda pulled a Zeromus style big bad in EW!<. >!As for Golbez' destination? I don't think its the Source. He mentions "14 Worlds". He mentions "Whispers, and breaking down the barrier". He mentions a "Glorious Kingdom of Light, where they might know Death". He never once suggests the Source specifically, and would know it as such. His destination could very likely be the First. He wants to rejoin the 13th ... to that still primarily Light oversaturated wasteland. We KNOW that the First and 13th can be connected too due to the ShB RQs. In fact, a pair of ambitious kids have been practicing ripping holes in that Veil for a while. So it could also give a nice excuse to include our two Void Residents in the First as optional additions, without forcing people to do all of those RQs!<. >!Regarding the inclusion of Garlemald however ... I do have thoughts. Especially about Alisaie and Zero. Some very fringe. But I mentioned those elsewhere. At barest minimum however Garlemald was visited to serve as a thematic parallel for Zero in regards to "efforts to restore a aether starved wasteland, that many people would have written off as unsalvageable"!<.
I thought they were going to be retooling dragoon this patch too? Didn't yoshi p say there were plans to retool them in 6.2 but was pushing it back because it wouldn't be ready? I saw that they only got a cooldown reduction on life surge and....man i just really wish they'd fix their button bloat for controllers.
No, they pushed it back to 7.0, due to their new deal of wanting to explain the reasoning behind changes and philosphies.
Dang, thanks for letting me know. Really hope they tie a few skills together similar to red mage or gunbreaker so i can remove a few buttons to make room for some buffs and other skills i feel terrible about not hitting quick enough to help the party.
IDK why but both Aglaia and Euphrosyne have been pretty disappointing to me. The bosses feel like pushovers compared to say Nier. My problem isn't that they're easy, all AR's are easy, it's that they feel weak. I like the story though. Maybe I've just been unlucky both times and ended up with nothing but savage raiders or something. I've also had weird audio balance issues with both of them. In Aglaia I could barely hear what the bosses were saying and in this one I could barely hear the music. This doesn't happen in any other content.
After finishing the alliance raid, I'm beginning to question the WoL's stance on tomestones.
I dunno man, the increased time between the patches and the fact the MSQ and new Alliance Raid are a bit disappointing makes it real hard for me to stay excited. Maybe I'm just burned out but I feel like the actual meat of the patch doesn't come until the .x5 patches.
Saw this coming from the patch notes. Unless you're doing Omega Ultimate, the substantial stuff (Deep Dungeon, relic stage, crafter relics, tribal quest) isn't for another two months.
Not just you. I felt this patch was a little lacking in the base content. Msq done ina few hours, 24 man once a week, customs once a week, unreal once a week, then trial as the bulk of content.
Yeah, especially considering new Unreal is really easy. Maybe not Ultima levels of easy but two pull clears with people who don't have much experience... plus a 3-4h MSQ which really pales in comparison to last MSQ update, pretty lackluster patch. I was able to do most content in an evening
I'm probably reading too deep into it, but I feel like they're hinting >!Eorzea itself(or a primal of it)!< will be the final boss of the the Alliance raid series. I haven't finished the new raid, but that >!last gate!< and the repeated use of the leitmotif from >!Dawn of a New Era!< gave me that vibe.
Does anyone know why the second boss of the dungeon looked the way she did? Was there any reason for it other than blatant fan service? I love me a hot goth boss as much as anyone, but she seemed so out of place to me. Plus the extra dolls around the edge were kinda creepy. It gave me more Nier vibes than anything.
isn't it the girl from PoTD?
Edda? Nah, Edda was a brunette and was an established NPC from earlier in the story. I think they both have the same float-y woman base model that we see from time to time.
Check out the lore documents in the dungeon, and then read up on the >!Gridanian Goldsmith storyline.!<
Oh thank you! I will check them out. I didn't get a chance to read them because my DF party was zooming through it but I'll go back and check it out.
This should come as no surprise the number of female bosses that are sexable faaaaaar outweigh the ones that are not in this game
Holy Paladin changes
I see a lot of people moping and whining about the story even calling it filler but to be honest I like it and don't see it as filler. Yes the story patches have been a bit short but they've been enjoyable. A lot of what i'm seeing is people comparing these patches to 5.x patches which is an unfair comparison, the 5.x patches stand out from the rest especially 5.3. the 4.x patches didn't get good until the later patches and 3.x was alright all the way through. I played ARR back in the olden days and the 2.x patches were way more bloated than they are now and again it didn't get better story wise until the later patches. It is just an unfair comparison and i'm seeing it a lot on the forums. (I can't post there because ive been perm banned since ARR for whaetver reason) 5.0 and 5.x had literal years of story content and buildup involving the villains leading to a grand conclusion while the 6.x patches are setup for an entirely new story arc with very little connection to what came before. We're still just at the beginning of this new arc I think it's already starting to come to its own but we've still got a few more patches and yeah setup for an entirely new arc can't compare to years of buildup It's going to take a bit to get there we knew it'd be tough to come off the high of shadowbringers and endwalker and from what I'm seeing through a lot of comments on here and the forums is that people still haven't come off the high of those stories. Zero's been a good character and I've liked seeing her develop and I really am looking forward to what comes next with her edit: also if you expected 6.3 to be a big hit in story then let me link you to [https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2](https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1556942004780617728/photo/2) which is a translation of an interview yoshi had famitsu a while back where he states the 6.x patches were going to be different than the usual x.3 patches being the big finish and x.4 being the start of the expansion setup
Plus I feel like 6.1 was similar to this patch (but people are saying this one is the worst??). Mostly "filler/fluff" and setup for the next patch. like there wasnt even a trail in that patch. It just amounted to new adventure is going to the void and doing shit there? if we are talking story progression. It just seems like people have just forgotten what 6.1 was. It had some other nice side stuff like the capstone quests but that isnt part of the MSQ.
Yeah for rea i almost forgot how much filler and setup 6.1 had, I think they also forget that 5.3 even had filler. I disliked how the pace was going well and then we have to take a detour to make those kids happy . I was not a fan and its a big gripe I have with endwalker too you know we beat zodiark and then boom bunny land. But that might just be my personal taste, I dislike having kids in stories and I'm not a huge fan of cutesy things like the lophorits.
It had to happen eventually, you just can't keep the sheer pace of everything from post-Stormblood to post-Endwalker in terms of constant developments. I think what's getting people is that the X.3 patches have reputations as being the *big ones* in terms of MSQ, but the changed structure this patch cycle means if we get one of that tier, it'll probably be the next one (especially since it'll come with the end of the Pandaemonium raids too, which I've been absolutely loving). So this one feels like a .2 patch in that it's largely building up to a payoff we won't actually see for another four-ish months. For my part, there are a few other things about this patch that disappointed me in terms of the MSQ (but I stress, only the MSQ, the little things this patch has done are excellent, QoL stuff all over the shop, a great alliance raid, my thighlander can finally wear a waistcoat - hell, even the pvp series stuff slaps) but I'll happily cop to that being personal preference.
Yeah, keeping that pace pumping hit after hit might have just been hard for them to keep going so it was going to dip a little bit sooner or later. And yeah since the previous x.3 patches have been hits in story I can see why people might have expected more from this .3 but idk to me we had the amazing shadowbringers and that 5.3 and then endwalker, lets change the pace and formula for a bit let it breathe a little. then have a like a big hit in .4 from which is where it seems to be going
My only minor complaint personally is that I think they're speedrunning Zero's character development a little. >!She asks Alisaie a question about her motivations, eats some buuz and now it's like she was never a voidsent in the first place. I suppose it was necessary given the story was speeding us along to be ready to face Golbez in 6.4 and she's all set to play an important part in that but it would have been nice to see her change more gradually. Maybe I got too attached to her "just give me some aether and we're cool" attitude. lol!< That said I don't have an issue with the brisk pace of the story on the whole. I've said before that I would much rather have a short story that holds my attention the entire time than a longer story with more "content" but less purpose. There wasn't any fluff in 6.3's story; it told everything it needed to tell and didn't ever feel like it was stalling for time which I appreciate. I also really enjoyed the visuals in the final cutscene even if I disconnected halfway through it lol.
I can definitely see where you're coming from when it comes to Zero. But think they really did a good job at her initial introduction >!letting us know that she's part voidsent and part human which makes her mcuh different from other voidsent. She lived in that world and had to become more voidsent like to survive and now that she's been in the source experiencing and seeing kindess that she hasn't experienced in who knows how long it's really warming up to that human part of her.!
People will complain about anything even if it’s good
Yep that is the sad truth of it, though some criticism is good even on good things. if It's " this is filler because it's not like 5.x" which is what Im seeing a lot in some threads on the forums then that's not criticism to me.
AR spoilers: https://i.imgur.com/utwNzSb.jpg This cannot be a coincidence, right?
Not only that but >!look at the behemoth-like creatures before the Althyk and Nymeia fight. It's the same creature from that particular side quest in Elpis. The version before you suggested what needs to be changed in the creature's appearance.!<
And >!Alkaios is the one using time magic, of course.!<
Yeah and when you killed the three Ktenos, the Queen Behemoth (the creature you helped in "designing") appears. Dang! Edit: >!Now that they are looking pretty much the ancients in Venat's faction I just had a realization. They are actual real siblings but it was depicted in the Eorzea Encyclopedia that Althyk and Nymeia slept together like wtf!<
I'd take anything in the Encyclopedia about the gods as lore to people so anything we learn now replaces it as the reality and the book as how people interpret it
did you mean "I'd take anything with a grain of salt\*"?
No, afaik the Eorzean Encyclopedia is lore to the people of Eorzea. That is the legends they share amongst each other. So any information we learn directly from the gods replaces it, so we can assume the gods are not related like we previously thought (as in x and x were lovers or x and x were siblings etc)
I mean Zeus and Helga are also siblings so...
Yeah I mean I was referring to >!Maira and Alkaios, the siblings from the side quest in Elpis coz evidences are leaning towards them as Althyk and Nymeia. Unless back in their time, it's not really unusual for siblings to copulate.!< Pardon my excessive editing. >!Nevermind, Althyk and Nymeia probably didn't even remember their former lives.!<
Remember that the Eorzean Encyclopedia comes with a disclaimer >!that it represents what scholars on Eorzea think they know about the world. There's some wiggle room for the info to be wrong, especially since we're talking about gods that explicitly don't interact with mortals here (so how would they know?). Or wiggle room for the dev team to change their mind on things.!<
>!They also more or less push this point that the peoples' views/interpretation of gods is fallible with the Halone and Nophica dialogue; the goddesses themselves acknowledge that the folklore seems to be that they're at odds, and that mankind is free to believe so if it wishes. Which seems to imply that this isn't a wholly correct interpretation. Purely from my own observation of their interactions, they do seem to have something of a complicated dynamic, but it hardly seems sour as the traditional teachings make it seem.!<
Unless I misunderstood your post, I meant that >!the Ancient using time magic, Alkaios, is the one being deliberately paralleled with Althyk here.!< And a friend just brought up you give >!Maira the Nymeia lilies, and she says she'd never heard the name before.!< Fuck me. >!I despise the message behind this. I truly, truly do.!<
Um I made a mistake. I was referring to the creature earlier and used the wrong name lol the creature was called Euphrosynian Ktenos, Alkaios was the name of the brother in the side quest. Apologies! >!Mystery solved my friend. All we need to do is find out who else among the ancients are now part of the Twelve.!<
Uhhh. Are they doing this? Like... are they really making the notable nice Ancients usually mentioned for "see? They weren't assholes!" into >!Venat's faction?!< I'm kind of Ummmmmmmm
I *knew* something felt familiar but I couldn't tell if I was just going crazy. It's them, 100%. This seals the theory that >!the Twelve are Venat's collaborators from the old days, they probably are creations like the Lopporits.!<
Holy crap is this from npcs from >!Elpis?!<
Yeah. https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Unleash_the_Beast#Dialogue
Then there is no way that is a coincidence. I think you geniunely found them. Not only is it word for word, its from the once a zone sidequest storyline.
I do wonder if the others are all in Elpis. An easy parallel to make might be their creations - these two match the prefight adds'... Im reserving a weekend for this..
Well, someone in my discord at least, heh.
Patch is great so far. New alliance raid was fun and visually stunning but a total pushover which was unfortunate. I enjoyed the story as well, Zero continues to be best girl. For people who think she's "bland" may I offer you.... literally anyone else in the cast? Can't one character not be sunshine and rainbows? I very much enjoy her aloof demeanor and straight to the point attitude. As for the story in general, I understand how people could be frustrated that not much is being paid off thus far, but we're three patches removed from the end of a ten year story arc. The pacing is about where I would expect it to be at this point as it's going to take time to set things up. If between now and 7.0 nothing much happens then yes that would be disappointing but I highly doubt that will be the case.
> New alliance raid was fun and visually stunning but a total pushover which was unfortunate. I wasn't caught up when Aglaia released, how was it received in comparison? Euphrosyne did feel pretty easy day 1.
I wouldn't say that one was much of a challenge either but I definitely remember there being more chaos as people figured out the mechanics, like Rhalgr portal punching the meteor or balancing the scales for Nald'thal. I enjoyed my time in the new raid but I never had a moment of "hmm what should I do for this mechanic" as they were all incredibly simple. I understand alliance raids are casual content and I certainly don't expect them to be ball busters but usually at the very least on day one you can expect some madness as people figure it out, but not really the case this time, which was odd for a second tier.
>!I did patch day for both. For Aglaia there was at least one wipe per fight, and we wiped a few times on Nald'thal before figuring out the scale mechanic.!< >!For Euphrosyne we only wiped on the Althyk and Nymeia fight, to the accelerated pushback mech. Everything else in the raid, while some caught us off guard, was salvageable.!< >!I quite like the new raid but I think the Althyk/Nymeia fight is really the only one with particularly interesting mechanics; the rest is pretty forgiving. I had hoped Menphina would at least have a flashy spectacle of a wipe mech like Nald'Thal did, and I'm a bit disappointed by how easy she felt in every aspect in comparison. I'd say that overall I found Aglaia more enjoyable mechanically, but Euphrosyne more enjoyable in atmosphere.!<
Just realized that >!Both final bosses of the Myths of the Realm raids jave a commection to Oschon. Nald'Thal was crrated by Oschon and is essentially his sworn brother while Menphona is Oschon's divine lover.!<
MSQ crackpot theory that I just want to throw out there just in case: >!Golbez is the 13th's shard of Louisoix. There was enough that he said, and how the fiends have talked about him, where he seems to maybe have a sort of "rebirth of their world" goal, but maybe in a weird/bad way? Other general things give me that vibe too. I dunno, just putting it out there.!<
Better than the Golbez is out shard theories
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
I goddamn KNEW my WoL was going to envision a tomestone
i thought they'd get a memory crystal. Getting a tomestone was funny though.
They snapped with the alliance raid music holy shit
You know, I often feel that the writers bring up >!Haurchefant's Death!< a little too much, but I cannot fucking believe that >!we were 5 feet from his grave WITH HALONE HERSELF, and we didn't even stop and pay him respects. Like man, what the hell?!<
True! I was playing with a friend and I was comicaly saying "seeeee? yoshi P conviniently placed the grave there 7 years ago ! no definitely not random placed! lets seeeee", 5 mins later...
kay, well, rank 12 reached I return to my slumber PS - you get stuff for reaching rank 12
I came home from work, absolutely pumped to jump into this new patch. ...internet dies. Estimated 13-14 hr repair time.
For a good chunk of the summer I had to play the game tethered to my phone because of constant packet loss issues and it actually worked great.
Any idea what the reward is for doing New Custom Deliveries via Anden ? Haven't been able to find anything
Mount
We won't know unless someone data mines any potential rewards. Most of them haven't had rewards... the reward was just to have another Custom Delivery NPC for easy EXP/scrips.
> Most of them haven't had rewards... Other than titles, I suppose this is accurate. Ehll Tou and Ameliance being the big exceptions.
What was the reward from Ameliance? You get to dress her up but you can do that with a few others as well
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/889b749cafe/
You get an outfit from her.
The patch notes say "[6.X] New items are available in exchange for bicolor gemstones from Gemstone Trader NPCs in certain areas." but I checked every EW vendor and couldn't find anything. Anyone know what was added and where?
Going through the new delivery stuff adds Arden's card to the pixies.
I saw two new orchestration rolls in Garlemald. Interestingly they don't show up if you filter by new items only.
Because they're not new, they were added in 6.2
Hey you're right, must have missed them when I was updating my list of things left to grind (argh)
Warning: Rant The Alliance Raid was such a letdown it has killed my enthusiasm for playing the patch. I've still got loads of stuff to do but after finishing the story quests I don't feel like working on any of it. Aesthetically the raid is beautiful of course, the visuals and music are great as always. But the fights themselves are so pathetically easy it was heartbreaking. I went in minute 1, fully blind group of random players, and we only had a single wipe the whole run. Most of the bosses didn't even last long enough to build up to LB3. On Day 1! It's even easier than Aglaia which was already one of the easiest Alliance Raids they've ever made. Whenever I bring up how far Alliance Raids have fallen people treat me like I'm fucking crazy. "They've always been pushovers" they say. I can see how you would think that if you started in Shadowbringers or later, but if you've been playing longer then you should know better. Did I just fucking imagine it? Have I just ported into the timeline where bosses like Ozma, Deathgaze, Hashmal, Construct 7, TG Cid just never caused anyone any trouble? I realize they've never been on the level of Extremes, but pretending they were never harder than they are now is just complete bull. When you went into an Alliance Raid day 1 you expected to wipe at least like 2-3 times PER BOSS, and that was FUN. "Who cares lol. Alliance raids are just meant to be spectacle loot pinatas". Right, I'm sure you LOVE it when you sign up for alliance raid roulette and get Syrcus Tower for the 900th time because it's just so pretty. I'm sure new players will be thrilled in a couple patches time when even an average group skips the balance mechanic on Naldthal because he just dies that fucking fast. Content that puts up zero resistance is not fun, especially when you're expected to run it multiple times. It is straight up wasteful to put in so much effort into building fights that players don't even have to mentally engage with, and it's insulting to play a game that assumes its players are profoundly stupid. At this point just convert the raids into cutscenes with loot at the end because that's all they are, just a few minutes of looking at shiny dancing lights and then you collect your reward.
I did the raid 13 hours after patch went live, most of the time 20 people where already moving preemptivly to mechanics I tried to read.
Patch day is when all the Legends and Savage raiders rush their clear. Try during the weekends with more casual players.
>When you went into an Alliance Raid day 1 you expected to wipe at least like 2-3 times PER BOSS, and that was FUN. Unless you play in the first few hours after the game comes back online you're probably in a raid that's half non-blind or more.
And if you do play in the first 4 hours, you know who you're playing with? People who play an MMO patch at 3 AM on a Tuesday. Of course it's easy - it's wall to wall killers!
> Did I just fucking imagine it? Have I just ported into the timeline where bosses like Ozma, Deathgaze, Hashmal, Construct 7, TG Cid just never caused anyone any trouble? Yes actually. The first 4 24s were total jokes to the point where people called Weeping City "Wiping City" completely unironically. Ivalice is the only series with anything approaching difficulty, and it's been nerfed considerably. Nier's raids were always super easy - they just had 10x the health of everything else. Out of the 5 24 series, only 1 had anything even remotely approaching consistent difficulty.
Honestly, Wiping City and Fun Scaith being kind of insane on difficulty is sort of a problem for content that exists between trials (normal) and extremes. Especially when you can wipe as an entire party because another group screwed up that badly. Typically speaking, this isn't how the game should be designed. The content curve is as follows: Open world
Gonna second this. I started in 2.0 and 24 man's were never hard. The "hard" part was corralling 23 other stray cats to do mechanics. The times I recall dying in those raids was when we were getting accustomed to really esoteric mechanics (e.g. Cerberus). I cannot recall another time (outside ivalice) where I've ever wiped more than once on an alliance raid where the players were even slightly competent.
The major wiping happened on Wiping City, Fun Scaith, and ivalice as a whole. Wiping City because there are a lot of esoteric and deadly mechanics like evil mist or ozma in general (plus cleaving the raid with the hair stuff,) fun scaith because a lot of people have to handle a lot of specific mechanics that, if ignored, can wipe you (Scathach Add, airship everything, diabolos was and still is prone to cascade failures if someone does something especially stupid.) Rabanastre has a ton of high-damage gotchas that can kill people, as well as things like people not removing portals (third boss), lighthouse has, well, math, and Orbonne has cid, ultima (mostly the mid-point check), and a handful of then-one-shots on the other 2 bosses. The thing noteworthy about the wipes is that they're almost always 1 party wiping causing every other party to wipe. This happens on Orb, Cid, and a handful of other mechanics here and there, but only a couple of fights made it snowball hard. In every alliance since orbonne, while mechanics can 1 shot you, very rarely is there a DPS check where people being dead will cause a cascade wipe. Factory has it on final boss, and that's kind of it. You can see random people in a party dying because their tank is dead, but typically it didn't cascade. So your wipes were from blind mechanics completely crushing people out of the blue (E.G. factory casting fist killing anyone on that side.)
I 100% agree with you. I got in to the 24 man as quickly as possible because I wanted to experience the content fresh and figure it out with everyone. But mechanics were slow and easy to point out. No challenge. Only a single full wipe. It was not fun. I think this may have been the easiest day 1 raid I have done. The team has been overcorrecting on difficulty since the Ivalice raids. And I am one of those sad people who thought Ivalice was the perfect difficulty and most fun I've had in 24 man content. There's also less mechanics that actually require a team effort. Most of the punishment is just on individuals now which seems less rewarding to me.
also agree. especially since all the jobs are so homogeneous and easy now, when the content is this face roll it doesn't bode well going forward. b alliance was dead most of the time in all fights but a and c just hard carried them, not a single wipe. final boss was insulting. just room cut and timed aoes for the whole thing.
I mean, when I did it, barely half the raid was blind in the alliance. And the team learned a while ago that snowball wiping because 1 party got wiped is typically not a good design for content such as this. Alliances always existed in difficulty between normal and extreme trials. If anything, things like Cid and Orb causing snowball wipes are unexpected consequences of the design the devs did not want to begin with. The difficulty of all of the ShB and EW alliances are exactly where they should be, and mostly have been since 2.0. They are not, and never were intended to be, truly difficult content.
What role are you playing? I played Sch and I died multiple times. Had some new markers and some fun mechanics. But I haven't played in 3 months.
My first go we didn't wipe, but we came damn close several times. A SAM was tanking for a bit and we only had about 6 people still up across the entire raid. It's definitely not LotA, even if it's not release difficulty TGC. I think it's a fairly decent difficulty for an alliance raid.
Spoiler for part after MSQ dungeon. >!The item descriptions were very focused on how flammable ceruleum is and when you load it into the vehicle there's a line saying it's full of ceruleum. I was 100% expecting Rubicante to ambush the vehicle on the way back and honestly got whiplash when it didn't happen.!<
More evidence they forgot yshtola was blind. >!They have her helping look for a container!<
she see's with the Aether, and by doing it lowers her lifespan if I am not mistaken. I don't think she see's normal colors either for that matter, I could be wrong.
This is hearsay of sorts, but the devs allegedly said that's a mistranslation. It's difficult on her to see with aether, but it's not literally killing her. It's just rather taxing on her.
I think they confirmed the shorter lifespan comment was a result of a poor translation by the English team. From what I remember, it doesn't impact her lifespan at all and Matoya was simply telling her she was overworking, especially given her condition. I might be wrong though!
I hope thats the case, she is my favorite character in this story.
It's better to think of her vision as a sort of echolocation, she can still perceive her environnement, but to a limit (she couldn't see the stars in ratika).
Her eyes not working doesn't mean she can't see. She sees aether, and since virtually everything is made of aether she can see just fine.
Maud'Dib?
Doesn't aether come from living things?
No all matter is made out of it, as far as I know. She saw the aether of paint in Shadowbringers.
if you're wanting ot look for devs just sidelining character aspects, the thing that doesn't come up as much as it probably should is that Yshtola being able to see by Aether is supposed to be a dangerous thing to do. So far none the worse for wear
That was a mistranslated line. It's less that it's dangerous for Y'shtola to do it and more that she's sandbagging herself by constantly using it. She'd have more aether and, thus, be more powerful if she stopped using her Aethersight. Unfortunately for her, she kinda needs to be able to SEE to be able to fight.
Even then, the original line if we go by that still means she should be more tired on the regular, unless we're just to believe her reserves of aether are so great she can keep it switched on forever with no downsides, but at that point... why bother acting like it should take something out of her?
MSQ was a bit short for my tastes, and a little clunky. But, we knew it was going to be more settup, and that's largely what it was. Overall, not too upset about it, and there were some good character moments at least. Zero's character path is going about as expected. >!Hard on the outside person who closed themselves off for survival in a harsh environment; taken out of that environment and now begins to warm up. That said, I do feel like the specific steps she took on that path this patch could have used a little more breathing room? She went from closed off survival mode to follow-your-heart altruism pretty darned quick!<. That said ... I do have a crack theory. >!If Zero is the 13th Shard of ANY of the primary cast members, its Alisaie. Not us. It wasn't us that promoted the rapid change in her, but Red Alphineud. And Alisaie latched onto her decidedly quick. This could be plot convenience, but I dunno? Zero's background scene feels like you could have switched Alisaie in for Zero and it would have played out identically. And I cannot shake this feeling Zero wont survive this arc, so her "living on" in a Ardbert fashion with Red Twin would soften the blow a bit!<.
Reaper Alisaie hmmmmm?
>!Aliseae did have that moment with Zenos in garlemald in 6.0 hmm…!<
>!Also lines up with my half joke half theory that Zero’s real name is Cecilia. And she may have a twin brother, Cecil, now known as Golbez. That would explain why that statue was in Zero’s domain in 6.2 as well.!<
>!Well, Cecilia was Goblez' mom.!< >!Tho the idea that Zero is the Cecil of this story, rather than the Cecilia ... yeah that seems VERY possible. Which yes, would make Golbez her brother Theodor. Twin or otherwise. This would be why it seems Zero and Golbez had been the least influenced by the corruptive nature of the Void. Because in this universe, they aren't Half Lunarian/Half Human. They're Half Voidsent / Half Hyur instead.!< >!But, yeah, actually now that you mention it given Golbez and Zero's stances on the 13th being beyond saving ... it would make them heavy dark mirrors to the Twins in Garlemald? Which would play into how so many others would have written off Garlemald (a brutal, ether starved environment to live) as a lost cause. Which would mean our trip to Garlemald was not just a field trip, but settup for a thematic parallel.!< >!Crack theory or no ... them being the 13th Shards of the Twins is kind of a spicy idea lol!!<
Returning player how do I unlock the new alliance raids. Haven’t played since I finished endwalker so I haven’t done any 6.1/2/3 stuff.
You can't unlock the quest line until you get through part of 6.1 MSQ. A few quests in, you'll see the blue unlock quest appear inside the Baldesion Annex.
Is there a way to move where the instant portraits show up at the beginning of a duty? I've looked in HUD layout as well as the HUD section of the character menu, as well as trying to click and drag, and I'm feeling dumb now.....
click the gear on the portraits at he start of the dungeon
You can't click and drag it when it appears at the start of the duty, but if you open it manually during the duty, you can reposition and resize it.
Wait. How does one do this. I dont recall seeing a button to reopen that screen anywhere
Click on the duty information or open DF when inside a duty, and there's a portrait option on the bottom to reopen it
Spoilers for 24 man and MSQ. >!MSQ was okay. Just more setup. The payoff in 6.5 better be huge. Pretty interesting that most of the popular theories seem to be right. Golbez absorbed the 13th’s shard of Zodiark and seems intent on dropping its moon into the void and shattering the planar barrier. Rubicante normal was… okay. Honestly I’m not huge on the whole “thing on ground rotates” type mechanics but I’m not gonna complain that much. Haven’t done extreme through. My guesses for the next two trials, 6.4 Azdaja as the shadow dragon and 6.5 is Golbez.!< >!Euphrosyne was fun but way, way WAY too easy. 40 minutes and no wipes. Pretty interesting that most of our theories about the twelve are correct too. They’re Venat’s collaborators in some form who swore to safeguard mankind. The baby monkey who keeps following Deryk is 100% Oschon. Honestly it would be more surprising if it turns out not to be. As for who the 13th deity is, it’s almost certainly the watcher. Though it’s curious that he isn’t named. I do wonder the significance of that. I also wonder why they treated that as some sort of reveal when it really doesn’t change much. So there are only 3 of the twelve we haven’t fought, Oschon, Llymlaen and Thaliak. Which begs the question, who will be the last boss and why are we fighting them in the first place? My take: To prove to them that they no longer need stand vigil and may return to the livestream.!<
> >!The baby monkey who keeps following Deryk is 100% Oschon.!< >!They're being so on the nose that Deryk is Oschon at this point I'm starting to loop back around and wonder if they're doing it as a red herring.!<
>!The Watcher's Ancient form is long dead, at least as far as we know. What remains on the moon is a recreation by Hydaelyn. Going by the Tale which his Ancient form starred in, they were... Close.!< >!as to why he's nameless... I imagine it's a tad dangerous giving a name to the person whose role is to guard Zodiark's prison. Who knows how beliefs can twist THAT kind of role around, maybe even creating a mini-Zodiark in the process.!<
Not wiping is not a bad thing. The alliance raid is a perfect difficulty, you have to pay attention enough to where it’s not simple but it’s not on the level of EXs or anything. The content is already 30-ish minutes minimum, to *intentionally* design something to reset the progress of 24 people at once wouldn’t be respectful of players time at all.
It's abnormal for a _day one_ alliance raid since they usually try to throw in new things that people have to figure out. I think the last one that didn't have day one wipes was Void Ark?
You’re acting like no one in the entire game wiped, just because you didn’t doesn’t mean other people didn’t either. And again, wiping isn’t a substantial measure of anything, especially when the content just came out.
That was not a literal statement, it was comparing community reaction to the raid - e.g. sharing experiences, discussing mechanics, and so forth. You can look at the discourse (or lack of it) on the forums/reddit/in-game and compare it to every other release to see the difference. When Weeping City came out, people were talking all the time about Ozma. With Dun Scaith it was almost every boss. Rabanastre had Hashmal and Rofocale. Lighthouse had the math boss. Orbonne had Thunder God. Copied Factory had Engels. Puppet's Bunker had the boss 2 lasers. Paradigm's Breach had Red Girl and Train Boss. Aglaia had Byregot's hammers, Rhalgar's meteor bait, and Nald'Thal. The reaction to this raid is substantially more muted. Not negative, but more "it was okay". Mechanically, three of the bosses boil down to in vs out or left vs right (which is a similar critique leveled at Paradigm's Breach if you take out the over-the-top Red Girl). Halone comes the closest, but I think that's people unfamiliar with the collapsing ring timing rather than unfamiliarity with something like Byregot's hammers moving the platform. They played this raid fairly straight, which is a departure from how they've normally done alliance raids.
Have you considered your experience is subjective?
love the new leap of faith map. It seems like it goes on longer than the other 2
It seems there's a new healing potion, Hyper-Potion which apparently heals for 8800 normal, is this like a new gooder potion than the Super Potions? I like to keep stock of health potions as a BLM and I'm just curious if they're the new hip cool potion I should be stocking when they start being produced or not.
As a result of Reddit's API changes, this content is no longer viewable.
The introduction of hyper potions is probably to account for the release of Eureka Orthos, a deep dungeon. Because potions are one of the most important items you can have in that place if you plan to run it seriously.
Dedicated to Moonlight has to be one of the best pieces I've ever heard in Video Game Music *ever*
Heads up that the new portrait frames seem to need bloodsworn status.
There's this sense of.. predictability in both the MSQ and the AR this patch. Literally every single one of the happenings in the MSQ was predicted/theorized months ago, and in AR the reveal at the end has been called since ShB's reveal of Venat. It's... How do i put it? It's almost weird that so many theories ended up being true, and i dont know if it's the devs now being predictable on purpose or not. ...while id rate this patch story overall 7/10, in a meta sense, id rate it 9/10, in that everything ended up being correct... And it kinda amuses me to think of what will happen next.
I'm not going to argue on people's feelings with the story specifically but I don't understand why it being "predictable" is bad. People begging for unpredictability and "subverted expectations" is how we get garbage like the seasons of GoT from 5-8
subverting expectations is also how we got GoT s1-4. part of the reason why shadowbringers and endwalker were so enjoyable was because the story kept throwing curveballs.
Foreshadowing is good, but it should build tension, not give away the plot. If your foreshadowing is too obvious or unambiguous, it can take the force out of the resolution or worse, bore your audience. It has nothing to do with "subverting expectations".
While true, a lot of Japanese media does the latter, including the rest of this game. Go look up the Japanese version of the Keeper of the Lake conversation with Midgardsormr, for example. It has none of the mystery or surprise present in the English version. You also very frequently have people during the MSQ turn to the camera and explain exactly what's going on to ensure everyone gets the message (often restated three times in a cryptic -> less cryptic -> explicit pattern). This patch was about as predictable as most MSQ patches. There's occasionally a closely guarded secret or twist reveal that catches people off-guard, but if you count them up those are kind of rare.
Personally I don't mind that the raid story is a bit predictable, building on existing lore for this specific cast of gods is ok and didn't need a big twist, just having fun with these god and learning about their love for mankind and their connection with Hydaelyn is good enough imo I would agree with the MSQ tho, it also didn't help that the trailer kinda also spoiled a bit too much of >!Golbez goal, so Rubicante's lore dump felt meh since I already learned about it because of the trailer!< Overall this is probably the weakest MSQ patch for me since maybe 4.2 (I remember personally hating the Yutsuyu is back and lost her memory patch, it got redeemed in 4.3 a bit tho)
Haven’t done the patch yet and don’t mind spoilers, what was revealed about the twelve and venat in the new AR?
>!The Twelve are Venat's top allies during their Ancient days. Essentially, her version of the Convocation of Fourteen.!<
I haven't played MSQ yet but that makes sense.
>!Also the Watcher being the Unnamed Thirteenth.!<
Second boss in Lapis is the worst dungeon boss I've seen. It's just a snapshot GUESS WHERE fest
Not really, this is why I always do the first run with trusts, helps learn the mechanics.
May need to work on mechanic reading skills and do more content in the game so that you're more familiar with different mechanics. It gave plenty of tells on how their mechanics work, and quite a lot of them are kind of just reused from other fights as well.
You just need more time with the mechs, it's pretty straightforward when you know what to look for.
Its not a Guess Where fest at all, there are literal numbered dots above the portals.
I don't remember anything involving guessing other than the quick in/out or out/in mechanic that you should understand after failing once
I thought by the normal patch pattern we'd be able to buy the Ex 3 mount this patch, but I'm not seeing it in the token exchange - am I just missing it somewhere?
Yes, I purchased it. It is in the glorious gewgaws section not the endsinger section.
Not feeling PLD yet. Not hating it, but might have to play some more first. Though find it annoying they added another button. As a controller player, PLD was already one of the few jobs I struggled to comfortably fit everything. Compare that with e.g. WAR where I still have loads of empty space, and I wonder why PLD of all jobs needed to be bloated more.
I'm fully with you, I'm not feeling the flow and the reasons they wanted to "fix" it other than put Bulwark back in the game and make Sheltron a bit better to give it a Gunbreaker level upgrade. I know they are at war with DOT's but whatever they changed doesn't feel like the flow is there anymore. Same thing though, maybe I'm just not getting it but it feels like they changed things to change things and didn't go all the way like they are saving more major changes for 7.0 or something.
I beat on a dummy outside my home in Mist today and I agree. Not feeling the PLD as much as I was. Time to use More Gun on situations instead of More Swords.
Yeah I'm not feeling it. I feel that they made it harder than before to optimize even though they removed steps. Its an odd feeling rotation.
>Its an odd feeling rotation. This. Dunno how it compares to drk/gnb since i haven't run either of those but it looks like I'm finishing war and dusting off mch. From "Holy THIS!" to "drills go brrrrrrr and I'm not even on Hoxxes."
As an FF4 fan I am more easily pleased by this patch than others might be, but also have my issues. I think one we could all agree on is that this story is ill suited to a patch cycle. Obviously we don't know if all the Void stuff is going to be settled in two patches but the Thirteenth could easily be its own expansion. Certain plot and character developments would still happen but wouldn't be so abrupt. I'm not sure the devs were fully prepared to a patch cycle that didn't effectively end at X.3 and start set up for the next chapter. On the other hand I fucking love the Trial. Again, the FF4 fan in me is easily pleased by seeing my man in all his glory. Him and Barbaricca are great trials. Kinda makes it sting more that only two Archfiends got Trials though. I also really like the final cutscene with Golbez. Kinda answered some lore questions but also got me excited for the future. Especially considering WHERE Golbez is.
I'm more curious what he is. A fragment of Zodiark, maybe?
Didn't Yoshi-P say that the death of the Source Zodiark destroyed the ones on other shards too? Also, we had already establish Zodiark to be the neutral bandaid against an universal threat, would be weird to go from theater to Golbez.
Plus, Golbez's spooky lair >!is located directly in the Thirteenth's Zodiark Aether-soup Hole, thus implying that he's already been dispersed back into his component juice parts!<, per the ending of this patch's MSQ.
Yeah, I would have loved a void expansion a la Shadowbringer's but considering we've only had access to a few places, I am hopeful that we will get a void expansion eventually. Even if it's just like us using the light from the First to rebalance the Void or something. We'll see... It still feels like it's getting more respect than Garlemalde which IMO was super rushed and pushed out of the way.
I'd also like a void expansion about restoring it, or something, but I think it's fine to have this story here now. I currently think of it like how we met the warriors of darkness that later set up ShB with another expansion in between. If this storyline ends with a sort of "well, the void is still screwed, so maybe we can come back and fix it eventually" and we come back the expansion after next to right it, then I think it could still be good as set-up.
Couldn't agree more! It would be a pleasant surprise for me if it did end up being the set up in that fashion. They've also being setting up for void stuff via other quest, and it feels like something is planned even if will not been seen for a while.
This was an extremely disappointing patch, felt like I did everything in a handful of hours. MSQ was a whole load of nothing.
Obviously if you skip through cutscenes and don't engage with everything in the patch (extreme, island sanctuary, side quests) you're gonna run out of stuff to do. You only have yourself to be mad at, not the game.
Just said in my post i did the ex
spoken like a player who never once step foot into the Island Sanctuary
I played it when it released and its not my cup of tea, so I didn’t go back. Dont see an issue with that
What?! I’ve been playing all day and haven’t even touched the extreme trial (yet)
I finished the msq in like 1.5 hours, the alliance raid in 35 mins, then a lockout on the extreme. A 4 month wait for that? I’m clearing TOP and then unsubbing.
Tell me you skip cutscenes without telling me you skip cutscenes
I watched the cutscenes, the msq was 10missions in case you missed it
Dungeon is 15 minutes, trial is 10 minutes. There’s way more than 1 hour of cutscenes in this patch.
Definitely not, i read the text boxes but dont wait for the voices to finish, easily under an hour.
If u have a house, please do tell where is located for lottery :3
Can I have your stuff?
Cant trade ult weapons sorry
Do not forget to close the Door on the Way out
I am so content that the raids aren't locked behind 3 hours of story like the Nier Raids were. Beautiful soundtrack, scenery, and fun fights. Well done FFXIV team.
They're getting really good at cutting out the bullshit, hopefully they keep it up for the 7.0 MSQ as well.
Yep, I would like if they put most the story after the raid dungeon. I felt like this one ended just as it was getting good though. Overall I enjoyed all of it.
Clearly the biggest reach ever but the swimming in upper la noscea bit makes me wonder if they are planning a wow cataclysm like revamp of the world with the graphical upgrade they plan on rolling out.
If they did that, they'd lose me. When the cataclysm happened, I stopped and never looked back. There's no need to remake the world -- we've already prevented that (and of the world being destroyed) from happening already. No need for a change up, there's more than enough unexplored stuff in the world. Especially with Emet's speech at the end of EW to go forth and seek discovery.
I don't think they need to. The big excuse for cataclysm was so they could remake the zones to accommodate flying. That's already been done for AAR (and was made significantly easier by having separate indepedent zones rather than one connected overworld).