Starlight Celebration 2024

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Turethir

Yes, this event definitely felt much better than the last few. The remix of the Starlight theme in the new area is really nice as well :)

Make sure to run around the top part of the area, there's a few NPCs there to meet!

---

Yeah, including my favorite machine dual lol


https://i.ibb.co/3mj6zxN/ffxiv-12162024-040502-283.jpg

Lmao isn't the chocobo kinda almost obsolete content that they abandoned? They need to give the chocobos some love......

I think it was the valentine's event that had 2 players do puzzles together that was actually cute...

This might be a hot take but I hate how instant gratification the quests are, too. Like you do maybe one or two quests in the seasonal questline to get the goodies, and that's it. It's treated like an aether currency questline and I'm kind of not a fan.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rueby

Lmao isn't the chocobo kinda almost obsolete content that they abandoned? They need to give the chocobos some love......

I think it was the valentine's event that had 2 players do puzzles together that was actually cute...

---

I don't think I ever got to do that one and now I'm sad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Basteala

This might be a hot take but I hate how instant gratification the quests are, too. Like you do maybe one or two quests in the seasonal questline to get the goodies, and that's it. It's treated like an aether currency questline and I'm kind of not a fan.



I don't think I ever got to do that one and now I'm sad.

---

It was almost two years ago that came out and it really was cute when I went with my partner. I hope they bring it back this upcoming Valentine's Day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

This year's Starlight celebration has a new area called Starlight Stalls and it's pretty cute for gposing and more. I would say it's an improvement from the typical quest they have for events :3

---

They made a whole area? Like Sneaky Hollows?

I can’t wait to get home and do the event! :D

The new space is really nice. The rewards are pretty typical fare. I'll do it on my main and some of my alts not all of them. I don't really use my chocobo that much.

It's cool that it's an instanced area, but like again it's ALL aesthetic based. Where is the gameplay loop? This would have been awesome to incorporate some kind of fate system or roaming notorious christmas monster pop, or idk random item pop hunt of some kind. Like SOMETHING that involves actually PLAYING the game. This is just fetch quests, albeit prettier.

Also, im gonna keep harping on this because its kinda garbage, but where are the actual holiday items that people want for housing like Christmas Trees. They are already made assets, just put them in the game for these events. The only ones they have are from 2014 and 2015, and apparently one from 2018 which are obviously now on the store, and the handful you could maybe find on the marketboard from then are 20mil a piece. Same with the other holiday items. And did you notice? On the item text this year it says "marketboard prohibited" meaning that they are trying to maximize the cash shop roi by gatekeeping content for the game. That's utter trash considering that this constantly updated content is supposed to be what our sub is paying for, meaning that they're double dipping with our subs to create limited time cash shop items and labeling that as content. Like wtf man, this is why people who aren't afk'ers, or RP'ers are leaving. Even then apparently RP'ers have their gripes but idk the ins and outs of that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rueby

Lmao isn't the chocobo kinda almost obsolete content that they abandoned? They need to give the chocobos some love......

I think it was the valentine's event that had 2 players do puzzles together that was actually cute...

---

Not sure how it could be considered obsolete or abandoned unless they said there would be more to it. Sure people have wanted more. Sure it could be improved, but the bird functions and is consistently useful. They keep giving us new outfits so that aspect is not abandoned. It’s not like Grand companies where there are several ranks that aren’t available. There may have been the intention of more companions, but the chocobo seems to be what they intended it to be.

They do seem to have given up on group and repeatable content for holidays. I don’t recall any dungeons or FATES this year. This little RP area could be something if they actually expand on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rueby

Lmao isn't the chocobo kinda almost obsolete content that they abandoned? They need to give the chocobos some love...

---

The Chocobo is one of the most consistently useful features in the game, due to the usefulness of Bicolor Gemstones, having a pocket Healer makes FATE farming substantially more bearable solo, and gives some jobs something to bounce off of , like a DNC will be able to Partner their Chocobo and make their skills work properly in otherwise solo situations. I do think Chocobos could afford to be buffed, it doesn't operate well at all roles like it is supposed to and Tank Chocobo is completely useless due to its enmity generation being far to weak to hold aggro of a level 100 DPS, but it's hardly "almost obsolete".

Oh, and also the fact that the Company Chocobo is the only customizable mount in the game and all Bardings apply to it as a mount is great to some people.

I really liked the extra area they included this time, with the vendors and all ^^ . I think it would have been cool to include some stall mini games but I guess that's really pushing it haha

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

This year's Starlight celebration has a new area called Starlight Stalls and it's pretty cute for gposing and more. I would say it's an improvement from the typical quest they have for events :3

---

Where is it? Will be a good few hours before can get in-game to take a look.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

The Chocobo is one of the most consistently useful features in the game, due to the usefulness of Bicolor Gemstones, having a pocket Healer makes FATE farming substantially more bearable solo, and gives some jobs something to bounce off of , like a DNC will be able to Partner their Chocobo and make their skills work properly in otherwise solo situations. I do think Chocobos could afford to be buffed, it doesn't operate well at all roles like it is supposed to and Tank Chocobo is completely useless due to its enmity generation being far to weak to hold aggro of a level 100 DPS, but it's hardly "almost obsolete".

Oh, and also the fact that the Company Chocobo is the only customizable mount in the game and all Bardings apply to it as a mount is great to some people.

---

So, the only functional job the chocobo has is just healer and you can only play dress up with it? I feel like when they did the stat squish in EW my chocobo felt abit weaker in terms of heals, but it could be just me. It would be nice to see them revisit the chocobo, give it buffs and/or more skills/levels beyond 10. I've never seen anyone using the chocobo as a mount so it feels the dress up is really niche unless you're grinding gemstones all the time.

I think chocobos are adorable but it makes me sad that the only content they get is just dress up.

I guess I meant obsolete in terms that they're not getting any buffs/abilities and their useage is pretty niche, in my opinion I guess. Perhaps obsolete is improper.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

They made a whole area? Like Sneaky Hollows?

I can’t wait to get home and do the event! :D

---

Yeah, pretty much the Starlight version of Sneaky Hollow and it's really cute with various NPC appearances :3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Where is it? Will be a good few hours before can get in-game to take a look.

---

It's in Gridania when you do the Starlight quest similar to the Halloween one at Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rueby

So, the only functional job the chocobo has is just healer and you can only play dress up with it? I feel like when they did the stat squish in EW my chocobo felt abit weaker in terms of heals, but it could be just me. It would be nice to see them revisit the chocobo, give it buffs and/or more skills/levels beyond 10. I've never seen anyone using the chocobo as a mount so it feels the dress up is really niche unless you're grinding gemstones all the time.

I think chocobos are adorable but it makes me sad that the only content they get is just dress up.

I guess I meant obsolete in terms that they're not getting any buffs/abilities and their useage is pretty niche, in my opinion I guess. Perhaps obsolete is improper.

---

I like using my chocobo, though I typically stick with the motorcycle because it being faster by default until I get riding maps

I believe it's only tank that is really useless in terms of the stance it can have
You almost always want it to be attacker or healer
Whenever I am a healer I have it attack, otherwise it heals
It can be helpful in some of the open world content when you don't have a reliable way to heal, especially if you make its favorite food the mimett gourds

I do agree that the dressup part is pretty niche, and I would like to see them look back at the companion and see what can be done with making it more useful but it still has its uses as is

I was pretty happy I got mine to level 20 finally, it helped with shared fates in Tural

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

This year's Starlight celebration has a new area called Starlight Stalls and it's pretty cute for gposing and more. I would say it's an improvement from the typical quest they have for events :3

---

I enjoyed the holiday event and area as well. I'm fine with holidays being a short mini "feel good" story that doesn't take up too much time.

I will say I do miss the cameos from story characters we haven't seen in a while that we used to get after the quest though. The ones where you can pick one of like 6 options, and each one would have a cutscene with a cameo. But other than that I'm content.

Once again all I can ask when doing a seasonal event is "Where is the gameplay?" because it sure isn't there.
FFXI, SE's 23 year old MMO has better, more engaging seasonal events, complete with remixes of city music with a Christmas theme.

This year is trash, the new area is cool I guess. But the rewards are absolute dogshit. It's a duuumb barding (Yippeee), Than we are insulted with a lame ass cup of hot cocoa and a poster... My account got suspended last year at this time for EMOTE spamming and I lost the ability to get the nice outfit they released that year, then of course it's gone this year (Probably to be sold $$ Greedy jerks) and instead of the sweet santa getup. We get to dress our chocobos up, I never use my chocobo for a mount and I never fight with it out in all my years (From ARR Release) My chocobo is rank 5 and that's because of it being fed while stabled. I cannot believe we got such a nice reward swapped with such god awful trash items.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my holiday is ruined.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CosmicDream

This year is trash, the new area is cool I guess. But the rewards are absolute dogshit. It's a duuumb barding (Yippeee), Than we are insulted with a lame ass cup of hot cocoa and a poster... My account got suspended last year at this time for EMOTE spamming and I lost the ability to get the nice outfit they released that year, then of course it's gone this year (Probably to be sold $$ Greedy jerks) and instead of the sweet santa getup. We get to dress our chocobos up, I never use my chocobo for a mount and I never fight with it out in all my years (From ARR Release) My chocobo is rank 5 and that's because of it being fed while stabled. I cannot believe we got such a nice reward swapped with such god awful trash items.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my holiday is ruined.

---

maybe shouldnt spam snowballs or something idk
clearly people took issue with it and if you got suspended i have a feeling it wasnt your first offense
/emotelog off can help if you have the chat message spam on

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Turethir

Yes, this event definitely felt much better than the last few. The remix of the Starlight theme in the new area is really nice as well :)

Make sure to run around the top part of the area, there's a few NPCs there to meet!

---

Agreed, I like the new area and the remixed music, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

Yeah, pretty much the Starlight version of Sneaky Hollow and it's really cute with various NPC appearances :3




It's in Gridania when you do the Starlight quest similar to the Halloween one at Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre.

---

Thank you :)

Have to say, I love it - really nice festive atmosphere!

Small step forward but they still have a long way to make this "event" any good

Aside rewards, where is the gameplay? This entire event was walk here, talk to npc. Sure, the backdrop it was set against was festive, but compared to previous events where we've had things like mini games, non-standard dungeon duties, hidden item hunts, and unique-to-event boss FATEs, this was... pretty much the epitomy of a fetch quest. We literally fetched three people some mulled punch, and that was the whole event. Quest plot/story was very short compared to events from previous years as well. No twists, no turns.

Enjoying the music and the little festival area with some working shops. I'm still giving props to whoever animated chocobos 15+ years ago; they're delightful to see in cutscenes.

Considering the "little helpers" quest theme and the barding reward, I am disappointed the festival area doesn't allow us to actually summon our chocobos out. I'm sure they could manage to code it. Our always-reliable, eternally loyal chocobos can't gpose with us in the shops with their new barding, a travesty. Chocobos are such an underutilized, abandoned feature and they don't have to be.

I like the handful of NPC cameos too, though I once again wish there was more! I recently finished Endwalker and can think of a few NPCs who would absolutely show up for hot, spiced punch. I'd love to play the old minigames too like the caroling one. Holiday events have been giving me a terrible case of 'wouldn't it be cool if's.

This event just wouldn't feel like modern FFXIV if it allowed for any player interaction whatsoever, I suppose. I gave up on the "this is a video game and I expect to play it" argument a long time ago. The community has spoken, and what they want in their massively multiplayer online game is to play dress-up using one of the worst cosmetic systems in the genre, walk around listening to NPCs talk (largely to each other, since their character is mute most of the time), and to never have to interact with another human being. This event delivers on that front, I suppose, like much of the rest of the game does. How do you argue with all the people claiming it's fine or even good?

In GW2's Wintersday 2024, going on right now, you can do:

* Tixx's Infinirarium, a group dungeon where you have to assist with out-of-control toys
* Toypocalypse, a group tower-defense game where you set up and upgrade structures to defend against incoming waves of toys
* Winter Wonderland, a jumping puzzle with three different paths
* Bell Choir Ensemble, a minigame where you play songs on bells with other players in groups of three
* Snowball Mayhem, a team PvP snowball-fight brawl with multiple different roles
* Secret Lair of the Snowmen, a 10-man "raid" mission against an evil snowman
* Snowfall Sprint, a mount race through the city that serves as the winter event hub
* Donation drive, which lets you buy rolls of wrapping paper for your rewards from all the other events and pass them out to orphans for extra Karma (another currency)

This is all in addition to various other things going on throughout the world. There are tons of rewards to earn, or money to make, if you don't want the rewards but want to sell the currency items. The entire population of the game comes together to enjoy the holiday for weeks. It's awesome. GW2 isn't a perfect game by any means, but they sure do know how to do seasonal events.

Meanwhile, in FFXIV:

"Oh, you wanna hand out hot drinks?" -- spread out over nine lines of dialog

*Camera zooms in on a mug of punch for six hours, nineteen minutes*

"This is a hot drink." -- paraphrased from a series of novellas

*Walk back to aetheryte, teleport to different aetheryte, talk to NPC to teleport back to instanced area*

"Hi, we're those kids again. I see you made it back here. Just to recap, we're doing the only thing we've talked about thus far, handing out hot drinks. Do you remember those?" *Stops talking for several seconds to flail arms about to emote the previous spoken line*

But no, don't believe your lying eyes, it's a good event. The worst part is that the instanced area is really pretty, and it would be awesome if there were reasons to spend time there. But there aren't. A couple vendors you'll look at once, one who inexplicably sells level 1 food, etc. It's just sad. They're not even trying, and they should have the biggest dev team in the industry.

Even FFXI has more activities for holiday events.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

This event just wouldn\\'t feel like modern FFXIV if it allowed for any player interaction whatsoever, I suppose. I gave up on the "this is a video game and I expect to play it" argument a long time ago. The community has spoken, and what they want in their massively multiplayer online game is to play dress-up using one of the worst cosmetic systems in the genre, walk around listening to NPCs talk (largely to each other, since their character is mute most of the time), and to never have to interact with another human being. This event delivers on that front, I suppose, like much of the rest of the game does. How do you argue with all the people claiming it\\'s fine or even good? (...)

---

Just like you, I gave up on trying to explain to people that if I want to play a game, I want to *play* it and if I pay a subscription for FFXIV specifically, it means I want to play FFXIV, not "go play other games". A lot of people seem to be happy with getting the bare minimum though, I guess to each their own. Maybe this game is just not for me after all. I followed Yoshi's advice and "went to play other games", closed my subscription (maybe even for good), so I wanted to leave my opinion here while I still can.

I've never played GW2 past the first few quests, but that sure sounds like a lot of fun. I used to play LOTRO though and I absolutely looooved their seasonal events. For Yule Festival there was (and probably still is) a whole new instanced area called Frostbluff where you could do a ton of daily activities, some of them were more boring quests like "clean the mess", but there were a few really fun quests as well, like participating in a Yule theater play, snowball fights with other players, building snowmen, seasonal dungeons where you had to fight waves of cold and evil snowmen and raid bosses, like a huge ice giant. For each of them you get tokens and then you can spend them on really nice rewards, like mounts, pets, cosmetic clothes, furniture, emotes. And they composed special Yule music for all of that, which made you feel even more festive.

When I saw that they added a new area in FFXIV this year I got excited for a bit, because I thought that maybe they made it with something special in mind... Only to be brought back to reality when the last quest ended and all I could do there was speak to some vendors and take pictures.

Oh well. It's a shame, but it's just a game after all. While I'm still here, happy Yuletide, Christmas or any other holiday you are all celebrating!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeleriaEvenstar

Just like you, I gave up on trying to explain to people that if I want to play a game, I want to *play* it and if I pay a subscription for FFXIV specifically, it means I want to play FFXIV, not "go play other games". A lot of people seem to be happy with getting the bare minimum though, I guess to each their own. Maybe this game is just not for me after all. I followed Yoshi's advice and "went to play other games", closed my subscription (maybe even for good), so I wanted to leave my opinion here while I still can.

I've never played GW2 past the first few quests, but that sure sounds like a lot of fun. I used to play LOTRO though and I absolutely looooved their seasonal events. For Yule Festival there was (and probably still is) a whole new instanced area called Frostbluff where you could do a ton of daily activities, some of them were more boring quests like "clean the mess", but there were a few really fun quests as well, like participating in a Yule theater play, snowball fights with other players, building snowmen, seasonal dungeons where you had to fight waves of cold and evil snowmen and raid bosses, like a huge ice giant. For each of them you get tokens and then you can spend them on really nice rewards, like mounts, pets, cosmetic clothes, furniture, emotes. And they composed special Yule music for all of that, which made you feel even more festive.

When I saw that they added a new area in FFXIV this year I got excited for a bit, because I thought that maybe they made it with something special in mind... Only to be brought back to reality when the last quest ended and all I could do there was speak to some vendors and take pictures.

Oh well. It's a shame, but it's just a game after all. While I'm still here, happy Yuletide, Christmas or any other holiday you are all celebrating!

---

Oh man, LotRO was my jam back in the day (when Moria was current). Wonder if there are still enough people playing it for it to be fun to hop back into.

I complain about FFXIV a lot, but I do think its end-game encounter design alone is good enough to justify the subscription price for me, and it's not a bad game; on the contrary, it's got quite a lot going for it, including its legendary IP. I just see all the ways it could be better and get frustrated sometimes, because it could be so much more than it is. The developers just have to put in serious effort to modernize a lot of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TemporalFruitsAndVeggies

Oh man, LotRO was my jam back in the day (when Moria was current). Wonder if there are still enough people playing it for it to be fun to hop back into.

I complain about FFXIV a lot, but I do think its end-game encounter design alone is good enough to justify the subscription price for me, and it's not a bad game; on the contrary, it's got quite a lot going for it, including its legendary IP. I just see all the ways it could be better and get frustrated sometimes, because it could be so much more than it is. The developers just have to put in serious effort to modernize a lot of it.

---

From what I know, LOTRO is still going strong with new expansions and big enough playerbase :D I haven't touched it in last 2 years though.

And just to clarify - FFXIV is not a bad game overall by any means! Just for me personally it is not exactly what I'm looking for in the game, hence the decision to close the subscription. I'm more than happy that there are people who play and have fun, of course and I'm not entitled enough to go and say "mmmhmmm, I don't like this and this so it's a bad game" :D