The Good, The Bad, and The Meh of the Live Letter

[AwesomeJr44]

The following is a general list of my takes on the stuff revealed in the Live Letter. If I left anything out, it's because I either forgot it existed or it's just too small of a thing to bother listing.

The Good:

- Gearing: The changes to gearing are a big step in the right direction. Gearing in this game is a very annoying process, and hopefully this will make it less so. The third fight of the tier is usually near useless once the Alliance Raid is released as unless you need a leg coffer, you can get twines from the Alliance Raid coins, so adding chest coffers to it is a good way to keep it alive as typically everyone needs chest pieces. The only thing I'm a little unhappy with is the decision to keep weapon coffers at 8 books. They really should have brought it down to 6 along with chests and legs.

- Raid Bosses: The two(?) shown look amazing.

- Tomestone Gear: Some of the Tomestone weapons/armor sets look really good.

- Frontline Roulette gives Series EXP This hopefully will make the series grind less annoying.

- Market Tax Change: Item prices can now be set to 'Total' on the market, which makes it easier to buy things without having to worry about the market tax. This is very helpful.

- Chat Job Icons: It's a very small change, and it's useless if you have more than one of the same job, but it's a nice little addition.

- Island Sanctuary Furniture: I'm hoping that this feature will finally make islands less generic and samey. There hasn't really ever been a legitimate reason to visit a friend's island, so hopefully that will change with this update.

The Bad:

- Golbez: Golbez uses Thordan's skeleton and it looks a little... goofy. His sword is way too big and just looks off. Thordan holding his sword the way he does makes sense for Thordan as he probably doesn't know how to hold a sword correctly, but why is Golbez holding it like that? Also, his shadow dragon's horns look a little weird. I wish it looked more like it does in the patch art.

- Job Changes: Apart from the increased range of party buffs, the job adjustments they've shown don't really look that good. Obviously they haven't shown everything, but having played a lot of Paladin recently, making Atonement not break combo wasn't really something that was needed, and really only serves to make the job needlessly easier.

- Shatter Map: The new Shatter map for Frontline looks smaller and less fun.

- Crafted Gear: The crafted gear reminds me of the modern glamour sets we've been getting for a while. When these were exclusively crafted from materials in side content like treasure maps, I felt it was alright, but it's a real shame to lose an entire tier of crafted sets for these. They might end up being alright, but it's really not what I'd want from crafted gear. The weapons are at least alright, although they are recolors of the Ktisis weapons.

- The Gilded Araya: I understand that they want to hype people up for fanfest, but I don't really like that this is how they're doing it. I don't feel that this sort of content should be open for early access at fanfests, especially if it's going to be so hard to get into one. I still have no interest in fanfest, but this just feels wrong to me.

The Meh:

- New MSQ/Dungeon/Trial/Raids: This is scheduled stuff. I'm hyped for the raids, but it's business as usual in this area.

- Duty Support for Stormblood: I guess this is good for those that like Duty Support.

- Unreal: It's an old fight from years ago. It'll be nice to do once or twice I guess.

- Tataru Quests: I doubt it is even possible to get me to care about this questline.

- Faerie Glamours: Although technically they're only adding carbuncles for SCH, it's alright for those who really like Carbuncle. I'll probably be keeping mine as a Faerie.

- Variant Dungeon: It looks the same as the other one gameplay-wise, just with a Kugane coat of paint. The glamour gear from it just looks like the same 'Far Eastern' gear we've gotten for years. Meh.

It's sad that I have to say this but this list is indeed a list of my opinions, and not objective facts.

[Bunnycake]

Golbez is going to swing the sword goofy like Thordan did after how shocked he was when WoL survived Ultimate End, isn't he?

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

- Frontline Roulette gives Series EXP This hopefully will make the series grind less annoying.
- Shatter Map: The new Shatter map for Frontline looks smaller and less fun.

- Wait, I thought Frontlines already gave Series Exp. I did 5 matches of Shatter Back to Back to get my last level for the Mount the other Day.
- I think a Smaller Map is better. And if they shrink the Score. Makes the matches Faster. Fun?...I mean we'll see. PvP has always been kinda bad, even though CC is a HUGE improvement..but still not perfect.

Golbez is going to swing the sword goofy like Thordan did after how shocked he was when WoL survived Ultimate End, isn't he?

I think that would be adorable.
Lord Golbez: "Whu,WHAT, A Thousand Years of Prayer wasnt enough!?"

[AwesomeJr44]

- Wait, I thought Frontlines already gave Series Exp. I did 5 matches of Shatter Back to Back to get my last level for the Mount the other Day.

The Frontline match itself already does, but now the 'daily challenge' (the roulette) itself will as well for the daily reward part. That should mean your first match of the day gives more exp than usual, assuming they don't rebalance the existing rewards.

- I think a Smaller Map is better. And if they shrink the Score. Makes the matches Faster. Fun?...I mean we'll see.

That's just down to personal preference, I felt the current size of the map was fine. We'll have to see how it plays out once the patch is live.

PvP has always been kinda bad, even though CC is a HUGE improvement..but still not perfect.

Big true.

[Mosha]

- Job Changes: Apart from the increased range of party buffs, the job adjustments they've shown don't really look that good. Obviously they haven't shown everything, but having played a lot of Paladin recently, making Atonement not break combo wasn't really something that was needed, and really only serves to make the job needlessly easier.

It doesn't really change anything but holding Atonement for under FoF rather than burning them ASAP. instead of breaking combos, it's going to be easier to overwrite Atonement stacks just a little forgiving if you drifted a gcd or 2 but overwriting your Atonement stacks would be a big dps hit.

[Kaurhz]

Can mostly agree...

As a little adage, would be nice if CV&C were to expand their actions to something that is essentially a full suite like Logos/Lost actions rather than something so... Constrained.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

- The Frontline match itself already does, but now the 'daily challenge' (the roulette) itself will as well for the daily reward part. That should mean your first match of the day gives more exp than usual, assuming they don't rebalance the existing rewards.
- That's just down to personal preference, I felt the current size of the map was fine. We'll have to see how it plays out once the patch is live.
- Big true.

- AH, if that Info was in the LL, I missed it, Haven't watched it / and Overview yet.
- Naturally, if PvP was more fun Id probably be ok with Longer Matches. But obviously: personally, PvP is so not fun, I just want my rewards to Go
- Common Ground Baby~

[Saraide]

Looking very much forward to the tataru quest. I really like getting to check in on the nerds from completed bigger story lines.

[SassyAssassin]

Pretty much, I’d add the variant dungeon to the bad for me, I loved the first one because the location felt new, but after endless hours of stormblood I just can’t with bamboo trees anymore

[Renalt]

Pretty much, I’d add the variant dungeon to the bad for me, I loved the first one because the location felt new, but after endless hours of stormblood I just can’t with bamboo trees anymore

Rabbits don't eat bamboo?