What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[BaconBits]

The story is over. Go outside.

You've grown weak in your old age lil sis.

[Absimiliard]

Protein is protein. Gotta get them gains, right?

As an aside, I want to see more 'out there' food in general when it comes to FFXIV's offerings. Just having straight up copies of 'safe' dishes that exist in the real world doesn't really cut it for me. I thought it was pretty cool that WoW had culinary dishes based around spiders. It was fun to have my night elf snack on them around humans in roleplay.

Morbol vine stew sounds suitably horrific. It could be FFXIV's own version of fugu. Prepare that stuff wrong, and everyone who eats it is getting a one-way trip to the lifestream.

[Vyrerus]

Morbol vine stew sounds suitably horrific. It could be FFXIV's own version of fugu. Prepare that stuff wrong, and everyone who eats it is getting a one-way trip to the lifestream.

WTB Candied Antlion, Deep fried Koja Tongue, Morbol Solus Salad, Hardboiled Puk Eggs, Sanuwa Ribs, and Hydra Kofta.

[Theodric]

Speaking of FFXI, one of the raids in Dawntrail is going to be based off of it...

I never played FFXI myself, though.

[Vyrerus]

It's so old at this point, it's an entirely different beast these days.

It's pretty easy to play through once you've tackled Playonline's late 90s/early 2000s internet setup quirkiness. You are given summonable Trusts that allow you to make your own party of NPCs, where you are more or less the nucleus of the party (you die, they die). This lets you play without others for the entirety of every storyline with the exception of very late The Voracious Resurgence (though you can grind for master levels to do it alone).

The storylines are honestly hit or miss, with some of them being incredible, while others are just sorta there. It was still a higher plane of storytelling than most MMOs had when it was current, but in the old days you'd forget storyline details because they were not released all at once. You'd be given expansion content and a few story quests, and then there'd be a hiatus for the story until the next major patch.

So for example, Wings of the Goddess, its fourth expansion come out in early 2007. But its main story did not originally finish until late 2010. (the sentiment at the time was that they were beginning to funnel XI funds into XIV)

If you were to try it out, I would suggest be patient with getting it setup. Then choose your preferred race and nation, and then pick one of the melee classes since spells cost money and have opaque mechanisms you'll have to look up to understand completely. Your Trusts as you acquire them from Records of Eminence and Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline will do most of the heavy lifting spellwork wise, and there are 16 jobs beyond the starting 6 for you to unlock and try out anyway.

Combat is Everquest like with auto attacks based on weapon delay and Haste or Slow effects. It's very possible to hands off a lot of fights, especially with Trusts.

Each zone has unique music with a few exceptions, and you will unlock mounts via the Chocobo License quest at level 20, and a quest proceeding it to unlock mounts kept in your KI inventory. The quest itself takes about 6 real life hours to complete, due to having to wait for game days to pass (chocobo license). The proceeding quest takes much less time, though you will only start out with a Raptor as your default mount.

Fighting and encounters in XI rely heavily on foreknowledge. You sort of need to plan out how you're going to approach fights before you do them, but the large majority of content of the game is pre-Item Level, and so it can be crushed rather easily with a level 99 character wearing i119 gear.

[Absimiliard]

It's so old at this point, it's an entirely different beast these days.

It's pretty easy to play through once you've tackled Playonline's late 90s/early 2000s internet setup quirkiness. You are given summonable Trusts that allow you to make your own party of NPCs, where you are more or less the nucleus of the party (you die, they die). This lets you play without others for the entirety of every storyline with the exception of very late The Voracious Resurgence (though you can grind for master levels to do it alone).

The storylines are honestly hit or miss, with some of them being incredible, while others are just sorta there. It was still a higher plane of storytelling than most MMOs had when it was current, but in the old days you'd forget storyline details because they were not released all at once. You'd be given expansion content and a few story quests, and then there'd be a hiatus for the story until the next major patch.

So for example, Wings of the Goddess, its fourth expansion come out in early 2007. But its main story did not originally finish until late 2010. (the sentiment at the time was that they were beginning to funnel XI funds into XIV)

If you were to try it out, I would suggest be patient with getting it setup. Then choose your preferred race and nation, and then pick one of the melee classes since spells cost money and have opaque mechanisms you'll have to look up to understand completely. Your Trusts as you acquire them from Records of Eminence and Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline will do most of the heavy lifting spellwork wise, and there are 16 jobs beyond the starting 6 for you to unlock and try out anyway.

Combat is Everquest like with auto attacks based on weapon delay and Haste or Slow effects. It's very possible to hands off a lot of fights, especially with Trusts.

Each zone has unique music with a few exceptions, and you will unlock mounts via the Chocobo License quest at level 20, and a quest proceeding it to unlock mounts kept in your KI inventory. The quest itself takes about 6 real life hours to complete, due to having to wait for game days to pass (chocobo license). The proceeding quest takes much less time, though you will only start out with a Raptor as your default mount.

Fighting and encounters in XI rely heavily on foreknowledge. You sort of need to plan out how you're going to approach fights before you do them, but the large majority of content of the game is pre-Item Level, and so it can be crushed rather easily with a level 99 character wearing i119 gear.

They didn't kill skillchaining and magic burst, did they? Because I have a hard time believing those would remain a thing if the game is now tuned to be playable solo with NPC assistance.

Fond memories of disregarding the common knowledge of subbing WAR as DRK and instead using SAM so I could slip in extra skillchains or even skillchain and magic burst off of myself when necessary. The fact it consistently outperformed others using the "correct" build was just icing on the cake.

[Vyrerus]

They didn't kill skill chaining and magic burst, did they? Because I have a hard time believing those would remain a thing if the game is now tuned to be playable solo with NPC assistance.

Fond memories of disregarding the common knowledge of subbing WAR as DRK and instead using SAM so I could skill chain and magic burst off of myself with impunity. The fact it consistently outperformed others using the "correct" build was just icing on the cake.

Nah, SCs and MBs are still around, and even had a resurgence in popularity and use due to the damage cap of 99999. In fact, most weapon types on a job that can use all WSes for a particular weapon are capable of making Self Double LIght or Self Double Darkness with the right amount of Store TP and Haste. Magic Bursts and Skillchains have even been given job traits that directly raise their damage, and a lot of mage Trusts have a script telling them to MB skillchains and to even close skillchains with a weaponskill.

For instance, the Shantotto II Trust melees with magical auto attacks and nukes with Tier 1 Elemental magic that has roughly the strength of Tier III/IV elemental magic from players (ignoring for gear bonuses). She also has weaponskills with the Distortion, Gravitation, and Fusion properties (these also carry the Darkness and Light properties), and she will close SCs with one of them randomly, most often opting for the Distortion one in my experience. She will then Magic Burst twice, due to the casting speed of Tier 1 magic being so quick. She'll land both MBs guaranteed if other trusts or player closed an SC instead.

They did, however, implement the, "Nuking Wall." As SCs are easy to make and maximize magical accuracy, people had started to stack Black Mages casting Death, which will deal 99999 on NMs instead of killing them, assuming it goes unresisted. To cut down on the effectiveness of this, hitting a monster with spells of the same element too quickly back to back will lower the damage of each successive nuke.

Other than that, the 4th iteration of ultimate weapons, Aeonic weapons, come with an Aftermath effect that allows their associated weaponskill to make Radiance or Umbra. Which are considered, "Tier 4 SCs" or Level 4 SC. Basically Light or Darkness that does extra damage if you haven't already hit capped damage. The only sad thing about them being, they look identical to Light or Darkness.

[Absimiliard]

Nah, SCs and MBs are still around, and even had a resurgence in popularity and use due to the damage cap of 99999. In fact, most weapon types on a job that can use all WSes for a particular weapon are capable of making Self Double LIght or Self Double Darkness with the right amount of Store TP and Haste. Magic Bursts and Skillchains have even been given job traits that directly raise their damage, and a lot of mage Trusts have a script telling them to MB skillchains and to even close skillchains with a weaponskill.

For instance, the Shantotto II Trust melees with magical auto attacks and nukes with Tier 1 Elemental magic that has roughly the strength of Tier III/IV elemental magic from players (ignoring for gear bonuses). She also has weaponskills with the Distortion, Gravitation, and Fusion properties (these also carry the Darkness and Light properties), and she will close SCs with one of them randomly, most often opting for the Distortion one in my experience. She will then Magic Burst twice, due to the casting speed of Tier 1 magic being so quick. She'll land both MBs guaranteed if other trusts or player closed an SC instead.

They did, however, implement the, "Nuking Wall." As SCs are easy to make and maximize magical accuracy, people had started to stack Black Mages casting Death, which will deal 99999 on NMs instead of killing them, assuming it goes unresisted. To cut down on the effectiveness of this, hitting a monster with spells of the same element too quickly back to back will lower the damage of each successive nuke.

Other than that, the 4th iteration of ultimate weapons, Aeonic weapons, come with an Aftermath effect that allows their associated weaponskill to make Radiance or Umbra. Which are considered, "Tier 4 SCs" or Level 4 SC. Basically Light or Darkness that does extra damage if you haven't already hit capped damage. The only sad thing about them being, they look identical to Light or Darkness.

Kinda makes me want to play the game again. It's been a long time. Did DRK ever recover from being nerfed into the ground way back in the day?

Tangentially relatedly, I always felt like FFXIV was missing something in not having skillchains and magic burst. Those two systems were quite fascinating.

[Vyrerus]

Kinda makes me want to play the game again. It's been a long time. Did DRK ever recover from being nerfed into the ground way back in the day?

Tangentially relatedly, I always felt like FFXIV was missing something in not having skillchains and magic burst. Those two systems were quite fascinating.

DRK's never been nerfed to my knowledge. If you're referring to them making monsters resistant to Souleater to counter Souleater Kraken Club zergs of Absolute Virtue and other challenges... the game has departed from that being a high source of damage, due to the decline in HP% doing more damage than just raw base damage and weaponskills. As far as I am aware, there aren't many things past the Voidwatch era that resist Souleater at all.

Kraken Clubs nowadays are best in the hands of Rangers, who have accuracy bonus traits out the ass that allow them to have capped accuracy even when mainhanding the KC, maintaining their i119 off of just their Crossbow or Gun.

[Theodric]

So FFXI is a lot like Eureka and Bozja but with much more depth? I kind of regret not getting into it back in the day though my backlog of games is already immense.

As for story related gripes...I can only feel indifference towards Dawntrail. If I do end up buying and playing it, I'll likely just become a cutscene skipper. I don't care about the Scions and there isn't even an attempt to throw a meaningful bone to anyone who didn't want the Ancients/Ascians, Garleans and the Void to all be pushed into a state of irrelevance.

I'd point to the Fall Guys crossover as an excellent representation of the game's current state - it legitimately felt like playing through a fever dream. I guess if nothing else it shows how important it is to not only maintain consistency when building a world in terms of its story but in regards to tone and aesthetics.

To counter the 'u just h8 fun m8' rhetoric, I'd point out that my second favourite game in the franchise is FFIX. That game had a pretty cutesy art style and plenty of comic relief but it knew when to play it straight and when to have the 'moments of levity' that FFXIV increasingly insists on pushing with greater frequency.