So this is going to by my collected thoughts on the xpac and notes that I took during the initial play time, I started at early access with a few short breaks for food or a nap and I will post my experience so far based on having just completed the second dungeon and dinging 54:



1. Queue times.

Of course the first thing I encountered, I got lucky when I finally got in, I was fourth in queue and only had to wait roughly ten seconds before getting back in, excellent job on that. Even at peak hours earlier I was able to get in relatively quickly and the servers have been largely stable as a result, props to that.

2. Server lag.

I am facing some lag that I will of course attribute to the heavily crowded areas and some dozen people trying to get quests from the NPC's at once. I am getting spikes even in instances that last roughly 10 to even 15 seconds at times. It hasn't gotten me killed yet, but it's frustrating when it happens.

3. Ishgard

Love the city though I have a bias for that, when I played FFXI as an Elvaan devoted to the Kingdom of San D'oria which was my favorite nation, Ishgard to me is like an evolved version of San D'oria and I was loving every moment of running through the city. I really hope we eventually get an option for personal housing there, I'd love to build a manor style house there for my character. One issue I have though that I think would make everyone very happy is make it so that when you mouse over a teleport point in the Aetheryte menu, let us see exactly where that Aetheryte is, having to memorize all of them is somewhat annoying.

4.Questing and FATEs

The difficulty thanks to the enemy damage feels about right but I can't help but feel the enemies in the zone have too much HP, their damage does make it challenging but I feel like the battles were dragging on at times, made me glad I had my chocobo. The quests are pretty standard affairs but the characters are fairly well written and have a lot of personality, I find myself genuinely interested in seeing what happens. Another issue that's always bugged me: let us stay on our mounts to talk to NPC's! Seriously, it really needs to happen.

For the FATE enemies though, to even kill one enemy takes ages even in the level 50 ones, I believe they could stand to have their HP reduced by about 25% or more, their challenge is still there as the enemy damage should not be changed (if anything maybe lower it some) but wailing on an HP sponge isn't very fun.

5. Aether currents

I do appreciate how they force exploration if you want to fly, I even enjoyed that a few of them require some problem solving to figure out how to get around and up or down to the various places where they're located. So far they aren't too hard, a few took me a few minutes to figure out the path but I got it eventually. They aren't guild wars 2 or swtor level jumping puzzles, maybe the later ones will reach that? Dunno.

6. Flying

Love it, being able to fly anywhere including in various caves and in buildings is fantastic, don't change it, at all. I have one complaint though similar to above, let us get on our flying mount while we have our companion chocobo out!

7. Dungeons and Trial

First dungeon wasn't too bad, I think it was well tuned given that it's meant to be an entry level experience for people that don't have raid gear from the old content, I feel that it's well tuned for what it was. But I have the same complaint about as I do about the FATEs, I think the enemy HP all around is a little too high and this was in a group of dps with 120-130 ilevel gear, the fights were taking forever.

The first boss was an HP sponge that didn't pose much difficulty, he caught us offguard with his rather large telegraphs and unavoidable AoE but we managed.

The second boss had a lot of HP to but the rather frequent movement mechanics combined with the adds made for an interesting battle.

The third boss went down once we realized when to hide behind the rubble walls. Once more, fight took forever.

The first Trial wasn't so bad either, we got it after a few attempts once we figured out the mechanics, I'm not too keen on putting an 8man in right at the beginning though, I feel the fight should have been a 4man instead with the 8man content closer to the end. The music was fantastic though, especially in the second half.

However there seems to be a bug present with his adds, if you don't kill them fast enough the boss one shots you, even after we killed the adds before they spawned the swords, sometimes he one shot us, sometimes he didn't.

Second dungeon, in the ilevel 125 gear we get in the zone as a paladin rolling cooldowns in shield oath, the trash in this place was tearing me apart in seconds. Our healer was keeping me alive, we had no deaths and no wipes the entire run but man, I noticed my hp dropping so fast and just out of curiosity I had a dps in the group take some of the auto attacks and their HP was dropping just as fast as mine, albeit they had less overall to work with. The primary culprits were the Ochu trash, their damage seems out of wack compared to the rest.

The first boss is drastically undertuned, he has a mechanic where he spawns adds, if you don't kill the adds before it reaches him, he gets a damage buff. Either it wasn't working correctly or the buff is negligible because we just brute forced him down and ignored the mechanics entirely. It was pretty dull, he hit like a wet noodle even with the buffs he received, I think I saw him with like 5-6 stacks and he still could barely scratch me.

The second boss we just ignored the adds to outside of the one green add which appears to be the only one you need to kill. The damage is heavy but survivable, definitely a healer check right there.

The trash leading to the last boss was pretty tough, the three trash dragons you have to fight at once was pretty intense but we got them down.

The final boss was a blast, telegraphs all over the place, tons of stuff flying at you from every which way, the attack "Chaos Blast" was aptly named to say the least! Really good fight, enjoyed it a lot, once more I think the HP is a little too high though as it made the fight and the phase change feel like they were dragging on.

Conclusion:

Overall I'm really enjoying it outside of the few bugs I encountered, I'm looking forward to continuing playing the xpac when I have the chance!