Offline Mode

[VeyaAkemi]

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Just going to say what I've said before in the other thread relating to the mobile game:
- Square isn't designing or deeply involved in the mobile game. That is Tencent/Lightspeed and they are an entirely separate publisher to Square Enix. Tencent would have bought the rights from SE for the mobile game, so all development and choices made will be by Tencent while they kick back some profits to SE/CBU3 overtime.

- As I said in my other post regarding my girlfriend who's actually played this mobile game, it is a dumbed down version of FF14. Side quests have been removed, the story isn't in the correct order at points, you don't have to work as hard for anything (the game literally just gives you a chocobo out of nowhere without even having an idea of what grand companies are or doing the mount side quest, for example) and the market board is locked behind a paywall similarly to how we have with the free trial. So, if you have issues supporting gacha/gacha companies I'd prepare to not even be able to sell items to other players.

- You don't *need* to play the mobile game, especially if the only reason you want to is for cosmetic purposes. You'll be sinking a lot of money into it, more than you would just by playing the PC version as they have weekly rotating limited time cosmetics/hairstyles/mounts and are fully driven by FOMO. You could easily spend $200 a month in blind boxes for different items if you want everything and have awful luck (1 per week) and that's not even counting the individual outfits and mounts they sell alongside that.

Yeah, I always expected something like this, to a degree. The moment I heard about f2p I expected every scummy monetization method under the sun, and some that only exist in the darkness. What people are doing right now is going through a honeymoon phase of a sort exacerbated by their discontent with the game, hyperfocusing on the things it does better, while ignoring all that is done worse, even the things that make those better things not as good as they sound on surface. It was always going to get this sort of reaction.

Messing up the story order wasn't in my bingo card, though...

[Dellita_of_Mtek]

Yeah, I always expected something like this, to a degree. The moment I heard about f2p I expected every scummy monetization method under the sun, and some that only exist in the darkness. What people are doing right now is going through a honeymoon phase of a sort exacerbated by their discontent with the game, hyperfocusing on the things it does better, while ignoring all that is done worse, even the things that make those better things not as good as they sound on surface. It was always going to get this sort of reaction.

Messing up the story order wasn't in my bingo card, though...

According to her they stripped out a lot of the beginning quests to fit with mobile game expectations (i.e. fast progression w/ little time investment). She started in Ul'dah with Summoner (unknown if that was a 2.0 decision or they just decided to switch things up with mobile) and did the intro quests (learning how aethers work, markets work, etc.) but after that it felt like she had only been playing for 30m-45m of story before already going to visit the other main cities (without even going to the Waking Sands or meeting the grand companies). You don't fight Ifrit and you skip Tam-Tara and Copperbell. Satasha you still do but they slot it in at level 10 now. You skip learning about materia and retainers and guildleves as well.

So the flow for the beginning is: character creation -> normal introduction quests -> extremely summarized version of your main city questline (like 6-7 quests tops, there's 23 in the PC version) -> unlock chocobo randomly -> go visit Limsa and New Gridania -> stay in Limsa and do Satasha

Edit:
She just brought up something else I forgot to mention. There's no push or reminder that class/job quests exist until after Satasha. So either they are just lazy and forgot to add that into the tutorial/pre-Satasha bits or they've redesigned class quests to where they're pointless now for progression outside of lore. She hasn't dove too deep into them yet because crafting/gathering testing took up her attention lol, but that really stuck out to her as something that was "off". There are also a lot less cutscenes than there are in the PC version, they turned them into simple like...half-cutscenes where the character just kind of stands there and you go through their text.

[TaleraRistain]

You don't fight Ifrit

How the heck does that work storywise? One of our whole things early on is that we're the primal slayer.

[DPZ2]

How the heck does that work storywise? One of our whole things early on is that we're the primal slayer.

Remember that you don't fight Ifrit until level 20, which incorporates Starting Area, Nearby Local Area, Fight micro-boss, Have a Party, Fly to Other Cities while doing Sastasha, et al, and THEN you go to Waking Sands and the quests leading up to Ifrit occur. Up to that point your name is Happy Adventurer, not Warrior of Light.

[Iscah]

going to visit the other main cities (without even going to the Waking Sands or meeting the grand companies).

That much isn't "skipping story", it's how the game has always gone. City quests up to level 15 where you catch the attention of the relevant city leader, get assigned envoy and receive the airship pass to visit the other two cities; that leads into Sastasha and the other two dungeons and then you get approached by whichever Scion you previously met with an offer to join their secret club. Joining a grand company doesn't happen until after that and I think not until you're partway through the Camp Drybone / Ifrit storyline.

How far past Sastasha has she played?