OK I know a lot of you haven't played the most recent Variant Advanced or the Criterion.

Honestly you should, helping Y'shtola's sister get some tail is both a fun sidestory and great battle content, but I'm not here to talk about that.

I farmed the coins to get the carpet mount from Variant Advanced.

Although being a series of extremish fights I did a number of clears via DF and some via PF.

In the first week, DF was just as good and as fast as PF.

More importantly, once I finished farming VA and stepped into criterion, I was already familiar and comfortable with the base forms of most of the boss mechanics.

So once I stepped into AMT (criterion), even though all the mechs are faster and more complex, they didn't feel overwhelming and I was able to clear much much faster due to my past experience.

I don't claim to know if the extra tier will justify the rewards, but as a practice mode for players who struggle getting into savage, or as a separate mode for players who prefer DF over PF, would you similarly speculate the community will see a lot of merit and use out of this mode?

In another mmo game I played it was in desperate need of tanks, was curious if there was a similar role shortage in this game?

Just remembered this thing exists. You know the thing that shows you how much damage your actions do and when you lose certain effects. Do any of you use its chat filters to great effect?

So. That's right. It's a rant. About a relaxing thing known as Fishing.

My reason is that I think MOOCHING ruins big fishing 99% of the time, and could have a really nice fix. Currently mooching is almost completely uninteractable. You Spareful Hand the few you can in prep, you get the int window if it has one, and then.... LETS GO GAMBLING!! WOOO! Hope you get lucky! Oh? You didn't? Fuck you.

And yet NON-MOOCH Fish have significantly more you can do with Surface Slap and Modest/Ambitious Lure.

Now, for my idea and the reason for this Rant.

Surface Slap and Spareful Hand.

These two together in my opinion should allow you to Surface Slap WHILE USING MOOCH BAIT. In fact it feels like that's exactly what it could've been used for. You get your 3 Swimbaits and then catch one more! You don't get the fish on that first one? Reel in what you did and SURFACE SLAP THAT MFER! Then you get a far smaller pool of options for you to use your Swimbait on. Will you get the Big Fish? Maybe maybe not. Depends on how many will bite that mooch fish and your odds, but At Least You Got To Interact.

And that last bit is the biggest issue I have with Mooching. Its completely uninteractable besides prepping with Spareful Hand and then hard coping that you'll get it... and then you dont... and then you just continue gambling. I really love FF14s Fishing, especially Big Fishing! Its why it just blows to sit here and get fucked over by Mooching being pure RNG when non-mooch fish are so much more fun because I can at least try to interact with the various skills at my disposal.

Thank you if you actually read all that, and if you have any thoughts of your own or tips or anything feel free to put them below! I could very well not know the secret sauce of Mooching, and would love to be informed that there ARE things you can do to make it not pure gambling.
Reposted here as well since I do wanna hear more thoughts. (Preferably from those who do big fishing and actually read more than the first few lines...)

I cleared DMU for the first time a few days ago. It was a merc run and went super smooth. I am slightly worried about reclears as I have heard PF reclears are rough as fuck. What has reclearing been like for you guys? All I know is I don't want to spend more gil on merc reclears when the weapons aren't even that good. The glam itself is underwhelming and they aren't even BIS.

Hi everyone. I'm just wondering how other people with controller solve P4. Did you use macro or you just memorize all of it?

I have my macro for P4 in my command panel and have it up thru P4, but navigating it during my rotation and mits is a bit hard so i was wondering how other people do it

Thanks!

As the title says has any EU players noticed this? I haven't played the game mode in a while and used to be in Top 100 regularly, and while climbing to Crsytal after a break, I feel like there have been a lot more obnoxious people recently. A lot more ignore marking of team mates and ping spamming Nice Job, Hello, Good match etc.

I'm just surprised because I don't remember it being this bad after the lodestone post outlining very specifically not do it. Is it just new players influx from DT or GMs aren't actually doing their job? Of course shitty behavior still happened after that post, but it's pretty bad in my climbing experience in the last week

Hi,

first of all: I really, really enjoy this game and I can't believe it flew under my radar for so many years. I never experienced a nicer community in a game - and the sprout-system is \*chef's kiss\*

As someone who always has this strange habit of thinking all classes through and spending hours of picking names and deciding which class to play first - FF14 really eased my mind being able to switch between jobs - how genius is that?!

After the first couple of days I now got into crafting and unlocked all jobs as soon as I was able to travel from Limsa to the other big cities (the choral song of Limsa... so awesome btw).

When I tried to wrap my head around the crafting jobs I was... overwhelmed. The game has this awesome way of showing you where to find any material... but.... I don't really get the need of crafting or maybe it's just me getting overwhelmed by all the things you can craft.

Maybe it's just nothing and this feeling of being overwhelmed is just caused by getting to know this very new system of crafting, but maybe there're people who felt the same and like to share their experience (and approach of solving it, because I love everything else about this game!) 😄

Thank you!

This morning I attempted to join a random party as a dragoon, and after some discussion was kicked because ''dragoon is too squishy"

That event itself was whatever, but it led me to wonder; is this technically allowed as per ToS? Any discussion I could find on this was quite old and was in regards to specific jobs being prevented from joining because they were significantly underpowered at the time, so I feel like that no longer really applies in the current landscape where everything is very statically balanced.

If I were to guess, I suppose I'd say this is like a gray area where you technically can, but you're not really supposed to, and if you did it repeatedly you might be questioned.

I don't know. Let me know your thoughts.

New player and loving it but have one game breaking gripe!

Firstly, I’m loving the game so far. I’m on Materia and playing on the free trial, but I’ve now hit a wall in the MSQ at Thornmarch.

Everywhere I look, the advice is basically “use Party Finder,” but free trial players can’t create Party Finder groups. Duty Finder just isn’t filling, so at the moment it feels like I’m hard-locked out of progressing the story. If this is going to keep happening with mandatory MSQ content, I’m honestly not sure I’ll continue.

What I’m confused about is data centre travel. From what I’ve read, if I had originally made my character on a Japanese data centre, I could play there when I need faster queues, but travel to Materia when I want the lower latency.

Is that actually how it works? If so, wouldn’t making a character on a JP data centre effectively give an Australian player the best of both worlds?

Also, does anyone have any advice for getting through mandatory MSQ duties like Thornmarch on Materia as a free trial player? Different queue times, Duty Finder settings, Novice Network, Discords, or anything else I should be trying?

Hello to whoever sees this, today after debating this for some time in my head- I want to Share my history in the FFXIV community, if for nothing else, just to finally put that painful part of my history behind me.

for the most part I tried to keep quiet about my time in Final Fantasy XIV, mostly because of a fear of once again being dogpiled all over again or because trying to explain the sheer scale of what happened sounds almost unbelievable to anyone who hasn't looked deeply into the truly toxic side of the community and the moderation system.

But I’m done carrying the silence for a community that thrives on cruelty behind a polite smile. FFXIV loves to market itself as the "friendliest community in gaming." My reality was entirely different.

Over the course of Five years on that game, what started as simple friction over non-conforming opinions and blunt honesty eventually escalated into a multi-year campaign of targeted harassment across three different servers for me. Moogle, Spriggan, and Omega.

I didn't just deal with run of the mill raid drama or petty arguments in Limsa. I experienced - Cross-Server Blacklisting as bad-faith actors who literally jumped from server to server to poison every single Free Company I tried to join, threatening FC leaders with mass reports until I was issued ultimatums to leave.

When simple disagreements didn't destroy my reputation, these people resorted to outright lying / fabricating accusations of sexual harassment, lying about mod reporting, and pushing vicious, bad faith narratives just to see what would stick. Transphobic, Homophobic (i am pansexual) racist, sexist (to woman, i am a woman but they did not know that as my character was a male aura) fascist, Hitler, etc etc

I experienced the Novice Network and shout chats turned into a daily battlefield where people felt completely empowered to tell me to kill myself or insult me on sight, and revenge kick my account, and this went completely unchecked by the game's moderation. Despite over 100 reports, only ONE person ever received a caution.

Even when I tried to find a quiet space in the RP and nightclub housing scene, old grudges followed me. Whole smear campaigns were fabricated out of thin air just to get me blacklisted from venues, spreading lies that I was reporting people for mods or harassing venue staff or even.. most disgustingly.. was sexually harassing members of the community.

{I don't often talk about what happened to me as an 11 year old child.. but something that shouldn't happen to any child happened to me by a man 4 times my age, and I became sexually avoidant ever since then. even now at 34, I have never allowed another human being to even so much as kiss me.. I am fortunate that this does not strain my CURRENT relationship, though it did many previous ones. So these rumours felt like a brutal caricature of me designed to create a completely fake narrative of who I was or what I was capable of.}

It wasn't until Cloud of Darkness Chaotic Alliance Raid that things really got utterly un liveable for me. I amassed over 350 clears all while constantly adapting mechanics on the fly to save wipes. Yet my actual skill was irrelevant. I was dogpiled for wipes I couldn't save on my own as 1 sage, shut out of parties or harassed out of the parties I did succeed in joining, or targeted simply for not parsing blues or purples (on healer might i add)

The breaking point wasn't even just the harassment aimed at me it was watching a friend get told "how did you survive a coat hanger?" in a P10S run over a simple tower mistake then kicked and harassed in her dms by the Party leader. That is the actual reality beneath the pristine surface of this game, and despite being reported.. not a thing was done about this user. That friend quit ffxiv for good that day in tears.

My name is Sugar And Spice, my server was once Omega, now Twintannia where an account i believe in good faith i will never reactivate currently resides. I tell you this information openly, so that if you are a player, you can visit those servers, ask in the NN and conduct your own research. my name was particularly infamous, and you should be able to get accounts from the NN users.

I guess I want to share my story, as both a warning to new players, and as a cautionary tale to veterans, sadly.. many of whom will know exactly what I am talking about, if not having literally experienced it.

You can survive the abuse dealt to you, you can rebuild your life and self esteem even after this kind of brutal systematic gatekeeping, and you can love yourself in an ocean of people who despise the person they think you are. I hold up my hands, I was not a saint in that game, and I DID NOT handle everything perfectly; though honestly, when it got that out of hand, who would.

But I think I can say with confidence, the Game Masters failed me at a time where a small FC disagreement snowballed into DC wide abuse.

Given the person that made the (successful) renaissance of PVP is the same that is making the Evolved modes, and we saw how similar those designs can be in the very early preview we got. Some abilities ported over even, like the DRG's jump.

So, on that note, which PVP features from other jobs you think will make into the Evolved jobs?

(will answer mine in a comment)

I think me and a lot of people would be a lot happier with the downtime between content drops if the filler was better. By filler I mean your collabs, limited jobs, and seasonal events.

The recent Valentione and Hatchingtide style seasonal events need to become the standard. The last two events (Rising and Moonfire) had a single quest to get your rewards. For Valentione's we got to run around with Mammets while decorating cakes in a repeatable minigame. For Hatchingtide we got to reap the grass in another repeatable minigame.

But now we have had the last two events where veteran players with nothing else to do are expected to fill the content void with a 10 min max quest.

Why did we create these in-depth events and then just run away from the idea? Both of those events were wildly popular.

To fix the Moonfire event for example we could have turned the jumping puzzle into a GATE outside the gold saucer where completing it in a certain time gave you a small amount of MGP.

The collabs also just need to become much better than they are.

Im sorry, but why did we bring back YoKai and not add any of the last 4 jobs weapons or add any new rewards? Same with the dragon quest collab, why did we bring the exact same event back? These collabs have no replayability (you can replay them but theres no point before someone says it). Veteran players who have done them in previous years get to sit there and go "welp, maybe next time" and hope the next event is unique.

Then we get to the limited jobs, this expansion is a mess on that.

Let's forget about Blue Mages getting shafted, I am as pissed as anyone else about that it's ridiculous and their answers regarding it make no sense.

Beastmaster is only going to have content to 50? You are adding a job right before the level cap turns to 110 and you are creating content locked at level 50? Do you expect me to go out and enjoy fighting Garuda or something? Should I go into the coils, something you won't even put in roulette?

The biggest complaint that I've seen outside the usually discourse this expansion is the lack of content outside raiding and the quality of that content. Adding higher quality (non-reused) events and creating better limited experiences would satiate a lot of people.

I made a web app that shows per-phase DPS percentiles for ultimates

FFLogs shows you a percentile for a whole fight. What it doesn't show you is percentiles for specific phases, ranked against everyone else who cleared. Their site has per-phase statistics, but there's no phase filter anywhere in the public API.

So I built the distributions myself. Paste a log and you get: a percentile against that job's distribution for every phase, for the whole fight, and a "luck parse" which tracks your crit and dhit.

Wipe logs are also valid for analysis, but obviously the numbers on the wipe phase are going to be inaccurate

**Where the numbers come from.** Every log that's on the fflogs rankings, for every ultimate. Updated daily, so new clears show up. Distribution data is presented on the statistics page.

**Luck parse.** This is more of a fun feature. Faster than comparing each ability's crit and dhit rates by hand. Each phase shows how lucky your crit and dhit rolls were, weighted by how much damage each hit was worth. Auto-crit abilities are detected and excluded, but external buffs aren't. Raid buffs that raise crit rates are accounted for in the baseline, but the luck still lands on whoever rolled the crits, not whoever provided the buff.

**Per-phase rankings.** Something fflogs also doesn't give you an option to see. You can find who did the highest damage in every phase individually. Only logs that are actively on the fflogs rankings are included.

**Statistics.** Similar to what fflogs presents, but based on their rankings and not on last 2 weeks of logs. **One thing that you can see here, which you can't see on fflogs, is phase statistics for older ultimates**. For some reason fflogs doesn't have an option to view per phase data for TEA, UWU and UCOB. rDPSdata for those is available here.

All feedback is appreciated.

And I don't know what to do with myself!

I finished everything in the MSQ but the patch content (which I plan to do after a short story break) but I'm super stuck on how to spend my time before I get to the patch content/when I finish it and still have to wait for Evercold. For context, I have been playing since Shadowbringers and haven't ever been caught up storywise.

I feel like leveling up other jobs is less important because it'll become more enjoyable with Evolved Mode (not that I don't enjoy it now) but also all I have ever done is MSQ and random leveling for other jobs resulting in me having a lot of jobs leveled halfway and a two at max level (DNC and SMN).

Anyways I don't know what my point is, I just found myself fiddling with glamours for like an hour tonight and I was like damn I don't actually know what to do other than MSQ. I figured I would see if anyone else has any thoughts.

Thanks 🙂💞

Jumping generally isn't used in combat, at least in an intended way. You can never avoid attacks via jumping, and platform-based mechanics almost always allow a means to run to your destination, or inflicts a debuff that prevents you from jumping. Is it just too janky due to code sphagetti or whatnot?

In another game called Fellowship, one of the heroes can cast a projectile spell that slowly moves across the battlefield. WoW might have something similar. But I thought it was interesting. I know FFXIV doesn't have the best code and stuff, but maybe the projectile just has to make contact once to achieve its max effect (like a slow moving fireball). And if enemies can have them, why can't we?

Skill expression can come with knowing the fight. Maybe anticipating where the boss will move or when adds spawn, then precasting the projectile towards that direction.

My friends have come back because of the Evercold hype and I decided to join them. I left off during the 1st raid tier and now that I am back its been really frustrating trying to navigate the MSQ because I dont really care for it since I already finished the main one, and I just want to be able to play with my friends.

I dont have as much time to play now because I am in school and Im not really understanding why I have to do more MSQ when I already completed the mainstory in order to do the new content when its not even related to the story. Oddly enough, its very easy to unlock the raids which is more inline with the story but the deep dungeon, alliance raid, OC and the V&C Dungeon isnt even remotely connected to the MSQ.

It's something that has bothered me a lot while playing Occult Crescent and I got to Ninja and that was the final straw.

Why is fuma shurikan, a skill is just a cooldown has to have 60 seconds? Or similarly Long Reach and Bladeblitz, but instead that takes 120 seconds instead.

You can spend an entire CE using them twice or three times and they are the definition of bland yet they somehow had to be gatekept behind a cooldown normally reserved for ultimate, capstone abilities.

Even stuff like Ranger's "Aim" (or Time Mage's Quick) sitting at 120s cooldown. Why does it need to follow the regular raids formula and take this long. It's a defining cooldown for the job, make it a 60s CD since at least it's 30 seconds long.

You might say this is done for balancing reasons but there's already a meta regardless with samurai's zeningage or summoner, and this is supposed to be the mode to break and experiment with things, which they tried but ultimately were still scared to go a bit further than they can. I like what they did with predict and dance but the rest have been too safe.

Outside of OC there are examples to this that personally bother me (Searing flash, gluttony, manafication) but that's a different story in terms of balancing and with evolved mode coming there's little point.

In terms of the in game seasonal events this one seemed a bit lacking compared to a bunch of the more recent ones. What did you all think? Unless I'm missing something there isn't any of the visits from various NPCs like usual.

((TL;DR: I was previously removed from an FFXIV FC after an argument started over me using an AI-generated picture of my dogs and openly defending personal AI use. Six months later, I returned to the game, applied to another FC, disclosed what happened and was essentially told my views on AI made me a poor fit there too.

I don't believe all AI use is inherently unethical. I support personal use, especially when commissioned artwork isn't financially accessible, while strongly opposing people passing AI work off as their own, selling it deceptively, or corporations using it to replace employees just to cut costs.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with being treated as morally suspect within the FFXIV RP community simply because I use AI and won't pretend to be ashamed of it. I'm curious whether others genuinely see personal AI use as sufficient reason to exclude someone from an RP community, or whether context and intent still matter.))

The full story: So, this is bound to be a hot and spicy debate, but here goes.

I’ll start off strong by saying that the FFXIV RP community is perhaps one of the most toxic communities there is. At least, in my experience.

Around six months ago or somewhere about, I don’t know, I haven’t really kept an accurate track of how long it’s been, I was removed from my FC because in discord, I was using an AI generated image of my dogs and admitted to such. It sparked such a heated debacle with the artists in the FC that the leadership made the decision to give me the boot. Not for the artwork, but because of my opinions on the use of AI and the fact that they chose to side with the artists.

Shortly after this, I canceled my subscription to the game but not solely for the above reason. There were other factors, but since they don’t really apply, I won’t get into it. Fast forward to the present, I just reactivated my subscription. Since I’m looking for ways to have fun again in the game and the fact that I really love RP, I start looking into FCs. One catches my interest.

After the former incident with my last FC, for whatever reason, I felt it permanent to mention my last experience in my application. Of course, they ask about it, so I give them a few short answers and after about four or five lines of back and forth, they tell me that this isn’t the FC for me and turn me away.

I do some thinking and give it one last shot, going into greater detail about my thoughts and opinions on AI and give them this reply:

I think that we, as a civilization, are very blessed to live in a time to see humanity and technology evolve into what it is, and will eventually become. Personally, I'm a lazy fuck and I look forward to a day where everyone can have the option of working and where universal basic income is a thing. 

So, from an individual stand point, and I am going to narrow in on AI art as an example for this, but this more or less encompasses my feelings on AI as a whole. Now, there's a lot of disabled and low income individuals who simply don't have a hundred dollars to spend on high quality art of their characters. I don't think these people should be made to feel shame or guilt over choosing to use something within their means. On the flip side, even if someone has the money, or even chooses to use AI for something the equivalent of a ten dollar chibi art, I don't think people should be guilted for that either because that is the luxury of having the freedom of choice. 

That said, what I do take issue with is people who take advantage of and abuse the technology we've been given, for example, people who try to sell AI art and pass it off as their own. From the big corpo standpoint, I will admittedly be the first in line to grab my pitch fork and raise my torch to rally against shitty corporate greed and laziness. What is inexcusable is when you have people employed on paper who are assigned to do a task and CEO's with literally millions in their pockets decide to cut corners instead.

So yes, in a manner of speaking, I am both for and against AI, circumstances depending. What everyone should be mindful of is how it's being used and the intention behind it. AI is not just affecting artists jobs.. It's affecting everyone from coders to the McDonalds employee. Maybe I am a part of the smaller subcategory of people who embraces and looks forward to the change AI will bring, but that doesn't mean I should be automatically benched for having such opinions.

Did it make a difference? Probably not. It’s been nothing but radio silence on their end since I’ve posted that. They’re probably still going to tell me to look elsewhere and frankly, I don’t know why I even bothered, but I did.

The thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve been flamed by folk of the artists community for having this opinion. Out of all the employed individuals AI is affecting, artists are by far the loudest, most aggressive complainers when it comes to defending their career. Frankly, I am beginning to lose a lot of respect for their community because of it. I am growing quite exhausted of this community treating me like I murder innocents and blacklisting me because I like to utilize AI and have show little shame in doing so.

And I guess that's ultimately where my frustration lies. I'm not asking artists to like AI. I'm not even asking them to stop criticizing it. There are plenty of legitimate concerns surrounding generative AI that deserve to be discussed, and people are perfectly entitled to decide that they personally want nothing to do with it.

What I don't understand is when we crossed the line from criticizing the technology into judging the character of anyone who uses it.

If an FC doesn't want AI-generated artwork posted in its Discord, fine. Their house, their rules. But if someone can otherwise be friendly, respectful, contribute to RP, follow the rules and get along with everyone, should their private use of AI or simply holding a different opinion about it really make them incompatible with the community?

Maybe I'm completely out of touch here. Maybe most people genuinely do consider using AI art to be enough of a moral failing that they wouldn't want to associate with someone who does it. If that's the case, tell me. That's partly why I'm making this post.

But I'm genuinely curious where everyone else draws that line. Is AI use itself enough to make you exclude someone from your RP community? Does context matter? Personal versus commercial use? Selling it versus generating something stupid for yourself? Or has this issue become so black and white that simply saying "I use AI and don't believe all use of it is unethical" is enough to make someone unwelcome?

Because at this point, I'm less interested in debating whether AI is good or bad and more interested in understanding why disagreement over it has become such a social litmus test.

A friend is currently replaying ARR and we've been talking about how much 'grittier' the world building was and it got me thinking about what other dark/surprising things are found throughout the game.

I'm talking about things like the Sastasha room that has the captured women in it, or the group of adventurers you beat to Sashtasha and Tam-Tara who then die in Copperbell because they were careless.

So what're some of the darker moments in FFXIV - any expac.

First, sorry if mods discussion are not allowed, I’ll delete the post in that case

So I’ve just made the switch from PS5 to PC and tried a few of Papachin’s mods. They’re all great and drastically improve some classes animations and "weight" (looking at you Bard !). He’s really good at what he does !

However I’m not sure how to feel about them. On one hand, it’s really cool, on the other it feels a bit "too much" to play all the time with it ? Like something’s off, or too overtuned, I don’t know and I’m not sure how to correctly express it…

How do you guys feel about them ? Do you use them regularly ? If not, why ?