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• A Realm Reborn (2.0) - Giant Bomb Free Company Thread

• Heavensward (3.0) - Giant Bomb Free Company Thread

• Stormblood (4.0) – Giant Bomb Free Company Thread

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• Joining the Giant Bomb Free Company

• More Questions and Answers from «VinCo»

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers (5.0)

1. Shadowbringers will likely be the culminating point for the war against the Garlean Empire. The founder of the Garlean empire and Zenos yae Galvus's grandfather Solus has recently been revealed as an Ascian and looks to further their agenda. He will likely serve as one of if not the primary antagonist for Shadowbringers.
2. We will be travelling to another (dimension/universe/time?), which was mentioned in patch 3.4 as a world being flooded with light. While there is night in the technical sense, there is no darkness in this realm and the universe appears to be in its final days. Also, the weather appears to be bizarre.
3. New Level Cap: 80
4. The battle system will be seeing yet another revamp to keep ability bloat down and streamlining stuff like MP/TP. These will all be detailed in May 2019's Letter from the Producer Live.
5. Restoration to the Holy See of Ishgard will be new endgame content for Gathers and Crafters and will last the entire expansion.
6. Nine new instanced dungeons.
7. There will be a Trust system added, which greatly expands the ability for players to solo content with story NPCs. This is similar to why it’s used in FFXI, but very different mechanically.
8. New Game Plus system is being added to let players replay various story content.
9. New Data Centers
10. A World Visit system will be added just prior to Shadowbringers’s release to allow players to visit any world on their data center, further breaking down barriers between players across different servers.
11. Viera is being added as a playable race. Hrothgar are also being added. Viera are female-only, Hrothgar are male-only.
12. The Nu mou and Pixes will be the new beast tribes, with the new Primal being Titania.
13. A new tank, DPS (and healer?) are being added. The new tank is Gunbreaker. The new DPS is Dancer.
14. The new 24-main alliance raid (e.g. The Crystal Tower, The Shadow of Mhach, Return to Ivalice) will be based in the NieR universe. This is an expansion-long collaboration, with Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito helping with the narrative design.
15. Tetsuya Nomura will be doing the character design on the new high-end raid, now known as "Eden".
16. The mascot job for this expansion looks to be Dark Knight.

Will be adding more as new information comes out. There's one more Fanfest in March and a Live Letter in May.

Other Stuffs / Helpful Links

WoW Refugee Guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/wiki/wowrefugee

«VinCo» Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/ZdCCysj

FFXIV «VinCo» Twitter List: https://twitter.com/SnakeLinkSonic/lists/vinnco-free-company

Lodestone: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/9234208823458136603/

Waypoint Community: https://forum.waypoint.vice.com/t/the-final-fantasy-xiv-thread-ready-for-shadowbringers/1112

FFXIV Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/

FFXIV Free Trial: https://freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com/na/

FFXIV Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/finalfantasyxiv

FFXIV Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ffxiv/

FFXIV Twitter: https://twitter.com/FF_XIV_EN

Also of note: starting tomorrow (2/4/2019), The starter edition of FFXIV will be free for Twitch Prime users. This includes a month of subscription and the base 2.0 (A Realm Reborn) game.

I'm sad that the Gunbreaker is a tank but I knew it in my heart anyway.

Not usually a raid guy either but I may have to break that for some Nier bullshit.

Not really interested in Gunbreaker. Was never into the whole gunblade thing. FF8 is for weirdos ;)

Also disappointed that the raid thing is not FF related? I'm not on the Neir bandwagon. Just didn't seem like my kinda thing.

Viera is.. alright I guess? I liked Fran but that was in 12 and her voice actress was pretty good. Don't really have a bunny fetish thing. I wish they would add Bangaa, only because I'm curious how their combat animations and armor would look. Fairly unique from anything else I imagine. It sounds like maybe Ronso is being added? The cat/lion dudes from 10. They were blue mages or something? Not 100% sure on them being added but, it's kinda coming from a reliable source. That would align with Blue Mage being added recently, and I've heard a long time ago that Dancer is the other job.. which would align with the very feminine Viera? /shrug

I dunno. I'm sure I'll play the expansion when it comes out but like many long time players, the game is waaaay too formulaic for me now. Not enough is changing. Blue Mage being a "limited job" seems dumb and unnecessary to me.

I like the Raids being barely related at all to the rest of the game. It lets them just say fuck it and do whatever they want. Also affords to the perfect excuse to treat the greater Square world the same way they do with bringing in old FF content.

I think the rest of the game will still do a perfectly fine job of mining the nostalgia of FF proper.

Blue Mage is a really hard sell right now. It's a fun thing to do but it's also one of the only true dead ends in the game.

I am so excited about the Nier alliance raid. I never even considered it as a possibility, but the idea of getting a whole original story over the 3 raids is really cool.

Yoshi said today that the way the MSQ of Shadowbringers is going, integrating Automata and YorHa will actually make sense. If they can pull it off it could end up as the best stuff in the game.

Of the previous three, the one I've heard the most complaints about were the Shadow of Mhach line, which is the only 100% original one they've done. I enjoyed it, but this game is so full of fanservice at this point, it's not unexpected for fans of the game to turn their nose up at it. They essentially fused the lore of Hydaelyn with Ivalice and FFIII's tower. I was fine with it, so I imagine I won't be too disappointed when they find whatever justification they need to bring in YorHa.

I'm definitely on board to try Gunbreaker (much moreso than I was with Dark Knight). The bigger question for me is if they've learned anything in their tank/healer design by skipping additions there for an entire expansion. Both Astrologian and Dark Knight took a long time to find a place and they still suffer more than the other two when things swing in a bad direction.

Yea, I'm not necessarily upset that the raid is not more old FF fan service, I'd just rather they did something completely original within 14's lore than something entirely unrelated to FF at all. And I thought the Shadow of Mhach stuff was classic FF fan service stuff? Starting with Ghost Ship or whatever it's called. I dunno.

I'd be fine if they chilled out on the fan-service and tried more original areas/themes etc.

I dunno, they do fan service so very well. I also worry about tying them too close to the main story or lore since at that point they'll feel more than just optional content and that's bad for me at least because my ability to raid at all is ever in question.

vinco is a beautiful free company full of lovely friendly people and I hope you'll all consider joining us for shadowbringers

Oh... oh no.

I want that statue.

ಠ_ಠ

I haven't played the game since 2.0. Thinking about coming back, but I'm not sure yet. I almost feel like I'm so far behind it would be overwhelming.

@casepb: I didn't start playing until like a month before stormblood. my girlfriend started playing with me, but dropped off for a few years and just started getting serious in like 4.1 and is already caught up. you're never too far behind honestly

The only thing you're really truly behind on that will take a long time to catch up is story quests. Dungeons you do once or twice as you level, no big, you can learn them better on subsequent runs as other jobs. There are very few end game fights that "matter" for gear so if you got to max level and wanted to do harder content, there's really only several 8 man fights that are ever tuned for current gear and some older fights that might still have tough mechanics but lax gear requirements because they were early in whatever expansion you're in.

Leveling is fairly fast through dungeons for healers/tanks and while still not bad for dps, you have the deep dungeons that can host any party composition so dps have good queue times for fast xp there too.

It only ever gets easier to level crafters and gatherers and get gold saucer points and most of that side stuff. I got all of my crafters to level 70 last year after rejoining the game because of stormblood myself. Not long after, they increased xp bonuses from leves you could do in the 60-70 range(repeatable quests)for crafters, but they also have introduced the stormblood crafting beast tribes(daily quests, decent xp bonuses, easy to do and free from mats basically) and more delivery npcs(weekly item turn ins for crafter currency and xp).

If you wanted to get gold saucer prizes, you can get tons of points now for much simpler things than grinding out hundreds of chocobo races or mining mini games there. Weekly challenge log for large pay outs, some of the bigger mini game tournaments with big pay outs, a weekly little fashion game for a ton of points.

Basically what I'm saying is, there's never been a better time to be playing video games. But really, like most online games, the early parts of the treadmill are made much more attainable as more stuff is added at the back half. The only REAL lengthy endeavor that has never got tightened up is the incredibly long quest chain for the main story. I feel the main story gets real good at certain parts early on, and better/tighter as whole into the first and second expansion, but it's long. Mega long.

@vortextk said:

Can't be emphasized enough. Of all the people I've seen coming over from WoW recently for whatever reason , so many of them are dumbfounded by how aggressive FFXIV is when it comes to saying "fuck off" if you're not there for the story (that refugee guide that I posted at the top is pretty good at spelling this out as well). 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 are all essentially their own standalone JRPGs if you look at them just in terms of sheer length, which can range from 30-50 hours depending on how distracted you get from side stuff. Outside of that, they've gone to great measures to make sure just about anyone can hop in and get to trucking along.

Then again, it's damn near unanimous---even amongst the most hardcore proponents for the game, that the 2.0-2.5 main story quests are FFXIV at its sloggiest.

@snakelinksonic: It's that, or it's Moogles.

moogles are only really long if you do every side quest.

just like 2.1-2.5 is only really overlong if you can't wait to get through it. it's an enjoyable story and there's not a lot you could cut out of it, unlike the titan questline in the 30s

@frankxiv: That's true enough but there's a couple things relying on doing too many moogle quests and at least initially if you didn't do a bunch of that shit you probably ran into level gates.

I actually liked The Fascinating Adventures of Mogleo, it was those two idiots in Idyllshire and their questline that started to grate on me.

@snakelinksonic: Oh god. You're right.

I think that's literally the only thing I skipped when I had a new character.

@seikenfreak: They've said Viera will be the last added race, so that other speculation is 100% not going to happen any time soon. In it's 6 years, this will be the second new race, and that is all they're doing for the moment.

@snakelinksonic: And a correction to the main post: there are only 2 classes being added. Yes Gunbreaker is a tank, but the other is not technically confirmed either healer or DPS (though dancer healer is heavily speculated.)

For anyone waiting for a deal to get in. This is as good an opportunity as any.

@snakelinksonic: it should be noted, the twitch prime version and the steam versions aren't compatible. if you're buying on steam, you will have to go all in on steam. if you have the twitch prime version, you have to buy from square enix store or some other non-steam pc store

it basically treats steam as a separate platform, just like how you can't log in on ps4 without buying the ps4 version, even though you have a pc account

Ah, yeah. I know about that.

You're right though. I don't know why I didn't think the Prime version wouldn't just be the regular old PC version.

Interesting updates I suppose. Seems my source/info was good, totally called Ronso being added and heard Dancer a year or two ago.

I hadn't heard about this whole "shard" and "Source" thing til now. I haven't been following story speculation in the community but I don't remember it really being mentioned in the game story. Sounds kinda cool though. Really love how they are actually implementing that city from the tech demo way back. Maybe disappointed that Dancer is a ranged DPS but eh, feels like melee healer would've been more interesting.

Still no big fundamental changes to game design to freshen things up and make it less of a shallow gear treadmill. I'll play it to see all the new areas, content and great new music no doubt.

I don't know how many people we have here that aren't already in the Discord, but with the World Visit now being a thing, anyone on the primal center that's interested is welcome to be a part of a regular pre-expansion photo. We're currently seeing who will be available when and will announce the date we're doing it probably late this week.

You can sign up here: http://whenisgood.net/3xrxz5r

Since ff14 allows up tto 8 cross world linkshells, have you thought of setting one up for those on primal that want to join?

@nycnewyork: We've tried it a few times before they expanded the number of CWLS we're allowed to have. They usually die off because people wind up transferring over to Ultros eventually.

Some of our mods are going to give it another try this time though. The best place to keep up with that is over Discord, as it's kind of an awkward process getting people into it.

Hello , just would love to plug shamefully. Considering our effort to try and join up with the original GB FC on Ultros or even Primal Cross World Link shell comes to a somewhat disappointing end due to server congestion etc , we'd like to bring your attention to a representative community albeit at unofficial capacity we'd like to try to create a GB community going also on the Crystal Data Center.
As of now we've just created the Giant Bomb Crystal CW Linkshell. Feel free to send me a tell via my character Leon Loire on Goblin. Join us there if you're on Crystal.You could also try the VinCO discord and contact me there.

I heard something along the lines of Shadowbringers being "the best MMO expansion ever". Anyone got any thoughts on this? I've very casually been playing the game over a couple of years, and last I played I was about to start Stormblood. I heard rave things about that too. Do you guys recommend I pick it back up?

@melondog: I would say that with Shadowbringers FF14 finally fully ensconces itself as my favorite Final Fantasy game, without needing to qualify about it being an MMO. It is certainly the best narrative they have done.

Best expansion to an MMO ever is a pretty grandiose statement and rather complicated given how many types of MMOs and players are out there..ShB has changed some things that I'm sure ruffle a lot of feathers.

But if you were playing casually then absolutely I would pick it back up.