Working as Intended

"Oh, come on! How can you not have freaking Chocobos up until now!?" Again. Excellent question; go ask Tanaka. I'm sure he's in the corner, watching the new development team crumple up paper to throw at his head. 

Or maybe that's just I'd do if I were them. 

But, yes, after a long and very embarrassing history in the Beta, Chocobos are finally in Final Fantasy XIV. Actually, they've been there right from the very start. Players just couldn't ride them, for reasons completely beyond my understanding. The Chocobos and vendors have been in the towns since Day One, and yet nobody apparently felt bothered enough to, y'know, make use of that. Then they were accidentally translated, hilariously, as 'Horsebirds' in the Japanese version; and then, when they tried to fix that, they translated them as 'Chocopos'. Yes, the poor horsebirds Chocobos have not had it easy in Eorzea up until now.

Following in the airship's footsteps, and gleefully dropkicking FFXI's system for the little buggers right into a ditch, Chocobos are freely available from the start and require no obtuse or impenetrable requirements in order to ride. Have I mentioned how much I love the new XIV team? Because it's quite a huggy-buggy bunch.

There are two kinds of Chocopbo. Rental and Personal! Rental Chocobos, as just said, can be ridden whenever you want for a flat fee of 800 gil for 10 minutes. 10 minutes on horsebirdback will get you to pretty much any camp in the zone outside the city. Once you've reached where you want to go, a simple hit of the Active Mode button will let you jump off and watch the Chocobo, quite honestly, rocket off into the distance.

Or through whatever wall you may have parked the poor dear in front of.

Personal Chocobos are a bit different, in that you need to meet requirements. You need to be Private Third Class with any Grand Company, and then fork over 3,000 of their credits in order to gain a license. It's a pretty easy goal to work at, especially with the new Grand Company guildleves. The Glorious Personal Chocobo Master Race comes with a few upgrades over its filthy, free-use, peasant brothers. Most importantly, they're faster; not a terrible lot, but fast enough to be noticeable. Secondly, you don't have to pay the vendors in the city a fee to ride your Chocobo. Thirdly, you can call them from pretty much wherever on the field, unlike the disgusting lower-class churls who will have to run back to the nearest city to use a bird.

Like the airships, there's very little to criticize over the awesome flightless birds. Easy to get, cheap, and effective. The only problem they have is not with the birds themselves, but with the terrain they have to run through. Final Fantasy XIV's zones are still sub-standard at best, and absolutely horrific on average. Even with the bo'd Choco, it can still take five to six minutes of solid running just to reach the Level 20 camp in The Black Shroud. The bird'll probably rightfully boot you off before you reach the more distant areas and camps.

Also, you can't ride them sidesaddle. Boo!

It's been said time and time again, so let it be known that I'm not above repetition (just like the zone designers HURRRR), XIV's zones need a chainsaw taken to them. They need to be hacked apart, shrunken down, and the useless and more grotesque chunks (which would be nearly all of them) be replaced by entirely new designs. The developers have said its coming, and I had confidence they'll do a bang-up job, but every time a player has to run for several minutes just to reach a Guildleve objective in The Black Shroud, Rhalgr kills a baby.

Won't somebody please think of the children!?

Specifically, the ones who grow up and have to navigate obnoxiously circuitous zones.





One of the biggest changes of 1.18 was the abolishment of the Stamina Bar and more button-mashy combat system in favour of a more 'traditional' cooldown timer and auto-attack one. I generally prefer hacky-hacky mayhem to just clicking abilities every so often, but XIV did a surprisingly good job of it all. Mostly because the old system was terrible. It tried. It really, really did, but trying doesn't put fun on the table, mister!

Following up on this, 1.19 has also given the boot to the idea of Physical Levels, and replaced it with a more traditional RPG leveling system. Physical Levels, for the uninformed, were a separate leveling system in ye olde XIVe. You would level your 'class' with Ranks, and your stats would only go up when you gained a Physical Level. You got to choose what stats went where and all that sort of stuff. It was nice... in theory. In practice, it was a horribly broken system that meant you pretty much had to level multiple classes just to keep your Physical Level at a decent stage, since it would progress much, much slower than your Rank.

Now, you'd think this is the sort of thing an MMO developer would pay close attention to, and construct some sort of testing phase in order to see how it worked with the potential playerbase. Sadly, we do not live in every other MMO ever made, so the idea of Physical Levels lived on for about a year and a half too long. Luckily, it's gone now and we may all rejoice in the streets!

With the leveling system now like that of any traditional MMO (you get the EXPs to get the levels and repeat until there's no more levels to be gotten) FFXIV flows a lot smoothly. It's not exactly shattering expectations of the genre here, but it works. Much like how it works in all the other titles. I guess you don't realize just how perfectly functional it is until some dingbat waltzes along and mucks the whole thing up. So, right now, character progress is pretty much like FFXI.

Except you can still change classes on the fly, which is still very, very cool.

The battle system has also received a lot of overhauling in other regards. I won't list 'em all, as I'd like to actually get to sleep sometime tonight, but the ones I noticed the most were the increased speed in some of the most previously bothersome animations. No longer needing to pull out your weapon to cast spells. The introduction of Link Bonus EXP, and other misc. niceties. The first two are pretty self-explanatory, but Link Bonus EXP means basically now you get a nice little boost of experience points (20% up to 100%) if you pull multiple mobs towards you within a certain time frame. It rewards s'more risky playing, which is always nice.






So the stabby-stabby progression system has gotten about a million times more smooth and natural, but have the quests that lead you to the stabby-stabbies? Well, to answer that bizarrely worded question, we must first delve into what made the system, Guildleves, so terrible in the first place.

Hint: The answer was it's the everything.

Guildleves, at XIV's launch, were a pretty neat idea, but so, so, so, so, so horribly executed. The idea of creating a centralized hub for receiving and taking on an influx of quests was pretty spiffy, and one that surprisingly hadn't been done before in the genre. Most games have you running to the arse ends of the planet to find someone with a hankering to get that exclamation point off of their noggins, so it was nice to know that, regardless of level, you could just head to the Adventurer's Lodge in any city in XIV and chat up that pretty young, or old, thing behind the counter and get your questin' on from there.

What wasn't cool was that you could only do eight quests every fourty-eight hours. Doing the eight leves would take roughly an hour or two, and then you'd... just stop playing the game for the next two days? You couldn't even do all eight in one city, so you had to run/teleport all the way over to another city and finish 'em off there. It was just... just... mortal words cannot properly describe just how utterly asinine a gameplay decision this was. Sadly, it was pretty much par the course for Mr. Tanaka, who has an almost fetishistic determination to limit how much fun a player can have in a video game.

Imagine telling someone playing World of Warcraft that they could only do eight quests over the course of two days... Now imagine they laugh in your face and then maybe punch you and steal your lunch, because that's pretty likely. They're a scary bunch of fellows, them.

In 1.19 the limitations of Guildleves... aren't really removed, but are honestly made pretty much a non-issue, which is just as good. No, really! In 1.19, every twelve hours (regardless of if you're logged in or not) your characters gains four "leve allowances" (basically the things that let you do Guildleves) and you can store up to 99 of them. Unless you're the type of person who feels the compelling urge to log in and level multiple times in a single day, every day of the week, you're not going to run out of Guildleves. Over the weekend, I spent most of my free time doing the Guildleves I had 'saved up' during the weekdays (which is to say, the ones I got when I was sleeping or doing other perfectly normal human activities and chores) and I still had 14 of the silly allowances left over, so I could've kept going for a few hours more.

Now honestly, it's a weirdly convoluted solution to the system's biggest problem, but I imagine it was done to try and stop people spamming them incessantly for the Gil/Item rewards. The regular, non-leveling-obsessed player will most likely never run out of Guildleves to do, so I consider the problem gone. FOREVER.

And thank the merciful developers for that, too.





Oh, right. Those things.

Like every other aspect of XIV, the various sidequests, activities and daily happenings also got the 1.19 lovin'. Grand Companies got new quests, reward changes and new, specific Guildleves. More sidequests were added. A 'Materia' system was introduced. You can now go and gloriously punch Ifrit in the face. A new dungeon was added. Something else was added that doesn't involve punching Ifrit, so who cares?

Let's talk about that!

In the crapsack world that is Eorzea, the summons (or Primals, or Eikons or whatever the buggery you want to call them) are actually in control of the enemy beastmen tribes, instead of in the player's. This might seem like a bit of a cruel gyp, but then all one has to do is look at how FFXI treated the playable Summoner class (or didn't, rather) to see that, hey, maybe it's for the best...

Anywho, Ifrit is one of those Primals, and there's now a neat little quest chain that involves his being summoned into this plain and everyone majorly freaked out about it. It's a nice story, but everyone just wants to get right down to the big question. Is the fight cool? Personally speaking, I've only done it once, and I did the Level 25 'easy' version (as opposed to the harder Level 45 one) and I think that, yes, yes it is just the bee's knees!







I took part in a pick-up group fight for the fight (what with the not bothering to join a Linkshell yet) and while Ifrit certainly hits like a goddamn truck that's packed with smaller trucks, he's a good, proper challenge. Maybe the Level 45 version is different (and I like the fact that there's two versions/difficulties for the fight), but outside of his obvious HOLY SHIT IN A BUCKET THIS IS GOING TO SUCK ultimate attacks, he didn't do anything I'd consider cheap or unfair. It's a fun fight! Wish we had more of 'em right now.

The new dungeon is very much the same. You can take part in it starting from Level 15-ish, and it's a pretty standard run, what with it being the first dungeon a newbie is likely to encounter, but it's a nice change of pace from the usual Eorzean activities at the moment. The only problem is that all the dungeons and 'boss' fights require, obviously, trying to get people together, and that's just a complete hassle right now. They've mentioned implementing it, but like the zone designs, every day without some sort of dungeon/party seeking mechanic is another day players have to wade through the game's irritating interface and lack of options. It really can't arrive soon enough.

In other, sadly non-Ifrit related gameplay, the Grand Companies are coming along pretty nicely from the look of it. I've yet to properly delve into them, since for the first time ever in XIV I have more options available than I have time to do 'em in (glee!), but the new updates for it look really interesting. Again, they don't really do anything new (if you're a non-XI MMO player), but their inclusion is mucho appreciated. I like that now you can take part in Grand Company Guildleves in some of the game's more remote regions (like the cave systems) and work towards some nice rewards for going out of your way.

In regards to the sidequests, there's... well, more of 'em now. They give you EXP and, more importanly, items and equipment appropriate to the level they're intended for, so that's all you can ask for. Well, okay, a way of being able to see where new quest givers have popped up on the map would be nice, since running around all of Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa looking for the bastards every few levels can be sort of irritating. Could we pretty please have them appear on the map before you accept their quest? I'll be your friend!

"So..." you pipe up. It's been a while since you said anything. Hi! "What was that about Materia being in the game now?"

Now before you fanboys get all excited and start hyperventilating over how XIV is totally an MMO remake of Final Fantasy VII and you need to buy it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, I should probably start by saying that Materia in XIV is just a fancy word for enchantments/augments. Still, very cool, but I'm afraid there's no W-Item or Bahamut Zero for your to equip to your stupidly oversized sword.

No... No, you don't have to go! You can still sta---

Well, okay then.

Poor guys...

Anyways, the Materia system needs a fair amount of explanation to properly describe what the hell.

As you equip and use gear on your travels throughout the land, your gear will gain Spiritbond. Which is basically just a fancy word for "a bar on your equipment fills up, and when it's full you can do some awesome shit with it". Once said bar is full, you can choose to crumple it up into a ball, squeeze real hard and magically change it into a piece of Materia!

You can get all sorts of Materia depending on what item you Spiritbond the crap out of. The vast majority of them are stat-boosting enchantements. STR+, DEX+, CRIT+, all that good stuff. Once you have a piece of Materia, you can attach it to practically any piece of equipment you desire. To do just that, you need the Materia (obviously) and a Catalyst, which can be found by Miners and other gathering classes. You could also just buy the Catalyst and Materia on the Market Wards. That... that also works.

Once you become a wiz at placing Materia on your clothes like the clever and pretty princess you are, you can speak to an awesomely named Goblin, Mutamix Bubblypots, who will allow you to place multiple Materia on the same item. This will come at a price of potentially shattering the Materia however, so it's a bit of a gamble. You can either just have the one Materia on any piece and be perfectly happy with that, or you can throw caution to the wind and try multiple Materia, you madman!


You can also remove Materia from an item, but that'll destroy the little sphere in question. Which is kind of a bummer, but it's done to keep a constant cycle of Materia flowing through the economy, which seems to be working pretty well. On Cornelia at least. Prices for the basic Materia are around 5,000-7,000 gil, and the bigger upgrades are being sought after by the min-maxers and/or e-peeners for hilariously expensive amounts. Oh, you guys!






Not really much to blab on about here, but I thought it was worth mentioning all the same.

One of the issues that faced a new player to FFXIV was that the controls and general mechanics were not explained very well. Or at all. Mostly the second one. Well now, in Glorious and Tanaka-free XIV, the new team has added a series of tutorials to the start of every new character. When you finish the opening cutscene, you'll be shown and asked to follow the instructions to walk, talk, select targets, fight, menu navigating and purpose and the story-specific NPC Linkpearl. It's actually really well done and in-depth too. You can select if you want the tutorials to show you the Keyboard+Mouse instructions or the Gamepad ones.

In other areas of convenience, the Gathering classes now have access to Stealth abilities, which allow them to sneak past some of the nastier enemies that inhabit the land, since they're in no position to put up a proper fight. Harvesting/Mining points and other points of interest (Guildleve Aetheryte crystals) can now be selected by clicking/targeting them instead of having to open the main menu and select a context-sensitive option within.

Repairing items is a lot easier now. You can go to an NPC, which are now in every city and every Guildleve camp, and ask them to repair your items back up to 99% (up from the 75-ish% they'd do before). I'm not sure if the prices have changed, but it doesn't seem so. As someone who really, really hated the old Repair NPCs, this was music to my ears. Or text to my eyes. Whatever.

And lastly, while not a convenience thing I'd get bitched at if I didn't type it in, you can now powerlevel lower-level characters pretty effectively. Even the development team is perfectly cool with it. I can't be bothered going into deep detailing of it, because who honestly cares? But, basically, a high level player can now accompany a lower level one and fight all sorts of high-level mobs that'll give the low level player a heaping mess of EXP. Supposedly you can hit Level 20 in about an hour or two, which I guess is pretty neato.

Personally, I don't get it. XIV's leveling is actually pretty good now (outside of a few easily patchable quirks with difficulty early on). The lower level character doesn't even get to do anything. They just stand there. I mean, all the more power to you if you want to do that, since the developers seem okay with it (I see a big ol' 'adjustment' for that in the very near future) but... Jesus, that sounds boring. You'd have to be a pretty goddamn uninteresting individual to consider that a solid night's entertainment.

Have fun completely missing the vast majority of the current content in the game though, I guess. This seems more up your alley. Or this.