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[Elven_Star]

If only this game weren't stuck behind a subscription fee....

 

[Dunkley]

Which begets the question...why are they here? The answer to that question and more lies in the selfsame legend of which they sing. The legend of Ivalice.

This makes me wonder if these might partly take place inside the Echo ability of the protagonist. While I don't assume they'd get Matsuno on board just to have it be an interactive flashback especially since it apparently tie into the Main Story Quest, it does kinda remind me of The Ministrel's Ballads already found in the game.

 

[BudokaiMR2]

And even then it's not that the ARR story is straight up bad by any means, but the pacing just isn't very good and there's a lot of fetch quests. Yoshida did express interest in revisiting it at some point to kinda fix the pacing, or at least that's what he implied, but who knows when/if that will actually happen. It also sets up a lot of the base rules that the XIV universe abides by and there's also callbacks in Heavensward and Stormblood to things that happened during A Realm Reborn.

Heavensward and Stormblood are much better at pacing the storyline.

Yeah, the story was great but sometimes it just got waaaaay too fetch-quest heavy.
Those sorts of quests still pop up in HW and SB, but I feel like they are usually cut into multiple short pieces that pay out rewards quickly.

It's been a while since I finished that stuff, but I remember being extremely pissed at all the bullshit they made me do leading up to the Leviathan part.

 

[Dunkley]

It's been a while since I finished that stuff, but I remember being extremely pissed at all the bullshit they made me do leading up to the Leviathan part.

Tbh looking back at what happens between 2.1 and 2.55, nothing before 2.4 is really of any substance. Like all the more interesting elements introduced inbetween A Realm Reborn and Heavensward that do actually re-appear later only were introduced in 2.4 or later.

So I think only somewhat paying attention till the end of 2.3 is kinda justified since not a lot of it matters in the long run. 2.4 and onward is where stuff gets interesting again with the introduction of White Magicide and the story beginning to lead into the Heavensward arc.

 

[duckroll]

Yeah, the story was great but sometimes it just got waaaaay too fetch-quest heavy.
Those sorts of quests still pop up in HW and SB, but I feel like they are usually cut into multiple short pieces that pay out rewards quickly.

It's been a while since I finished that stuff, but I remember being extremely pissed at all the bullshit they made me do leading up to the Leviathan part.

"Kid let me tell you about the time me and my mates defeated Tidus, yeah that was his name, Tidus. Yeah...."

"Oh you went through all the trouble to get that elemental shard and it's just the wrong one. Too bad Warrior of Light, but your elemental crystal is in another castle!"

Make... it.... stop.

 

[near]

Might be possible in 150+ hours. That's if you really skip a ton of stuff, have friends to carry you, and give you kickass gear at every major stage of the game. 200+ is more realistic for a normal player.

If you really, really want to skip, you will still have to play through Stormblood, but before that if you care about the story you should probably sit in the inn and watch all the story cutscenes from the start.

i wanna say 1-2 months probably? depending on how hardcore you are
i wouldn't advise anyone to actually sub into ff14 if it's just for the sake of this ivalice raid though

God damn.

This will consume my life. I'm gonna contemplate if this is worth it then make a decision. If anything I think I might just start off at Stormblood to save time cause I'm only really considering this for Matsuno baby, at the same time if the story is as good as people say it is I really don't want to miss out on that either. Thanks for the input guys.

 

[Atolm]

God damn.

This will consume my life. I'm gonna contemplate if this is worth it then make a decision. If anything I think I might just start off at Stormblood to save time cause I'm only really considering this for Matsuno baby, at the same time if the story is as good as people say it is I really don't want to miss out on that either. Thanks for the input guys.

Don't. I know there's hype around this but this will be a dungeon with a few cutscenes to set up the lore, and then you run it once or twice per week to get what you want. It's not worth to sink 200+ hours just for this.

It's one of the many tastefully done fanservice tidbits the game has that may help you in deciding to subscribe or not, but it shouldn't be the only reason.

 

[duckroll]

God damn.

This will consume my life. I'm gonna contemplate if this is worth it then make a decision. If anything I think I might just start off at Stormblood to save time cause I'm only really considering this for Matsuno baby, at the same time if the story is as good as people say it is I really don't want to miss out on that either. Thanks for the input guys.

If you only want to do the Matsuno content NOW, it's honestly a bad idea to start with this patch. The story won't even be complete. These big raid stories are split into three chunks and get delivered across many months. The final part might not be out until end of next year. You're better off waiting for the entire thing to be complete, or honestly, I would recommend if you are interested in the game itself, start playing about 6-8 months before the final part of the raid hits. That will give you plenty of time to catch up to all the main content, and run through the post-Stormblood stuff.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

The game doesn't have to be year long commitment people


Treat it like you would any single player game. Enjoy it for the great FF story it is, unsubscribe until their is a decent amount of new content, then come back to it.

 

[BudokaiMR2]

"Kid let me tell you about the time me and my mates defeated Tidus, yeah that was his name, Tidus. Yeah...."

"Oh you went through all the trouble to get that elemental shard and it's just the wrong one. Too bad Warrior of Light, but your elemental crystal is in another castle!"

Make... it.... stop.

If I could have stabbed that PTSD hobo in his stupid hut I would have.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

I took a break after playing storm blood, is it official that the world of hydaelyn is the world of ivalice?

So.. Ivalice - and all that we know of Ivalice - is on Hydaelin and somewhere under that cloud over the middle continent?

That's such garbage.

What about the Ivalice calamity that leads into the FFT era? Is XIV after all that?

Sorry, I hate all of this. Let separate worlds be separate worlds.

Honestly, it's difficult to tell, because there's no consistency.

Lightning in XIV is apprently the "actual" Lightning, lost in her universe-wandering after XIII's retconned ending, supposedly?

The Crystal Tower makes more sense as a knock-off, as it's just a vague structure full of monsters.

When you actually have Ramza et al appearing in the Ivalice poster, and an identical facsimile of Rabanatsre physically in the game world, it's hard to tell if it's some kind of "actual" overlap, or a knock-off.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ducer-LIVE-Part-XIII-Q-A-Summary-(04-09-2014)

Q: A lot of names from Ivalice have been mentioned such as Dalmasca, Belias, and Zodiak. Is there some kind of connection between Hydaelyn and Ivalice?

A: Maehiro: To be absolutely clear, there is no direct connection between FFXIV’s Hydaelyn and FFXII’s Ivalice or even FFXI’s Vana’diel. They are not the same world in different dimensions or time—they are their own separate worlds. However, there are certain connections to people or objects that appear in these other worlds that figure into the story of FFXIV as it has been conceived and is being told.

 

[near]

If you only want to do the Matsuno content NOW, it's honestly a bad idea to start with this patch. The story won't even be complete. These big raid stories are split into three chunks and get delivered across many months. The final part might not be out until end of next year. You're better off waiting for the entire thing to be complete, or honestly, I would recommend if you are interested in the game itself, start playing about 6-8 months before the final part of the raid hits. That will give you plenty of time to catch up to all the main content, and run through the post-Stormblood stuff.

That makes sense, it does give me plenty of time to progress through all the content before the final raids hit. I'm kind of interested in the main game but got put off cause I'm so far behind. But Matsuno has mostly got me excited for this so I think I'll take your advice.

 

[Kenai]

Is that the year the last FFXI expansion landed out of interest?

No. Not sure which year Rhapsodies of Vanadiel and its final updates dropped but that one was it. Think it was fairly recently.

 

[mcw]

"Kid let me tell you about the time me and my mates defeated Tidus, yeah that was his name, Tidus. Yeah...."

"Oh you went through all the trouble to get that elemental shard and it's just the wrong one. Too bad Warrior of Light, but your elemental crystal is in another castle!"

Make... it.... stop.

pray return to the waking sands

 

[LordKasual]

If only this game weren't stuck behind a subscription fee....

Trust me, you wouldn't want it any other way.

 

[Brazil]

If only this game weren't stuck behind a subscription fee....

Then we wouldn't get awesome content updates like this.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

This has got me back into FF14. Finished up Stormblood last night, just working on getting my gear good enough for this.Hopefully my equipment level is high enough when this comes out.

 

[CaviarMeths]

If only this game weren't stuck behind a subscription fee....

I've played free MMOs before and after playing FFXIV, I'd never go back. The difference in quality of the service and community is night and day.

 

[Estellex]

FF XIV have some of the best graphics and music of any MMOs I have played. Sucks that I really don't like the gameplay of the game though.

 

[Nicolada]

God I want to play it but I also don't please give him XVI squeenix for God's sake.

 

[blummer102]

That makes sense, it does give me plenty of time to progress through all the content before the final raids hit. I'm kind of interested in the main game but got put off cause I'm so far behind. But Matsuno has mostly got me excited for this so I think I'll take your advice.

Honestly, if you like Matsuno games, you'll like FFXIV. The story is basically set up to follow in the same vein of games like FFXII, Vagrant Story, FF Tactics and Ogre Battle. It's an epic medieval fantasy FF game, rather than a crazy anime FF game. (The series seems to alternate between these two extremes.)

The localization is good enough to make up for the fetch-quests that fill the first part of the game, and those quests are standard for any MMO. They become less grindy once you hit level 40 or so, and I got a friend who made it all the way from level 1-30 in like four days. (Granted, he played a heckuva lot, but still.)

Also, even though it's an MMO, FFXIV is honestly still set up like a single player game to the point where I'm pretty much playing it as such. Guilds, raids and socialization are there, but the crux of the game is a selection of story-focused quests that you need to complete solo in order to unlock these extra features.

It really is a fine game worth subbing to.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Honestly, if you like Matsuno games, you'll like FFXIV. The story is basically set up to follow in the same vein of games like FFXII, Vagrant Story, FF Tactics and Ogre Battle. It's an epic medieval fantasy FF game, rather than a crazy anime FF game. (The series seems to alternate between these two extremes.)

Not to mention Matsuno games and FFXIV share some of the same staff, even outside of Matsuno. For example, the UI designer of FFXIV was the director of FFXII and Tactics Ogre PSP.

 

[aceface]

Matsuno returns to Final Fantasy tomorrow! Praise this glorious day!