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A Realm Reborn Finale Changes Reviewed: Final Fantasy 14's Praetorium, Cape Westwind, And More
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Post edited by StevenWeber on
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When it comes to cut scenes I think if you have seen them once you should be able to skip any of them as long as everyone in your party has seen them.
There does seem to have been some evening out of jagged edges in gameplay which made sense, but new players should not expect to get the hang of everything first time, you don't get better at anything by always winning.
This is all about making the game easier and easier so that players will quickly get to the later expansions and buy them. SE is the Gaius van Baelsar or playing to the lowest common denominator to make the most money. Such childlike gameplay was absolutely their intention.
Level 50 content for the msq was never endgame, it was never "hard" to begin with, and it certainly hasn't been made "easy". Just more streamlined and less time-devouring. I enjoy the revamp, and I'm glad that SE cares to address such old content to help people still getting started.
The final dungeons have been a drag for most of A Realm Reborn's lifespan. It was tons of time wasted running around in circles. It was tons of pointless cutscenes that you either could not skip, or were forced to skip if you wanted to even see the dungeon. It required 8 players just for the sake of being end-game content while every boss did nothing worthy of having 8 bodies. There was tons of waiting around for something to happen or 1 person handling the heavy lifting to make it go slightly faster.
Now, the bosses have actual mechanics to perform. Stacks exist, tank busters happen, aoe patterns are shown that have to be dodged. It is possible to win without a healer, but not particularly pleasant, and a lack of one player is noticed, so everyone's participation feels relevant. Moreover, the duties don't take forever to do, so more veterans are running them more often.
I have nothing but good things to say about the changes they made. The things that made the original versions of these dungeons clever were completely overshadowed by how un-rewarding it was to do so. We swapped from a passive-aggressive mob mentality waiting game to some engaging solo duties, a REAL set of final two dungeons, and a trial which engage new players. They are more polished, engaging for new players while not overly difficult, and prioritize capturing the essence of the story's final battle.
Anything that was left behind is nostalgia for something that doesn't deserve it. The game is 10 years old. It is a GOOD thing for the crusty elements of the past to evolve with it.
Max level players have done these scenarios many, many times and want to rush through them as quickly as possible. But why would the developers incentivize players to rerun these few dungeons over and over again?
The reason is because they are a significant part of the main story and the roulette system ensures that new players will always have someone to queue with. Progressing through these dungeons is mandatory, so it wouldn't be good if it was hard for a new player to find people. They wouldn't be able to progress their character until they do.
But still, it resulted in a bad experience for new players because they can't really tell what's going on when everyone is rushing. These changes break the scenarios into smaller, more straight forward experiences to help alleviate that problem.
Instead of playing through the new dungeons on my Main using New Game +, I created a new character simply to follow the modified story. They did not reduce content, they simply streamlined it and made it doable with a 4-man team or a solo instance. You need to realize that the 8-mans were a mad rush ignoring all mechanics. The 4-mans are absolutely not. The solo instances replaced 8-man 20 second fights with 5-10 minute epic battles which give a much more in dept sense of the bosses you are battling. The changes they made were very much for the better and enriched the content. They took nothing away.
They've managed to retain some of the popular characterizations, whilst reducing the instance lengths and also adding some new mechanics.
That's not at all what the article says. Un-needed aspects have either been removed or reworked. All of the fights mentioned are now actually a challenge. For new players all of these fights are now actually fights and not just target dummies.
Have you played either the originals or new versions?
Also, yeah sorry. Yours was really the only comment I read and was also a knee jerk reaction comment.
The graphical update that'll be happening, as far as I can tell, is mostly going to be improving shaders, with some other things added to environments, like ground clutter and grass. If you know what gshade is you can just use that to improve what the game looks like. I broke down and started using it around 6 months ago. Right after EW launch.
Basically, don't let graphics keep you from trying a really good mmo. You can improve that yourself while waiting for the official upgrades.