{"id":9074,"date":"2021-03-18T15:10:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T15:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=9074"},"modified":"2021-04-15T06:26:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T06:26:04","slug":"final-fantasy-xiv-online-heavensward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/final-fantasy-xiv-online-heavensward\/","title":{"rendered":"FINAL FANTASY XIV: ONLINE – HEAVENSWARD"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vast majority of the content included in the first expansion<\/a> to Final Fantasy XIV<\/a> is… notably worse<\/em> than that found in the base game. The sidequests, in particular, are soulcrushing timesinks.<\/p>\n

First of all the expansion adds several new world maps to explore. Maps which are extremely large, sparsely populated, and must be crisscrossed back-and-forth innumerable times.<\/p>\n

Second, both crafting and gathering have been made more difficult. Instead of four nodes relatively close together, you now have three groups of two nodes spaced widely apart. So gathering materials takes more time. The new craftable items, meanwhile, now require more ingredients to craft. So you’re hit both ways. It’s far more efficient to just buy whatever you need from the marketplace… though that will end up running you close to a million (or more if you’re a full omni-crafter) to clear the various crafter quests.<\/p>\n

The main questline is more or less on par with the Astral Era quests<\/a>, though it introduces a new ‘solo’ duty feature. Which are basically Duty Finder<\/a> instances where NPCs take the role of other players. And while that’s something I specifically desired, the implementation here is lacking. Most of these duties feel empty\/artificial and much of the NPC behavior is heavily scripted rather than dynamic (to detrimental effect in the case of One Life for One World<\/a>). The last one before Stormblood<\/a> actually features what appears to be dynamic behavior (in addition to heavy scripting) though, which gives me hope the future NPC instances will be better handled.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned sidequests are where the pain truly lies however. Pretty much each and every questline requires running back and forth between two locations 5+ times. Trips which can take 1-2 minutes each way due to the size of the maps and lack of teleporters. It’s insane. I’m ~told~ this sort of quest design fell out of favor in the next and later expansions… but then, I was also ~told~ that the game got better in the first<\/em> expansion when it unequivocally does not.<\/p>\n

We’ll see if that’s a lie as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vast majority of the content included in the first expansion to Final Fantasy XIV is… notably worse than that found in the base game. The sidequests, in particular, are soulcrushing timesinks. First of all the expansion adds several new world maps to explore. Maps which are extremely large, sparsely populated, and must be crisscrossed back-and-forth innumerable times. Second, both crafting and gathering have been made more difficult. Instead of four nodes relatively close together, you now have three groups of two nodes spaced widely apart. So gathering materials takes more time. The new craftable items, meanwhile, now require more ingredients to craft. So you’re hit both ways. It’s far more efficient to just buy whatever you need from the marketplace… though that will end up running you close to a million (or more if you’re a full omni-crafter) to clear the various crafter quests. The main questline is more or less on par with the Astral Era quests, though it introduces a new ‘solo’ duty feature. Which are basically Duty Finder instances where NPCs take the role of other players. And while that’s something I specifically desired, the implementation here is lacking. Most of these duties feel empty\/artificial and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[28,499,500,121,62,473],"class_list":["post-9074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-fantasy","tag-final-fantasy","tag-mmorpg","tag-rpg","tag-science-fiction","tag-third-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t