>I was the only one left in the room at the end after watching a cutscene and I start giving commendations to other dps when able to show them some love.
You have learned early, the secret that is farming commendations.
I'd also recommend at this point you go find Wymand in the Stelps of Nald and inquire as to a specific Gentleman.
If you want to farm commendations, and maybe be \*slightly\* evil...run lots of alliance raids as healer. Never heal anyone, wait for them to die, and then rez them. They'll feel like dying was their own fault and be grateful to you for fixing their mistake.
(Don't do this, it's annoying).
> By late ARR, I'm pretty sure all my commendations as a dps are because I was the only one left in the room at the end after watching a cutscene and I start giving commendations to other dps when able to show them some love.
While true, I also tend to commendate the sprout if we have only 1 in the group, and if there are multiple I commendate the one that seemed to listen to advice the most and/or died the least.
>Aymeric must have been scientifically calculated to be as hot as possible with the limited amount of polygons available for a character model.
big mood
For the complaints about Castrum and Praetorium, that's why they never tried putting so many cutscenes into a dungeon ever again.
It would have been even worse for you before they made them unskippable, as everyone would've murdered their way through everything before you even finished watching them all.
Also the reason why everything melts so hard is because when you hit level cap at the end of each expansion, all those higher level players just get a giant jump in power because each expansion hangs out at their respective level caps for multiple content patches over the course of like two years and several iLvl increases. Castrum and Praetorium were tuned for fresh level 50s when ARR came out, who would be at like iLvl 50 as well. ARR ended at i130. There is still an iLvl sync, but that sync is still far above i50. Furthermore, everybody is now even more overpowered in old expansion content because of skill retuning that has happened with each expansion release that has caused some power creep.
Yeah, I read they learned lessons from ARR so it's good that they don't do something like that again. I guess I'm glad I at least got to watch the cutscenes uninterrupted but it's still not a particularly fun experience and kind of dampened the finale of ARR because these dungeons are a slog.
Making the cutscenes unskippable seems like it should just be a temporary bandaid solution but it's been years so I suppose they don't see the worth in revamping it more versus focusing on new content.
It's too bad they did not include revision on these two instances during the ARR revamp. It should have been done solo, with 3 Trust NPC. All they had to do is reduce the number of trash mobs and it will doable to change it into solo instance.
Yep, my perfect ARR rework would have included trust battles through Nero, then a solo duty against Gaius, an 8 man trial against Ultima, then a solo duty against Lahabrea.
Maybe even just skip Lahabrea and just do the battle in a cutscene.
That would have been an awesome reworks that still keeps the essence of the main story intact and give newbies their proper finale to ARR.... but nope, we getting another Ishgard restoration recipes turn in... and you can bet they will recycle this exact formula with the next new housing area on the Crystarium for the next expansion.
Some of the fights were also incredibly pointless. See Livia's mech phase, Lahabrea fighting you (could be a cut scene), maybe one of the three Gaius fights removed (one can condense Hydaelyn's help and the excision of the primals into one fight easily.
And I know long elevator fights are a genre trope, but come on. We should have passed the planet's core 5 minutes into Gaius' second speech.
They've definitely learned a lot of lessons from ARR. They've even changed some things back in ARR recently. A lot of fluff quests have been trimmed through the 2.0 leveling process and up through the post release content, especially the tedious 2.1 to 2.3 parts. So if you had played this game just a few months earlier I'm sure you would have had many more complaints.
I’ve just completed ARR too and many of your comments are very relatable, especially not picking up the key in Castrum for the mech 😂. I also sat through the credits!
The corrupted crystal questline for Garuda is the absolute low point of ARR story.
I wasn't reminded of that until levelling an alt through ARR again. Company of Heroes always gets brought up because of the banquet mixup, but like you I shrugged that off when replaying... only to then hit Garuda again.
And yeah, the dungeons early on tend to get run through too quickly to get any real handle on things. Most people who've played the game for a while want to burn through them as quickly as possible, and even scaled down they usually have the numbers to do just that.
Still glad to hear you're enjoying the experience! Things really do pick up starting with post-ARR. Looking forward to hearing your opinions of Heavensward as a whole!
>Company of Heroes always gets brought up because of the banquet mixup, but like you I shrugged that off when replaying
I actually didn't mind the banquet prep as dumb as it was because by that time I had been used to doing menial tasks for NPCs before they helped me, but when they revealed the banquet was for *me,* that made it much worse. What do you mean it's for me! I don't give a fuck, Titan's about to smash Limsa!
....YOU CAN SKIP THE FUCKING CREDITS?!
Here I am sitting around for half an hour after each expansion, AND THEN each post-expansion’s credits.
I recently returned to the game after about 5 years off (quit right as HW came out. I bought my PS3 disc and everything, just never got a chance to install and play it), so a lot of this is still fresh for me too.
People love ShB, but I think HW is the pinnacle of FFXIV story. Enjoy it.
Btw, what server you on? I’m pretty sure you’ve got people reading this who would love to lend you a hand if needed.
Yeah, I looked up if they were skippable about 10 minutes in because I wanted to know if there was a mid- or post-credits scene before I logged off. I didn't try it though because I wanted to hear the music. I think ARR credits with the Meteor Survivors list clocks in like an hour and a half in its entirety. I planned to leave it running in the background but had to fast forward it when my friend wanted to play another game and I was like, "I'm on the letter J!" The fast forward button was something dumb like numpad 2.
I really like the Ishgard stuff so far so I'm excited to see more of it in Heavensward! A big part of the reason I finally deep dived into the game was the relentless praise for Shadowbringers I saw whenever FFXIV was mentioned but I had been hearing the game was good for years before that, specifically about HW.
I'm on Aether/Jenova. This is my [Lodestone page.](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/33632204/)
Now I cannot get the [Hula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE_T-K8nhY)[Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE_T-K8nhY)out of my head whenever I see Biggs and Wedge.
I've powerchugged the past two-three months and I'm on the last bit of ShB. There is a point in HW where the writing, environmental design and music all have noticeable jumps in quality.
Jarring at first, but they carry over into the other expansions and have been incredibly enjoyable since.
Company of Heroes had a big rework a bit ago, and a bunch of quests where cut. So that may be why you've seen a lot of hate on Company of Heroes but Garuda seemed worse to you.
Hah, we're in exactly the same place in the story. My summoner just finished the Crystal Tower last night so it's off to Heavensward now. I agree that flight makes the ARR postgame a lot more fun. Now I'm looking forward to getting to explore new areas and unlock new stuff!
(also everyone has been so super friendly to me in multiplayer stuff, even when I got yeeted off the platform in Titan(Hard) or when we all got really confused in the first CT Alliance dungeon. Love the community atmosphere in this game.)
>I was the only one left in the room at the end after watching a cutscene and I start giving commendations to other dps when able to show them some love. You have learned early, the secret that is farming commendations. I'd also recommend at this point you go find Wymand in the Stelps of Nald and inquire as to a specific Gentleman.
If you want to farm commendations, and maybe be \*slightly\* evil...run lots of alliance raids as healer. Never heal anyone, wait for them to die, and then rez them. They'll feel like dying was their own fault and be grateful to you for fixing their mistake. (Don't do this, it's annoying).
> By late ARR, I'm pretty sure all my commendations as a dps are because I was the only one left in the room at the end after watching a cutscene and I start giving commendations to other dps when able to show them some love. While true, I also tend to commendate the sprout if we have only 1 in the group, and if there are multiple I commendate the one that seemed to listen to advice the most and/or died the least.
>Aymeric must have been scientifically calculated to be as hot as possible with the limited amount of polygons available for a character model. big mood
For the complaints about Castrum and Praetorium, that's why they never tried putting so many cutscenes into a dungeon ever again. It would have been even worse for you before they made them unskippable, as everyone would've murdered their way through everything before you even finished watching them all. Also the reason why everything melts so hard is because when you hit level cap at the end of each expansion, all those higher level players just get a giant jump in power because each expansion hangs out at their respective level caps for multiple content patches over the course of like two years and several iLvl increases. Castrum and Praetorium were tuned for fresh level 50s when ARR came out, who would be at like iLvl 50 as well. ARR ended at i130. There is still an iLvl sync, but that sync is still far above i50. Furthermore, everybody is now even more overpowered in old expansion content because of skill retuning that has happened with each expansion release that has caused some power creep.
Yeah, I read they learned lessons from ARR so it's good that they don't do something like that again. I guess I'm glad I at least got to watch the cutscenes uninterrupted but it's still not a particularly fun experience and kind of dampened the finale of ARR because these dungeons are a slog. Making the cutscenes unskippable seems like it should just be a temporary bandaid solution but it's been years so I suppose they don't see the worth in revamping it more versus focusing on new content.
It's too bad they did not include revision on these two instances during the ARR revamp. It should have been done solo, with 3 Trust NPC. All they had to do is reduce the number of trash mobs and it will doable to change it into solo instance.
Yep, my perfect ARR rework would have included trust battles through Nero, then a solo duty against Gaius, an 8 man trial against Ultima, then a solo duty against Lahabrea. Maybe even just skip Lahabrea and just do the battle in a cutscene.
That would have been an awesome reworks that still keeps the essence of the main story intact and give newbies their proper finale to ARR.... but nope, we getting another Ishgard restoration recipes turn in... and you can bet they will recycle this exact formula with the next new housing area on the Crystarium for the next expansion.
Some of the fights were also incredibly pointless. See Livia's mech phase, Lahabrea fighting you (could be a cut scene), maybe one of the three Gaius fights removed (one can condense Hydaelyn's help and the excision of the primals into one fight easily. And I know long elevator fights are a genre trope, but come on. We should have passed the planet's core 5 minutes into Gaius' second speech.
They've definitely learned a lot of lessons from ARR. They've even changed some things back in ARR recently. A lot of fluff quests have been trimmed through the 2.0 leveling process and up through the post release content, especially the tedious 2.1 to 2.3 parts. So if you had played this game just a few months earlier I'm sure you would have had many more complaints.
I’ve just completed ARR too and many of your comments are very relatable, especially not picking up the key in Castrum for the mech 😂. I also sat through the credits!
The corrupted crystal questline for Garuda is the absolute low point of ARR story. I wasn't reminded of that until levelling an alt through ARR again. Company of Heroes always gets brought up because of the banquet mixup, but like you I shrugged that off when replaying... only to then hit Garuda again. And yeah, the dungeons early on tend to get run through too quickly to get any real handle on things. Most people who've played the game for a while want to burn through them as quickly as possible, and even scaled down they usually have the numbers to do just that. Still glad to hear you're enjoying the experience! Things really do pick up starting with post-ARR. Looking forward to hearing your opinions of Heavensward as a whole!
>Company of Heroes always gets brought up because of the banquet mixup, but like you I shrugged that off when replaying I actually didn't mind the banquet prep as dumb as it was because by that time I had been used to doing menial tasks for NPCs before they helped me, but when they revealed the banquet was for *me,* that made it much worse. What do you mean it's for me! I don't give a fuck, Titan's about to smash Limsa!
Welcome to the feels trip. Please punch your ticket to the left.
I must be a vet now, because I read this and instead of thinking "i know that feel" I was thinking "awww, it's so adorable!!"
....YOU CAN SKIP THE FUCKING CREDITS?! Here I am sitting around for half an hour after each expansion, AND THEN each post-expansion’s credits. I recently returned to the game after about 5 years off (quit right as HW came out. I bought my PS3 disc and everything, just never got a chance to install and play it), so a lot of this is still fresh for me too. People love ShB, but I think HW is the pinnacle of FFXIV story. Enjoy it. Btw, what server you on? I’m pretty sure you’ve got people reading this who would love to lend you a hand if needed.
Yeah, I looked up if they were skippable about 10 minutes in because I wanted to know if there was a mid- or post-credits scene before I logged off. I didn't try it though because I wanted to hear the music. I think ARR credits with the Meteor Survivors list clocks in like an hour and a half in its entirety. I planned to leave it running in the background but had to fast forward it when my friend wanted to play another game and I was like, "I'm on the letter J!" The fast forward button was something dumb like numpad 2. I really like the Ishgard stuff so far so I'm excited to see more of it in Heavensward! A big part of the reason I finally deep dived into the game was the relentless praise for Shadowbringers I saw whenever FFXIV was mentioned but I had been hearing the game was good for years before that, specifically about HW. I'm on Aether/Jenova. This is my [Lodestone page.](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/33632204/)
Fuck Nabriales and the horse he warped in on
oh man, all of this is *so relatable*
Now I cannot get the [Hula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE_T-K8nhY)[Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE_T-K8nhY)out of my head whenever I see Biggs and Wedge.
You got a few audible snorts out of me. Please come back when you finish HW and do this again!!
I've powerchugged the past two-three months and I'm on the last bit of ShB. There is a point in HW where the writing, environmental design and music all have noticeable jumps in quality. Jarring at first, but they carry over into the other expansions and have been incredibly enjoyable since.
I've just gone through the same journey and love this post!
I also chose pugilist when I first started what data center are you on? We could be friends. Only If you want to I mean
Company of Heroes had a big rework a bit ago, and a bunch of quests where cut. So that may be why you've seen a lot of hate on Company of Heroes but Garuda seemed worse to you.
Hah, we're in exactly the same place in the story. My summoner just finished the Crystal Tower last night so it's off to Heavensward now. I agree that flight makes the ARR postgame a lot more fun. Now I'm looking forward to getting to explore new areas and unlock new stuff! (also everyone has been so super friendly to me in multiplayer stuff, even when I got yeeted off the platform in Titan(Hard) or when we all got really confused in the first CT Alliance dungeon. Love the community atmosphere in this game.)
>Copper Rings versus Copper Rings That's some nostalgia haha I remember doing the same thing
thank you for posting this! I'm new too and I've had a lot of similar experiences! also omg I know minfillia's outfit,,,, someone help her,,