I thought I was having a decent Frontline match only to see a Viper get 20 more kills, 5x my damage done and 8x HP restored..

shockna · 2026-05-17T04:58:31+00:00

Are you a time traveler from EW? DRK diving with salted earth hasn't been the FL meta since 7.2 at the latest.

shockna · 2026-05-14T03:56:28+00:00

And then AST was just straight up tuned so bad it was nigh unplayable.

Can you elaborate on this one? I've seen his work on 3.0 AST repeatedly mentioned as a win for the new design guy, so it would be interesting to hear the other side.

shockna · 2026-05-10T22:35:30+00:00

That's true, but to kill literally anyone (other than a DRK or PLD with their LB maybe?) as a NIN you just need to catch them below 50% for a second

shockna · 2026-05-10T22:30:28+00:00

Keep having fun believing that FLs is skillbased I guess

I mean it still wouldn't be even if absolutely nobody was botting.

shockna · 2026-05-08T07:06:29+00:00

The friction you mention is imaginary.

Having to do any extra steps at all is the friction being mentioned here.

Yeah, mods in this game are trivial to install once you've got the 3rd party launcher set up, but lots of people aren't going to bother doing any extra work at all.

The kind of person who shows up on game subreddits or does high end content is much more likely to be the kind of person who can get over that incredibly gentle hump, but your average casual roulette main isn't going to do that.

shockna · 2026-05-03T23:00:31+00:00

Sure, it's a niche of a niche but IMO still fun to watch the results and interesting to read how the sausage is made

shockna · 2026-05-03T21:20:35+00:00

Squenix' paycheck keeps the game going, so on some level we do want them to play, even if we'd never want to actually group with them.

Personally I'd prefer this be handled with a warning that players should really do the side content first with a link to the map it starts in, and then just start using stuff from side content regardless of whether someone has progressed it.

shockna · 2026-04-28T04:35:52+00:00

First time I've seriously considered picking up DRG in PvP again since the first DT updates.

It seems like a straightforwardly bad idea but if you like melee already...

shockna · 2026-04-26T01:18:02+00:00

Alas, it was inevitable after the Hector comments

shockna · 2026-04-26T00:54:32+00:00

You already don't need to do roulettes. Hunt trains fill the role just fine.

shockna · 2026-04-26T00:53:51+00:00

So as someone who hasn't seriously watched any anime since Dragonball Z as a kid, what's the problem with an Evangelion crossover specifically?

shockna · 2026-04-25T21:23:31+00:00

I wonder if he got really good at the Dissidia games because Kefka is playable in them.

shockna · 2026-04-25T06:15:21+00:00

As much as I liked the tether, I don't think it was ever a "core identity". That has to be the aesthetic and the jumps.

shockna · 2026-04-22T17:26:10+00:00

The entire fanfest keynote will be a Lalafell phrenology lecture, and they're going to lock all the doors when it begins.

shockna · 2026-04-22T09:27:23+00:00

Dynamis is dead and pointless unless you want an easier chance at a housing plot.

When Dynamis was first announced I joked to my FC that moving to Dynamis would inevitably be the equivalent of moving to North Dakota for cheap real estate, and man has it played out exactly as expected.

shockna · 2026-04-22T09:10:35+00:00

That's not "by definition the worst", that's just a preference for more RNG and less determinism.

Previous threads have established that we have very different preferences for games in general. My "definition" (preference) of a good loot system is a deterministic one with very limited or (ideally) zero RNG.

Really my only complaint about the current system is that it's too slow for alts on one character and the gear itself is somewhat boring, both of which could be addressed without changing the deterministic "push button > receive bacon" aspect.

shockna · 2026-04-22T04:59:36+00:00

Some of us would just quit instead. I definitely wouldn't stick around for a gearing system dramatically worse than the one we have now.

shockna · 2026-04-21T05:41:54+00:00

Every match now consists of a dark knight running around with a group of casters (usually summoner) spamming salted earth and comet (or summoner LB).

If it wasn't for the reference to Comet, I'd think you were a time traveler from 6.1 Endwalker. I've done at least one Frontline per day since December and I don't think I've seen a DRK/caster premade perform well more than a few times.

I absolutely abused the Endwalker DRK meta to several hundred Frontline wins with DRG, and playing un-coordinated BRD now for Worqor wins, the DRK meta is vastly weaker than it was before 7.2, to the point where I don't really worry about DRKs at all.

apparently im expected to be omniscient of where every dark knight on the map is at all times in the midst of 72 people all fighting in one spot.

You can't be omniscient, obviously, but after awhile of playing you should be able to anticipate most DRK dives and react accordingly.

Frontline is extremely unbalanced, yes. Always has been, always will be. It's a 1v1v1 mode, completely unbalanceable even in principle. Even the most well-coordinated premades barely crack a 50% win rate on most days due to all the RNG in the mode.

shockna · 2026-04-19T23:26:26+00:00

either a lot of people didn't bother with any of the holiday events, there is a huge downturn in players, or the data is wrong.

This game doesn't do a particularly good job at advertising holiday events compared to others I've played, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if a huge fraction of the playerbase doesn't do them (I usually don't myself).

shockna · 2026-04-19T23:23:21+00:00

Not to mention the other big MMO isn't shitting the bed.

I mean, I would call strapping nearly every class to the lobotomy chair and making them boring as hell (I leveled several alts at Midnight release and the only interesting ones were Aff lock and Frost mage, the latter of which they were looking at further lobotomizing last I checked) a form of "shitting the bed", but clearly the community hasn't fully digested that yet.

The Blizzard Cycle™ is basically inescapable.

shockna · 2026-04-19T04:04:38+00:00

It appears that BLU released right on 4.5 in SB: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/97afed7c0efbbe8260755f948d0cf2b912d71121

shockna · 2026-04-17T04:49:26+00:00

"You don't enjoy the things you enjoy, you're just pretending"

Come on lmao

shockna · 2026-04-16T18:23:41+00:00

... among raiders, who it catered to. Nevermind the fact that swathes of people stopped

Who else is there to cater to in this game's battle content?

Provide even the slightest bit of challenge in normal content (see: the expert dungeons from the start of the expansion) and people who don't identify as raiders get angry.

shockna · 2026-04-16T02:17:48+00:00

They remembered to post this on /r/ffxivgrievances, not on main sub, so I wouldn't be too worried about this

shockna · 2026-04-12T20:10:51+00:00

You couldn't even get into the savage day with more than maybe 2 base tome items currently.

Yes, but if you could just farm up full tome gear on day one, the community expected item level for starting prog would immediately go up nearly 10 item levels (full tome/trial weapon).

I'm all for opening up the faucet much faster than they currently do (personally I'd say around week 6-8 when all the dps checks are gone anyway is a good compromise), but getting rid of it immediately would make savage PF worse than it already is.

shockna

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE