As a general rule, Final Fantasy XIV does not offer much for players to do during the first minor patch after a major one. They tend to come out pretty soon after the main patch (which is definitely the case here, as patch 6.5 aka Growing Light released on October 2nd) and are mostly about turning over PvP stuff, unlocking minor features, and otherwise adding things that are mostly delayed so players don’t feel like they’re rushing to finish all of the patch content on the day it releases. That’s the usual state of affairs.[AL:XIV]
Patch 6.51 is a bit different, however, containing some of the content that would usually be held over for the 6.55 patch – like the new variant/criterion dungeon, the Fall Guys crossover, and the expansion of the Splendorous Tools questline. And this also makes sense, since patch 6.55 is at a bare minimum 63 days away at the time you’re reading this. So how does this surfeit of content feel? Is this a good thing? Should we all be happy? Bemused? Annoyed? Let’s talk about it.
Now fall
I had basically no hope for the Fall Guys crossover, nor any particular interest. It strikes me as akin to a lot of the crossovers in games that I tend to dislike, one that has absolutely no coherent space to exist alongside anything that’s happening within the game beyond the simple fact that the developers wanted it to happen. And let’s be clear, this is definitely not a crossover that works on a narrative level, nor is it one that even pretends to. It is a crossover formed purely of mechanical and cross-promotional material.
Fortunately, for the most part, it succeeds at that.
While FFXIV does not feature anything close to the very bouncy and push-pull mechanics of Fall Guys, it has trained all of us to very efficiently gauge and avoid AoEs, and this event is basically replete with every wonky movement mechanic that has been introduced for boss fights over the game’s decade-long history. Some of these are a touch annoying, like getting About Face early in one of the maps; others are familiar if you’ve gotten adept at sliding on icy surfaces. But the result is an obstacle course that is consistently fun and rewards that are perhaps a bit out-of-context but at least thematically appropriate.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve gone from being opposed to the event to loving it; I wasn’t opposed to it, just not hype about it, and my reaction while actually playing it is that it’s better than I’d expected. But I’ll still count that as a win in the long term. It’s still not my bag, but I’ve had fun with it, and what else can you ask for?
Stand tool
Expert crafts. Of course it’s expert crafts, my most hated of all crafts. Sigh.
While I’ve long been an omnicrafter, I’ve never been a big fan of expert crafts as a mechanic; I get the idea of presenting crafters with a challenge that they can’t simply automate with macros, but the result is a crafting system that is so heavily based on RNG that it becomes a different sort of annoying. Get the wrong status often enough and you’re just straight out of luck, or get it at the wrong times and you’re out of luck. It feels like good strategy doesn’t enable you to consistently pull out a fully successful craft, even if you can at least get within a reasonable spitting distance.
That being said, it seemed kind of inevitable we’d end up on expert crafts, and since these crafts don’t require a laundry list of pre-crafts that make things far more annoying, it’s just on the right side of being acceptable for me. It’s also materially helped at least a little by the fact that these are, strictly speaking, bragging rights rewards; you have already crafted everything important this expansion, nothing actually requires it, this is investment for Dawntrail and cosmetics. So on that level, it works.
But I still don’t like expert crafts very much. Good thing that the story is cute and I’ve got the spare time over the next couple of months.
‘Allo ‘allo
Y’know, it’s weird: I feel as if a lot of the frustration (though by no means all of it) toward these dungeons comes in part because the first one, the Sil’dih Subterrane, was just bad. It was an unnecessary coda to a question no one was asking, the dungeon was overlong and kind of annoying, and it just wasn’t very fun. Mount Rokkon was a significant step up, and Aloalo continues that trend by just being enjoyable to play.
Seriously, I’ve run this dungeon half a dozen times already as of this writing even though there’s not actually much I want from the dungeon. It’s fun to play! Matsya makes an entertaining companion through the run, the boss fights are interesting and have a neat set of mechanics, and even more than Rokkon, I actually want to fill in the lore of this place and find out more about this land of fish and gun-toting faeries.
That’s not to say that it is a perfect slam dunk, of course. The limited number of variant actions is still pretty darn boring, and it definitely encourages using the expected roles even on Variant runs; similarly, the base version doesn’t have great reward incentives. Having the savage criterion drop a weapon upgrade item for tomestone weapons is kinda nice, but it feels more like another carrot for the same people who aren’t going to be satisfied in the first place.
While I’m definitely happy that we’re getting more of these dungeons in Dawntrail, I hope that the expansion has a more considered place for them and an expanded set of player options within. I suspect that’s already in the plans and that these have been experimental as much as anything, sort of a dry run to see what parts work and what parts don’t. (Tied into the relic line in 7.x is what I see for the future.)
Still, it’s really a shame that even aside from issues like rewards and the like, the first offering here was so weak that it kind of tainted the well. If you haven’t checked this one out, I promise you that it’s a lot of fun, unless you were harboring some illusions that savage would replace tomestone gear, in which case you’re probably not going to be happy with not getting what you were never promised.
All of this also does need to be taken with at least half an eye toward the timing, too. Is this two months of content? No, not really. (I personally know more than a few people who already have the whole of Aloalo cleared out or everything they want from the Fall Guys collaboration.) But I do appreciate that the effort is being made to give us some extra stuff to do while we wait a bit longer than usual. It might not be the crossover I really want at this point, but hey, it was obvious in Las Vegas that we were getting beans before Torgal.
Feedback, as always, is welcome via email to eliot@massivelyop.com or in the comments down below. Next week, I’m going to actually take a different tack and look back into the days of 1.0 for a change and talk about the parts of the game back then that were worthwhile.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
