FFXIV – 4.2 Rise of a New Sun Patch Notes

Roughly 75% of the 4.2 patch doesn’t interest me, but there’s a few cool things in there.

This cracked me up: You won’t be able to skip the cut scenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium anymore. If I were a new player, I’d be glad about that, because I’d hate to miss them (I honestly don’t remember if I watched them the first time or not, or if I ever have). I don’t understand why they didn’t do the same in other Main Scenario instances though. The social pressure to skip cut scenes in instances is immense (even if nobody asks you to), and to this day I can’t understand why they keep putting cut scenes, even very short ones, into group instances.

There are some changes to the Bard Perform thingy, but I still think it’s an underwhelming feature. I thought I was going to be able to program elaborate sequenced performances with it-to just press a button and have my character play a song. But no, unless I completely missed something, you plunk out notes on your keyboard in real-time. What’s the point of that?

No changes to Bard actions as far as I can tell (the only job I care about hehe).

One new dungeon Hells’ Lid at item level 310. I presume the Main Scenario will go through it. My item level is 321 so I’m ready. (“Players must first complete the main scenario quest ???"-so yeah, it’s a main scenario dungeon.)

Second new dungeon Fractal Continuum (Hard) at item level 310. Appears to be optional. I have no memory whatsoever of Fractal Continuum. If it wasn’t part of the Main Scenario Quest, I probably haven’t done it, so I won’t be able to do this one.

One new trial The Jade Stoa at item level 325. Sadly it appears to be part of the Main Scenario as well (“must first complete the main scenario quest ???”), so I guess I will need 4 more points of item level from somewhere.

Thankfully the weekly restrictions on alliance raid The Royal City of Rabanastre will be removed so I can spam it to get new gear at my leisure. (If I’m not mistaken I’ve only gotten one or two Bard drops since it came out.) Presumably that will allow me to get over 325 for the new trial.

For the cutting-edge treadmill crowd, Allagan Tomestones of Mendacity will be added as the new top-tier 450-per-week currency, replacing Tomestones of Creation. We won’t be able to get Tomestones of Verity anymore.

Interestingly, the Expert Duty Roulette is changing into a whole new thing that includes the new Hells’ Lid and Fractal Continuum (Hard). Presumably I’ll have to familiarize myself with Hells’ Lid for the main scenario, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Fractal Continuum before, and I’m not anxious to start now. What used to be the Expert Duty Roulette will be called the Level 70 Duty Roulette, and probably not worth doing anymore, unless you’re one of those people who has nothing better to do than to run ten different roulettes every day to squeeze out every last tomestone from the game to gear up all 15 jobs for raid-readiness.

I will probably be getting the majority of my Mendacity from the Alliance Roulette Duty, if I get them at all. Although if I get used to the new dungeons, it would probably be less tedious to run an Expert Roulette every day. (It’s not clear to me if any of the dungeons will reward non-bonus Mendacity tomestones or not.)

I have no problem with removing elemental resistance. I never once gave that a single thought while playing.

The item stack size increasing from 99 to 999 is the greatest news ever. It won’t save me much space though because I rarely kept more than one stack of 99 materials anyway. It begs the question though: Why stop there? Arbitrary numerical limits in computer software annoy me. The only inescapable limiting factor that’s apparent to me is the number of digits you can display at the bottom of the icon, and it looks to me like you could easily get five digits in there.

Not letting you discard something if you haven’t already unlocked it is a nice feature for people like me who tend to discard things when I don’t know what it is. I’m quite sure I’ve thrown away things I could have used numerous times before. This feature won’t help with knowing whether to roll on something or not, though.

I’m very interested in trying out the new Glamour Dresser thingy, but I have a feeling it’s not going to work as effortlessly as I’d want it to, which means I will probably just continue to wear whatever mismatched gear I last picked up. For example, I anticipate it will be a pain to get the required number of “glamour prisms,” a step which seems arbitrary and pointless and designed to annoy me specifically. I am not looking forward to the tedium of clicking “yes” on every “are you sure” dialog as I throw truckloads of saved gear into this Dresser. And I see that there’s a hard, arbitrary limit of 200 glamours you can put into the Dresser, which I expect most people will run into on the first day, because who doesn’t already have 200 gear pieces already sitting on their retainers?

The Duty Recorder, if it is anything like what I think it is, looks like one of the coolest things ever put into an MMORPG. It’s Quake Demos all over again!! Except everyone in the group has to consent before you can record the instance!? Ugh! And it only works on the new trial The Jade Stoa. I would literally use that every single time I was in an instance if I could. (Or at least the first time I was in an instance.) People making video guides are going to love that. Next they need to add it into the PvP matches.

The Chocobo saddlebag looks cool I guess, but I doubt I’ll use it except in emergencies. It doesn’t seem like it would be functionally useful unless you could automatically put things into it. Like if you could direct all of your loot drops to the saddlebags. But more inventory space is always nice, I guess. Still, it makes me revisit my long-standing gripe, why is there any limit at all on my inventory? Especially in a subscription-only game. It should be unlimited, right? An endless, bottomless inventory? Auto-sorted, filterable, and searchable? It’s 2018 last I checked. Nobody is trying for immersion and realism with their inventory system anymore. The game industry is firmly in “well that’s the only way I’ve ever seen an inventory so let’s keep doing it that way” and it annoys me.

I like the inventory grid changes (from 5×5, 6 tabs to 5×7, 4 tabs). But … I still want more. :) Next, can we arrange it however we want? See above, where I mentioned it’s 2018. It would be great if I could expand the window so it’s all on one tab. I imagine the FFXIV game engine is probably a creaky old thing that will break at the slightest touch by now but surely somebody over there can manage resizable windows?

Maximum retainers increasing to nine would have been awesome if I hadn’t just cut out all of my retainer subscriptions. :)

Still waiting on improvements to the Retainer UI. If they haven’t changed it by now, I imagine they can’t, and I’ll have to wait until the next Final Fantasy MMORPG. Speaking of creaky old engines, when I look at the FFXIV UI and ponder what they have and haven’t changed, I imagine the code behind it all is a bit of a mess. The UI layer is by far the biggest problem in FFXIV. I get the impression that they slapped it together very quickly for the 2.0 re-launch, and I suspect they are now paying the price for that. I hope they are working on the next iteration of a flagship MMORPG already because this one is already showing signs of age. :)