Looking For Party – Dressed for the occasion

This weekend in Final Fantasy XIV a rather MASSIVE update changed the shape of playing this game. Not just on how you throw your punches or cast your spells, but also on how you look. I am currently running around Ul’dah looking like a demented canary (more on that later) but people who pass me know I have had to fight to look this… well, demented! Sitting on the corner of my linkshell’s favourite spot in the city, other players know who I am and what I do.

It all sounds a little bit vain, but when you see the class gear that can now be obtained, you know you need it! It’s not just the look of the armour that draws you in but the promise of what you can now do with your character. This armour makes people sit up and take notice of you and the abilities you now possess.

This is Widargelt. He starts off lovely but ends up a bit bonkers.

Square Enix have brought back in the classic jobs from Final Fantasy games – Warrior, Dragoon, Bard, Paladin, Monk, Black & White Mage. Each class comes with its own recognisable costume, branding you to that job and that job alone. Before you could cross class armour and your weapons did the talking. But these make a statement not only on the character but also your linkshell (group you are a member of; like a guild) and how much work and effort they have put into each member.

As soon as we heard that the classic jobs were being brought in, the linkshell leader worked out who, when and how we were going to get this done for every member. Each individual wanted to take one or more classes so to achieve this we all had to worth together and get everyone to the level cap of 50. Once released, they would be able to unlock everything on the new classes. We discovered classes were unlockable as soon as their player hit level 30 and continued to unlock more abilities as more job specific tasks were completed.

I chose to focus on Monk as it has been my favourite class in most games. Now that my character Paru is level 50, I could go straight ahead and start taking on the missions to unlock the class. Each one has a different mini storyline which pulls the player in and makes them a vital part of it. You are granted about five to six tasks and upon completion another ability is revealed to add to your action bar and a piece of your instantly recognisable armour.

After many hours of fighting, running around and hunting out treasure boxes I finally hit Monk 50, and this is the end result:

The Yellow Avenger – Paru!

Yeah, it IS a bit yellow, isn’t it? But that tells anyone running past me that I am a level 50 Monk who has ticked all the boxes. This is very much a status thing but also makes life a bit easier if you are looking for a party of specific jobs to do something in the game. But most important is you look damn cool and people are jealous of you! They need to invent a smug emote for this game…

But is this all important to the player’s experience? Personally I found it to be a good way to engage with other players, not only with my linkshell but other people who were all after the same goal. One of the tasks issued to me was to kill an NM (Notorious Monster, these come up a lot in FFXIV) and report back once successfully taking it down. When I arrived at the spawn point there were several other Monks there. Instead of competing against each other, we all came together in a party and took the NM down very quickly. We even re-ran the same fight a few times once other Monks came along. I didn’t mind helping the other players out as it was a pretty fun fight!

But what it really meant was each one of us reached our goal and together we achieved it much quicker than expected. This is what I love about this game, community spirit is very high. The natural instinct would be to challenge the opposition but it pays off to work together rather than against each other. It just makes far more sense.

One of the toughest fights was Black Mage. The lanterns could kill you in one hit D:

Most of the linkshell have unlocked each job and I hope to do the same but right now I am enjoying punching things and looking like a demented canary far too much! I hope to take Paru’s Bard and Warrior up next but right now I NEED more sleep… I may have stayed up for longer than I planned, but that’s all part of the fun!


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One response to “Looking For Party – Dressed for the occasion”

  1. Ten avatar
    Ten

    Dangit! The rest of the shell are standing in front of me in the shot! Those scallywags!

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