FFXIV Nico 09
©2013 Craig Ashby
Screen Capture

FFXIV Nico 09 sees good old Nico in Mor Dhona wearing AF1 Black Mage gear. I pull back to show the the full garb for nostalgia’s sake. It being a classic interpretation of Black Mage gear.

This instantly cookouts to mind Vivi from Final Fantasy IX. A beloved and well remembered character from the franchise. Funny how those popularity contests work.

I really enjoyed the Heavensward update to the class. It made the whole cast process more fluid. A flexibility that really worked for the class.

But with more good options comes greater possibility for failure. Taking the risks of the new mechanics was thrilling for the benefits but if you failed you looked like a dope.

The real failure occurred when people would just perform old 2.0 rotations in instances dungeons. Just coasting with old skills. It was infuriating in new content.

This is the problem with the game. Most people just log in to do the weekly grind of tomes. Exhausted from the grind, most just settled into gamer comas and waited for the carry.

Even sadder is that this problem has been ongoing since Warcraft and it seems there are no new solution to mitigate the pointless grinds. This makes the genre almost impossible to stick with for truly long periods of time.