Being an MMO junky since my middle school days of Everquest and Runescape classic, there is rarely a time I haven’t been playing an MMO of some type in the last 15 years. After finishing leveling to 50 in Final Fantasy XIV, I felt a little disappointed with the overall difficulty of the game. Seeing as I had never played Final Fantasy XI before but had friends that did, I was expecting slightly more challenge with the “hard mode” Primal Fights required for an end game set of quests. Even dropping into the “Binding Coil of Bahamut” was a bit easier than I was expecting for end-game content.
Here comes Patch 2.1 and Extreme Mode Primals.
These fights are right up there with Bahamut’s Coil in terms of end game content and are a refreshing experience from the normal “Don’t stand in red circles” mechanic that is all too generic in FFXIV. The Garuda Extreme mode encounter, the first of three was a refreshing experience for Disciples of War and Magic. Personally as a Tank class I felt a little left behind on the hype train of the infamous “Titan Hard Mode,” which is a hard check on how well you can avoid instant death mechanics. As the tank though, you get out of jail free for a lot of those checks. In the Extreme modes of the Primal Fights, there are no get out of jail free cards for anyone at all.
An example of just one of the four phase’s positioning in the Garuda Extreme Encounter.
End game content has always been a difficult scale to balance for MMO designers. Ever since the days of Legacy of Steel in Everquest, there’s never been a shortage of vocal end game players who believe there is not enough challenging content in the game. Before I dove into the end game content of FFXIV, I did almost feel the same away about the relative challenge of the game. While I’m by no means a world-class player, the challenge of the Extreme Mode Primals is well enough for my group of friends. FFXIV has kept me completely engrossed in my free time for the past 5 months now. With the way that Square-Enix is supporting the end-game, I don’t see that trend changing anytime soon!
