If I'm honest, I really dislike that the Beastmaster "class" concept was used for it. It feels like they designed this roguelite mode first and the majority of the effort went into building it, then they just kinda arbitrarily shoved Beastmaster into it which leaves the class itself feeling like an accessory at best, a gimmick at worst, of the Crucible rather than its own thing.
The actual "beastmastering" of it all is just two pages of random mobs you can collect in a day and honestly kinda feels like an afterthought. Especially with so many of the "harder" to acquire beasts being things you can just straight up buy from the crucible vendor so you don't even have to engage with going out and taming them at all.
At the same time the actual gameplay of the Beastmaster feels more like rotating through three 90 second cooldowns as quickly as possible to get your burst or CC rather than actually fighting alongside a pet you've bonded with. The fact you can't even name them really underlines how inconsequential them being "pets" really is.
For what it is, its seemingly well made. But man it just doesn't feel like it fulfills the promise of the class fantasy at all. I wish the gameplay of the BST didn't boil down to blowing through three pets as fast as possible like they are just inanimate ammunition. Like it doesn't feel much, if any, different using my BSTs pets than it does cycling through my Machinists tools.I also wish the collecting aspect of obtaining the pets was a much bigger deal to the class. There's another version of this where it's a bigger focus on being in the overworld hunting down pets, with powerful pets being crucible-like duty encounters you have to hunt down and overcome to tame them and job quest-lines devoted to acquiring legendary creatures.
It's fine for what it is, I'm glad for those having fun with it. But personally the more I engage with it the more I'm just kind of let down that this is all XIV's version of "Beastmaster" gets to be.
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The actual "beastmastering" of it all is just two pages of random mobs you can collect in a day and honestly kinda feels like an afterthought. Especially with so many of the "harder" to acquire beasts being things you can just straight up buy from the crucible vendor so you don't even have to engage with going out and taming them at all.
At the same time the actual gameplay of the Beastmaster feels more like rotating through three 90 second cooldowns as quickly as possible to get your burst or CC rather than actually fighting alongside a pet you've bonded with. The fact you can't even name them really underlines how inconsequential them being "pets" really is.
For what it is, its seemingly well made. But man it just doesn't feel like it fulfills the promise of the class fantasy at all. I wish the gameplay of the BST didn't boil down to blowing through three pets as fast as possible like they are just inanimate ammunition. Like it doesn't feel much, if any, different using my BSTs pets than it does cycling through my Machinists tools.I also wish the collecting aspect of obtaining the pets was a much bigger deal to the class. There's another version of this where it's a bigger focus on being in the overworld hunting down pets, with powerful pets being crucible-like duty encounters you have to hunt down and overcome to tame them and job quest-lines devoted to acquiring legendary creatures.
It's fine for what it is, I'm glad for those having fun with it. But personally the more I engage with it the more I'm just kind of let down that this is all XIV's version of "Beastmaster" gets to be.
Continue reading...