IS this the MMO to be played right now?

[MrPaladinGuy]

Sure is, like I said before, the game just gets better and better.

Though the playerbase is......special.

[Resiak]

In WoW I do run a lot of random group content, but typically only at the highest echelons (very high mythic + keys, very difficult to get into mythic pugs (that regularly clear 50%+ of the raid while it's current). These experiences are very pleasant because they automatically weed out the players who flat out cannot participate. There is no raging, belittling, or harassing. More often than not, someone is aware they're not pulling weight and apologizes and volunteers to leave. FWIW I have seen this behavior before in FF14 too, however, not at the upper echelons, but more towards low end/midcore.

The idea of this RCA was to identify if feedback is in fact toxic or if there are other measures. LFD/LFR isn't the root cause so we agree there. If anything IMO the root cause would be visible performance feedback. FF14 provides 0 feedback. WoW gives ample feedback. People often praise FF14 for its environment, while people curse WoW for its.

The question then becomes is it truly toxic if the same circumstance exists in both games, but one hides it vs. other showing it? Think of it like this, imagine if you're at school or work on a team project. Everyone shows up to meetings, does the work, and participates in the project, but one person only shows up for the presentation. You all get a 96. This person got the reward without putting any effort in. In the real world there are consequences for this. In Gaming, Sports, Careers, and Education this behavior is prevalent and arguably considered toxic and there are consequences for it. In WoW there are consequences for it, but why does FF14 not give any consequences? I think its more toxic failing to give a gamer good feedback than it is to see someone criticized in real time. All IMO of course.

I think we've finally came to the disconnect. You play in the high end content with similar people. Which is fine. But your kind of in a bubble. I have some quirks, I don't like doing top end content with strangers. I only ran mythic +, and heroic/mythic raids with my guild. If I didn't have anyone to run with, I did heroic dungeons and lfr. And thats where you see most of the harassment.

I tend to care more about the little man. I do this in real life too. I don't like seeing people treated badly. The way i see it is this. When newer/weaker players get harassed for not playing well, they are more likely to quit the game. I see it on forums all the time. Mobas are horrible for this, i see numerous people saying they wont play games like LoL because of the toxicity. I know a lot of people, and seen many other online, quit wow because they didnt like the community. People say all the time they won't play ftp games because anyone can play them and the communities suck. I've never seen someone say they quit a game because they didn't want to play with newbies/bad players. So I prefer protecting the weaker players over making things better for the hardcore.

Also, I don't like the school and work comparison to a video game. School is hard work we put in to try and put ourselves in a better place in life. Work is what we do to provide for ourselves and our families. FF 14 is what we do for entertainment. Did the person put in enough effort to clear the goal? Then it doesnt matter. I can careless what numbers they put in versus what I did. I only care they we won.

[Katchii]

That's the point of them. If that doesn't appeal to you then a Summoner isn't the class you should be playing. There's no reason to gut what the class should be to appease people who can't stand not constantly hitting their face into a keyboard. That said, the Summoner of Final Fantasy XI wasn't exactly "passive" so it would do well in this game with perhaps a small bit of polish.

You're missing my point. I don't care how the summoner is presented as long as the actual gameplay was fun, engaging and was aesthetically a summoner. I feel the current iteration in FFXIV accomplishes those things well enough. The FFXI version of Summoner was neither fun nor engaging IMO but could work in FFXIV if they increased the frequency of the actions per minute to be in alignment with what SMN does now, just with a more primal centric flavor.

[Wrecktangle]

Doom on the first boss in Quarn is one that springs to mind immediately. If you're considering trials as dungeons then pretty much every extreme mode has at least one instant kill mechanic.

Not counting trials. Doom is a good example though. IIRC Qarn is also a 1.0 dungeon yeah? I think we can agree that 1.0 dungeons were the best of the bunch when it comes to engagement. They're by far the most engaging. They're harder sure, but they're not "hard".

I actually like that idea. My main thing for Summoner is to feel like a caster who's entire purpose is to summon and / or control a primal so seeing the connection or the primal just drives that home but seeing it really frequently for split seconds would also fulfill that. I don't have any particular attachment to it being a DoT pet class, or even a caster. I've also always personally really liked the implications and aesthetics of a melee caster, similar to the Rift Mage Harbinger, or the Age of Conan Herald of Xotli.

As I said, as long as the gameplay is engaging and fun (not boring) AND the class feels like a Summoner I'm OK with it. So channeling the power of the primals through split second melee attacks while actually seeing the primal would be cool.

Glad you like it!

Doom on the final boss of Sunken Temple of Qarn at 35 (as mentioned above), the Disclosure ability the Demon Book uses in Gubal Library Normal Mode, the Meteor that is summoned at the final boss of Gubal Library Hard Mode, Sable Price as cast by Nidhogg in the Aery, and the ability the first boss (undead Goobue) uses in Amdapor Keep Hard that swallows a player that needs to be freed are some that come to mind.

I don't remember ever seeing a disclosure ability in Gubal. I acknowledged Doom as a good example. Is Sable price the thing that if you fail the dps check you insta wipe? I'm 99% sure at release I could basically solo the 3 mobs while my team AFK'd and still kill it before the timer so I've actually never seen it. If it was a different mechanic I don't remember seeing it (the one was a DoT that drained a person until freed). The Gobbue in AKHM where you have to switch targets to his tummy? You die if you don't get broken out? I'm pretty sure at release 1 LS Full Thrust did the things full HP. If I tanked it, I could solo it with ease. While it may be an instakill mechanic, it's another one I've never seen so the bar for failing must be astronomically small.

I know there's the bee's Final Sting, but even that has workarounds, but I can give credit for it since I have actually seen that one.

I think we've finally came to the disconnect. You play in the high end content with similar people. Which is fine. But your kind of in a bubble. I have some quirks, I don't like doing top end content with strangers. I only ran mythic +, and heroic/mythic raids with my guild. If I didn't have anyone to run with, I did heroic dungeons and lfr. And thats where you see most of the harassment.

You still didn't acknowledge my comment though. Is feedback toxic? You join a LFR/Heroic Dungeon, what do you see that is considering toxic, thus harassment? Is it almost ALWAYS performance feedback or are there other elements?

Then take it a step further - is it the feedback that is toxic or is the PLAYER that is toxic by criticizing or is it the PLAYER who is not contributing their share that is toxic?

I tend to care more about the little man. I do this in real life too. I don't like seeing people treated badly. The way i see it is this. When newer/weaker players get harassed for not playing well, they are more likely to quit the game. I see it on forums all the time. Mobas are horrible for this, i see numerous people saying they wont play games like LoL because of the toxicity. I know a lot of people, and seen many other online, quit wow because they didnt like the community. People say all the time they won't play ftp games because anyone can play them and the communities suck. I've never seen someone say they quit a game because they didn't want to play with newbies/bad players. So I prefer protecting the weaker players over making things better for the hardcore.

I love the little man! That's why you see me constantly advocating for getting more people into the game. It's also the same reason you see me criticize people politely or in private because I respect other people. I do firmly believe that if players truly had more knowledge of their performance and the game had a better feedback loop for improvement you'd see harassment fade and player engagement increase. IMO of course.

Also, I don't like the school and work comparison to a video game. School is hard work we put in to try and put ourselves in a better place in life. Work is what we do to provide for ourselves and our families. FF 14 is what we do for entertainment. Did the person put in enough effort to clear the goal? Then it doesn't matter. I can careless what numbers they put in versus what I did. I only care they we won.

I get your stance, that's fair. Let me put it this way. Let's say you have a friend who asks you to log in and do his daily roulette's on his character for one day. You don't mind right? He's a friend.

Next day he asks the same, you do it. Next day and next day. You never see him online lately and he keeps asking you to do things for him. That's what DF feels like when I do it. It's people asking me to do their work for them 40-60% of the time. I don't mind doing it every now and then, or for people who need help/are trying, but I'll be damned if my presence means you can AFK, or watch netflix while I do the dungeon. Which is why you see me advocate for performance feedback and engaging dungeon mechanics/qualities that require engagement (note: not difficulty).

[Deleted]

That's the point of them. If that doesn't appeal to you then a Summoner isn't the class you should be playing. There's no reason to gut what the class should be to appease people who can't stand not constantly hitting their face into a keyboard. That said, the Summoner of Final Fantasy XI wasn't exactly "passive" so it would do well in this game with perhaps a small bit of polish.

Summoner worked pretty nice in FFXI, but you can't use that model in a structured game like FFXIV which follows a strictly role-based model for classes.
FFXI has no role based model (almost...) for classes, and SMN is one of those typical jack-of-all-trades examples which would be impossible to reproduce in FFXIV.

It focuses heavily on summoning different avatars, and each of them having different buffs, debuffs, attacks and auras they can give to you, other players or monsters.
You have some job abilities which change their effect according to the Avatar you summoned, and keeping an avatar out costs resources, so initially you couldn't keep avatar permanently out (that's no longer the case but it's irrelevant to go this deep)

The closest thing they could do is shifting the focus more from the master towards the pet. If they want interaction they could do so by putting emphasis on actions you activate from the master, but that produce effects on/from the Egis, with different effects according to the Egi currently out.
Not different from the direct pet command we already have, but in a deeper and more articulated gameplay system.
Also have a combo-build system that allows you to quickly swap from one pet to another given certain circumstances.
At that point all that would be left to do is to differentiate Egis more, give them a specific purpose for specific fights, and make long-term plans so they can add more Egis in the future and so that they can actually make sense.

I think something like this is the closest you could get to have a better implementation of SMN given how things work in FFXIV.
Also do something about aesthetics. I've seen people say that arguably FFXIV sometimes exceed with the "flashy" stuff.
This is true to a certain degree. When a bigbang appears on screen even if a character is sneezing, you are overwhelmed with flashy stuff, and that makes each flashy action less... epic, and in a sense less flashy.
If flashy actions were a minority, they would stand out much more than they do now (and there would be less confusion on screen :P)
This might sound off topic but follow me please.
I think one of the reason why they made the Egis so simple and so small, was to avoid furtherly creating too much confusion on screen. Not sure this choice paid out in the end. Egis mostly feel pretty dull and not very SMN-esque.
They should make them slightly bigger, maybe use the adds model from the EX primal fights? Those wouldn't be perfect but it would be a step towards the right direction, I think.



To add more to what other people said, I personally love SMN for many reasons, but I have to agree it totally doesn't feel very SMN-esque, in the FF sense of the term.
From this point of view I totally understand the sense of disappointment many people have expressed.
Alas it seems like things aren't changing much with Stormblood.

[Dasffion]

Grubal normal doesn't have disclosure but it does have repel which is an instant kill if you're not positioned properly. Point is that there are instant kill mechanics in dungeons.

[Berethos08]

Grubal normal doesn't have disclosure but it does have repel which is an instant kill if you're not positioned properly. Point is that there are instant kill mechanics in dungeons.

Repel is what knocks you back and is just before Disclosure, which is when it closes then opens again, trapping anyone on that side before blasting them with a killing beam attack.

@Wrecktangle - Sable Price is the thing you attack that is trapping the player. Sable Weave is the cast going off while they are trapped that kills the player if it is allowed to complete.

The other one is just a phase change that has 5 or 6 adds total across three short waves.

Also, if Estinien is allowed to die at any point that wipes the fight as well.

Regardless of how easy these checks are to pass, they still must be done or the fight is over or a party member is killed, so they are instakill mechanics in 4 man dungeons.

[Dasffion]

Repel is what knocks you back and is just before Disclosure, which is when it closes then opens again, trapping anyone on that side before blasting them with a killing beam attack.

@Wrecktangle - Sable Price is the thing you attack that is trapping the player. Sable Weave is the cast going off while they are trapped that kills the player if it is allowed to complete.

The other one is just a phase change that has 5 or 6 adds total across three short waves.

Also, if Estinien is allowed to die at any point that wipes the fight as well.

Regardless of how easy these checks are to pass, they still must be done or the fight is over or a party member is killed, so they are instakill mechanics in 4 man dungeons.

You're right. I'm thinking of ampador keep.

[Wrecktangle]

Grubal normal doesn't have disclosure but it does have repel which is an instant kill if you're not positioned properly. Point is that there are instant kill mechanics in dungeons.

Just to be clear I am not saying there aren't any. I said I don't remember any. I still don't remember this example though lol. I might have quit before this one came out (Gubal HM right?).

Repel is what knocks you back and is just before Disclosure, which is when it closes then opens again, trapping anyone on that side before blasting them with a killing beam attack.

Sable Price is the thing you attack that is trapping the player. Sable Weave is the cast going off while they are trapped that kills the player if it is allowed to complete.

The other one is just a phase change that has 5 or 6 adds total across three short waves.

Also, if Estinien is allowed to die at any point that wipes the fight as well.

Regardless of how easy these checks are to pass, they still must be done or the fight is over or a party member is killed, so they are instakill mechanics in 4 man dungeons.

Thank you for the clarifications. Again I'm not refuting the difficulty of said mechanics so I shouldn't have gone down that path to begin with. I'm merely stating that I didn't remember any of them. I'm all for mechanics that force players to actually be engaged.

[Deleted]

XIV will always hold a special place in my heart, played it in 1.0 and in 2.0 all the way to heavenward first patch
Now seeing storm blood coming, I'm so tempted to join again, but then realise I have the annoyance of having to do all of heavenward before moving to new expansion.
I think it's the only MMO I've known where you are forced to do main story throughout old content just to catch up to an expansion you have paid for.
Would dread to think what a new to 50 goes through nowadays

[Katchii]

XIV will always hold a special place in my heart, played it in 1.0 and in 2.0 all the way to heavenward first patch
Now seeing storm blood coming, I'm so tempted to join again, but then realise I have the annoyance of having to do all of heavenward before moving to new expansion.
I think it's the only MMO I've known where you are forced to do main story throughout old content just to catch up to an expansion you have paid for.
Would dread to think what a new to 50 goes through nowadays

They're adding a MSQ skip potion and a leveling potion (separately). Here's a link to a reddit post that shows all of the slides from the Live Letter that discussed them.

Hope this entices you to come back, or at least makes it harder for you to choose not to come back =)

[Faroth]

XIV will always hold a special place in my heart, played it in 1.0 and in 2.0 all the way to heavenward first patch
Now seeing storm blood coming, I'm so tempted to join again, but then realise I have the annoyance of having to do all of heavenward before moving to new expansion.
I think it's the only MMO I've known where you are forced to do main story throughout old content just to catch up to an expansion you have paid for.
Would dread to think what a new to 50 goes through nowadays

Heavensward's post release patch MSQ is really short. If you plays at release of Heavensward and completed the MSQ, but did nothing whatsoever in any patch, you only have 44 quests from all following patches for MSQ (compared to 94 MSQ quests in Heavensward, 100 MSQ quests after 2.0, and 184 in 2.0 itself). And the story is much more brisk pace than the post 2.0 patch stories.

It leads to/through 4 dungeons and 2 trials. I want to say under an hour per patch for MSQ, it was noticeably short when playing through as they released.

But as Katchii mentioned, $25 for a Heavensward MSQ skip potion will be available as well.

Alternatively, if you want to play Samurai or Red mage, they start at 50, so you could also mow through the HW MSQ with the new job and get some levels that way (whereas the sea of Samurai/Red Mage will likely be stuffing PotD at the start to grind out 10 levels).

[Berethos08]

XIV will always hold a special place in my heart, played it in 1.0 and in 2.0 all the way to heavenward first patch

By first patch do you mean 3.1?

If so, you have a very short road to go to catch up - perhaps the toughest part being the need to meet the required ilevel for 3.4 and 3.5. (the easily obtainable Centurio Seals can get you to ilvl 210 super quick, and that will take you through 3.3). Beyond the gearing requirement, 3.2 through 3.5 can be done in a day.

[Deleted]

Thanks to the three that replied, appreciate that advice and info.
Might just give it another go for a month, what's the worse that can happen lol
If all else fails will try the story skip potion thing
Trying to remember last thing I did when playing, think it was speak to some big dragon in some zone (sorry been ages) also vaguely remember a fight against knight of the round type thing and beast men dailies for two races got added. Probably doesn't narrow it down but has been a while

[Lillpapps]

Heavensward's post release patch MSQ is really short. If you plays at release of Heavensward and completed the MSQ, but did nothing whatsoever in any patch, you only have 44 quests from all following patches for MSQ (compared to 94 MSQ quests in Heavensward, 100 MSQ quests after 2.0, and 184 in 2.0 itself). And the story is much more brisk pace than the post 2.0 patch stories.

I recently came back to the game after leaving during 3.0. I did 1 patch a day only playing 1-2 hours per day. I'm sure someone who played a lot could level from 50 and finish the MSQ in a couple of days.

[Deleted]

Well seems my return is delayed by a pesky authenticator
Moved since I last used it, no idea where it is
Customer service tried to help me but wanted my bank card info used to register the game which I have not had in ages due to new card
My address now is different as well. Sigh might need a total restart

[Faroth]

Well seems my return is delayed by a pesky authenticator
Moved since I last used it, no idea where it is
Customer service tried to help me but wanted my bank card info used to register the game which I have not had in ages due to new card
My address now is different as well. Sigh might need a total restart

That's odd. You'd think the registration code would be the main thing needed.

Call your bank and tell them what you're trying to do and see if they have your past card number on file, perhaps?

[Deleted]

That's odd. You'd think the registration code would be the main thing needed.

Call your bank and tell them what you're trying to do and see if they have your past card number on file, perhaps?

They said id need either the bank details for when my account was registered. Bit tricky since I registered initial account when FFXi launched in EU
Or
Game reg code, again tricky as I bought the game in 1.0 so no idea where that is
Bank said they can't help unless I can provide the last four digits, which I can't as I have no clue what card was attached to the account.
First time I've had to deal with SE customer services, and damm they are bad
I understand securing an account, but seriously

[Faroth]

Having the game registration code is the most common verification for MMOs. Not having that is tough. Where'd you buy the game? Physical 1.0 or digital somewhere?
If Physical, ouch.
If digital - old email with the code? Account with where it was purchased maybe?

Don't have any old statements with the old card? How many cards back was it? :/
Did you call the bank or go in? If you called, I'd go into a physical location where you can sit with someone and see if there's anything they can do with past account history, pulling up old statements, or anything.

Honestly, I can't fault Square on this one. Those are two fairly basic requirements to retrieve an account and Square seems pretty serious about battling RMT scams. Without either of those required, it would be somewhat easy for anyone to get your account.

[Deleted]

Oh yeah I totally get they are in the right
I bought physical original then digital via SE for heavensward. Checked no code in only email I had
Bank can't help unless I know 4 digits of the card number, which I don't, as account was registered when XI launched
Probably good to start over anyway, see the game with fresh eyes