Is FFXIV Worth My Time (and money)?

[Scufflegrit]

The cities are all gorgeous. Limsa Lominsa, to me, is probably the most beautiful major city in any MMO I have played - and I have dabbed around almost all MMOs released in the last 10 years.

Forgot to comment on this earlier. Limsa Lominsa during the day with foggy weather; to me, that is hands down the best looking thing I've seen in the game. It's like a city floating in the clouds. It also seems to be fairly rare, as I've only ever seen it once.
A close second is the Floating City of Nym. I would pay real money to have in-game housing there.

[Grym]

A couple of things annoy me (like you can pick up and do a quest, but not hand in cos you're the wrong level. Seems backwards to me) but nothing that wont take some getting used to.

They did it so your Lv50 main cannot do like 500 quests, then switch to a Lv1 character to hand them in to instantly gain a few levels. You can still do the quest on higher level character, just need to be have the minimal hand-in requirement. Doesn't stop the issue but probably slowed it down a little.

[Sohrae]

Reading through some of the comments here.. if you have come from playing WoW the GCD on this game will feel very slow. For me personally, it hasn't bothered me, but I know other people have tried playing and just felt it was not fast enough game play. Even if you watch some of the ninja videos you will see a 'spamming button repeatedly until the ability goes off' thing happening, I do that myself too when I play a dps class, I guess because of being accustomed to doing it in WoW lol.

I have only been playing for around 3 months and after using some of the advice from other people (also I see mentioned in this topic) and took it slow levelling, I decided to look for options for raiding and I found it quite confusing, especially in comparison to WoW. I have always been accustomed to raiding teams being inside a guild, but in FF:ARR I have come across a lot of "do it yourself" attitudes and have noticed that trying to get into end-game can be a little difficult for newer players. I figure in terms of raiding I will probably wait until Heavensward now because trying to find a group seems difficult due to expectations of you having experience already, topped with people selling runs (as if I can afford that anyway) and I found the concept of 'statics' confusing and had no idea where to start looking for one.

I guess my biggest piece of advice as a newer player myself, is that if you do want to raid eventually, I hope you find somewhere with information on getting into raiding as that is something I have found difficult.

[Deleted]

instead of asking other people what to expect in a game you should just try it. Try it without much information and expectations. Also dont compare games to other games, makes them much more enjoyable.

[Remilia]

Static isn't that foreign of a concept outside of WoW... maybe?

All it means is it's a group that raids together and such but aren't in the same guild essentially.

[Deleted]

TERA at least has statics as well :P

[Gandrake]

depends on you

i dont want to absorb the playerbase of warcraft into ffxiv. the playerbase of wow is of such a low quality, i am instantly miserable whenever i play the game and have to interact with other players because i expect everyone to be disappointingly stupid and stubborn beyond measure.

being disappointingly stupid is not a problem. being stubborn is. it's a huge fucking problem with the community and frankly i'm done with it and will not tolerate the behavior i find so rampant in wow in ffxiv.

this is an issue on a daily basis in wow. when i think of ffxiv, i think of how helpful, patient and hungry players are to improve.

with that out of the way...

leveling can take a while if you are expecting to be hand fed the entire way there like Blizzard has done for players with quests. by comparison, it is pretty grindy.

it is not difficult to get good gear now as Heavensward is going to be released next month on June 26th.

FFXIV has hardcore raids and then it has what is basically LFR. It is designed with more casual, lower geared players in mind. However, it is a far cry from the determination and constant nerfing of wow's LFR due to the fact that LFR players are horrifically awful at the game. Beyond that, there are Primal fights that you can queue for to get gear and the rare chance of acquiring a special crafting item from that you can use or sell. (this item is automatically placed in a player's inventory and is not rolled on).

i dont really play mmos for anything but slaying internet dragons but they did add in the gold saucer and triple triad recently

i do not know about lag. it was bad at launch and then there were people complaining about lag that did not understand how the system works. if you are in a circle on the ground before it disappears, you will be hit by the attack even if you are out of it when that attack's animation starts. however, the game is heavily telegraphed and many bosses use abilities in extremely predictable rotations so it should not be hard to figure out what is coming out when and when to move even if your internet is a little crappy.

i've never really looked into servers, but the more full that it is the harder it will be to get on.

and no i have nothing else to say to sell it to you other than if you think it looks good then try it and if you like it that's great

[Starlightz85]

Reading through some of the comments here.. if you have come from playing WoW the GCD on this game will feel very slow. For me personally, it hasn't bothered me, but I know other people have tried playing and just felt it was not fast enough game play. Even if you watch some of the ninja videos you will see a 'spamming button repeatedly until the ability goes off' thing happening, I do that myself too when I play a dps class, I guess because of being accustomed to doing it in WoW lol.

I have only been playing for around 3 months and after using some of the advice from other people (also I see mentioned in this topic) and took it slow levelling, I decided to look for options for raiding and I found it quite confusing, especially in comparison to WoW. I have always been accustomed to raiding teams being inside a guild, but in FF:ARR I have come across a lot of "do it yourself" attitudes and have noticed that trying to get into end-game can be a little difficult for newer players. I figure in terms of raiding I will probably wait until Heavensward now because trying to find a group seems difficult due to expectations of you having experience already, topped with people selling runs (as if I can afford that anyway) and I found the concept of 'statics' confusing and had no idea where to start looking for one.

I guess my biggest piece of advice as a newer player myself, is that if you do want to raid eventually, I hope you find somewhere with information on getting into raiding as that is something I have found difficult.

It's not difficult and there are plenty of resources. FFXIV makes it easier than most MMOs out there. Your first option is to join an FC. Mention you are still a new player and looking for FC with endgame raiding. There's even a search option for FCs on the Lodestone you can view here, just set your options to what you're looking for. http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/ And many are recruiting and you can see what kind of FC they are before joining by the options that show highlighted. The FFXIV community is very helpful. Sounds to me like you may of contacted some bad apples if they had that attitude. If you don't want to join many of the FCs around that have endgame raiding, you can always use the party finder to create or mention that you're looking for a static. Party finder is in your menu options under Party. You can say anything you want here. You can say you're looking to join an FC with endgame raiding, or looking for a static if you prefer that, and whatever other info you feel like putting. Or you can shout in chat, or a mix of both. If you're going to shout it is best to do it in Mor Dhona where most of the endgame players hang out. Also, the following site has plenty of info on various aspects of the game: http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki

[D3athsting]

i dont want to absorb the playerbase of warcraft into ffxiv. the playerbase of wow is of such a low quality, i am instantly miserable whenever i play the game and have to interact with other players because i expect everyone to be disappointingly stupid and stubborn beyond measure.

being disappointingly stupid is not a problem. being stubborn is. it's a huge fucking problem with the community and frankly i'm done with it and will not tolerate the behavior i find so rampant in wow in ffxiv.

this is an issue on a daily basis in wow. when i think of ffxiv, i think of how helpful, patient and hungry players are to improve.

with that out of the way...

leveling can take a while if you are expecting to be hand fed the entire way there like Blizzard has done for players with quests. by comparison, it is pretty grindy.

it is not difficult to get good gear now as Heavensward is going to be released next month on June 26th.

FFXIV has hardcore raids and then it has what is basically LFR. It is designed with more casual, lower geared players in mind. However, it is a far cry from the determination and constant nerfing of wow's LFR due to the fact that LFR players are horrifically awful at the game. Beyond that, there are Primal fights that you can queue for to get gear and the rare chance of acquiring a special crafting item from that you can use or sell. (this item is automatically placed in a player's inventory and is not rolled on).

Players are not douchebags like the majority in wow, the other day a player waited with me for about 20 mins coz i had to kill a fate mob for the quest to attune to lfr, speaking of lfr it's not wow's lfr, the difficulty is just a bit lower than wow's normal (former flex) for this reason i died several times because of mechanics and i said to myself "looks like i should have read some guide before"