Convince me to buy FF XIV

[Deleted]

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the starter experience in an MMO is 'boring'. It starts off deliberately slow to ease players unfamiliar with the genre into getting to grips with game mechanics.

Yeah but it doesnt help to get players that already know how to play mmos. Guild Wars 2 and Wild Star had a good starter experience. It wasn´t slow or boring and it still introduced me into the mechanics of the game.

[Binaris]

it ios slow/boring because people dont know to save those starter quests for additional classes.

[Graeham]

They're pretty useful - do 'em all and you're guaranteed to reach level 3 with minimal effort. Plus you can unlock all the aetheryte shards for easy city travel during the quests. You learn where every major location within the city is - which is useful for both veterans and new players alike.

[Anzaman]

I wasn't really that interested in FFXIV couple months ago, downloaded and ran the benchmark just for fun. Then ended up purchasing the game and now enjoying my time with nice Free Company.

[DeadmanWalking]

Perhaps we should move the conversation of starter zone quests to the ffxiv megathread and let this thread about someone who can't make decisions on their own like a big boy without crowd surfing opinions die out.

[Sorrior]

Unfortunately the city quests are a bit of a red herring, in most games the starter zones have quests which send you down a chain to complete an early story, the city is the ffxiv starter zone and players think they have to hit every quest they see because it is part of the starter zone experience and none of these quests really do anything but add flavor. Nothing wrong with flavor but these quests could easily be designed to send you out of the city quicker. 'I need bee wings' which you find on bees outside the doors to the city, 'I need a ring for my fiance from the jewler but a thief ran stole it and ran outside with it' or 'I need mandragora skulls for my bathroom decor', what ever, just get the player outside killing things.

The city quests are a sandpit for new players, especially western players.

Yeah irony is I think for those new to MMOs they are GREAT they teach emotes, chat channel usage, quests and more

Buuut for experienced mmo players they are def a trap

[satletio]

Well went for a trial, so far so good got myself level 11 - some city quests are really noob friendly. But overall seems good, but i feel like playing single player. I never was in any party, is there any even any general chat or stuff like that? Only teamwork i had was FAME events.

[1001]

Well went for a trial, so far so good got myself level 11 - some city quests are really noob friendly. But overall seems good, but i feel like playing single player. I never was in any party, is there any even any general chat or stuff like that? Only teamwork i had was FAME events.

I think a lot of people tend to focus on free company or linkshell chat, so general chat tends to be quite quiet. Your first dungeon (Sastasha) gets unlocked via the main story at around 15-17, which is the same time the party finder become available iirc.

[Deleted]

At lvl 10 you can unlock guildhests which are instanced group scenarios that teach you the basics about how a group works together.
Every other 5 levels or so, more of them will unlock that introduce you to mechanics and other stuff.

Aside from Dungeons there are FATEs... which could be considered group content, as boss FATES are most likely to difficult to beat for new players.

[Katchii]

Well went for a trial, so far so good got myself level 11 - some city quests are really noob friendly. But overall seems good, but i feel like playing single player. I never was in any party, is there any even any general chat or stuff like that? Only teamwork i had was FAME events.

As you progress through the main story quests you will be directed to dungeons, trials and guildhests which require groups to complete (this persists all the way to level 60, with a dungeon or trial required roughly every 2-3 levels). Aside from those things though, the leveling experience is largely single player friendly. Once you hit the level cap though, everything you need to do to progress your character is group based.

[Lathais]

They're pretty useful - do 'em all and you're guaranteed to reach level 3 with minimal effort. Plus you can unlock all the aetheryte shards for easy city travel during the quests. You learn where every major location within the city is - which is useful for both veterans and new players alike.

this totally makes doing those initial quests worth it. I mean the cities are large and semi-confusing at first. This way, you get your bearings in the city right away. I mean sure, if you want to jump straight in to combat, it's a little off-putting, but, as many have said already, you do not have to do them either. It's really not all that different from many single player Final Fantasy games either. There's a lot of stuff to do before really getting in to combat in some of them. FFXII I know has a really long cutscene to start the game off, a little running around and then some really simple combat off the bat before getting into the meat of the game. Even then, the full combat system(gambits and whatnot) do not get unlocked until even later. I know there are other FF games that do throw you right into combat as well, but not all. Really, the first 30 or so levels of this game really hold your hand. This is just a prime example of that.

[frymastermeat]

If you are one of those Warcraft players (the majority from what I can tell) that skips all the quest text, then the game probably isn't for you. There are several instances where I've gone over an hour without fighting anything in FFXIV, that doesn't happen in Warcraft.

[Treeba]

2. Flashy combat: I don't think that ffxiv's character animations are really that 'out there'. If you play The cat person with skimpy clothes, ears, and a tail, well then what we're you expecting? The rogues tumble, the warriors swing weapons etc etc. What IS distracting is that the skill animations themselves are absolutely huge and bright. Your screen will be loaded with them in narrow passages of dungeons. That said, after doing roughly 8 dungeons, I found that it was a matter of getting used to them. When you're more familiar with the animations they really arent very annoying anymore.

You can turn down the spell detail from other people's abilities. It makes a pretty massive difference.

[Stormspark]

You made the seemingly common mistake of doing all the town quests

A tip to the OP DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT DO ALL THE TOWN QUESTS!?

Get your basic story and class quests doing your class quest unlocks a hunt log(kill certain enemies for xp)

At 5 just do your story and class quest.

There us a FAQ thing here that goes more in depth but overall stick to story and class quests as well as ghildheist and dungeon roulette once a day

The other quests are one to unlock guildheists and levequests(they tell you when you unlock em at a certain point in stort just take the quest they point out)

And challenge log

Among others buut I think the faq that us stickied has em all

Overall I say try ut but DO NOT do all city quests they are mostly for new to mmo players and cover stuff like emotes and chat channels among other things

This may be a good idea if you don't like those types of quest. The ONLY quests that are required in the game are 1) your class/job quests (they come from specific people depending on class and later job), and 2) the main story quest, which has a different graphic with the Realm Reborn icon around the !. Anything other than these, you do not have to do if you don't want to. They do give XP but it's not that big of a deal. And if you do skip them, it's not like you can't go back and do them later on another class when you don't have the story quests to give you XP.

Other than the main story quest and your class/job quests, NOTHING in this game is forced on you. You always have several options for levelling.

[Jester Joe]

No it is not. I would say it looks like shit because I really don't like that type of character artwork and I don't like it because it just reeks out of them "anime".

Odd, FF is probably the most realistic "anime" style, at least in my opinion.

Also I haven't played FFXIV that much because I let the trial expire due to like others are saying, it starts off slow if you don't know what you're doing it seems, so either plow through that or do whatever actual players advise, don't let the trial go to waste like I did.

Also no one posted the Shia Labeouf video, I'm shocked.

[Jester Joe]

I'm still confused about the "anime" claims that I see people making. I feel like if it wasn't well-known that it's a Japanese company, no one would be talking about "anime". Nothing in the game looks like anime at all to me, it's confusing to hear it brought up all the time.

If anything, Tales games I'd consider anime appearance (See my avatar), Final Fantasy is more like what I'd picture a 3D fairy tale artstyle to be like I guess? Kinda?

[Chain Chungus]

I bought it thinking it would be the next big thing and was bored within a couple days. It's just too slow. The combat is very slow and unsatisfying, with nothing but a bunch of out-of-context lights; it lacks both substance and depth. The quests aren't very interesting. The story is bland and unengaging. All of the cities feel bad like chopped up mazes not hubs.

The game feels like it would have been awesome played on a console during the first few months of the PS3's release. That should tell you something right there.

[Selastan]

Hey, Im kind of on the fence about this game as well. When I get my main computer fixed I've decided to go with the free trial, but what I would like to know is how the end game is for healers? Planning on rolling White Mage, is it very keybind intensive? I can't keybind to save my life.

P.S. Lets not make this into keybind VS. clicking, I know keybinding always make you like 5% better and I just don't think its very fun.

[Valium104]

2,5s GCD kills it for me. Literally cant stand this shit. 0,5s for unholy presence in Cataclysm was perfect.

[Spiral Mage]

My PC is struggling with this game (which is a bit odd, since it shouldn't be) and it's so good, it is actually the main reason I'm excited I have resources to buy a new PC that can handle it properly. I've been playing WoW since Vanilla, (and actually have, not like everyone and their mother who claims they did), and this game was exciting and engaging very early on. The 14 day free trial should have you more than enough time to decide if this the game for you or not.

FF14 is a beautiful game. But this is from someone who likes the direction they're going in art style wise.
It's not insanely so, but it's flashy akin to any other oriental influenced MMORPG.
It doesn't have resource mechanics for each class like WoW does, they all basically work from MP or TP and when you run dry on it, it takes forever to get it back. (Still leveling, so I can't speak for it being an issue later).

It's very story driven which would be fine with me if the cutscenes weren't where my video card was flipping it's shit. (It runs a bit hot all the time with this game but nothing bad .. cutscenes though, it shoots up into the danger area and there's alot of cuntscenes, like ALOT, during the main story which you need to do all of I am told.)

Combat, speaking from my character and my girl friend's character, largely consist of "keep this damage increasing buff up via this ability, keep this DoT up, use this proc, use this filler". I can only speak for Lancer and her Archer. By level 15-16, she was fairly happy with her Archer and felt she had a "rotation" that was engaging enough to be happy with it for such a low level, my Lancer seems to be lagging behind a bit on that but I'm getting to where I think it will be better.
Neither of us are unhappy with the experience so far and have been like "children" since we started, "wide-eyed and excited" (this more true of her than me but I'm having fun with it as well). Both of us are fairly "casual/serious" MMORPG players. We don't go hardcore obsessive but we enjoy mastering a game and having a game that offers us a sense of mastery as we play.

We're both huge FF fans so we're happy every time we see something that is from one of the previous titles in the series. There's chocobos, magitek armor, and you hear alot of FF music in the background that you recognize if you play the games heavily.

Now, what if you AREN'T an FF-Fan and you just wanna view this as a new MMO? Then I'd say this is a very solid display from a team that admits they are heavily inexperienced in the MMO Market. They learned from their mistakes, and came back with a serious contender of a game. Their project head is a smart and caring man, who aims to deliver on every promise he makes, having said: "Look at my history of promises, you will find I have strived to keep every single one of them I've made. I mean what I say because I know that following through on promises is important to the community." He also said he kept his promises and kept to his decided approach in the face of "strong internal opposition", so this is a project lead who is not afraid to go against his company to do what he thinks is right.

Gameplay wise, you have tanks, healers, DPS. You have dungeons, gearing up, meaningful stats, and end-game raids. The dungeons and raid battles look and feel fun to do (We've done of the leveling "raids", I'm positive the 'harder mode' end game ones will feel epic). I really appreciate the vastly improved visual displays, warning you where an ability is aimed, and how wide a hit box it actually has, so you can make decisions to move and be sure of it.

What can I say, I'm a long term WoW player so is she and we both began playing and fell in love immediately and are looking forward to playing this game more in the future though we may stop leveling while I get a better computer, which this game has heavily influenced my decision to rush to do.

We've both decided we're going to slack off WoW and focus on leveling in FF14 as much as we can (minus breaking due my PC), but we're not planning on quitting WoW either, we're going to play them both but this game is already a focus to us and we're still leveling. At points, it shows that they were influenced by alot of F2P MMORPGs and some minor details left us kinda pointing and snickering at it but this is not F2P .. it's P2P and the team is doing their absolute best to make every dime you spend on it a dime you don't regret. In our opinion, they're succeeding.

Play the free trial, level like mad, and see how far you get and how you like it. Only YOU will know what YOU like. It is a bit slower than WoW with 2.5 second GCDs which is a bit frustrating sometimes for a button spammer like me but I got used to it. Oh and you do NOT need to setup a payment method until you ACTUALLY need to pay .. so 14 days will not even ask you for a credit card, only to download it and setup a Squeenix Account. You have no buy in and nothing to lose by giving it a go, go for it. It's different, you may find it too different or you may just love it but they're definitely trying hard.