[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Wrecktangle]

And our guild didn't break up specifically because of M+, I missworded that, we stopped raiding as a mutual decision because it just wasn't as rewarding as it used to be and we decided we just didn't enjoy doing the raids in BFA (and people not being able to find a fun class to play anymore because of the gutted classes was part of it too), BfA raiding just isn't that fun.

Ah ok - that helps me understand a bit better. Speaking personally - I find raiding to be the only redeeming quality of BfA besides maybe the world design (it is aesthetically pleasing) and the cutscene/story work. One of my favorite bits of FF14 is seeing MY character in the scenes. WoW did a good job doing this in BfA. It made me care more than it normally does.

Islands were a bust, warfronts a bust, dungeons are good, but I'd argue slightly lower quality than Legion IMO, class design is average at best, more often worse. In my case - Ret, it feels pretty sad. Legion Ret was probably my second, maybe third favorite iteration (a good thing), and BfA ret is a noticeable step down.

I don't really care if joe schmoe gets X ilvl gear but you should have to actually put some effort in for it, not queing up for an AFKfront and getting free gear.

Mythic week caches, timewalking week caches, currencies that you work for, all these are far better systems then RNG hope that we have now in wow. They could have went the deterministic route of gearing, a la FFXIV, but instead they went like 100% RNG with 0 effort required.

I wanted to touch base on this comment - I may be an outlier here, but I haven't cared about gear since WotLK honestly, and I'm not so sure I'm that much of a minority in that thinking. I'd honestly be ok if they removed gear entirely and made it strictly cosmetic and just scaled your power over time as content got harder. Truthfully I'm not confident I'd even notice a difference. This applies equally to both WoW and FF14. The only thing that really rewards me nowadays in MMO's is the experience or a cosmetic reward that lets me fulfill some fantasy I couldn't before (good example being the first warfront gear set for alliance, I did it every week despite hating that content because I wanted that reward badly. To help suplement my chances I also got to 1800 in pvp to get the alternate color appearance (but i wanted gold not bronze color scheme!)

To offer some additional insight. I just upgraded this morning from a 375 to a 400 weapon. Huge upgrade by FF14 standards that many people would be like ooo wow yay so exciting. Except nothing changed; I have marginally bigger numbers that I can't see anyway (they're hidden) and I had to reglamour... Nothing exciting about that TBH, just like in WoW.

Overall almost all the changes are looking great, not the biggest fan of removing the impact of tank stances. However the reason for the removal is absolutely solid.

I just like stances because they can enable impactful decisions. I have always been a fan of Risk vs Reward when it comes down to tanking, and I always felt lowering my threat, or lowering my mitigation in exchange for a meaningful damage increase made the tank role more fulfilling/impactful

I am now at a very serious crossroads between focusing on classic or Shadowbringers.

Classic will be fun with friends (not solo IMO), and SHB will be fun with friends (not solo IMO).

Whichever one you have more friends doing go with that. As someone who played on the classic private server it WAS fun with friends, until it wasn't. I've experienced the same phenomenon in FF14, so I always say go with friends.

Regarding tank discussing yes you do owe me that. Popcorn is ready. I'm also a fan of risk/reward for tanking, and I agree it's unfortunate to lose it, but I will not shed a single tear for tank stances. They're archaic and not fun design. If they could replicate the risk/reward sensation with my dynamic/organic gameplay I'd fully support it 100%. I posited changes a long time ago about how i'd do it.

I have to somewhat agree with Oni here. While the term "screwy" may not be appropriate, it's also more than just open ended, IMO. To boil it down, there's no structure, it's far too RNG based, and just really makes it difficult to hone in on anything but the easiest, fastest, most efficient gearing method because that's where the players you need to work with will be.

I respectfully disagree. I've had this discussion in guild.

• Show me a heroic raider with a higher ilvl than a mythic one
• Show me a normal raider with a higher ilvl than heroic
• Show me a non-raider who doesn't participate in any challenging content (M+, Raiding) with a higher ilvl than a normal raider

You won't. And if you do it's an outlier. You're not going to find a heroic raider who doesn't do at least 1 M+ a week, and if you find a hardcore M+ boy (no raiding) he'll still be below a mythic raider, as intended. That's what I mean by open ended and by design and working as intended. It has structure. It works in 99% of cases and makes sense. Again, I'm not saying it's better or worse, because as I've stated gear doesn't do a damn thing for me in either game so I don't have a dog in the fight. And like you said, at the end of the day, they lead to the same place.

The best simile I can come up with would be that, to me, WoW is like walking through a bad neighborhood that gives you a "bad" vibe, but getting harassed very little, if at all, by people and overall the people are good...they're just rough around the edges. You really only get harassed when you're directly affecting and genuinely upsetting someone. FFXIV is like a nice neighborhood where you get a generally good vibe and the people are pretty nice in passing and seem overly positive, but when interacting with them directly, they're pretty entitled assholes who get triggered over extremely minor and stupid shit.

This is a surprisingly good simile. I endorse it.

[Onikaroshi]

• Show me a non-raider who doesn't participate in any challenging content (M+, Raiding) with a higher ilvl than a normal raider

The other two are mostly correct (I'm taking this as a perspective that M+ isn't in the equation because you could have a non raider who only does m+ who has the same ilvl as a mythic raider), but this one you can easy do. You can hit 385+ by never touching a raid or M+ easy, it's all about doing the proper things in the proper order, and helps if you come in when both Warfronts are up and it's a timewalking week.

You can get over 385 in less then 2 weeks with a bit of luck, not even that much.

[Faroth]

It is not entirely possible to ignore the bots whenever they are at a kill something stage as they teleport around underground and nuke everything.

That can definitely be reported and I'd advise to do so.

I have floating names turned off except when targeted, FC & party members excluded. But I see a lot less of this since Gilgamesh doesn't have as much freedom for making new characters.

That said, I wish they had a way for current players on a server to bypass that restriction. I like to make new alts once in a while when I get an idea in mind for something I want to toy around with. My AltDude isn't taking up space when logged in since my main can't log in at the same time.

[RohanV]

• Show me a heroic raider with a higher ilvl than a mythic one
• Show me a normal raider with a higher ilvl than heroic
• Show me a non-raider who doesn't participate in any challenging content (M+, Raiding) with a higher ilvl than a normal raider

Actually, I have a horde-side alt that I made just to see the story, and it's about i385, which is very close to a normal raider. I've only done one LFR with it (the one the Horde quest requires) and I didn't get any gear. LFR is actually a downgrade. I agree with your first two examples, but Blizzard has been very aggressive with catch-up mechanics, and it's kind of obsoleted normal mode gear-wise.

[TheCookieGod]

Just swinging by to say hi. Heroic/mythic raider who never does m+ because I despise it. So there goes that theory. =p

I wouldn't go as far as to say that I'd never want 14 to implement something similar - as long as it didn't replace other gearing avenues - but I'd never use it. That said, I like the way 14's gear treadmill is set up right now and I'd be hesitant to see something else thrown into what I think is a perfect mix. High-end gear on raid release. Catch-up 24mans and trials on off-patches where people can upgrade the tomestone gear they've been farming since raid release another 10 ilvl. Very simple, very structured even if you don't do savage raiding.

[Onikaroshi]

Actually, I have a horde-side alt that I made just to see the story, and it's about i385, which is very close to a normal raider. I've only done one LFR with it (the one the Horde quest requires) and I didn't get any gear. LFR is actually a downgrade. I agree with your first two examples, but Blizzard has been very aggressive with catch-up mechanics, and it's kind of obsoleted normal mode gear-wise.

It was really bad going into Uldir actually, and that was before catchup. I went in with entirely 340 and quite a few 350 pieces and basically nothing in normal was an upgrade.

However the guild we ran was mostly casual level and we carried a lot of people so.... it was a lot of no upgrade weeks while people spent hours figuring out simple mechanics... was not fun.

Miss when you used to go in with blues and things were actually upgrades in normal.

[Katchii]

I respectfully disagree. I've had this discussion in guild.

• Show me a heroic raider with a higher ilvl than a mythic one
• Show me a normal raider with a higher ilvl than heroic
• Show me a non-raider who doesn't participate in any challenging content (M+, Raiding) with a higher ilvl than a normal raider

You won't. And if you do it's an outlier. You're not going to find a heroic raider who doesn't do at least 1 M+ a week, and if you find a hardcore M+ boy (no raiding) he'll still be below a mythic raider, as intended. That's what I mean by open ended and by design and working as intended. It has structure. It works in 99% of cases and makes sense. Again, I'm not saying it's better or worse, because as I've stated gear doesn't do a damn thing for me in either game so I don't have a dog in the fight. And like you said, at the end of the day, they lead to the same place.

If we're going on a time line, you're correct. The same thing happens in FFXIV. If you were to start gauging ilevel of random players within ~2-3 weeks of fresh content with higher ilevels released, the folks with the higher average ilevel will be the ones that actively participated in that higher end content. If you start gauging the average ilevel 4+ weeks after that new content is released, the lines will start to blur due to how the gearing reward structure works. The dedicated raiders who tackle the highest levels of difficulty will still be at the top few percentages of the bell curve, but that middle percentage will now be a mixture of 1) casuals who just consistently played the game and built up their ilevel by doing WQ, Warfronts and LFR, maybe getting lucky with war/titanforging and touching normal raiding and 2) more dedicated raiders/M+ folks who only go after normal/ low M+ and maybe touch on Heroic raiding. The lower end of the bell curve will be the super casuals who don't play consistently and therefore don't have the ilevels required to push the WQ rewards high enough to compete with raid or M+ gear.

You're not going to have a clear ilevel delineation between the different tiers/ types of players, that's all I'm saying.

This is a surprisingly good simile. I endorse it.

Yeah, it made me smile when it popped into my head, as it really felt a bit too on the nose.

I think it speaks to the kind of environments each game cultivates. WoW doesn't try to pretend to be full of good/innocent/pious people or openly encourage good behavior it's pretty pragmatic in that sense...it simply accepts that we're human, that we act accordingly and therefore will be exposed to stupid, random, garbage a lot of the time...so when it does come around it's just an average day in the neighborhood and people don't go around clutching their pearls any time someone says something remotely offensive or shocking...they just kind of go wide eyed, say "well....THAT happened" to themselves and move on with their day.

FFXIV on the other hand actively tries to cultivate this kind of environment that denies the rougher side of humanity/ the community and tries to hide the blemishes. So when the random stupid garbage does come out of hiding the people who subscribe to that mentality are gasping and clutching their pearls saying "how DARE you speak that way!?" and make this huge deal about it.

[Kuja]

While I understand that it's annoying, what impact are they actually having on your game play experience? Aside from being a temporary eye sore?

They seem to do main quests. So usually every fifth kill quest is tough to do, because they are one shotting every mob from the sky, as they are all level 50. So have to be lucky and super fast to tag them when they spawn slowly. How do they even get to level 50 and then do level 20 main quests? Some boost thingy?

[Katchii]

They seem to do main quests. So usually every fifth kill quest is tough to do, because they are one shotting every mob from the sky, as they are all level 50. So have to be lucky and super fast to tag them when they spawn slowly. How do they even get to level 50 and then do level 20 main quests? Some boost thingy?

I haven't encountered them other then gathering or very infrequently out in the world, and haven't ever really heard about them interfering with killing quests. I can understand how that would be super annoying. My condolences, that sucks.

I'd imagine that they're multiboxers who spammed PotD to get to level 50 and are just now going back and completing the MSQ. There is no item to boost to 50.

I'm on Excalibur. Not sure if that's the difference, but I RARELY see them on my server.

[Super Kami Dende]

Sounds like confirmation bias to me and not actual analysis. Since we're using anecdotes I'll give mine. 14 years of Wow and roughly 6 years of FF14 I can say with certainty that I have more bad experiences playing FF14 than I do WoW.

Maybe it's a Region thing then. Since WoW has been full of absolute mouthbreathers for years for me. Yet at least the mouthbreathers I've come across in FFXIV have been at least nice People.

[Granyala]

While I understand that it's annoying, what impact are they actually having on your game play experience? Aside from being a temporary eye sore?

Pretty much what I was asking myself.
This isn't a PvP server where Multiboxers steamroll you in 1 GCD.

[Wrecktangle]

You can hit 385+ by never touching a raid or M+ easy, it's all about doing the proper things in the proper order, and helps if you come in when both Warfronts are up and it's a timewalking week.

You can get over 385 in less then 2 weeks with a bit of luck, not even that much.

But a normal raider would be over 385 as well, without heavily relying on luck, thus working as intended. Because a normal raider is also likely doing all of those things plus average wf/tf drops/coins from normal raiding.

Not only that, your example requires the stars basically aligning lol, not what I'd consider a "bit of luck".

Actually, I have a horde-side alt that I made just to see the story, and it's about i385, which is very close to a normal raider. I've only done one LFR with it (the one the Horde quest requires) and I didn't get any gear. LFR is actually a downgrade. I agree with your first two examples, but Blizzard has been very aggressive with catch-up mechanics, and it's kind of obsoleted normal mode gear-wise.

And like I said above, a normal raider would be above i385 from raiding normal, let alone all the other stuff a non-raider would do. That's my whole point. WF/TF and other catchup mechanics does indeed blur the line, but with 100% certainty I can say on average, the ilvl curves make sense. There will always be outliers, but the curves fit logically and functionally whether we like them or not.

Just swinging by to say hi. Heroic/mythic raider who never does m+ because I despise it. So there goes that theory. =p

You didn't even do your weekly 10 most weeks? Like literally never or just one a week and done? Maybe I shouldn't have said never, but it was obviously hyperbole, but an overwhelming majority of heroic raiders likely do SOME M+.

It was really bad going into Uldir actually, and that was before catchup. I went in with entirely 340 and quite a few 350 pieces and basically nothing in normal was an upgrade.

However the guild we ran was mostly casual level and we carried a lot of people so.... it was a lot of no upgrade weeks while people spent hours figuring out simple mechanics... was not fun.

Miss when you used to go in with blues and things were actually upgrades in normal.

Intro raids always suffer from this issue, we could argue about it being good or bad, but I'm inclined to agree so no need here. Now your comment about missing going in with blues and finding upgrades. That's fair criticism.

But let me ask you this - in older days raids were sequential. I.e. couldn't go to Dazar'alor without clearing Uldir first. Much like in ARR where you couldn't go to SCoB without first clearing CoB. Do you believe this design to be better in general over the design both WoW and FF14 have shifted to (raids being completely isolated and compensated via catch up mechanics)?

You're not going to have a clear ilevel delineation between the different tiers/ types of players, that's all I'm saying.

Clear is subjective and I think the crux of our inability to see eye to eye. I know with 95%+ certainty who is what kind of raider strictly by ilvl when recruiting for M+ or pug raids. If I see someone well above me I know they're Mythic. If I see someone around me (I'm one of the lowest ilvl in the guild) I know they're heroic, and sure enough a quick review of their gear shows me to be correct. To me, that's clear, but maybe to others, if it's not a hardcoded ilvl difference (a la FF14, old WoW) it's not clear. That make sense?

Maybe it's a Region thing then. Since WoW has been full of absolute mouthbreathers for years for me. Yet at least the mouthbreathers I've come across in FFXIV have been at least nice People.

What region are you in? FF14 is on average a MUCH nicer community. You'll never hear me say otherwise, but it's also creepily hypocritical and people come off as fake nice far more often than I'm comfortable with.

Sidebar, one of my WoW buddies (he's our guilds main healer, and a phenomenal player) is playing BRD right now leveling up and really enjoying FF14 (he's a weeb so he likes the aesthetic of FF14 much more than WoW). We did Sastasha last night for the first time and I was healing (hint, I don't ever heal).

I let the tank die twice. Granted I was top DPS in the dungeon LOL. I apologized for each death and owned my mistakes. FYI, whole party were sprouts but me. The tank didn't mind. He laughed it off. My buddy was surprised, he was blown away that no one was mad and we were laughing about it. I was like this is normal for the most part, it will be much more like WoW once you hit end game, but during leveling especially with the sprout icon people don't take stuff that harshly. I told him that owning mistakes is a very quick way to diffuse a hostile situation (not that this was one), but it's why you never hear me make excuses or blame the tank.

I learned that if you DPS too hard you can legit go OOM. I had no idea. I also learned that sometimes tanks just die from 50% to 0. I don't even know how. It never happens to me LOL. I admit I was practicing skirting the line so I knew some failure was a possibility.

[Kaelwryn]

I've only seen these in the ARR areas of the game, none in Heavensward or in Stormblood. Wonder if the bots just stop at a certain level but then again leveling doesn't really change at any point..

But in the early game there were times when every other player character I saw had it's name "mumbled"..

Oh, bots probably spam the deep dungeon when it's available, that's why they never appear at high levels!

Bots, iirc, generally farm Amdapor Keep for gold.

[Faroth]

Maybe it's a Region thing then. Since WoW has been full of absolute mouthbreathers for years for me. Yet at least the mouthbreathers I've come across in FFXIV have been at least nice People.

Wreck consistently has infinite problems with roulette players and yet not one single other person has even half of his claimed terrible experiences. I don't get it either. I've called him a magnet for it before.

[Katchii]

Intro raids always suffer from this issue, we could argue about it being good or bad, but I'm inclined to agree so no need here. Now your comment about missing going in with blues and finding upgrades. That's fair criticism.

But let me ask you this - in older days raids were sequential. I.e. couldn't go to Dazar'alor without clearing Uldir first. Much like in ARR where you couldn't go to SCoB without first clearing CoB. Do you believe this design to be better in general over the design both WoW and FF14 have shifted to (raids being completely isolated and compensated via catch up mechanics)?

I honestly kind of prefer the sequential raids, at least from a lore progression stand point. I understand from a purely game play perspective they're not ideal, but the journey of going through the content in the difficulty order it was intended, in the big baddie power order that's introduced just feels more Epic to me. Like you really are organically growing in power and tackling bigger and badder enemies. In today's raid environment, it doesn't really feel that way since you're almost handed the gear necessary to hop into the newer raids quickly without ever having to set foot in the older raid, the lore and story of the previous raids and why you're progressing from one to the other doesn't even matter. It's just game play, which should always be at the forefront, but IMO not at the expense of all else.

I'd likely feel differently if I hopped into the game really late and then had to hoof it through all the previous raids in order to see the current stuff...that would not be a good feeling either. At least with LFR and the Allied Raid roulette you're still likely to get a group together for it if you really want to see it. The only alternative I could see that wouldn't be too egregious would be, after a certain amount of time, having a dungeon level version of the raid that you could queue for solo that would allow you to progress and unlock the subsequent raids to preserve that epic adventure journey feel. Since you could get the ilevel required to join the newer raid quickly anyway, gear wouldn't be why you'd need to go to the older stuff.

Clear is subjective and I think the crux of our inability to see eye to eye. I know with 95%+ certainty who is what kind of raider strictly by ilvl when recruiting for M+ or pug raids. If I see someone well above me I know they're Mythic. If I see someone around me (I'm one of the lowest ilvl in the guild) I know they're heroic, and sure enough a quick review of their gear shows me to be correct. To me, that's clear, but maybe to others, if it's not a hardcoded ilvl difference (a la FF14, old WoW) it's not clear. That make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. Not denying that a pretty easily identifiable curve still exists, just saying that where certain people fall on the curve at any given time isn't so black and white. Any veteran MMO player would be able to eyeball someone and get a sense of what kind of content they do, especially with meters going, you can quickly tell the difference between a casual player and a more dedicated high end content runner, even when they're the same/ similar ilevel.

Maybe a better way to put it, for me anyway, is ilevel alone isn't enough (though it's a reasonable enough gauge), it's which pieces of gear they have and what kind of ilevel spread they have.

What region are you in? FF14 is on average a MUCH nicer community. You'll never hear me say otherwise, but it's also creepily hypocritical and people come off as fake nice far more often than I'm comfortable with.

Long story short, I play on Primal (Excalibur specifically) and see pretty much the same mixture of people in FFXIV as I do in WoW, personality/ disposition wise. The difference is in FFXIV, there's a lot more little spats in dungeons where people get all butthurt and defensive when they get called out for not doing their job. However, if no one says anything, or the one who made the mistake, it NEVER escalates everyone just kind of laughs it off and moves on...unless it's REALLY REALLY egregiously bad. Like that tank only doing Shield Throw you had the pleasure of grouping with.

I blame that on the fact that meters aren't practically universal in FFXIV, and are technically against the ToS (as you know all too well, lol), so the little shits actually have a leg to stand on in their defense of their behavior at least as far as the game rules are concerned.

Sidebar, one of my WoW buddies (he's our guilds main healer, and a phenomenal player) is playing BRD right now leveling up and really enjoying FF14 (he's a weeb so he likes the aesthetic of FF14 much more than WoW). We did Sastasha last night for the first time and I was healing (hint, I don't ever heal).

I let the tank die twice. Granted I was top DPS in the dungeon LOL. I apologized for each death and owned my mistakes. FYI, whole party were sprouts but me. The tank didn't mind. He laughed it off. My buddy was surprised, he was blown away that no one was mad and we were laughing about it. I was like this is normal for the most part, it will be much more like WoW once you hit end game, but during leveling especially with the sprout icon people don't take stuff that harshly. I told him that owning mistakes is a very quick way to diffuse a hostile situation (not that this was one), but it's why you never hear me make excuses or blame the tank.

I learned that if you DPS too hard you can legit go OOM. I had no idea. I also learned that sometimes tanks just die from 50% to 0. I don't even know how. It never happens to me LOL. I admit I was practicing skirting the line so I knew some failure was a possibility.

Yeah, pretty much my experience too. As long as no one really says anything "rude" and whoever makes the mistake owns up to it, things go extremely smoothly.

[Onikaroshi]

Intro raids always suffer from this issue, we could argue about it being good or bad, but I'm inclined to agree so no need here. Now your comment about missing going in with blues and finding upgrades. That's fair criticism.

But let me ask you this - in older days raids were sequential. I.e. couldn't go to Dazar'alor without clearing Uldir first. Much like in ARR where you couldn't go to SCoB without first clearing CoB. Do you believe this design to be better in general over the design both WoW and FF14 have shifted to (raids being completely isolated and compensated via catch up mechanics)?

IDK about sequential, I do kind of like the period between like Wrath and MoP, maybe into WoD, where you didn't just IGNORE older raids. I'm really not a fan of this "seasonal" approach that wow has implemented now, where the old is just negated though.

[Kaelwryn]

Wreck consistently has infinite problems with roulette players and yet not one single other person has even half of his claimed terrible experiences. I don't get it either. I've called him a magnet for it before.

Personally I am of the opinion that the two communities aren't that different from each other. You'll find bad players and jerks in both, but I feel like WoW's community is just more open about being a jerk. Idk, I play solo most of the time, and the most I do is lfr in wow and normal/alliance raids in 14.

I will also say that I feel like in general, when it comes to like answering questions, people are more polite in 14. In WoW, most of the time when I see someone ask for help in general chat, you're usually mocked, told to google it or (rarely in my experience) actually get helpful advice. In 14, most people are usually happy to be like 'oh you do x, y and z'.

All in all, I haven't had that many bad experiences in either game but if I had to say which one I had more in it would be WoW. People are imo more aggressive and more intolerant of things they don't approve of. Whereas I don't really see that as much in 14, and whether that's a good or bad thing is...not something I will argue but I feel like 14 lets a lot more shit slide by.

[Granyala]

Wreck consistently has infinite problems with roulette players and yet not one single other person has even half of his claimed terrible experiences. I don't get it either. I've called him a magnet for it before.

Haha, maybe he just pays way too much attention to what others do and is easily triggered?
I mean I get many a player that are sub par but since it is close to never a problem regarding actual completion of the content I just shrug it off and chuckle accordingly.

Then again, I would never do ex or savage with randoms for that very reason. I never did random raid in WoW too because when you start wiping due to incompetence is when the fun stops.

[Onikaroshi]

Haha, maybe he just pays way too much attention to what others do and is easily triggered?
I mean I get many a player that are sub par but since it is close to never a problem regarding actual completion of the content I just shrug it off and chuckle accordingly.

Then again, I would never do ex or savage with randoms for that very reason. I never did random raid in WoW too because when you start wiping due to incompetence is when the fun stops.

They only time I personally have Roulette issues ALWAYS seems to be The Vault and ALWAYS seems to be with undergeared tanks.... don't know why that in particular.

[Wrecktangle]

EDIT: - also to anyone who wants to play, I'm on Behemoth (Primal), main a 70 PLD, and will gladly run stuff or help out.

Wreck consistently has infinite problems with roulette players and yet not one single other person has even half of his claimed terrible experiences. I don't get it either. I've called him a magnet for it before.

Nah not a magnet, and for evidence that it isn't just me feel free to read: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ry.-Let-s-vent.

But in all seriousness, it's not infinite, but it does happen. Your average player just simply isn't as aware as I am, and for the ones who are good enough, what % actually care enough to look? At this point you're talking about a subset of a subset, which is why it seems rare when really it's pretty common.

I think I've only ever detailed maybe 6-7 events over the course of 6 years, hardly "infinite"

I honestly kind of prefer the sequential raids, at least from a lore progression stand point. I understand from a purely game play perspective they're not ideal, but the journey of going through the content in the difficulty order it was intended

There's merits and challenges to both approaches. I can't say for sure which I prefer. I remember recruiting for raiders back in CoB days was fucking aids trying to find, but I do remember enjoying the experience of sequential raids:

• A player who is the job you need
• A player who is as skilled as you need
• A player who is progressed and doesn't need to be caught up
• A player who is on your realm, or would be willing to transfer

This was back when you didn't have xrealm raiding. It really was fucking terrible. With xrealm allowed now, I wonder if going back would still be painful.

Long story short, I play on Primal (Excalibur specifically) and see pretty much the same mixture of people in FFXIV as I do in WoW, personality/ disposition wise.

LMK when you start playing again. I'll tank for you. I'm on Behemoth (Primal). I think you might be on my friends list, or at the least I remember we grouped once.

IDK about sequential, I do kind of like the period between like Wrath and MoP, maybe into WoD, where you didn't just IGNORE older raids. I'm really not a fan of this "seasonal" approach that wow has implemented now, where the old is just negated though.

Fair enough, I was simply curious. How do you feel about FF14's current seasonal approach? Do you like it better than ARR's sequential? A new raid invalidates the old one immediately. Many other forms of content almost immediately negates others too.

I will also say that I feel like in general, when it comes to like answering questions, people are more polite in 14. In WoW, most of the time when I see someone ask for help in general chat, you're usually mocked, told to google it or (rarely in my experience) actually get helpful advice. In 14, most people are usually happy to be like 'oh you do x, y and z'.

Just be very careful, while I can't recall any examples in WoW (positive or negative), I can absolutely recall numerous examples in FF14 where people have given downright false information, or at best outdated/no longer accurate. It happens at what I would consider an alarming rate.

It's one of those things where I wish the game was clearer about a lot of its features/systems so that it wouldn't perpetuate misinformation.

Haha, maybe he just pays way too much attention to what others do and is easily triggered?
I mean I get many a player that are sub par but since it is close to never a problem regarding actual completion of the content I just shrug it off and chuckle accordingly.

Then again, I would never do ex or savage with randoms for that very reason. I never did random raid in WoW too because when you start wiping due to incompetence is when the fun stops.

Nah, definitely not easily triggered. You know this from the shield lob incident. I gave that dude the WHOLE dungeon to turn it around.

Ironically enough, high end pugs are some of the best experiences I have in FF14. Less common in WoW for me, but they're still there. High End pugging is a really nice place because everyone has the exact same expectations and knows how to judge skill, and communicate and there's no oh Joey's wife is our friend, so we bring her in, despite her being 16th percentile at best.

They only time I personally have Roulette issues ALWAYS seems to be The Vault and ALWAYS seems to be with undergeared tanks.... don't know why that in particular.

Vault is overtuned compared to the dungeons that come before it, thus the game does a poor job preparing players for it. I personally didn't find it challenging at all when I went through it, but then again I also thought Pharos Sirius was one of the best dungeons in the game and we saw how the community handled that...