[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Katchii]

The thing is, that's fine. Or rather, it is in other games.

XIV is really the most DPS-obsessed game I've played. It's actually a bit frustrating at times.

How so? Or where?

In Savage or Extreme content, yeah I see it, but usually only when your gear level is low in comparison to the content, once your gear level matches or exceeds the content it's all about the mechanics, and knowing your class well enough to pull even average numbers.

Pretty much everywhere else, which is primarily where I spend my time, I rarely see anyone discussing DPS. The only time I make comments are when I see people just not doing anything, like mages (DPS or healers) that aren't casting for long periods of time or melee that aren't moving at all during fights and not hitting positionals. But that isn't so much about the DPS as it is participation and effort.

[blackpink]

I was referring to: 1 player makes a mistake, dies = wipe, as it usually is in savage. Esp at these early gear levels where enrages are definitely an issue.
Very few people are that good that they can handle these encounters out of the box. I certainly can't and need at least 5-10 tries to get a hang of it. Multiply that by 8 and and you get 40-80 wipes quite easily.

Sure, doing JUST THEM MECHANICS is easy as f*** once you understand what to do. Doing the mechanics and playing your class at a high enough level to meet the demands of the design team? That requires a bit of practice. Not a whole lot, compared to sth. actually difficult like playing the piano, but you need to see stuff a few times.

Yea, just multiply that by like 10. People still make mistakes after 50 wipes either due to just not understanding what to do, or just not paying attention. That's the level of raiders in this game outside of the top groups. It's a lot lower standard than WoW. I hate to compare the two, but it's kinda true. Although.....I haven't raided in wow in forever so maybe it's not fair to make that comparison at this point.

But like I wrote earlier, with a lack of wowprogress equivalent, I have no idea what kind of groups I get into. For all I know I may be joining groups that are like below world 1000 equivalent of wow raiding guilds. There's just no way to know (at least that I know of).

[Granyala]

Of course people make mistakes. They are human.
Everyones attention wanes now and then, everyone of us has brain lags.

I don't see much difference in skill between my WoW guild and the FF group I raid with. Both had around 50% Mythic/Savage clear progress.

If you are talking about the bulk of the community: they are completely incompetent in both games. There is a reason why I never set foot into a PuG raid in WoW or in FF.
The main difference is that FFs community shuns open criticism (partially encouraged by the asinine "parses are evil" stance of the developers) and is obsessed with fake politeness while in WoW people will plaster it in your face if you do sth wrong.

[Puremallace]

The main difference is that FFs community shuns open criticism (partially encouraged by the asinine "parses are evil" stance of the developers) and is obsessed with fake politeness while in WoW people will plaster it in your face if you do sth wrong.

Parses are not bad necessarily but it has become a complete monster in WoW where it went from are you carrying your weight to are you topping the charts constantly on Warcraftlogs and if not you are the worst player of your class to ever exist. People who call themselves guild leads not understanding how parses can be padded and putting extreme pressure to the point people quit over it.

I saw a total of 6 guilds completely fall apart when I returned for BFA from pure drama caused by this barrage of add ons that never used to be required but Blizzard pumped the mechanics on bosses from 1-5 to up to 57! on Ashara alone. DBM was always this nice thing going back to wrath that got the job done but when you need 3 seperate weak auras if not more for one single fight the drama in guilds gets to extreme levels.

It is now my opinion that addons while nice went from being optional to mandatory to even play the game. It is quite nice actually being able to watch the boss and not have my eye constantly on a dps meter or reviewing logs.

[Granyala]

I saw a total of 6 guilds completely fall apart when I returned for BFA from pure drama caused by this barrage of add ons that never used to be required but Blizzard pumped the mechanics on bosses from 1-5 to up to 57! on Ashara alone. DBM was always this nice thing going back to wrath that got the job done but when you need 3 seperate weak auras if not more for one single fight the drama in guilds gets to extreme levels.

It is now my opinion that addons while nice went from being optional to mandatory to even play the game.

Pumping up the encounter complexity by taking addons in mind and ultimately rendering them mandatory is on the DEVs though. Sad to hear it got this crazy. Last I raided was Hellfire Citadel in WoD and it wasn't as bad back then. Man... so long ago. :X

Just as the rather strict enrages in a game supposed to be played without a parser, that only enforces harsh selection due to necessity.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean, I've had people whine at me for pressing Clemency because "it's a DPS loss!!" in dungeons.

Oo

Seriously?
LoL.

[Katchii]

I mean, I've had people whine at me for pressing Clemency because "it's a DPS loss!!" in dungeons.

But beside that, the community IS obsessed with DPS and speedrunning in all things. That's really not something you can reasonably debate I would think, not after years of "Why is our Green DPS casting heals?" and the like.

Granted, people want to finish shit fast in every game, but I've never seen it taken to the same level.

I guess I just don't see it the same way.

Speedrunning for me isn't about "DPS," per se, it's about efficiency. True, you need good enough DPS to make it work right, but even in speed runs I rarely ever see anyone commenting on the actual DPS output, just whether or not people are actively participating and not phoning it in during the run. Same with healers, I only ever see comments, or comment myself, about healers when they're either standing around doing nothing in between heals, or doing practically nothing but over healing. Their actual DPS isn't ever really discussed.

As to the people yelling at you for using Clemency in a dungeon, they're idiots. It's a tool you have, you used it appropriately and if the two actual DPS in the dungeon can't compensate for one GCD use, let alone the two of them plus the healer, they're trash and can be ignored. Just like with anyone else, a dead DPS does no DPS...keeping yourself and/or the group alive is always priority one (with some exceptions in margin situations where a sacrifice can save you from a wipe or get the kill or something). Besides it's a fuckin dungeon...one GCD isn't going to affect anything.

[StrawberryZebra]

2) "Decisions" tend to be anything but in MMO gameplay, regardless of gameplay speed. Especially in XIV where things tend to be very rigid. You have to be positioned here, you have to move out of the red, you have to do the mechanics as they're presented, and you have to tank the boss, heal people, and do enough DPS. You really can't make a lot of true decisions, you can just fail at the execution.

As you rightly point out, is FF14 doesn't allow for much in the way of creative decision making. It's all in the execution. Shadowbringers has brought a lot of changes that have pushed the game to being even more of an execution based challenge. That can be a very frustrating place to be in if you know how to execute on the stratergy, but you're unable to physically do it.

Should it be? I've always been pretty vocal about the fact that I think the answer is no, I think that being skilled at the game should require less in the way of rote memorisation and muscle memory and instead require a more free-form understanding of the mechanics underpinning your Job that allows those who can work within them to excel.

In many cases the game play feel is far more important to me than what is actually going on, as long as I don't "feel" the down time within my game play it's not a big deal.

I like the charging idea, I would just wonder how that would work with latency and stuff. Much as far as player agency goes I like the idea behind that. It really would add a layer of depth and decision making to any class that had it.

So downtime is fine when it's not something you actively notice. I see.

As for the charging idea, plenty of other games already do it, so it's nothing new in that regard. I just threw it out there as one potential way you could implement button mash breaks without disrupting the flow of combat.

Speaking personally here - I don't like non-GCD locked classes. It's one of my chief complaints in WoW with regard to Ret. That's just me though. I like @Katchii don't mind some downtime, but excessive (and it doesn't take much for me to consider it excessive) is a detriment.

Is there any reason for this?

Personally, I'm fine with not pushing a button as long as I'm doing something else, it doesn't matter if that's a utility skill, handling a mechanic or just a few seconds waiting on a resource to be available, timer to run out etc. They don't feel like "doing nothing" as often as they feel like playing smart.

As a huge DS fan, the reason I like those games isn't the combat engine. It's arguably the weakest part of the game IMO. I like it because it's a fair but punishing game where every death is genuinely my own fault. I like the atmosphere and sense of exploration and the grandiosity of the boss encounters and the items.

I brought up DS to with regards to it's anticpation. You'll spend a lot of your time in combat, particularly with bosses, waiting for a swing so you can dodge and go on the offensive. With how fragile the player is it creates quite a tense experience even with very little in the way of actual mechanics. FF14 on the other hand has always handled anticipation very poorly in my opinion. You spend 2 whole minutes waiting and building up to Bahamut and when you finally get there, it's a very underwhelming pay off for all the hard work. The Scholar feels the same too, where the Fairy Gauge skills are a let down. Even a White Mage's Misery feels lackluster for the time it takes to ready, and Astrologians Divination isn't exactly the high point of the Job it really should be.

In particular, I like Ret paladins being able to toss a Cleanse, a Blessing of Freedom, a heal or two, etc.

Coincidentally, this is actually the reason I enjoy Ret in BFA. It's fun being able to offer up utility where required without losing any DPS. It's great in PvP too - Those BoP's are lifesavers and Cleanse is amazing in smaller skirmishes.

[Katchii]

As you rightly point out, is FF14 doesn't allow for much in the way of creative decision making. It's all in the execution. Shadowbringers has brought a lot of changes that have pushed the game to being even more of an execution based challenge. That can be a very frustrating place to be in if you know how to execute on the stratergy, but you're unable to physically do it.

Should it be? I've always been pretty vocal about the fact that I think the answer is no, I think that being skilled at the game should require less in the way of rote memorisation and muscle memory and instead require a more free-form understanding of the mechanics underpinning your Job that allows those who can work within them to excel.

I agree with the idea. FFXIV skill ceiling is just being able to multi-task. Having a rotation that rarely deviates from itself creates a pattern you can repeat, being able to execute this pattern while also paying attention to and successfully resolve encounter mechanics is the hallmark of someone who know has memorized the encounter well and has "mastered" their class (played it so often and so much that the pattern becomes muscle memory, really).

WoW does a much better job providing a deeper experience than this with ever changing mechanics and priorities both within the boss encounter itself and within the class you're playing. I just wish each spec had more abilities to use to add more flavor or combinations.

I don't really know how to articulate it but here goes: WoW's class mechanics are mechanically deeper, requiring a deeper understanding of the class and it's underlying mechanics in order to really bring forth their potential, however once you HAVE that understanding, the actual execution feels boring because it boils down to hitting the correct button out of like 4 buttons. In FFXIV, the situation is the opposite. The class mechanics are pretty shallow and you don't need to have a deep understanding of the class mechanics to bring forth their maximum potential, but the sheer number of abilities you have to use to maximize your output requires you to pay attention to (in some capacity) what you're doing regardless of your skill level.

So downtime is fine when it's not something you actively notice. I see.

As for the charging idea, plenty of other games already do it, so it's nothing new in that regard. I just threw it out there as one potential way you could implement button mash breaks without disrupting the flow of combat.

Pretty much, if I don't notice it, or if the delay is there but combat still has a very rhythmic feel, it's fine. In many cases, like Rogue or Feral Druid combat never felt very rhythmic, it just felt disrupted at the times where I was waiting for my energy to regenerate. That's why I've always preferred Monk to Rogue even though they both have similar builder-spender playstyles. Monks combat flow just felt better to me, and there are pauses in their game play too.

Is there any reason for this?

Personally, I'm fine with not pushing a button as long as I'm doing something else, it doesn't matter if that's a utility skill, handling a mechanic or just a few seconds waiting on a resource to be available, timer to run out etc. They don't feel like "doing nothing" as often as they feel like playing smart.

I can't speak for @Wrecktangle but based on what I know, I'd bet it has to do with player agency and the decision making process. It's not your decision, you're not choosing to pause and make a decision on which ability to use or what you're going to do in a given situation, the game is forcing you to not do anything during that time period. Being GCD locked means you need to make a decision at every GCD on what ability to use, when and why.

For me, it's pretty much the same. I know pretty much exactly what I want to be doing when those pauses happen I just can't do it because the game is forcing me to wait those 2+ seconds before I can actually do it. On WoW Rogue for example, I know I want to use the Mutilate ability, but I just expended all my energy building up my combo points, so before I can do what I want I HAVE to wait for my energy to build up before I can do it. That pause doesn't feel good to me, it's just disrupting what I actually want to be doing.

Maybe it's just the way I play those classes, but it never feels flowy and natural to me, they always feel disruptive.

[Wrecktangle]

If you don't have free GCDs, then every single utility spell becomes a dps loss. In particular, I like Ret paladins being able to toss a Cleanse, a Blessing of Freedom, a heal or two, etc. To me, that's central to the class identity. Thus it's very important for Ret paladins to be non-GCD locked. Of course, it's possible to take this too far. See the design of the WoW Classic paladin, for example. Nothing but empty GCDs for you to spend utility on.

Now, FFXIV can get around this to a degree by making utility be off-GCD.

Contrary to popular belief I'm 100% ok with this and encourage it. I believe that utility should be powerful and that using it should be a DPS loss (albeit minor). That's what makes it a meaningful choice otherwise there's no opportunity cost. That's one reason I DO like Ret. But who am I kidding, I'd make the spec GCD locked an all utility oGCD if I had my way lol.

If you are talking about the bulk of the community: they are completely incompetent in both games. There is a reason why I never set foot into a PuG raid in WoW or in FF.

Speaking personally I think it comes down to comparing the high end pug not the whole pie. Just the specific subset of the pie. This has actually always been my point when arguing both games. In WoW, even with bad players I can at least count on decent, a solid floor of performance. I cannot say the same with FF14. It took me almost 10 hours to clear E2S last week in pugs because I let my (former) shit ass cabbage static talk me into waiting till after Thursday to pug. I had some of the most pathetic players I've ever seen group after group. People who not only couldn't do mechanics with any reasonable consistency, but just flat out didn't know how to do DPS.

Is there any reason for this?

I brought up DS to with regards to it's anticpation. You'll spend a lot of your time in combat, particularly with bosses, waiting for a swing so you can dodge and go on the offensive. With how fragile the player is it creates quite a tense experience even with very little in the way of actual mechanics. FF14 on the other hand has always handled anticipation very poorly in my opinion. You spend 2 whole minutes waiting and building up to Bahamut and when you finally get there, it's a very underwhelming pay off for all the hard work. The Scholar feels the same too, where the Fairy Gauge skills are a let down. Even a White Mage's Misery feels lackluster for the time it takes to ready, and Astrologians Divination isn't exactly the high point of the Job it really should be.

Katchii nailed it on the head pretty much. I don't disagree on the anticipation comments and do agree that it's an enjoyable feature of the DS series, but just wanted to kinda point out that the combat isn't the highlight of the game for me (Sekiro on the other hand).

I can't speak for @Wrecktangle but based on what I know, I'd bet it has to do with player agency and the decision making process. It's not your decision, you're not choosing to pause and make a decision on which ability to use or what you're going to do in a given situation, the game is forcing you to not do anything during that time period. Being GCD locked means you need to make a decision at every GCD on what ability to use, when and why.

Bingo.

[KrayZ33]

I don't really know how to articulate it but here goes: WoW's class mechanics are mechanically deeper, requiring a deeper understanding of the class and it's underlying mechanics in order to really bring forth their potential, however once you HAVE that understanding, the actual execution feels boring because it boils down to hitting the correct button out of like 4 buttons. In FFXIV, the situation is the opposite. The class mechanics are pretty shallow and you don't need to have a deep understanding of the class mechanics to bring forth their maximum potential, but the sheer number of abilities you have to use to maximize your output requires you to pay attention to (in some capacity) what you're doing regardless of your skill level.

This is true.

People also talk about how the CPM in FFXIV is low, which is of course true - but at the same time, that doesn't mean you hit the keyboard less often than in WoW for example.

In the end, I'm playing FFXIV not like this: (0s)1 - (2,5s) 2 - (5s) 3
Everyone plays FFXIV like this: (0s)1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (2,5s) 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 (5s)3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
and when you add all the oGCD it becomes like this:1 1 1 QQQQQ EEEEEE 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 RRRRRR 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 YYYYYY 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

When I play WoW, it looks like the exact same game, fewer buttons and/but less "chained" too .
i.e.: 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 3 3 3 3 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3

Sure thing, I have "more time" to do the 1 - 2 - 3 than I do in WoW... at the same time however, I have less time to do the oGCDs than I do in WoW and I have to crawl over my whole keyboard to do them all, in a specific order too to not mess up some weird cooldown timings.
A Dragoon using Geirskogul before or after Mirage Dive when it should be the other way around due to it granting the first/second Eye and all that.

That's why to me, FFXIV combat doesn't feel slow at all.
Maybe I picked the exact opposites in classes (WoW = Hunter, FFXIV = Dragoon) but I feel super busy in FFXIV even though I have fewer CPM compared to my hunter in WoW.

[dope_danny]

Maaaaan the crafting game is strange this expansion. I've had recipes taking me back to Southern Lanoscea for Grapes, to sea of clouds for Lemons, bottom of lakes in ala mhigo for salt. Honestly maybe half the ingredients or less for culinarian come from norvrandt. Which canonically i guess makes sense but its such a change to the usual mmo expansion garbage of "urrrr, this is space iron! yeah thats right, so this expansion mine this iron and forget the old pre expansion iron thats now magically redundant!".

Boy is it a lot of legwork as miner and botanist. I've seen so many retainers in ARR zones farming and i forgot they did that.

[Granyala]

Yeah it's nice when that happens.
@Danny: well the only thing that is weird about requiring non Norvrandt materials is that it would be rather stressful for our character to constantly go back and fourth between the worlds.

[threads]

Speaking personally I think it comes down to comparing the high end pug not the whole pie. Just the specific subset of the pie. This has actually always been my point when arguing both games. In WoW, even with bad players I can at least count on decent, a solid floor of performance. I cannot say the same with FF14. It took me almost 10 hours to clear E2S last week in pugs because I let my (former) shit ass cabbage static talk me into waiting till after Thursday to pug. I had some of the most pathetic players I've ever seen group after group. People who not only couldn't do mechanics with any reasonable consistency, but just flat out didn't know how to do DPS

sounds just like me lol. e2s just pointed out major flaws in my static and i ended up clearing with a pug. but even "farm parties" suck ass at e2s. people still can't look away from the eye. dps being shit at cycles and getting multiple debuffs. people think it will get easy with gear but i doubt it. too many people trying to raid that just suck at this game.

[Puremallace]

Maaaaan the crafting game is strange this expansion. I've had recipes taking me back to Southern Lanoscea for Grapes, to sea of clouds for Lemons, bottom of lakes in ala mhigo for salt. Honestly maybe half the ingredients or less for culinarian come from norvrandt. Which canonically i guess makes sense but its such a change to the usual mmo expansion garbage of "urrrr, this is space iron! yeah thats right, so this expansion mine this iron and forget the old pre expansion iron thats now magically redundant!".

Boy is it a lot of legwork as miner and botanist. I've seen so many retainers in ARR zones farming and i forgot they did that.

Almost wonder if they are looking at other MMO's not just WoW that piss away their old content and pretend like it no longer exist. I have been wondering why I have seen higher level player in some of the 10-20 and 20-30 zones. I figured they were just leveling professions from scratch.

[dope_danny]

Almost wonder if they are looking at other MMO's not just WoW that piss away their old content and pretend like it no longer exist. I have been wondering why I have seen higher level player in some of the 10-20 and 20-30 zones. I figured they were just leveling professions from scratch.

Honestly i don't think its a bad thing. It was nice to have a reason to go through central thanalan again and listen to that music, maybe res a dead sprout that got thousand needle'd and hand out those coblyn minions i get when i don't need more gold.

Doing it without the new alarm system however would have sucked. That is amazing. Just open up your log, select the item and hit square/right click and that ephemeral type node gives you its spawn times and an ingame alarm 3 minutes before it spawns you can do one or on repeat as long as you are logged in. Hitting a bunch of those to go between stuff all over the world and across each expansion has really kept miner and botanist more interesting compared to just farming collectibles at a single point in a single zone for scrip. Might be way less common when i cap all crafter jobs but its still a lotta hours of gameplay and farming mixing up where you are and what you are doing which in the longrun feels like a nice way to avoid burnout before the crafting beast tribe shows up.

[Granyala]

Oh you can do that ingame now?
I always used FFXIV clock for that.

"Farming" collectibles at only one spot... ouch. That sounds inefficient.

- - - Updated - - -

people think it will get easy with gear but i doubt it.

EVERYTHING™ get easier with gear and more DEEEPS.
Sure, the instagibs will still instagib but a dead DPS is not much of a problem if you can take the enrage timer out of the equation due to overgearing the crap out of any given encounter. That won't happen while the content is current though. At least not to a ridiculous degree.

[Kazurath]

...Just open up your log, select the item and hit square/right click and that ephemeral type node gives you its spawn times and an ingame alarm...

This is the kind of bullet point information I'm spoiled to seeing for WoW here on MMO-C. I was still using a website. Christ I could have used this a few days back when I was grinding out CUL.

I know it's laid out rather well in the Patch Notes, but I feel I have to dig for the patch notes through the launcher, then dig through the patch notes for relevant information to me.

[ExiHext]

Just open up your log, select the item and hit square/right click and that ephemeral type node gives you its spawn times and an ingame alarm 3 minutes before it spawns you can do one or on repeat as long as you are logged in.

I don't say that very often, but I love you! xD
Always used an external website.

[dope_danny]

Well i'm down to one Crystalline Mean questline left for Leatherworker. I wonder if this unlocks anything at the end like all the role quests. The CUL/ALC one was interesting and kind of makes me think people will miss Amaro's when Shadowbringers is over. FFXIV's Chocobo's are kind of lacking in terms of being more than mounts with nothing like Fat Chocobo, Choco hot and cold or Chocobo Gardens and the like from other games so the Amaro as their Norvrandt counterparts were a nice change of pace and its a shame they might be left behind.

Unless you get every class to 80 for the Amaro mount i guess

[Wrecktangle]

sounds just like me lol. e2s just pointed out major flaws in my static and i ended up clearing with a pug. but even "farm parties" suck ass at e2s. people still can't look away from the eye. dps being shit at cycles and getting multiple debuffs. people think it will get easy with gear but i doubt it. too many people trying to raid that just suck at this game.

Yep. Exactly the same. It's crazy I now have to join parties and look at peoples logs more than ever and be like this dude is a trap remove him. Normally I'd just go with it and then move on to a new group, but tank slots are fucking hard to come by in ShB so I am way more choosy and protective of my time than I used to be.

Some of my "weekly 2 chest" groups were worse than fresh fucking learning parties. Like come on. I also don't think gear will make a difference. These people aren't hitting 8% enrage, they're hitting 18% (in reclears mind you). Gear isn't gonna make that up. Sure a tier or two down the road, but right now and next patch? No chance IMO.

On a plus side - I cleared Levi. Gonna start Titan learning tomorrow I think. I managed to find a group of people doing E2S and they were pretty good (about 5 of them) and they invited me to E3S reclear. I said I have only been to enrage, so if they're ok with that and they were. We straight carried a SMN who (had cleared already mind you) failed nearly every mechanic possible every single pull. Tsunami one pull, Maelstrom the next, Current, Tidal Wave, Smokers, you name it he died to it. Solid 9th percentile DPS too, almost missed the DPS check because of him.