A decent MMO plagued by some serious problems that make it unplayable in the long run

[leviathonlx]

I hear people say things like this a lot, but honestly can you give an example of "complexity and difficulty in the class rotations"?

And no, don't link a meme flowchart. I'm seriously asking what an example of a complex and difficult class rotation in XIV would be.

I feel SMN is probably the only 'hard' one at the moment but that's mostly due to class design issues of having way too many oGCD abilities which is supposedly going to be fixed with 5.1. NIN can be pretty bad too with weaving due to latency which is, once again, more a class design issue and not necessarily a good thing.

[blackops2008]

Double weaving being a "core" mechanic for some classes is cancer. Ppl with more than 100 latency are forced to play sub-optimally. Thats one of the reasons i quit this game.

[Irian]

I hear people say things like this a lot, but honestly can you give an example of "complexity and difficulty in the class rotations"?

And no, don't link a meme flowchart. I'm seriously asking what an example of a complex and difficult class rotation in XIV would be.

What exactly do you want someone to say if you don't want a flowchart of a rotation? If you look this up you will see plenty of examples. In particular, the NIN and SMN openers are pretty hilarious with how busy they are, if you want to look those up in particular.
A lot of times yeah the meme flowcharts are written jokingly but they're often also actually true to what the rotation is.

It's worth noting that I'm saying they're complex in relation to WoW. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to play FFXIV by any means but it's not designed so that a ten year old could pick up and play the game, there sheer amount of awful players you'll find in PF groups show by itself how tight and demanding a lot of the rotations in FFXIV are.

[Wrecktangle]

Because of bias pretty much.

People like to pretend there's way more to WoW's combat than there actually is. The truth is that the raid mechanics carry that entire game's difficulty and that's exactly why I don't enjoy playing it. I miss design like FFXIV's that puts way more complexity and difficulty in the class rotations and presents challenge by making those rotations tricky to pull off during a boss encounter.

Can you go back and read my post to @Faroth and point out any bias in my statement? Perhaps a statement I made that is incorrect or something easily refutable? I'd be curious.

There's nothing complex at all about FF14 rotations. Complexity is a measure of diverging decision trees (with respect to rotations). This is simply not present in FF14 barring very isolated examples. You consistently make the same decision, because you are only offered one decision at a time.

I won't argue difficulty merely because that's subjective in nature. I personally don't find either game difficult so it's hard for me to quantify unless we use specific examples. I.e. Savage vs. Mythic raiding, etc.

What exactly do you want someone to say if you don't want a flowchart of a rotation? If you look this up you will see plenty of examples. In particular, the NIN and SMN openers are pretty hilarious with how busy they are, if you want to look those up in particular.
A lot of times yeah the meme flowcharts are written jokingly but they're often also actually true to what the rotation is.

It's worth noting that I'm saying they're complex in relation to WoW. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to play FFXIV by any means but it's not designed so that a ten year old could pick up and play the game, there sheer amount of awful players you'll find in PF groups show by itself how tight and demanding a lot of the rotations in FFXIV are.

Those flowcharts only look challenging because of the number of button presses, not because of genuine difficulty or complexity. You always push those buttons in the same exact specific order every time. People always used to say oh DRG is so hard to play well because it has a super long rotation. It took me exactly 1 day to learn how to play it optimally. The hardest part of that job is making sure the Dragon Sight macro actually goes off and trying to double weave with 120ms. Neither of these are things I would praise.

Now mind you. I'm not saying WoW is some pinnacle of design, BUT it is deeper. It is also significantly more fluid and responsive. Even if their class design is staggering cabbage this expansion (and it is), it still is more complex (complexity and depth being synonyms here as a measure of decision trees).

I wanted to point out - you seem to imply that WoW being designed to be able to be picked up a 10 y/o as a bad thing? As long as the skill ceiling isn't the same as the floor I would argue that this is actually good design. Secondly, you make the claim that FF14 isn't designed that way. I respectfully disagree. As an experienced MMO player I actually felt that FF14's handholding was incredibly intrusive and really drug the opening act (ARR) down. This isn't just my opinion either, this is widely echoed by experienced MMOers trying out FF14 over the years. There's a reason people have called it "baby's first MMO".

[Faroth]

I guess if you can juggle 3 juggling pins, you can juggle 2 knives, 2 torches, and 2 chainsaws since they're the same motion and the same decision. No increased difficulty whatsoever. Add in 7 other jugglers doing the same and rotating their throws to each other is still the exact same. No changes whatsoever.

A perfect rotation on a striking dummy is 100% the same as a perfect rotation on a raid boss with no added difficulty in reacting to anything while still maintaining rotation.

[Irian]

Those flowcharts only look challenging because of the number of button presses, not because of genuine difficulty or complexity. You always push those buttons in the same exact specific order every time. People always used to say oh DRG is so hard to play well because it has a super long rotation. It took me exactly 1 day to learn how to play it optimally. The hardest part of that job is making sure the Dragon Sight macro actually goes off and trying to double weave with 120ms. Neither of these are things I would praise.

DRG isn't considered hard to play at all, it's widely seen as one of the easier classes these days because of exactly what you described. It's very much the Unholy DK of FFXIV, having a 1-2-3-4-5 rotation that has little no variance. Some people like that kind of design, some don't, but there are a ton of other classes that have procs that vary the way your rotation flows including bard, dancer, red mage, and black mage.

That being said, I don't really see how someone could dismiss the amount of keys being a part of a rotation as a thing that doesn't matter. Faroth's post above me sums up pretty much how I was going to respond, that says more than enough. Yes, more keys will make a class overall more difficult, especially when you have a ton of cooldowns that need to be lined up and in sync with each other or else some entire rotations are ruined.

I wanted to point out - you seem to imply that WoW being designed to be able to be picked up a 10 y/o as a bad thing?

I never implied that at all and I made a point not to state that. I'm saying it's my personal opinion that I personally can't stand that WoW's difficulty is focused on raid encounter design rather than interesting class design.

This isn't just my opinion either, this is widely echoed by experienced MMOers trying out FF14 over the years. There's a reason people have called it "baby's first MMO".

I mean, I've literally never heard that before until now and I've been playing it as my main game for years, so there's that.

[Faroth]

I'm sorry, but the notion of FFXIV being "baby's first MMO" while WoW is some sort of advanced design for veterans who have mastered difficult concepts is absolutely hilarious.

Sure, XIV was designed so ARR would catch FF fans who had never played an MMO before. It's a big reason for the longer GCD. Add in that it's designed with a controller in mind and you start to see some reasons for design choices. But with some classes being naturally faster through buffs and then faster with materia, you can near match WoW's GCD.

Then there's positionals, which are required if you want to maximize the capability of some classes. Yet players here who complain about XIV's combat despise them and think they should be completely removed....which is simplifying the requirements to maximize those jobs.

Yoshida's already realized the most important factor for designing an MMO when he basically said "I can't trust anyone. If I give you what you said you want, you complain about it."

I'll reiterate what I've said multiple times before... if you hate FFXIV so much and dislike quite close to every single aspect of the game, stop playing it, stop posting about it, and find something you enjoy. You're wasting your energy on something you don't enjoy in the first place.

I'll put my money where my mouth is on this- you won't find me griping about WoW on the class forums or general board. I stopped enjoying it, I don't play it as much (just the occasional return to dabble), I don't talk about it. Occasionally I'll chime in on lore/story aspects if their threads are on the front page or ask questions, but that's about it.

[tangers58]

So to fill the downtime created by completing most of the activities in 8.2, as well as to clear the bad taste playing wow classic has left in my mouth, I decided to jump in and try out FF14. I've always been a great fan of FF games, so the thought of playing those old school jobs in an mmo setting and riding chocobos seemed kind of cool to me. One of my mates also plays it which gave me an additional incentive to try it.

I'm a person who gets a kick out of leveling things up, collecting stuff and all that, so every game that allows you to do that will provide me with some sort of entertainment. And I had a fair share of fun playing FF14 btw, about 3 weeks of fun to be precise. There's a lot of good things in the game, and overall it is an mmo, and everyone who enjoys that kind of gameplay will enjoy it to an extent. In this thread I will be focusing on the negatives, but that does not mean I hate the game. I wanted to make this very clear because fanboys are often unable to understand that.

At some point however, all the gameplay problems started to mar my experience to the point where I no longer feel the need to log in to play anymore. I stopped playing the game 5 levels away from the cap (at 75) because it's just unpleasant to play it now. It also made me realize how much I value some aspects of a game, ones that I normally don't think about. With that said, let me enumerate the biggest problems I encountered.

1. The combat

...is awful. Much like Rift, Swtor and all the other usual suspects in the past, it just feels clunky. It's one of those things that are hard to put into words. It's just not as smooth and fluid as you'd like. It feels like there are unnecessary delays between you using a skill on your keyboard and the character actually executing the command.

The other thing is that the rotations are extremely bloated as you advance your level. FF14 is a good example of what happens when you don't do the so called "ability pruning" that all the elitist players criticise so much in wow. At max level, or even slightly below the max level, your rotations include about 20-25 skills. And that is not including AOE skills, utility skills etc. It's just the single target rotation. I'm sure someone will argue that using 25 skills in a rotation is fun, but to me it's really not. It makes it hard to pick up a class because unless you're a gaming professor you will have a hard time learning it. It also makes it ridiculously hard to optimize your gameplay, let alone min-max, which is downright impossible. Using your actual rotation on anything outside of a dungeon boss? You wish. You'll just have to settle for using a couple random skills, using a fraction of your potential on those non-boss things. As far as the number of skills, combat below level 50 at best feels okay, afterwards it's just too much filler stuff in your rotation.

The funny thing is I didn't even think combat would matter so much, because I am mostly interested in other areas of an mmo, but it turns out that a bad enough combat system can turn you away from a game even if you aren't combat oriented.

2. Leveling and alts

MSQ Leveling is a bit weird, but it's fast and varied, which is good. Myself I am not a plot-person so I don't care at all what the game's story is about and thus I skipped every cutscene ever. Somewhat enjoyed all the leveling of my main job still, because at least it took me around the world, through all the zones, and it was close to the questing/leveling experience I know from other games. No problems here.

However, the real problem is the leveling of your alt jobs. Now some people will probably scratch their heads and start telling me how fast it is and all that...okay, I don't disagree, it may be fast, but fast does not equal entertaining or interesting. Quite the contrary, leveling alt jobs is pure pain in FF14. You use your main character for all of the jobs, and you can only do quests once per character, which means that you are pretty much left with the following methods for leveling up your alt jobs/classes:

-levequests (incredibly boring repetable quests, which are also capped hourly to make it even worse and stop you from doing them all the time)
-doing dungeons over and over (only really viable for tank and healer jobs)
-a dungeon crawler mini game that you can do over and over for levels

While those methods may be quick, they are an absolute and complete pain. I managed to level an alt tank job to a level of about 40 or so through dungeons which is where I felt I am done with it and can take no more of the same dungeons over and over. The whole system seems to be designed with blocking grinds in mind. You are supposed to just do a daily roulette once per day and level your alt job that way, over the course of like 100 days.

3. Queues are ridiculous, even during the peak hours.

It's no surprise that playing DPS results in long queue times, but even trying to queue up for a trial from the current expansion, that is required for a MSQ quest can take up to an HOUR. The game is only playable if you have a friend who can tank/heal for you, otherwise you have to wait for like an hour, and your best bet is to just do something else (but that something else can't be playing an alt job, because the best way to level that up is doing dungeons, and you can't queue for another thing at the same time).

It's pretty funny, because while I never believed all the talk about FF14 killing WoW, all the voices make you think and consider the possibility that the game is pretty active. Again, reality turns out to be different than the forum rhetoric. If you have to wait up to 1 hour in queue as a dps for current obligatory MSQ content, that means barely anyone is playing it.

4. Professions are done horribly

So with this one I don't have much hands-on experience, because after researching how those things work in FF14 I decided not to even try. Profession skills such as mining, cooking etc. work as a separate class, so they lower your level to 1. It is an interesting concept, but also means you have to switch jobs whenever you want to partake in those activities (because you will get one shot by any mob otherwise). To pile up onto that, you have mining rotations, which you have to use correctly, or you risk failing the mining activity (I mean really?).

There were some other minor things that got on my nerves, many of those probably more subjective so I won't be talking about them too much. Dungeon encounter design, un-obvious boss mechanics, UI bugs, the horrid TRUST system (doing dungeons with NPCs which takes like 1 hour longer than a normal party), retainers instead of a regular deposit place, market interface, confusing housing system.

In the end...it's just one of those games. It's fun for a while to take a break and play it. It will just make you appreciate and enjoy the proper MMORPG more once you go back to it full time.

I very much like the game but walked away when they decided to ignore healers for a third straight expansion. Since Heavensward they have added 4 DPS jobs and 1 for tanks, while healers got nothing. Even that wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't strung the healers along for 3 Fanfests instead of just saying "We aren't added anything for healers"

[Rogalicus]

That being said, I don't really see how someone could dismiss the amount of keys being a part of a rotation as a thing that doesn't matter. Faroth's post above me sums up pretty much how I was going to respond, that says more than enough. Yes, more keys will make a class overall more difficult, especially when you have a ton of cooldowns that need to be lined up and in sync with each other or else some entire rotations are ruined.

That adds difficulty in the same way that playing something like DMC3 on keyboard does or pressing 20 keys in certain order to take off in flight simulator does. Point of the game is fighting monsters, not controls.

But with some classes being naturally faster through buffs and then faster with materia, you can near match WoW's GCD.

But thanks to haste almost no one plays with 1.5s GCD in WoW. And it also makes your channels and some ability cooldowns faster. For some reason I never see FFXIV fans mentioning this.

Then there's positionals, which are required if you want to maximize the capability of some classes. Yet players here who complain about XIV's combat despise them and think they should be completely removed....which is simplifying the requirements to maximize those jobs.

Sliding from flank to rear every GCD isn't compelling gameplay.

[Sharby]

Can you go back and read my post to @Faroth and point out any bias in my statement? Perhaps a statement I made that is incorrect or something easily refutable? I'd be curious.

There's nothing complex at all about FF14 rotations. Complexity is a measure of diverging decision trees (with respect to rotations). This is simply not present in FF14 barring very isolated examples. You consistently make the same decision, because you are only offered one decision at a time.

I won't argue difficulty merely because that's subjective in nature. I personally don't find either game difficult so it's hard for me to quantify unless we use specific examples. I.e. Savage vs. Mythic raiding, etc.



Those flowcharts only look challenging because of the number of button presses, not because of genuine difficulty or complexity. You always push those buttons in the same exact specific order every time. People always used to say oh DRG is so hard to play well because it has a super long rotation. It took me exactly 1 day to learn how to play it optimally. The hardest part of that job is making sure the Dragon Sight macro actually goes off and trying to double weave with 120ms. Neither of these are things I would praise.

Now mind you. I'm not saying WoW is some pinnacle of design, BUT it is deeper. It is also significantly more fluid and responsive. Even if their class design is staggering cabbage this expansion (and it is), it still is more complex (complexity and depth being synonyms here as a measure of decision trees).

I wanted to point out - you seem to imply that WoW being designed to be able to be picked up a 10 y/o as a bad thing? As long as the skill ceiling isn't the same as the floor I would argue that this is actually good design. Secondly, you make the claim that FF14 isn't designed that way. I respectfully disagree. As an experienced MMO player I actually felt that FF14's handholding was incredibly intrusive and really drug the opening act (ARR) down. This isn't just my opinion either, this is widely echoed by experienced MMOers trying out FF14 over the years. There's a reason people have called it "baby's first MMO".

But see I feel like a point that should be discussed is if complexity and quality have a shared relationship. The responsiveness I can agree with and that's what makes WoW's combat better imo because its less ping reliant, but not the complexity because a lot of the forked decision making in WoW's combat almost always has the most optimal path, the second, very situational path, and the third virtually never used path. Furthermore, most of the rotations in WoW sans a few are extremely forgiving as far as I know, so often times picking the wrong option in your rotation isn't a massive setback which greatly diminishes the significance of having options.

Legion's legendary system could have been called complex because you lots of choices, but a vast majority of them were useless. So it was largely a frustrating, shit system unless you got lucky early or finally grinded out your bis.

Just look at the current talent system, sure you have options and thus its complex, but if 85% of the time the options aren't used, is there really a point?

[Irian]

That adds difficulty in the same way that playing something like DMC3 on keyboard does or pressing 20 keys in certain order to take off in flight simulator does. Point of the game is fighting monsters, not controls.

It's a good thing this isn't DMC3 then and the comparison isn't even close to similar.

With this kind of reductive logic you could argue that any kind of difficulty is artificial and not fun. And you'd be right, because it's entirely subjective. The great thing is that both WoW and FFXIV exist so if someone wants more simple rotations and complex bosses they can go play WoW.

Which is also why I never understand why some people act as if the discussion is some kind of attack on the game.

It's because a lot of people don't like seeing people come into a discussion about a game they love and say that it should be more like a completely different game with a completely different method of designing content.

A lot of people love FFXIV for the reasons OP and others have said it's "flawed" and should be "improved". There's nothing to really discuss here, it's people coming from WoW essentially trying to say the game should be more like WoW and anyone who's played FFXIV for any amount of time has heard this shit a hundred times before from people who go into this game wanting it to be just like the game they actually want to play instead.

[Wrecktangle]

I guess if you can juggle 3 juggling pins, you can juggle 2 knives, 2 torches, and 2 chainsaws since they're the same motion and the same decision. No increased difficulty whatsoever. Add in 7 other jugglers doing the same and rotating their throws to each other is still the exact same. No changes whatsoever.

A perfect rotation on a striking dummy is 100% the same as a perfect rotation on a raid boss with no added difficulty in reacting to anything while still maintaining rotation.

I don't want to play let's move the goal posts. You said "I really don't see why people think it's so amazing and claim it has such depth."

I then gave a very detailed example of depth in WoW to explain my thought process. You're welcome to refute it, or add FF14 based insight to offset my point, but your analogy doesn't accomplish that.

DRG isn't considered hard to play at all, it's widely seen as one of the easier classes these days because of exactly what you described. It's very much the Unholy DK of FFXIV, having a 1-2-3-4-5 rotation that has little no variance. Some people like that kind of design, some don't, but there are a ton of other classes that have procs that vary the way your rotation flows including bard, dancer, red mage, and black mage.

You're moving the goal posts too. I asked you to identify where in my original response to Faroth where I showed bias. Can you please, re-read that entire example (including the text at the bottom as it's highly relevant to your above example) and point out where I demonstrated bias.

I was also very clear when I said "people used to always say". The reason people cited it as difficult was because it had a very long rotation before it repeated itself. This is your exact point above. You actually contradict yourself by saying it's easy, despite it having so many buttons.

That said, I really don't want to delve too deeply into difficulty. My original points were about depth, not difficulty. If you truly want to discuss it I will, after you tackle my previous points.

I mean, I've literally never heard that before until now and I've been playing it as my main game for years, so there's that.

Really? I actually never called it that before now, but have seen others here as well as reddit and the occasional OF. Snark aside, you can't really deny what the name implies, even Faroth corraborates it below.

I'm sorry, but the notion of FFXIV being "baby's first MMO" while WoW is some sort of advanced design for veterans who have mastered difficult concepts is absolutely hilarious.

Sure, XIV was designed so ARR would catch FF fans who had never played an MMO before. It's a big reason for the longer GCD. Add in that it's designed with a controller in mind and you start to see some reasons for design choices. But with some classes being naturally faster through buffs and then faster with materia, you can near match WoW's GCD.

I actually claimed that WoW is very accessible even more so than FF14, while simultaneously offering depth for veteran players. I apologize if you misunderstood me on that point.

Sidebar - yes the fastest jobs in the game can reach equivalent CPM as some of the slowest classes in WoW.

Then there's positionals, which are required if you want to maximize the capability of some classes. Yet players here who complain about XIV's combat despise them and think they should be completely removed....which is simplifying the requirements to maximize those jobs.

You know that I despise them. I don't think they add meaningful gameplay feedback for how tedious they are. I've covered that in detail before so I won't rehash it. They're one of the major reasons I main a tank instead of a melee DPS. They're super binary though. You ALWAYS go to the specific point, and if you're doing them optimally, movement is so minimal we're talking pixels.

Yoshida's already realized the most important factor for designing an MMO when he basically said "I can't trust anyone. If I give you what you said you want, you complain about it."

Fair. Can't argue with that.

I'll reiterate what I've said multiple times before... if you hate FFXIV so much and dislike quite close to every single aspect of the game, stop playing it, stop posting about it, and find something you enjoy. You're wasting your energy on something you don't enjoy in the first place.

Hate? How many times do we have to do this. I don't HATE FF14. I love it. I want it to be the #1 MMO on the market. The only reason I'm on here discussing it is because I'm passionate about the game. Don't mistake criticism for hatred. That's incredibly juvenile.

But see I feel like a point that should be discussed is if complexity and quality have a shared relationship. The responsiveness I can agree with and that's what makes WoW's combat better imo because its less ping reliant, but not the complexity because a lot of the forked decision making in WoW's combat almost always has the most optimal path, the second, very situational path, and the third virtually never used path. Furthermore, most of the rotations in WoW sans a few are extremely forgiving as far as I know, so often times picking the wrong option in your rotation isn't a massive setback which greatly diminishes the significance of having options.

The sheer fact that you list 3 decision trees (even if I disagree with the notions) proves my point though because 3 > 1 therefore there's more depth.

I'm not sure that forgiveness is really a relevant metric for complexity. For instance in WoW if I mistime Wings during a low uptime phase, I lose nearly 40% of my total damage. If I miss-time Dragon Sight or Battle Litany I also lose a ton of DPS/rDPS (not sure how much TBH). If i hit a wrong GCD it has DPS implications in WoW, but not terribly so. If I accidently hit true thrust twice, I lose a GCD and restart. God knows despite being a fairly elite player I fuck up all the time, but it's not like I lose 50% of my DPS. This isn't HW anymore.

Legion's legendary system could have been called complex because you lots of choices, but a vast majority of them were useless. So it was largely a frustrating, shit system unless you got lucky early or finally grinded out your bis.

I actually liked the legiondarys. I do agree the system needed a ton of work and that it wasn't complex by any means.

Just look at the current talent system, sure you have options and thus its complex, but if 85% of the time the options aren't used, is there really a point?

Talents are tricky because not all specs are created equal. For instance, Ret has 3 viable end tier talent choices that shift in value depending on type of content, gear level, and additional features (trinkets, neck powers, azerite, etc.). This is good, complex design.

However, Ret also has some talent tiers that I haven't changed since the beginning of the expansion. That's downright awful design.

It's because a lot of people don't like seeing people come into a discussion about a game they love and say that it should be more like a completely different game with a completely different method of designing content.

I think Xenogears is the greatest JRPG story ever told. If you or anyone wants to tell me they disagree or think negatively on it I would welcome it. Discussion breeds growth and the sharing of ideas.

FF14 isn't perfect. WoW isn't perfect. Only Xenogears is perfect (and Final Fantasy Tactics).

[KrayZ33]

Sliding from flank to rear every GCD isn't compelling gameplay.

uhm, because of what arbitary reason is it not?
The positionals are great, it's the kind of involvement in a fight many classes are currently missing in WoW in my opinion.
Saying "they are not compelling gameplay" without any reason whatsoever and trying to make a point with that is.... just dumb.
No reason to exaggerate (never have been, never will be and are not required for every GCD, not even close) either.

That adds difficulty in the same way that playing something like DMC3 on keyboard does or pressing 20 keys in certain order to take off in flight simulator does. Point of the game is fighting monsters, not controls.

You could say the same thing about any MMO's style of rotations.
Having to remember the sequence and executing it is the same as having to remember the priority list and executing it.
Might as well argue that the <1,5GCD in WoW is pointless because in the end it just adds more (of the same) buttons to press during a boss fight.

But thanks to haste almost no one plays with 1.5s GCD in WoW. And it also makes your channels and some ability cooldowns faster. For some reason I never see FFXIV fans mentioning this.

Must be the same reason when people forget to mention that not all FFXIV classes are on a strict rotation and can actually freestyle their gameplay.
Everyone is basically saying "I've played a dragoon/tank in FFXIV" (straight forward, basically no gameplay tweaks possible)- acting as if SAM, BLM SMN, BRD (proc based) and DNC (proc based), and most of all, boss mechanics which will literally change up rotations for many classes mid fight to line up CDs/procs burst windows better, don't exist.

[Swnem]

Double weaving being a "core" mechanic for some classes is cancer. Ppl with more than 100 latency are forced to play sub-optimally. Thats one of the reasons i quit this game.

Is this a ninja thing? That's getting fixed with the new patch.

- - - Updated - - -

I think Xenogears is the greatest JRPG story ever told. If you or anyone wants to tell me they disagree or think negatively on it I would welcome it. Discussion breeds growth and the sharing of ideas.

FF14 isn't perfect. WoW isn't perfect. Only Xenogears is perfect (and Final Fantasy Tactics).

Dude! You have amazing taste in JRPG's! I totally agree.

Xenogears is for me the greatest game ever made. FFT is probably the best SRPG.
I loved the Ivalice raid in FFXIV so much. Too bad peeps love to quit on the third wing. I'd love to run it more.

[Stormbreed]

After playing the game and getting some top ranking kills, I would say the biggest problem is WoW.

People will always compare the game to WoW, and sadly it doesn't stand up in a lot of ways.

However I personally think the game is more fun, and isn't that what we should all hope for? I don't need a harder pac man,

[Swnem]

Sliding from flank to rear every GCD isn't compelling gameplay.

This is complete nonsense. The positionals give a great dimension to your gameplay as you figure out the timing to maximise your damage through positionals while avoiding mechanics and when to use the skill that lets you temporarely ignore the positional. It gives you a lot more to think about as dps. More decisions and seeing a reward from them means more fun.

You are absolutely wrong. But i guess you only played low level stuff to say that kind of thing.

- - - Updated - - -

After playing the game and getting some top ranking kills, I would say the biggest problem is WoW.

People will always compare the game to WoW, and sadly it doesn't stand up in a lot of ways.

However I personally think the game is more fun, and isn't that what we should all hope for? I don't need a harder pac man,

I think WoW doesn't measure up to FFXIV in other ways either. But peeps are super engrained in the WoW way of playing and are very resistant to change.
I do think atm FFXIV is the superior game. The raids encounters are amazing and rely more on visual queues rather than addon warnings to react to mechanics. The excitement of the fights doesn't compare either. There is destruction and arena deformation in ways we never seen in WoW. Amazing boss attacks as well.
My favorite fight is the final boss of Orbonne Monastery. That fight takes you for a ride!

Anyways, yeah, now that i've finished ShB's, id say FF has better raid encounters (stormblood onwards), better regular content support, better end-game "loop" (no infinite grinds or rng bonanzas), more engrossing story (if you can be bothered to listen/read), better music.
WoW has better performance, better graphics and better, more consistant presentation.

[Advent]

What I often see, as in the case of even this thread, is someone who states that they dont like something about FF14, followed by rabid vitriol about how "It's not supposed to be like WoW". Very counterproductive and childish imo. But then again, critiquing FF14 in any capacity is met with fire and pitchforks because any criticism is taken as some sort of personal attack.

[Wrecktangle]

This is complete nonsense. The positionals give a great dimension to your gameplay as you figure out the timing to maximise your damage through positionals while avoiding mechanics and when to use the skill that lets you temporarely ignore the positional. It gives you a lot more to think about as dps. More decisions and seeing a reward from them means more fun.

You are absolutely wrong. But i guess you only played low level stuff to say that kind of thing.

Firstly - let me add that while I do not play melee DPS at the savage/ultimate level currently, I played DRG in ARR/HW at the highest levels (CoB/SCoB and Gordias).

1) They're not consistent (i.e. not all bosses have them)
2) The netcode really isn't good enough to support them
3) Optimal usage of positionals actually minimizes their engagement, i.e. micro stutters to optimize positioning isn't particularly fun
4) SE has consistently reduced their impact and their punishment for failure (i.e. Not getting Heavy Thrust buff if you missed the flank)
5) Button bloat is an issue in this game and creating an ability to mitigate the already reduced impact of positionals seems unnecessary
6) Most positionals are flat damage increases (barring like SAM) which for average players (not using FFLogs/ACT) means that you can't even tell the difference between hitting them or not.
7) They're fixed in occurrence and frequency. They always happen at the same time, on the same ability, for the same effect. I.e. static and not dynamic makes even less appealing to me.

I do think atm FFXIV is the superior game. The raids encounters are amazing and rely more on visual queues rather than addon warnings to react to mechanics. The excitement of the fights doesn't compare either. There is destruction and arena deformation in ways we never seen in WoW. Amazing boss attacks as well.
My favorite fight is the final boss of Orbonne Monastery. That fight takes you for a ride!

I can't say it's a superior game, even if I truly want it to be. If they could clean up the netcode and add some dynamism in the systems and content design it could EASILY be the best MMO on the market, but everything feels and is too rigid.

I don't quite understand the arena statement as I find that's actually one of the weakest areas in FF14 (Titan alleviates this somewhat, but it's a rare example). Look at a fight like Jaina compared to anything in FF14.

Don't get me wrong - I actually think that FF14 does extremely well with raid design on average. It's a bit rigid, but the presentation is often top tier and I regularly cite EX primals as some of the best content designed in the modern MMO space.

[Katchii]

This is complete nonsense. The positionals give a great dimension to your gameplay as you figure out the timing to maximise your damage through positionals while avoiding mechanics and when to use the skill that lets you temporarely ignore the positional. It gives you a lot more to think about as dps. More decisions and seeing a reward from them means more fun.

You are absolutely wrong. But i guess you only played low level stuff to say that kind of thing.

I disagree somewhat, at least on the idea that it gives you something to think about and that it's a reward. After playing enough, you don't really think about it and there's no real reward for doing it right, there's just penalties for doing it wrong. The reason I say there's no reward is because other classes can do just as good, if not better, damage without having to worry about positionals and the classes with positionals HAVE to hit their positional requirements in order to compete with them. That to me means there's no reward, as it's expected you hit them to do competitive DPS. That also means, to me, positionals are not "fun," they're a nuisance which means (again, to me) that it's not compelling game play. They're actually a deterrent for me to ever play those classes as more than just a side thing to level just to have the classes at max level.

EDIT: To add, after reading @Wrecktangle post, I don't see how it can be considered a reward when in most cases the person can't even tell whether they're doing it right or not. There's no in game feedback to let you know when/if you hit the positional correctly, you might see different numbers, but without a parser you wouldn't even be able to tell. So someone playing the class and hitting every positional feels exactly the same as someone playing the class and trying to but missing every positional...how is that compelling or rewarding?

[Swnem]

I disagree somewhat, at least on the idea that it gives you something to think about and that it's a reward. After playing enough, you don't really think about it and there's no real reward for doing it right, there's just penalties for doing it wrong. The reason I say there's no reward is because other classes can do just as good, if not better, damage without having to worry about positionals and the classes with positionals HAVE to hit their positional requirements in order to compete with them. That to me means there's no reward, as it's expected you hit them to do competitive DPS. That also means, to me, positionals are not "fun," they're a nuisance which means (again, to me) that it's not compelling game play. They're actually a deterrent for me to ever play those classes as more than just a side thing to level just to have the classes at max level.

EDIT: To add, after reading @Wrecktangle post, I don't see how it can be considered a reward when in most cases the person can't even tell whether they're doing it right or not. There's no in game feedback to let you know when/if you hit the positional correctly, you might see different numbers, but without a parser you wouldn't even be able to tell. So someone playing the class and hitting every positional feels exactly the same as someone playing the class and trying to but missing every positional...how is that compelling or rewarding?

You know, the same can be said about ranged having to move and break their DPS rotation. Learning to reduce the needed movement also results in better performance.
Well, in the case of Dragoon you have an indicator if you did the last one correctly cause it changes your first combo button. But damage is the hint. After you've done it enough, you'll know. Obviously, it shows on your damage parse result too.

Also, as some other tried to mistakingly say, they are -not- always the same. Each job works differently. If it were a random proc said people would be here complaining how it was so difficult to react to and unintuitive.
In the case of dragoon you got 2 combos, They both have different positionals and the positional combo after each other so they are the opposite on order in each combo. Samurai has at least 3 combos from what i know, Monk has at least 2. I haven't leveled them to max.