[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've thought about giving this game another try, but the questing just didn't grip me. I was a red mage and I was in the middle of the first expansion. Can anyone explain how this game is better than WoW? I want to understand the appeal, but I really don't get it and no youtube has really explained to me what makes it nicer other than the character models.

WoW and FFXIV comparison (long)

Spoiler: 

World of Warcraft
Tab target MMORPG. $15 a month to play + $60 box expansions every two years. Has a cash shop in which you can buy mounts for $25 and such. You can also legally spend IRL money to buy ingame gold, which can then be used to buy items and gear.

Positives

• + Timeless artstyle. Super iconic races and armor designs and abilities. Everything is clearly readable.

• + Huge amount of variety in player customization. There are over two dozen different races with different silhouttes, and each gender has a different silhoutte too. There are thousands of different armor models in the game. The only thing you can't really do is wear a trench coat (NPCs wear them so they might come one day).

• + Game is low performance intensive (except for certain areas, such as Suramar) and still looks fantastic.

• + Huge amount of mod support via addons.

• + 16+ years of content to play through.

• + The zones up until Legion feel like real places. Very immersive.

• + New zones added in patches.

• + Best PvP in MMOs.

• + Most raid content in any MMO ever.

• + From MoP onwards there is a LOT of voice acting. Almost all of the main zone quests are voiced. All instances are fully voiced. Seriously. There is a huge amount of voice acting.

• + Wardrobe system called "transmog". However, you cannot permanently change your character's appearance, nor can you do so on the fly, so everytime you get better gear, you have to go back to town to apply your outfit to it.

• + Lots of achievement stuff to do. You can do old reputations to get mounts, pets, cosmetics, titles, transmog, etc. You can even track achievements on your UI like tracking a quest. It's very fun to track achievements and try to do them. Some achievements even require you to do some interesting gameplay or whacky things you otherwise would not do if you were playing normally.

• + HUGE roleplaying scene. WoW has dedicated fandom and decades of lore built up, with dozens and dozens of different factions with iconic costumes that you can emulate with transmog, or even give your own spin on. Very popular dedicated RP servers such as Moon Guard and Wyrmsrest Accord with events happening every day (browse the server forums to find the huge meetups!). Addon support such as MRP that enhances RP and makes it easy to identify RPers, as well as a cross-server group finder that makes it easy to seek out RP.

Neutral

• +/- Overall good soundtrack. However, a lot of the soundtrack is ambient, so there aren't many iconic melodies. When you take a step back, you'll find that WoW has a good OST by virtue of the sheer quantity of music it has. On a per expansion basis there are only a handful of good tracks. WoW's music quality peaks with MoP (guest composer Jeremy Soule!) and WoD, and goes downhill in Legion. The music took a big hit in BFA as lead composer Dustin Brower stepped back and only composed for cutscenes.

Negatives

• - Content droughts. It is usual for the game to go 6+ months without a major content update. After the final patch of an expansion, there is usually a year long content drought, and you still have to pay $15 monthly subscription to play.

• - Blizzard doesn't really care about the story. The writing is unbelievably awful at times. The story is made up as they go along. The writers shamelessly retcon their own lore so often that they had to put out a series of codex books to establish the "yes really" official, current lore. And then those codexes were retconned and decanonized two years later.

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• Facial animations are a little stiff. You don't really get close up cutscenes of characters in engine.

• - Unless you play a monk or a Demon Hunter, every class uses pretty much the same animations as everyone else, just with different spell effects and sound effects.

• - If you want to go back and enjoy old expansion stories, you can't because Blizzard removed the second half of the story, such as MoP's and WoD's legendary questlines. You can't go back and do challenging singleplayer content like the Mage Tower.

• - Dailies and gear treadmill. Unless you're content with doing old content, the game revolves around logging in every day to check off your list of chores and grind. You have to do dailies, dungeons, Horrific Visions, and so on. You don't get to see the latest content unless you go through this treadmill.

• - Takes months to catch up to current content, as you have to level a character to level cap, then do every zone questline to unlock world quests, and then you have to start farming world quests to do reputations to get to the next patch's treadmill, until you finally reach the latest patch's content.

• - Crafting was forgotten years ago and is an unenjoyable gold sink.

• - Removal of flying. Prior to MoP, in order to fly, you simply had to go to the flying trainer and buy flight licenses for a few thousand gold (easily obtainable by simply vendoring crap and the gold you get from doing quests). However, starting with WoD, the flight trainers were removed, and flying was now obtained by spending months farming reputations for months on end and doing a lot of tedious chores. Furthermore, the zones were designed in such a way as to make travel on the ground as difficult as possible (not to mention that the mob density was cranked up to the extreme and mobs are now placed on roads, so you can't go anywhere without pulling mobs and being dismounted). The end result is that traveling through post-MoP zones is extremely aggravating, and makes me not want to explore the world at all.

Final Fantasy XIV
Tab target MMORPG. $15 a month to play + $60 box expansions every two years. Has a cash shop in which you can spend money to buy mounts and outfits and such.

Positives

• + Excellent controller support. You can even raid on the hardest difficult whilist using a controller and you won't be gimped compared to mouse & keyboard users.

• + Console support. PS4 and Xbox One.

• + One major patch every 3 months. It always contains new MSQ (main story questline) content, a new dungeon, a new raid, and other stuff. No content droughts.

• + Great writing. The overarching story of FFXIV has been outlined from the get go and the writers know where they are going. The Heavensward and Shadowbringers expansions are easily among the best - if not THE BEST - Final Fantasy stories in the franchise. Almost no retcons. The story will conclude in the next expansion, either in 2021 or 2022.

• + Lots of good quests. Cutscene heavy. Questing is like playing a JRPG. The main story, the raid questlines, and the Hildibrand questline are fantastic. Each job (FFXIV's term for "class") has its own questline, which varies in quality. There are also reputations which have their own questlines, which vary in quality.

• + Great character animations and faces.

• + Animation variety. Every job has a completely unique animation set (whereas in WoW everyone who isn't a monk uses the same melee and casting animations).

• + Amazing, melodic music by Masayoshi Soken. It's incredible how much music Soken manages to put out every year. He also has very wide range and tries out a variety of different genres of music, so the OST never feels stale or repetitive.

• + No catchup slog. There are no artificial timegates preventing you from reaching the latest content. The only thing stopping you is the speed at which you go through the main story.

• + Very little gear treadmill at endgame.

• + There is an ingame casino where you can spend your time and have a lot of fun doing fun, non-combat gameplay.

• + Player and guild housing which players can decorate. Players can buy one room apartments for 500,000 gil (easily achievable in FFXIV). You can buy housing plots of varying sizes (small, medium, and large) but there are limited plots per server so you have to compete with other players to snatch them up. It is difficult to get a plot of land for a house but everyone can get an apartment.

• + Wardrobe system in the form of glamour. However, you cannot permanently change your character's appearance, nor can you do so on the fly, so everytime you get better gear, you have to go back to town to apply your outfit to it.

• + You can teleport to any place you have visited before.

• + Flying. In order to fly, all you need to do is complete a few optional quests, go around the zone and interact with aether currents (you have a compass item that points you to them), and complete the zone questline. If you have done all of that, then as soon as you complete the zone questline you can fly in the zone.

Neutral

• +/- No class customization. No talent/perk trees, no picking abilities or passives, no nothing. Once you hit level cap and have obtained all of your class' abilities, what you see in your spellbook is what you get, and you have to make the best with what you've got. This can be great for people who don't like getting a migraine from reading huge class guides and DPS calculations. However, some job don't have a lot of depth, and you don't really have the ability to do anything about it other than leveling up another job instead.

• +/- No new zones added in patches, only in expansion box launches, so you don't get the feeling of discovering a new place as often, nor do you get to go to as many new places as in WoW.

• +/- Light achievement gameplay in the form of relic weapons, but a lot of them boil down to grinds (namely the Heavensward and Stormblood relics).

• +/- Crafting is better than in most games, as there is actual gameplay to the crafting process (each crafting job has its own abilities you use while crafting). However, it does boil down to a lot of repetition and macro usage and it's a goldsink. Not much more fun than WoW's crafting.

• +/- far less raid content compared to other MMOs. In WoW, you get to explore these huge, massive instances with a lot of lore, and as you progress you fight mobs and story developments happen with key NPCs, and it feels really epic. You get to explore the Mogu'shan vaults with Lorewalker Cho, or storm the beaches of Orgrimmar with Lor'themar, Sylvanas, Varian, and Jaina (and it's all voice acted!). In FFXIV, you queue for a raid and you are plopped on a platform with a boss, and that's it. If you're a RAIDER and you like the CHALLENGE of learning the fight with your friends, then you will like FFXIV as it gets straight to the point. However, if you really liked the EXPERIENCE of going through the raid, of exploring, and the story, then you will be very disappointed in FFXIV. FFXIV kinda tries to do it with 24 man Alliance raids, but they feel very weak compared to WoW's presentation. You don't really get to explore or fight with NPCs, and with the exception of a handful of bosses, there is no voice acting.

• +/- Decent addon/mod support, but addons/mods are discouraged by the publisher, Square Enix. For example, you can install a DPS meter, but if you go around posting results in the ingame chat, you can get banned (keep it in your Discord chat). You can install nude mods (the devs don't scan your computer or anything), but if you go around posting screenshots online, you can get banned.

• +/- Small RP scene. Roleplaying isn't typically advertised in the cross server party finder, and there are no commonly used RP addons such as MRP.

Negatives

• - The game has an input delay.

• - The realistic artstyle does not age well and is very dependent on how powerful your system is. FFXIV is performance intensive. You may have to play at smaller resolutions and/or lower graphical settings to get the game to run smoothly.

• - The game doesn't really have racial options or gear items that dramatically change up the silhoutte of your character as much as other games like WoW, so player characters can look rather samey in silhoutte. Everybody looks like a human, with maybe a gnome or a big bulky human thrown in every now and then.

• - The first 284 quests of the MSQ (patches 2.0 through 2.55) have a LOT of filler in them, and the sheer amount of slog is often a deterent for new players. Fortunately, patch 5.3 is going to revamp the 2.0 through 2.55 storyline and make the filler optional, so new players should find that the revamped storyline will move at a far more brisk pace.

• - You can't do the MSQ instances with friends or other players.

• - Once you have completed the questlines, there isn't a lot to do besides crafting and raiding the current raid.

• - Because the game is hardly voice acted outside of cutscenes, dialogue during battle or boss quips appear as lines of text near the top of your screen, which is very easy to miss as you will have your eyes glued towards the AoEs on the ground, or looking at your ability cooldowns, or looking at your health bar or mana bar, and so on.

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TL;DR

Why you should play FFXIV

• If you want a great, ongoing storyline, look no further than FFXIV (also the Trails series, but that's a singleplayer series of JRPGs. Trails and FFXIV are pretty much the only huge, ongoing RPG storylines with a beginning, a middle, and end in gaming).

• You get a new, major patch every 3 months. No content droughts.

• Very little grind compared to WoW.

• You can lean back in your chair with your controller and play just fine.

• Fantastic music. Almost every track is memorable (whereas in WoW the music is more ambient and there are only a handful of great tracks per expansion).

• Devs actually listen to player feedback, rather than being bullheaded and condescending towards their playerbase and making decisions that alienate said playerbase. Devs don't try to reinvent the wheel every expansion.

Why you should play WoW

• If you like WoW's artstyle and you want a game that looks great on low end hardware

• If your friends are playing WoW and you have more fun playing with your friends

• If you like PvP (because PvP in any MMO besides WoW is shit. FFXIV's PvP is, at best, just "okay"

• If you like how raid content is done in WoW (seriously, WoW's presentation of their raids is fantastic)

• If you like talent trees and different ability builds

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Further, I like the philosophy on class design. Support dps classes are actually a thing and rotations are slower but feel a lot more complex and satisfying.

I forgot to add this.

In WoW, you game is balanced around everybody constantly taking damage at a high enough rate that if the healer stops healing for a few seconds, somebody is going to die (unless they pop their cooldowns or run away). Also, healer DPS in WoW is so abysmal you mind as well not even bother trying to deal damage.

In FFXIV, the game is balanced around healers having enough time to top the tank off, and then be able to lean back and DPS for a little bit, and actually contribute a significant amount of DPS, enough that healers are EXPECTED to DPS when they can and the raid will fail a DPS check if the healer doesn't pull their weight. IMO, this makes healers far more fun than in WoW, because you are alternating between healing and dealing damage, and it spruces things up.

[-aiko-]

Also, healer DPS in WoW is so abysmal you mind as well not even bother trying to deal damage

This is not true anymore. Any serious M+ group, for example, is going to expect the healer to be DPSing. Holy Paladin DPS is actually insane with the right essences (I'm talking 120k burst dps insane).

Also, I'd be careful advertising dpsing as a healer as a good thing. Many of us hate the concept...if I'm a healer I want to heal. It really bothers me that this has creeped its way into WoW.

[Hyral]

I've thought about giving this game another try, but the questing just didn't grip me. I was a red mage and I was in the middle of the first expansion. Can anyone explain how this game is better than WoW? I want to understand the appeal, but I really don't get it and no youtube has really explained to me what makes it nicer other than the character models.

It's different than WoW. Enough for some people who don't care about RNG grinds or raid logging to find it a better alternative. If you are just looking for WoW why not play WoW?

[Lazuli]

This is not true anymore. Any serious M+ group, for example, is going to expect the healer to be DPSing. Holy Paladin DPS is actually insane with the right essences (I'm talking 120k burst dps insane).

Also, I'd be careful advertising dpsing as a healer as a good thing. Many of us hate the concept...if I'm a healer I want to heal. It really bothers me that this has creeped its way into WoW.

Its fun in games like ESO and GW2 where you have smart heals and aoe heals, but between playing the UI and targeting mobs I agree. It just doesn't fit that archaic design, choose 1 or the other.

[Granyala]

As for that SAM I've unfortunately never met anyone like that, people in dungeons are usually either mute outside the usual greeting and tyfp at the end or just use anime emotes every so often through the run. He sounds like a cool dude to chat with tbh.

Same here.
Man I'd probably found that run to be hilarious. So what if one dungeon takes a bit longer, if an interesting conversation is involved I usually do not mind that at all.

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I want to understand the appeal, but I really don't get it and no youtube has really explained to me what makes it nicer other than the character models.

Like any RPG, the story takes a while to pick up and really draw you in. I found the entirety of the ARR story to be petty uninteresting too. It wasn't until heavensward that it really clicked with me.

Whether XIV is "better" or "worse" than WoW is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I prefer it because there is no dumb RNG factor in gearing and you get good stuff even when not raiding / spamrunning M+. Story is nicely done, I like the world (I like Azeroth equally).

Ultimately, like any MMO it's the people that make or break the experience. While I still like Azeroth, I am pretty alone in WoW nowadays. MMOs suck as single player games.

BTW: don't just rely on youtube for your information.

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Also, I'd be careful advertising dpsing as a healer as a good thing. Many of us hate the concept...if I'm a healer I want to heal. It really bothers me that this has creeped its way into WoW.

Hmm I quite like the dance between the two. It does get annoying if content is so easy that the split is DPS 90% and healing 10%, completely agreed.

[Talrath]

In my experience however, the vast majority of people I run into are the glamour hunters, story seekers and those who see the game as a place to hang out with their friends.

Probably the most grating of these, for me anyway, are the lore nerds. I did Doma Castle earlier this week with a Samurai who felt the need to point out the in game significance of the colour choices, the enemies we were fighting and the real world similarites to Japanese culture in everything from the decorations to the choice of musical instrument for the bgm and explain the significance of it all.

While I'm sure there are those who would love a guided tour of Doma Castle, I was there just to blast through it for the XP. Those two thing are diametrically opposed. By the time we'd spend half an hour or so in there, and barely made it to the second boss, I'd had enough and went to vote kick him. Enough of the group wanted him to stick around, so I just gave up and rage quit the group.

The game just seems to appeal predominantly to an audience with different preferences to my own. That doesn't mean there aren't the srs bsns types there too, only they seem to be a tiny minority of the overall player base.

I admit I may be wrong there, but I very rarely seem to run into people who want the same from the game as I do.



I'd imagine most PS4 owners have it hooked up to a TV close to their sofa. A keyboard is hardly a sofa friendly peripheral - Particularly if you're going to be using it for long periods of time. It's best to make sure you've got a hard surface for it and are able to use it without putting pressure on wrists or elbows. I can't see the majority of PS4 players doing it, if I'm honest.

Holy, I've never even met someone that started explain everything ever in a game, hahaha. Think the guy was a bit obsessive about the culture.

[TacTican]

One very important thing I'd like to add to the Moofia Boss' excellent post, and to me the deciding factor that made me drop WoW for FFXIV:

- In FFXIV, one character can do everything. A single character can be any job in the game merely by switching out weapons and gear. You want to be a paladin? Equip your sword and shield. Rather heal instead? Equip your orrery and you're now an astrologian. Need a break and want to craft instead? Equip your saw and you're now a carpenter. Furthermore, crafting and gathering professions are full-fledged classes in FFXIV rather than side occupations as in WoW, complete with levels, exp, gearing, rotations, and gameplay that ranges from fairly simple (Botany/Mining) to decently complex with challenging endgame (all of the crafters) to old Sierra adventure game levels of obscurity and complication with endgame requiring so much knowledge less than .01% of the playerbase can do it (Fisher). This eliminates the need for alts for a vast majority of purposes and as a result I think my character identity is far, far stronger in FFXIV than it ever was in WoW.

[Granyala]

I think my character identity is far, far stronger in FFXIV than it ever was in WoW.

Absolutely. It's fantastic that one Kitten can rule them all.

[Rogalicus]

- In FFXIV, one character can do everything.

Personally I wouldn't call it a pro. This leads to stupid stuff like massive roegadyn in puny scholar clothes or frail miqo'te in full armor and with massive zweihander. You are locked out of gearing on your other classes due to weekly cooldowns. Unlike other FFs, job level and character level aren't separate, so you still need to level everything from scratch with no real positives. If WoW had account bound reputations, there'd be no downsides in their system compared to FFXIV.

[Granyala]

Personally I wouldn't call it a pro. This leads to stupid stuff like massive roegadyn in puny scholar clothes or frail miqo'te in full armor and with massive zweihander.

Uhuh.

Do you need me to continue?

Agreed on the cooldowns regarding weekly currency / raid lockouts etc though you can still level multiple chars with different classes the old fashion way.

You just don't HAVE TO. FF-XIV gives you options.
Which is awesome for people like me.

[Rogalicus]

Uhuh.

Do you need me to continue?

You have option to create idiotic combinations in WoW. In FFXIV your non-standard size character will look idiotic with some classes whether you want it or not.

you can still level multiple chars with different classes the old fashion way.

Yes, but it will be infinitely worse than WoW because nothing is shared between characters.

[StrawberryZebra]

As for that SAM I've unfortunately never met anyone like that, people in dungeons are usually either mute outside the usual greeting and tyfp at the end or just use anime emotes every so often through the run. He sounds like a cool dude to chat with tbh.

It was a Leveling roulette and only two person there were actually pulling their weight. The other two members of the group were off chatting, admiring the scenary and generally just not playing the game in any meaningful capacity. Which is why we kept wiping, the other one of those people was the healer, who kept letting the tank die because they were busy typing.

For someone like myself, that's a broken game state. It took me leaving the group and finding a better one to fix that issue. I'd spent 20 minutes in the queue and got stuck with some clown who was wasting more of my time.

This is not true anymore. Any serious M+ group, for example, is going to expect the healer to be DPSing. Holy Paladin DPS is actually insane with the right essences (I'm talking 120k burst dps insane).

Also, I'd be careful advertising dpsing as a healer as a good thing. Many of us hate the concept...if I'm a healer I want to heal. It really bothers me that this has creeped its way into WoW.

As someone who plays a Paladin (Usually Prot, but I do moonlight as Holy), I much prefer Healer DPSing in WoW to FF14. I mentioned this recently in this thread, but the WoW macros and UI setup are just so much more user friendly when it comes to things like Target of Target, Mouseover and generally being able to customise how spells cast without needing to constantly change targets and with proper ability queuing even when using macros.

You're liable to accidentally tab to the wrong target and start attacking, which can be a bit of a disaster with some M+ affixes. Especially since you want to be in the thick of things as a Holy Paladin.

Casting Glare, then wanting to switch to your tank for an instant, then back to your target for another glare is a lot of button presses for what should be a simple action.

It's different than WoW. Enough for some people who don't care about RNG grinds or raid logging to find it a better alternative. If you are just looking for WoW why not play WoW?

Oh how I would love to be able to raid log in WoW. Sadly, there's far too much addition crap you have to do as well. It took me almost a month of being on lockdown just to catch up to where I should be in terms of Essences, Cloak, Corruption and to clear Ny'alotha.

They've really gone overboard with all the extra game systems in BFA, which directly translates to time spent doing menial bullshit that's long since stopped being interesting or challenging.

Personally I wouldn't call it a pro.

I'm inclined to agree here. The biggest pro, for me, is not having to go through all the unlocks and story every time I want to change role. I really didn't care for the story at all. No way I'd ever want to do it again.

On the other hand, it does present issues of it's own. Not only gearing, but the repeatable sources of good XP are thin on the ground. Roulettes are good, of course, but FATE's are left wanting and POTD/HoH get very samey. I'd be happy just to find a solid spot and grind things out, but that's obviously not an intended play pattern.

It's quite clear that they want you to pick a main job - Or at least a main role that can share gear. I'd equate being able to switch Jobs with being able to switch specs in other MMO's. A White Mage is always a White Mage, but a WoW Priest can be many different things. In that regard, having to level up a second spec, even with the XP bonus, does feel very flat. You can also share most gear between specs in WoW too, Azerite gear excluded, so having to level up and re-gear completely from scratch doesn't ever happen in WoW the same way it does in FF14.

[Granyala]

I'm inclined to agree here. The biggest pro, for me, is not having to go through all the unlocks and story every time I want to change role. I really didn't care for the story at all. No way I'd ever want to do it again.

Is there anything you actually like about the game? From what you're writing you do seem to be barking up the wrong tree here.

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For someone like myself, that's a broken game state. It took me leaving the group and finding a better one to fix that issue. I'd spent 20 minutes in the queue and got stuck with some clown who was wasting more of my time.

As if you never had a group in WoW that didn't fare well. Esp if you played in the old days, when dungeons were a bit meaner than they are now.

The risk of getting incompetent players is the roll of the dice you accept when queuing random.
There is a very easy fix for that: an active friend list/guild.

[Nasuuna]

so im doing a full story playthrough on an alt and just finished stormblood

have to agree that heavensward is far far better

[Val the Moofia Boss]

so im doing a full story playthrough on an alt and just finished stormblood

have to agree that heavensward is far far better

Eh

Heavensward was good but by no means great. It has far and away the weakest villains in FFXIV (some evil pope dude, some evil dragon, and some evil black robed organization XIII member who laughs manically). It has incredibly generic aesthetics. Dragonsong and the Heavensward melody are played far, far too many times, to the point that they become annoying. The 3.0 story also comes to a screeching halt after the Vault, with the story not picking up until 3.1.

That said, there was a lot about HW I really liked. HW has good characters (Aymeric, Estinien, Alphinaud, Haucherfant, and Count Fortemps. I thought Ysalye was boring) and and a bland setting but it benefits from having great execution. The framing device of the narration at the beginning of each zone being a quote from Edmont Fortemps' journal was interesting, and lent an operatic feel to the story. I particularly liked the campfire scene, where everybody got a moment to breathe and hang out. The segment where the WoL and Estinien go off to kill Nidhogg was HYPE, and the scene where Estinien kills Nidhogg and then his armor becomes stained with blood while Stone and Steel was playing... ah so hype. I liked being able to slow down for a moment and have dinner with Aymeric. The 3.3 finale was executed perfectly. I loved when you defeat Nidhogg in battle and Estinien regains consciousness and asks you to kill him, but you and Alphinaud won't let another friend die and run over to help him and try wrestling the eyes off, and Estinien shouts at you to leave but you and Alphinaud are trying and trying and it's not coming off, but then someone lays their hands down on the eyes and you look up and it's Ysalye and Haucherfant. The closure from seeing Estinien leave his helmet behind, and then Count Fortemps finishes his book, leans back in his chair, and lets out a sigh of relief.

I think Heavensward gets a lot of praise because it came out right after the 2.X cycle. During 2.X, people had to slog through a lot of filler for a little bit of plot progression. Then HW came out and then suddenly people got a lot of plot progression and a little filler, so it seemed amazing in comparison. Then when SB came out, people were expecting Stormblood to blow them away like HW did, but there was no perceived huge jump. People went from a lot of plot with little filler... to a lot of plot with little filler. So people were underwhelmed. Had Stormblood came first, I think people would have been a lot more favorable.

Stormblood has good characters (Alisae/Raubahn/Zenos/Hien/Gosetsu, Lyse is good at points and aggravating at others, Yugiri is okay), great aesthetics and great music (I'm glad that they didn't hammer in the same melody over and over again like in HW). Gyr Abania is pretty bland so I'm glad that the entire expansion wasn't centered in it. It's three maps of tan, hot deserts. Would've been nice if we could have traded one or two of those samey desert maps for something else. Othard is gorgeous.

Stormblood suffers from being a setup chapter where nothing major can happen. The Empire can't be truly defeated until the end of the FFXIV saga, and none of the main characters can die until the end either (presumably in 6.0), so we instead get a chapter in which nothing of consequence really happens. We fight over a border state and the Imperial forces only lose to us because the villain intentionally hamstrung his own forces on purpose and does literally nothing to stop you. Zenos comes in and whoops your ass and they make a big deal about needing to open up a second front to thin Imperial forces in the West... but then you go to Doma, free it, come back, and somehow, despite the strategic situation in Gyr Abania having not changed one bit, the Alliance is now inexplicably able to fight the Imperials? Why did you guys send me to Doma again? After 3.3, people were expecting to have an impactful conclusion to the Stormblood story in 4.3, but again, there was nothing really at stake in Stormblood because nothing major can happen until the end, so 4.3 was sorta "well, okay...". 4.3 Zenos was a cool arc villain, but then he just comes back. They seem to be setting him up as the evil counterpart to the WoL and one of the final villains alongside Elidibus and Zodiark, but they haven't really explored or developed Zenos enough for me to care about him in such a meaningful way.

[Granyala]

so im doing a full story playthrough on an alt and just finished stormblood

have to agree that heavensward is far far better

I liked both, just had the feeling that Stormblood tried to do too much too quickly.
Also, Val is right: it was mostly a setup chapter for what is to come.

[StrawberryZebra]

The risk of getting incompetent players is the roll of the dice you accept when queuing random.

The issue wasn't that they were bad - Bad players are inconsequential for the most part. I've played with Bad players before, I'll play with bad players again. I've been a bad player myself, so I know there's hope for them. There are the odd one or two that are so bad they're a negative, but those situations are both extremely rare and absolutely hilarious.

The issue was they were there for reasons other than to clear the content. They weren't being rude, offensive or trying to spoil the game for anyone else, however they were also not, strictly speaking, playing the game either. They were spending more far more time taking screenshots and chatting than in combat.

There's just no way to functionally proceed at that point. Half the group is doing one thing and the other half something else. There needed to be a split for either half to get anywhere.

[Granyala]

They were spending more far more time taking screenshots and chatting than in combat.

You must be either on a really weird server or you are not truthful.
I play the game since ARR and run most of my content with at least 2 random people.
I never encountered behavior you described.

[Ashleyxoxo]

I did it! I finished A Realm Reborn! It took a week of nonstop playing, with my only breaks being eating and sleeping, but I did it! 4 days of leveling and 3 days of 2.1-2.5.

Heavensward awaits!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I did it! I finished A Realm Reborn! It took a week of nonstop playing, with my only breaks being eating and sleeping, but I did it! 4 days of leveling and 3 days of 2.1-2.5.

Heavensward awaits!

Favorite characters thus far? Story moments? Predictions?