FFXIV the worst game I've tried in a while

[neocount]

Okay... sorry, but if the quantity or order in which you push buttons while playing a game is what makes the game fun (or boring) for you, then the game itself has failed to be entertaining.

[Liaku]

I apologize for the book. PLD has 33 buttons. Of those buttons:

• 9 are Weaponskills (GCDs)
• 20 are Abilities (oGCDs)
• 4 are Spells (GCDs)

Of the 9 Weaponskills only 2 of them offer unique effects. Shield Lob (ranged physical attack) and Goring Blade (DoT). Every other Weaponskill either only does damage, or does damage and restores MP, which is a superfluous resource on PLD anyway in EVERY single content form in it's current implementation. Shield Lob one of the "unique" Weaponskills may as well not exist given how useless it is in actual gameplay. There are technically 10 Weaponskills, but one is replaced by a trait later on.

Going to skip ahead to Spells since they'll be quicker. Of the 4 spells they're all pretty unique to a degree barring Holy Circle and Confiteor, but Confiteor is different enough to qualify due to it's requirements. Clemency rarely sees use, but is still a good niche ability. I'll touch base more later on my thoughts about Holy Spirit vs. Holy Circle.

Of the 20 Abilities I find 6 of them to be redundant or completely irrelevant from a gameplay standpoint:

• Fight or Flight is a flat damage buff. Does literally nothing for gameplay. You could simply bake the 25% damage in with ~35-40% uptime across physical damage abilities and I genuinely wouldn't notice a difference. To people who don't parse? You could remove it and they probably wouldn't even notice.
• Iron Will is a tank stance and I think tank stances are dumb. They're dumb because they're binary and offer little to no gameplay decisions. I will touch more on this later.
• Spirits Within is a plain ass damage oGCD. It literally does nothing special. You simply press it on CD even if you're not at max HP. You sometimes feel bad hitting the button because you're low on health, but optimal healing dictates that you shouldn't be topped off unless you need to. Bad design.
• Circle of Scorn is another plain ass damage oGCD. It just adds a DoT and is AOE this time instead, but is still mindless press on CD.
• Divine Veil is needlessly annoying to use and overlaps with Passage of Arms in it's utility.
• Rampart is just flat % DR, like Sentinel. One is enough, don't need 2. Yeah yeah, tankbusters blah blah, will cover more on that later.

Now since you asked me how I would condense them I'd start by moving some GCDs to oGCDs and consolidating duplicate powers. In fact, the entire crux of my design idea is that oGCDs would be made much more meaningful and impactful rather than binary presses and decisionless items and I would tie it to meaningful Oath gauge interactions and opportunity costs:

• Shield Bash/Low Blow/Intervene - I would scrap Low Blow and Intervene entirely. I'd then add Intervenes mobility function into Shield Bash so that it doubly serves as a CC and mobility power and give it an Oath cost. I'd also remove the damage component from it entirely and make it an oGCD.
• Arm's Length - Scrap it and bake it into Sheltron. In 9/10 scenarios you have knockback when you need it because encounters are tuned with the cooldown in mind, so it being shorter is little consequence and all but irrelevant in anything but the highest content. Plus it kinda fits in the PLD theme of "immovable object".
• Intervention - Could honestly go; just bring back old Cover, make it more responsive/more range and put meaningful opportunity costs inside the Oath gauge.
• Divine Veil - I'd honestly scrap this. I think you could in theory take this functionality and bake it into Passage of Arms and decouple it from channeling. I.e. PLD could throw their shield at a targetable location and it generates the field effect there. Shorten the cooldown, and make a compelling Oath opportunity cost.
• Rampart - kill it. Shorten Sentinels cooldown and lower it's effect accordingly. Bake some extra utility into it to make up for it. For instance maybe increasing Block chance and allowing Blocks to lets you use combo enders regardless of where you are in your chain for the duration.
• Provoke - kill it. Bake it's effect into Shield Lob. Make Shield Lob an oGCD.
• Interject - I would kill it, bake it's effect into Spirits Within (heh ARR, except apply silence early on in the animation not after a 5 and a half minutes for you ARR PLDs who remember coil), removing the damage component entirely and maybe add an additional boon for successfully interrupting something.
• Reprisal - kill it, I would actually bring back Shield Swipe and have it be an old styled active mitigation mechanic where perhaps upon hitting something with Shield Swipe (honestly I'd probably call it Reprisal cause I like that better) it applies the Reprisal effect (tuned appropriately). Something to give a PLD a little more control on incoming damage.
• Holy Spirit - I understand the need for a ST/AOE differentiation but given their identical cost structure I honestly don't see much of a need, especially considering how infrequently encounters use AOE outside of dungeon trash. I'd honestly posit they just use the normal target scaling mechanics other jobs use and scrap Holy Spirit.

I just think FF14 can do better by adding more depth and synergy in the job toolkits and as such will be able to make more compelling encounter design decisions as a result. Some of this touches more than what you asked for, but I have a lot of ideas regarding tanking philosophy, encounter design, and general job design. Speaking personally I don't think tanks need a bunch of different binary defensive cooldowns, but rather a single engaging and complex cooldown to manage alongside a brainless short duration minor cooldown (like Sheltron) and maybe one old styled active mitigation (aka maintenance) mitigation mechanic. I don't think tank stances are needed and can be done by actively managing it (via weaponskill trees/oGCDs designed for that function). This would also help get rid of shirk which I think is an insanely stupid ability.

If you want to read an old thread I made back in early 2018 for fun that has some of these ideas in slightly different detail feel free. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...Paladin-rework. These are exercises I like to do when work is slow.

This was always a big complaint of mine, too. There were too many fire-and-forget buffs and a lot of "push button receive damage" abilities with no interactions (Fleche on RDM was always my go-to example). It seems like with some of the newer jobs and job reworks that they're getting better about it though. I think DNC is a wonderful example and one of the best designed classes in that game or really any other game I've played (the only gripe I have being that any amount of Haste causes you to clip GCDs with Standard Step and Technical Step. I haven't played in a few patches so I don't know if they ever addressed that). Devilment is a little fire-and-forget, but other than that I can't think of any throwaway abilities.

[Katchii]

Okay... sorry, but if the quantity or order in which you push buttons while playing a game is what makes the game fun (or boring) for you, then the game itself has failed to be entertaining.

Not necessarily.

If combat plays a large role in the overall game play loop, being entertained, occupied and engaged during that time is essential to the overall experience of the game.

If you only had to use one button in combat (in an MMO like FFXIV, mind you...FPS games like Doom and Halo use mainly 2 buttons and are just fine, but that's a completely different kind of game) it would be incredibly boring.

[neocount]

Not necessarily.

If combat plays a large role in the overall game play loop, being entertained, occupied and engaged during that time is essential to the overall experience of the game.

If you only had to use one button in combat (in an MMO like FFXIV, mind you...FPS games like Doom and Halo use mainly 2 buttons and are just fine, but that's a completely different kind of game) it would be incredibly boring.

My assertion is that combat can be engaging and fun independent of "rotation". Encounter mechanics, movement, visual components, even story elements - these things (I realize this is all subjective, by the way) are vastly more important (to me) than how many buttons I'm pushing or in what order.

[Onikaroshi]

My assertion is that combat can be engaging and fun independent of "rotation". Encounter mechanics, movement, visual components, even story elements - these things (I realize this is all subjective, by the way) are vastly more important (to me) than how many buttons I'm pushing or in what order.

I need both, I like how many buttons FF has and how good MOST of the animations are.

If a button has a crappy animation I'd rather get something better though.

[Katchii]

My assertion is that combat can be engaging and fun independent of "rotation". Encounter mechanics, movement, visual components, even story elements - these things (I realize this is all subjective, by the way) are vastly more important (to me) than how many buttons I'm pushing or in what order.

You need both, though.

I understand the hierarchy you're discussing, but both parts need to be there. Great encounter design with super shallow class design with only one button would get boring nearly as quickly as the reverse, because not every encounter will be the big curated/ designed ones. Open world/ basic quest mobs will still be a thing so the combat during those simple battles will still need to be more engaging than just single buttons, or whatever.

[EllieNora]

Okay... sorry, but if the quantity or order in which you push buttons while playing a game is what makes the game fun (or boring) for you, then the game itself has failed to be entertaining.

Not sure about that chieftain. I resubbed to WoW to play with friends a few months ago and always wanted to play a Demon Hunter. I was bored within a couple of weeks, especially since I had a viable talent option that just allowed me to sit there and auto attack to gain fury. Demon Hunter is one of the strongest classes in the game across all content, but I got bored of the afk fury generation into spending it into having nothing to do again except watch my character slashslash. Sure I did sick damage but it was boring so I went and made a Monk instead so I had more to do.

[mario710]

This game actively encourages the development of carpal tunnel.

World of Warcraft continues to be progressive by reducing the amount of buttons to press in favor of customer health.

Square Enix still has a cost focused business model instead of a customer focused one.

[ryanmahaffe]

I am level 50 now, having a pretty good time actually. Its pretty fun. Don't think I will main it or anything over WoW but its fun to play until Shadowlands comes out.

[EllieNora]

I am level 50 now, having a pretty good time actually. Its pretty fun. Don't think I will main it or anything over WoW but its fun to play until Shadowlands comes out.

That's actually how the game is designed to be played. Get your fill and then unsub and do something else. A lot of people who have been here since the beginning still fail to grasp this concept. You can play it as a main MMO, but you're going to have to reach a bit because it's not designed to be played all year around. Accept you're gonna have to do a bit of old content soloing, meaningless achievement hunting, maxing out all your dow/dol, doing all the other minor bits of shit like collecting TT cards, learning Verminion, getting into the LP PvP scene etc and at worst case scenario, repeating bosses you're already loot locked too just to help other people who are near a clear but need 8 reasonably competant people in one group.

[CptEgo]

That's actually how the game is designed to be played. Get your fill and then unsub and do something else. A lot of people who have been here since the beginning still fail to grasp this concept. You can play it as a main MMO, but you're going to have to reach a bit because it's not designed to be played all year around. Accept you're gonna have to do a bit of old content soloing, meaningless achievement hunting, maxing out all your dow/dol, doing all the other minor bits of shit like collecting TT cards, learning Verminion, getting into the LP PvP scene etc and at worst case scenario, repeating bosses you're already loot locked too just to help other people who are near a clear but need 8 reasonably competant people in one group.

I have a problem that when I play a MMO, it becomes my entire life and it's all I think about day and night until I get a depression

[Gorsameth]

I have a problem that when I play a MMO, it becomes my entire life and it's all I think about day and night until I get a depression

Have you considered getting professional help to deal with your addiction problem?

[Kazgrel]

Sounds like OP needs to play a healer here, seeing that their dps "rotation" consists of 4-5 buttons tops (and dpsing as a healer here is encouraged by design unless you like to afk /follow through stuff).

[sephrinx]

I agree with the title, but disagree with the content of the post.

FFXIV is so fucking mindbogglingly boring and easy it's insane. The leveling is among the worst leveling experience in any MMO I've ever played. The story quest stuff is complete garbage.

ITS ALL FETCH QUESTS!!! All you do is teleport around constantly and right click a bucket, fight 4 mobs, and then teleport around more. I cannot believe that people praise this games story, it's not good. The entire leveling experience is absolutely rock bottom. I've played many MMO's and it's by far the worst in every way.

It's really unfortunate too because the end game looks fun, and the classes look interesting to play. I just cannot stomach the leveling. You can't just skip the story quests either, they're mandatory. I don't believe it.

[Katchii]

I agree with the title, but disagree with the content of the post.

FFXIV is so fucking mindbogglingly boring and easy it's insane. The leveling is among the worst leveling experience in any MMO I've ever played. The story quest stuff is complete garbage.

ITS ALL FETCH QUESTS!!! All you do is teleport around constantly and right click a bucket, fight 4 mobs, and then teleport around more. I cannot believe that people praise this games story, it's not good. The entire leveling experience is absolutely rock bottom. I've played many MMO's and it's by far the worst in every way.

It's really unfortunate too because the end game looks fun, and the classes look interesting to play. I just cannot stomach the leveling. You can't just skip the story quests either, they're mandatory. I don't believe it.

The story isn't bad, you just don't like it. Which is why you see so many people praising it, but there are also plenty of people like you who dislike it.

I'm not disagreeing with anything else you said, by the way, just the story part as I personally enjoy it immensely.

[Kuja]

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of buttons as well. At level 35 or so I already had so many buttons to press that I had to start making lots of keybinds. But it's probably just because in wow I never had to keybind excessively even at max level, except with monk.

[Rekkis]

The story isn't bad, you just don't like it. Which is why you see so many people praising it, but there are also plenty of people like you who dislike it.

I disagree.

The story isn't good, you just like it. Which is why you see so many people disliking it, but there are also plenty of people like you who like it.

[Poppincaps]

I disagree.

The story isn't good, you just like it. Which is why you see so many people disliking it, but there are also plenty of people like you who like it.

There are far more people who think the story is amazing than the opposite. Although I'd imagine most of the people who dislike the story have only played ARR, which is admittedly pretty average.

[Justpassing]

Man nobody plays FFXIV for the game, it's pretty much:

1. Dressing up a cat or a bunny girl and / or ogling other cat or bunny girls in Limsa
2. Hook-ups (Mostly homosexual)
3. ERP

Hell, you can condense nr. 2 and 3 and not lose a beat. Nobody in this game thinks oh hey I'm gonna log in, do all roulettes every day and progress Shiva pointlessly for months. After levelling up what you want and gearing up, what you do is: Sub every once in a while, nut here and there and then cancel the sub & repeat. It's less of a game and more of a sexual medium.

[tronkles]

There are far more people who think the story is amazing than the opposite. Although I'd imagine most of the people who dislike the story have only played ARR, which is admittedly pretty average.

How would you know? I'd wager the amount of people quitting before level 60 is higher than the amount of people who finished the MSQ