What problems do you have with Final Fantasy 14?

[Necromantic]

Yes, it is anecdotal but the consensus is what it is. I'm don't like to say anyone is being dishonest but when someone says something and you know for a fact it's wrong, you kind of look at your screen with a :/ face. You don't want to be judgmental because there could be a good reason. Not everyone who says something that isn't true is doing it to deliberately be dishonest. Sometimes, they're just repeating what someone else has said, have an extremely low sample size or are in the "new and shiny" phase.

I think LFR gets a bad reputation and social comments make people exacerbate it. You are right about M+. It's not as bad as this game's sub but it is bad.

- - - Updated - - -

So in essence people can't be dicks in game because then they get reported and banned, but since people on the internet are dicks they find other ways to be dicks to each other.

Am I the only one that finds this approach of FF kinda childish? "Don't be mean to each other! Or else...!" What are we? Seven years old? I don't need a game to tell me to behave... I can take a guy being an ass to me, I shoot back and that's that. Not like I am ever gonna see that person again.

There are limits of course and some stuff needs to be sanctioned, but geez, we are grownups and should be able to handle a normal level of unfriendliness. FF is definately going too far and treats people like sensible snowflakes. Hearing that their videos can't be voted on or commented kinda makes me think that that is the idea. They try to opress negative behaviour, but it only leads to it spilling in other ways.

Pretty much.

I'm a rare breed of person who is respectful to others. Yes, the odds are that I will never meet you in real life and even if I did, I would never know that you are Raisei from the MMO Champion forums however, that's no reason for me to be rude or disrespectful to you. You didn't do anything to me.

If I didn't like someone's video, I'll "dislike" and possibly say why. "You talked a lot about XXX but didn't show it for those who are visual learners. Instead, you showed videos of you flying around". Or I may not say anything at all. I don't think replying with "Your video is garbage, unsubscribe to the internet" really adds value.

Yes, we're all adults and learn to grow thick skin but man, some people are just unnecessarily rude. Internet tough-guy syndrome is real.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Pretty much ever race (except the cat dudes) is a human with stuff added to it, and the only non-human race is male-only. Plus, you can just tell it's a Jrpg. Just look at how the characters look, plus your player character just does these really 'fake' looking expressions (shocked open mouth look, head tilt, shaking her/his head) which I just... am annoyed by.

Plus, no trolls , and the elves have weird looking ears

[Baconeggcheese]

Class design related things mostly.

The 2.5s gcd with ogcds feels slow and awful, it at best gets passable but never feels good to me. One of those peeves I have when new players are asking about it and the FF14 community swears up and down that everything feels great and EVEN FASTER THAN WOW! once you level up which is absolutely untrue. Just leads people to disappointment later when they realize that isn't the case.

Other thing is how homogenized everything is.

Oh and finally the bloat for bloats sake. Lots of things like 3 button combos that could easily be 1 rotating button with no change in gameplay.

[Necromantic]

It's weird that you keep saying "the consensus". Where is this idea of there being a consensus coming from? You've got people saying WoW is nice, you've got people saying XIV is nice, you've got people saying both suck, and in the end it's all anecdotal and subjective.

I've always had pretty good experiences in XIV compared to WoW. The only exception would probably be pugging raids, which is a shitshow in basically any game, so I don't really hold that against XIV in particular.

As I mentioned, this is literally the only forum I've ever posted on where more than a couple people are saying it's a nice community. Which is the reason why I'm a bit skeptical. Heck, even in other forums, when you see someone say it's a great community, 9 out of 10 of those people have not even obtained their first job stone.

Just a strange observation...

I'm not trying to tell that guy that every single person in this game is horrible because that's not true either. There are good and helpful people. Even in other forums where a new guy asks for help and he gets 15 replies laughing at him or telling him to go play another game, you'll get a couple people who actually point them in the right direction.

[Pakheth]

Having bunny/cat ears is furry? That's like a mild cosplay at best. Hrotghar could be somewhat counted to "appeal" to furries, but all other races are basically just cosplaying humans. If either FF14 or WoW would "appeal" to or target furries, it would 100% be WoW, i mean Vulpera, Tauren and Worgen ARE actual animals, including fur and animal head structure and all of it made humanized, while a Miqote is just a human with a buttplug and cat ear hairband at best. I'm absolutely not into furry/scaly stuff, but even i play an Au Ra (the dragon people), simply because they're a bit more interesting than just plain humans.

If anything, FF14's races are "too human", since we have pretty much "human with cat ears", "small human", "bigger human", "elf ear human", "human with horns" and "human with bunny ears", with the only exception being the Hrotgar and those are the most unpopular race (probably due to a mix of being only male and looking kinda silly for stuff like dancer or white mage)
Also, a few random people in this thread going "i hate weeb stuff" isn't really an argument, because it's pretty clear that those might just "hate" on anything japanese looking and just go "it's just shit weeb stuff" from the get go

This.
The only race that would count as a furry is Hrothgar, the others are as you say just humans with animal features while true furry are animals with human features. This is why many furries instead prefer the term 'anthro' as in anthropomorphic animal as it better explains the concept.
WoW has true furries in the form of Tauren, Vulpera and Worgen, not to mention all the beast races like Dragonkin and Saberon.

And that is actually my complaint about the game. I find the races to just be humans with a bit of makeup and why would I want to play a boring human?

Also I have beef with the Viera being an inferior version from the FF12 Vieras. They just took a regular human model they slapped bunny ears on top of the head, instead of more on the side where it would make sense and how the Viera in FF12 have them. Not to mention they are a lot less slim and much more curvy while all the FF12 Viera were very lanky and tall looking, giving them a very graceful presence. A bit like the classic high elves. Graceful but deadly and swift if provoked.

And I am probably gonna get some flak for this but I never felt the Viera in FF12 were as sexualised. Yes, they wore very skimpy armor but their demeanor wasn't 'lusty' in the way they have been portrayed in promo material for FF14. It just rubs me the wrong way and I say that as someone who has even cosplayed as Fran several years ago.

Also the male Viera is the laziest male race I have ever seen and the ear placement literally looks like they are sprouting from their hair. It looks ridiculous.

[Yoshimiko]

What price tag are you talking about here?

Skipping MSQ, was refering to being on railroads unless you paid for that. Worded it poorly though.

[Katchii]

Skipping MSQ, was refering to being on railroads unless you paid for that. Worded it poorly though.

Ah gotcha, yeah. That is unfortunate. Even after you pay for it you're still on rails, though at least all the way up through Endwaker because that's just how they've designed it and the only story skips you can currently buy only get you passed Stormblood, and once Endwalker launches, passed Shadowbringers. So you'll still be on rails for the most current expansion.

I personally enjoy the story and can't wrap my head around people caring so little about it that they want to skip it, but I also completely understand why it's frustrating to have the story be gating your progress into content you really want to do, or even just gating your ability to play with friends because they're at a completely different part of the story than you.

I wish they'd divorce the content (or most of it at least) from the story so people could experience each one at their own pace.

[Wrecktangle]

As I mentioned, this is literally the only forum I've ever posted on where more than a couple people are saying it's a nice community. Which is the reason why I'm a bit skeptical. Heck, even in other forums, when you see someone say it's a great community, 9 out of 10 of those people have not even obtained their first job stone.

Just a strange observation...

I'm not trying to tell that guy that every single person in this game is horrible because that's not true either. There are good and helpful people. Even in other forums where a new guy asks for help and he gets 15 replies laughing at him or telling him to go play another game, you'll get a couple people who actually point them in the right direction.

Another poster already commented on it. FF14's community can certainly be good to you. It can also be really bad. Each person has their own beliefs and tolerances and that's why the topic is impossible to reconcile.

If someone curses at me, I don't get offended. If someone gives me unsolicited advice, I don't get mad. If someone calls me out for a mistake, I don't make excuses or complain. I respect and value other players time and effort and therefore I always aim to be the best I can. I never once get upset about someone being bad at the game as long as they're trying (effort =/= skill). However, not all players are like me.

I get mad when people spread misinformation as gospel. I get mad when someone joins a matchmade duty with the pure intent to be lazy simply because something is easy/trivial/irrelevant. I get mad when people don't respect other peoples time or effort or make excuses for failures.

This is why I tend to have a lot of friction with the alleged majority playerbase of FF14. Most players are just playing some fantasy sim and want to put in no effort after a long days work. We don't get along and that's ok, but it certainly puts a hamper on my experience. This is also why the community is touted as being great, because if you're a part of that echo chamber you're included and recognized and that feels good, especially when the major competitor (WoW) is the complete opposite where personal responsibility is key.

With that said though, it's also why a lot of people say it's not that nice either. If you're not included, they will berate you, gang up on you, ostracize you, and organize campaigns to vilify you. It's downright vile the stuff I've seen the "community" do to outsiders. It's hilariously hypocritical.

Wow's community isn't perfect by any means, but it does a great job of keeping like minded players together much better than FF14 does. So much so, that in over a decade of playing WoW short of a few mad tyrant guild leaders I can't name a single bad experience. I don't have to or need to ever step foot in heroics or LFR so I'm never stuck with players who would annoy me. Sure I carry some QUESTIONABLE players through Heroic raids every now and then, but that's easy to do and not an issue whereas trying to do that in Savage or EX's just causes the entire party to wipe over and over, while they type hehe lol sorry xd. It was cute the first 2 times. Not the 6th...

[Unholyvamp]

Funny. I play FFXIV and think the same thing of wow. Except my points are different. Let's see

1.) WoW is toxic as fuck and for elitists.

2.) I play FFXIV. Cause it is not WoW.

It's fine as long as it ain't for weebs.

Anything else i can handle

[Rootsbum]

I wouldn't be worried, having played FFXIV off and on since its inception I find all the "bad community" posts extremely baffling because I can count the problems ive had with the community on 1 hand still. Compared to WoW where 1 hand wouldnt get me through a M+ session.

Im lvl 76 now and joined my first PVP-battle.
All my buttons ended up where they shouldnt be, I was slaughtered and didnt contribute at all
When I asked "how do I leave this place? My buttons are messed up and I havent gotten a single heal in and I just keep on dying" I got a "Just stick around, we got your back. Only 10 min left anyways =)"
Im a big fan of WoW, but that would NEVER happen in a random BG in WoW
So leveling 76 levels and not bumping into ANYONE who acted toxic, angry or crazy for any reason; thats something.
(And I have chatted with everyone I ever bumped into in FFXIV)

Odin EU is bae

[DeltrusDisc]

It used to irk me that some scenes were voice acted while others weren't but I kinda got used to that.

What does bother me is how some speak of the FF14 community as being the purest and most benevolent community out there, when they are just as likely to skin you alive if you have a dissenting opinion of the game. Yes I am being hyperbolic, of course no one is going to kill me for criticizing the game, but it sure gets people worked up.

This was discussed either here on mmo-champ or on a Facebook group for FF14, I forget, but basically, IN-GAME the community is super chill... because they have to be, from what I've learned. Apparently SE isn't afraid to ban people for being mean, so most are nice out of fear, which kinda saddened me when I learned this. Always thought the playerbase just seemed nicer, but then they have their typical superiority complex over WoW/WoW players, because lOl BuT tHe GrApHiCs

I love both games. I love the graphics in both games.

You know what else I love? Zelda OoT and MM and Star Wars Shadows of the Empire. Who gives a shit about graphics? Oh, WoW is an actively online game versus these games are console games of the past? It's still on an older engine. The fact WoW is still so successful should say something. The graphics don't make the game and I wish people would recognize that fact.

[Twen]

This was discussed either here on mmo-champ or on a Facebook group for FF14, I forget, but basically, IN-GAME the community is super chill... because they have to be, from what I've learned. Apparently SE isn't afraid to ban people for being mean, so most are nice out of fear, which kinda saddened me when I learned this. Always thought the playerbase just seemed nicer, but then they have their typical superiority complex over WoW/WoW players, because lOl BuT tHe GrApHiCs

I doubt anyone would actually act nice out of fear of getting banned, as for that it's enough to just not say anything. Unless in this case being nice simply meant not saying mean things.

[Stormspark]

None really. It's a great game, absolutely the best MMO right now. It is time consuming...I'm not going to say there's too much content though. It's just sometimes I don't feel like going through huge numbers of side quests (I eventually do them). The question is is more "do I want to dedicate the time to Endwalker". Even though I don't really do MMO's anymore (I play FFXIV like a single player game for the most part, I don't do the endgame grind, and the only grouping I really do is for dungeons/etc), I REALLY want to see the story for Endwalker so I'm sure I will play it.

[Dakhath]

I doubt anyone would actually act nice out of fear of getting banned, as for that it's enough to just not say anything. Unless in this case being nice simply meant not saying mean things.

It's actually quite true. I've spoken with a lot of people who say its not even worth correcting someone because they will just report you.

https://massivelyop.com/2019/12/18/f...on-his-stream/

You don't even have to be "rude" in game to face punishment. Ill save a response or two and say that I'm not an advocate for shitting on someone because of low damage, but this is still pretty heavy handed.

[Twen]

It's actually quite true. I've spoken with a lot of people who say its not even worth correcting someone because they will just report you.

https://massivelyop.com/2019/12/18/f...on-his-stream/

You don't even have to be "rude" in game to face punishment. Ill save a response or two and say that I'm not an advocate for shitting on someone because of low damage, but this is still pretty heavy handed.

Honestly I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing with me or arguing against. This is in line with what I said; if you fear a ban you can just say nothing, rather than actually act nice. Therefore I don't see that fear as motivation to be friendly, unless we're counting saying nothing as friendliness.

Whether that's good or bad is another thing, I feel it's a mix of both but that's not an essay I'm going to get into.

[Wrecktangle]

Well, that's just it. Disparate goals are where a lot of friction comes from in MMOs. WoW (usually) does a good job of stratifying the community so that there's not much friction IF you don't pug too much. Like any other online game, pugs end up being a miserable experience all around.

XIV pushes everyone together a little more, so you end up with more disparity in players. I've still often found it to be a little friendlier when pugging than WoW is on average.

I've had both good and bad pug experiences in both games. I've definitely had more bad ones in FF14 than bad ones in WoW, but this all trickles back to information and personal responsibility being frowned upon in the middle and low skill circles of FF14 (ultra high end community is fine, honestly better than WoWs, but I do think that's just because it's more insular and smaller).

The main issues that I see as drivers to support my statement:

• As content becomes less forgiving in FF14, the % of responsibility a player holds is significantly higher than WoW thus more susceptible to repeated wipes from poor play.
• Job toolkits are too binary and can't flex save dicey situations as smoothly as the more robust toolkits in WoW.
• Encounter design is too binary. All 8 players must do each step perfectly or wipe and start over. The problem with this is I might go 12 pulls without making a single mistake, but every one else rotates mistakes. Then the ONE pull I make a mistake everyone else plays perfectly. That's fucking soul crushing. Ad repeat for 2 more hours.

Im lvl 76 now and joined my first PVP-battle.
All my buttons ended up where they shouldnt be, I was slaughtered and didnt contribute at all
When I asked "how do I leave this place? My buttons are messed up and I havent gotten a single heal in and I just keep on dying" I got a "Just stick around, we got your back. Only 10 min left anyways =)"
Im a big fan of WoW, but that would NEVER happen in a random BG in WoW
So leveling 76 levels and not bumping into ANYONE who acted toxic, angry or crazy for any reason; thats something.
(And I have chatted with everyone I ever bumped into in FFXIV)

Odin EU is bae

To be fair, you actually trying, but struggling with the hotbars switching on you and not getting healed makes you better than at MINIMUM 20% of the rest of your team, because they're either AFK or intentionally just trying to speed the loss up so they can collect their resources. I'm actually surprised they added chat back in. I thought they removed it from PVP a while back? Or was that just ranked?

WoW pug BGs though are comical at best.

It's actually quite true. I've spoken with a lot of people who say its not even worth correcting someone because they will just report you.

https://massivelyop.com/2019/12/18/f...on-his-stream/

You don't even have to be "rude" in game to face punishment. Ill save a response or two and say that I'm not an advocate for shitting on someone because of low damage, but this is still pretty heavy handed.

Honestly I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing with me or arguing against. This is in line with what I said; if you fear a ban you can just say nothing, rather than actually act nice. Therefore I don't see that fear as motivation to be friendly, unless we're counting saying nothing as friendliness.

Whether that's good or bad is another thing, I feel it's a mix of both but that's not an essay I'm going to get into.

I received a 10 day ban on the OF for simply correcting someone. I was not rude or condescending. I almost word for word stated: If you want to see that information you can check here and here. Sure the topic was ACT (OP was discussing how it was useless because all it tracks is DPS, which is factually inaccurate) and cited how it can't even tell you how many res' a RDM throws out), but why I got a 10 day ban for 3 letters and correcting misinformation in a straightforward polite manner is beyond me. The OP despite also talking about ACT was not banned because they continued posting with no repercussions.

Now mind you I am permanently banned from the OF (like many of us lol), but I 100% deserved that and knew it while I was typing it up, but it was SO worth it. No one with straight 3rd percentiles with PLD in NORMAL MODES (not an exaggeration) should be writing a guide on how to play PLD, especially not when they're using all the wrong GCDs, not using CDs, and taking an average of 7.5s between button presses. I knew linking their FFLogs would get me banned, but I needed to do it so that some poor sap hopefully doesn't take his advice.

Ironically I've never been in trouble in game despite openly discussing ACT and removing players from groups who were not pulling weight or didn't know the fights (savages, etc.).

[Redroniksre]

Honestly my biggest problem is the amount of side content there is to unlock. My quest log is currently full of them and while i try to polish them off when i can, i reallllly don't feel like waiting over an hour to do Odin. I wish for the older ones they would allow you to skip the actually doing them part so you don't have to be gated when it is really old content.

[The Oblivion]

the community is a bunch of cry baby softies
the average player of ffxiv is a donkey compared to wow
class balance for dps roles at the high end is shit
no addons (legally)

still like it a lot more vs retail wow.

[Mojo03]

I didn't see it when I was new either.

It's funny you mentioned the concept of giving people tips. Many discussions I've seen where people claimed they were just giving people tips, they were (as described earlier) rude and condescending about it. A guy says "wtf use your damn cds scrub" and when the guy retorts in kind, he tells his friends "lol wow, this guy is mad at me and all I was doing was trying to help him out".

You are right, people do get reported in-game which is why it's not so prominent there. Go to the sub for this game, you'll see it. It's extremely common. I help people and answer questions often and I see all the time how people are treated. One time, a new guy came there from another MMO and was trying to learn our lingo and get information. He got flamed and even told "We'd prefer if you didn't play, you'll probably end up being dead weight". That comment within a day was upvoted 50 times.

The game itself is fun but as an objective person who isn't trying to force the "rose-tinted glasses", I feel bad when others are dishonest about the community.

- - - Updated - - -



Nope, I'm just not going to be dishonest about it. I will say, this is the only forum I've ever seen where anyone has said the FF community is better. Sometimes, I can tell some of the people saying it are either new but pretend they're not or are trying to wind people up. Granted, the sub hosts some of the absolute worst of the worst yet the WoW sub is leaps and bounds friendlier.

One of the reasons many do not say bad things as often as you'd see it in WoW is because WoW is PC only. You have a keyboard right in front of you for typing out bad things. Lots of people on FFXIV play on console and do not have immediate keyboards. Typing out comments without one is sometimes more effort than it's worth. However, get to a place where you can type and the gloves come off.

I just got done with the 1-80 leveling experience as someone who played wow since vanilla.

I literally have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve had nothing but overwhelming positive experiences with the community. So many people went out of there way to be helpful, patient with me and I never dealt with a single toxic person.

Furthermore, I’ve literally not heard anyone but you say so many negative things. It's almost always overwhelmingly positive things about the community.

You seem to basing the communities off of subreddits, that probably less than 1% of either community ever really uses or has been to and a handful of personal bad experiences you seem to be amplifying.

To juxtapose my experiences for example. I logged in WoW a couple days ago to see what it felt like to play after FF14.

In one day of playing -

The BG I joined turned into a flame war with some guy telling everyone they’re trash and should quit (which is common).

The leader of my dungeon group kicked a rogue (and I'm pretty sure blocked) because he had ress sickness before we got to the dungeon but not before telling him he's a moron and a terrible player for having ress sickness, then spitting on him (he was still outside the dungeon when we got there) even though he was outside the dungeon way before any of us and only had 3 minutes of ress sickness left when he got kicked and it would of been totally fine.

Later I did an RBG yolo. A yolo. And the tank was decked out in 213 PvP gear, but didn’t have the “proper” leggo and the leader and his friends were laughing at him and telling him he’s trash and booted him.

And I'll compare that with FF14 where literally zero negative experiences happened in the 260 hours it took me to get to 80.

This is "some" of what happened in one day of playing and is everyday stuff in WoW in my 17 years of experience. I don't think it's even a comparison.

[dlld]

Or my favorite, the time that I got kicked from Bastion of Twilight normal pug while wearing the Dragonslayer title. While being in the only guild on the server to have killed Sinestra at that point. All because at the moment I joined I was in off-spec gear and the raid leader immediately went off about not wanting to carry scrubs and such.

Reminads me of that one time in wotlk when feral druids were really op i joined a pug raid for the wintergrasp raid whatever, I was mostly in heroic blues and 1 quest green. We did the first few packs of trash and I was in the top 5 dps miles ahead of the majority with far superior ilvls when someone left the raid and we had to go out summon, so i went to help do that and the raidleader inspected me and saw my 1 green item and instantly kicked me with similar remarks. I've only really seen one significantly negative exchange in ff14 so far, One time in the first dungeon of ff14 the healer turned rather toxic against the tank, but that was over half way through the instance when the healer had been constantly tanking the majority of add's throughout the dungeon.

As for my biggest gripe with 14 it'd probably be lack of tweaking classes there's only one way to "build" and play class X and I don't mean just in terms of doing the most dps against a stationary dummy. If I don't like a certain part of a class play mechanics but like the rest of it tough luck, for instance I'd love to play a warrior dps.