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

[Saltysquidoon]

"COMBAT TOO CLUNKY (I played to level 7)".

I've played on and off FFXIV since HW I have every job except dancer and monk capped.
FFXIV combat is janky as shit, slide casting, animation locks, (o)gcd clipping, server tick nonsense, the telegraph engine issue. That's all without comparing the game to wow.
Comparing the game to WoW, ignoring the above the game 'feels' less fluid because of how WoW handles how you see combat client-side compared to FFXIV (this is why people often describe FFXIV combat as floaty).

Does that mean FFXIV combat is 'bad'? No; I prefer WoW? No. But that doesn't mean I run around denying the truth.
Anyone who thinks FFXIV's combat is 'fluid' has either never played wow, doesn't understand what people mean when they say clunky/janky/floaty (which is fair most people don't think about this stuff and resultantly don't have the vocab or technical knowledge to explain themselves properly), or won't hear a bad word said about their baby and will actively attempt to shut down any criticism.

[Vasilisa]

I've played on and off FFXIV since HW I have every job except dancer and monk capped.
FFXIV combat is janky as shit, slide casting, animation locks, (o)gcd clipping, server tick nonsense, the telegraph engine issue. That's all without comparing the game to wow.
Comparing the game to WoW, ignoring the above the game 'feels' less fluid because of how WoW handles how you see combat client-side compared to FFXIV (this is why people often describe FFXIV combat as floaty).

Does that mean FFXIV combat is 'bad'? No; I prefer WoW? No. But that doesn't mean I run around denying the truth.
Anyone who thinks FFXIV's combat is 'fluid' has either never played wow, doesn't understand what people mean when they say clunky/janky/floaty (which is fair most people don't think about this stuff and resultantly don't have the vocab or technical knowledge to explain themselves properly), or won't hear a bad word said about their baby and will actively attempt to shut down any criticism.

Since we are comparing, FFXIV engines does one thing better (at least to my experience): if you run out of aoe you don't get hit by it simply because you forgot to stop running and engine believes you are still in aoe zone.

[Wangming]

These are all opinions.

For the game to be "plagued by some serious problems that make it unplayable in the long run" you need to actually show that the way things are designed will stop the game from being enjoyable or accessible over a longer period of time for the vast majority of players.

People like to overestimate their grievances. But it is also true for things they like.

[zorkuus]

Now we're just into semantics. People trying to fit words like "clunky, fluid" etc. to fit their own narrative, rather than listening what critics have to say.

And now I'm being just mean: ahem... built-in 500ms delay. Let's see you folk defend that. I can't wait for the mental gymnastics.

[Saltysquidoon]

Quite the opposite.

When done correctly, the "unbending" rotation fits near perfectly into a fight sequence. That's what "fluid" means - It ebbs and flows along with the fight mechanics. Every FFXIV rotation can be tailor fitted per fight (well... except summoner, and I've always felt bad for them...) in such a way where every cooldown comes off at the same time, every rotation resets accordingly, and every member is ready to re-burst phase.
In WoW, the equivalent is called "Bloodlust" and you just hope that your CDs are up (or hold them) for the call.
"the gcd" being the suboptimal way to play notwithstanding... "the gcd" is not as bad as you make it out to be. Yes, the game is slower. Intentionally.
And while I would love to do away with the animation locks, there's something about having to properly time your big ass raid-centric ability that feels right to me. It shouldn't be "free damage" imo, and animation locks are rare outside that. (Unless you mean being upset that you can't hit more than two oGCDs within a GCD... in which case lol.)

Literally, seems like to you, "clunky" just means slow. Slow, and slow, and slow again, said with different words.

Yeah no, ignoring that every fight is different the idea that every rotation can fit near perfectly into every fight is nonsensical on its face. Beyond your argument specifically, ignore that there is more than one type of content in FFXIV and in much the same way as wow trials aren't even the primary content a player interfaces with. Beyond I would argue when people say combat feels clunky/janky/fluid/anything else they are not talking about job synergy I mean what?

Further, as litigated in my post above I wasn't even talking about the long GCD or class design

FFXIV combat is janky as shit, slide casting, animation locks, (o)gcd clipping, server tick nonsense, the telegraph engine issue. That's all without comparing the game to wow.
Comparing the game to WoW, ignoring the above the game 'feels' less fluid because of how WoW handles how you see combat client-side compared to FFXIV (this is why people often describe FFXIV combat as floaty).

[Wrecktangle]

Yes it's totally the FFXIV community that can't handle criticism.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that 95% of the criticism levied at FFXIV sounds like the poster in question didn't even play the game, or they played it for 2 hours and quit the game.

There's also the fact that 90% of "Criticism" from WoW andys is "LOL WEEB GAME" "COMBAT TOO CLUNKY (I played to level 7)" "ECONOMY SUCKS (I farmed some level 3 logs and they didn't sell for anything)" and whatnot. It's like, long time players can spot in an instant the disingenuous "Criticisms" of the game coming from players who barely even gave it a chance. I never see any criticism of late game, overall game design, overall story, journey, etc. There's no criticisms of the mid or late game.

There's plenty of criticisms of late game, systems design, journey/story etc.:

• Some people are tired of the formulaic expansions.
• Some people are tired of button bloat.
• Some people are tired of healer design.
• Some people complain about the differences in quality in story content over the years (minimal VA in ARR, changed VAs throughout, etc.).
• Some people complain about the overuse of menus and their design in general.

There's a plethora of things people complain about if you've been active on the forums. Sure you get some dumb responses some time (weeb game being a great example), but the combat being clunky is a VERY common complaint. Just like the ARR experience is another one. Just like signing up for the damn game and buying it is another one. I could go on and on, but the sheer fact of the matter is that FF14 actively shoots itself by not putting its best foot forward.

The first experiences in FF14 aren't great. Things do get better, considerably so, but it's a HUGE wall to get there and it's also why you see a LOT of common responses of "Yeah I had to give the game 3 tries to get to it and now I love it."

I was one of them as well. I played the beta for ARR and uninstalled at like level 16 or 26 or something. It just wasn't good. I had to come back a second time in 2.0 launch with 2 IRL friends to actually enjoy it.

When done correctly, the "unbending" rotation fits near perfectly into a fight sequence. That's what "fluid" means - It ebbs and flows along with the fight mechanics.

Literally, seems like to you, "clunky" just means slow. Slow, and slow, and slow again, said with different words.

Clunky (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clunky) means clumsy in style, form, or execution. Slide casting, built in 500ms delay, server side authentication/ticks, animation locks, animations/telegraphs not tied together, It's why you see things like healers oGCDs going on CD but not saving someone, or using invulns and still dying despite hitting it what looks like time, or how slipperly and slidey a character looks in combat.

These are clunky mechanics.

Fluid (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fluid). What you defined as fluid is not what fluid means. Fluid would be the ability to adapt as things change, not being tied to a rigid schedule as well as having good responsiveness. These are the complete opposite of what FF14 is. This is why people say WoW combat is fluid, because the ability to adapt is instantaneous and on demand.

[zorkuus]

Yep. There are so many examples of this.

I roll my eyes at myself every time I catch myself telling a new player, "Don't worry, it gets better." because it's such a stupid thing to even have to say. It's true, but it's not the job of new players to stomach a lot of crap to get started in a game, it's on the game to make the experience enjoyable.

God forbid a game feels good to play from the start. But this is common for a lot of MMORPG's. They start very slowly, it's just that FFXIV takes the slowness to a whole new level though.

I don't even remember how in the heck I gave the game three chances. That's how bad it felt, I quit two times very early on. And the third time, it didn't hook me instantly either, I forced myself to get to higher levels to see if things would get better as people were saying.

[doodle90]

2. Fates and leves are slow and limited. Deep dungeon is not something everyone will enjoy. Normal dungeons require time investment and are only good for xp once per day really. So you can't spam them..

This is simply not true, if you queue for the most recent dungeon it takes like 3 runs per lvl. I would know thats how I lvl basically every class.

Also I play WoW and the combat is NOT fluid like you mention. You have to edit the UI so specifically to show you when things are coming off CD, when things proc, when trinkets proc, how many stacks of a festering wound is up, half your CDs do not line up with other classes so everyone has different burst ranges, sometimes you wait for procs for skills and get unlucky so you sit there auto attacking, I mean you have a whole mod team (weakauras) dedicated to fixing the clunkiness of WoW combat. THAT is clunky where I have to focus on my UI so much I can die in a fight. That means the tools of the rotation are impeding me not being fluid and intuitive. The CLOSEST you get to this in FF14 is Summoner and BRD and even then its not near as bad. Look at FF14 most CDS are on the same timers for all classes so burst phases are coordinated. Even when they are not they are usually on a multiple of the CD such as class bursts 111-22-323-44-535 Where one class bursts every second phase.

Lets take Rogue in WoW the energy regen mechanic you can get unlucky with crits and get 1 combo point each attack then you need to sit and wait on regen, or get a BUNCH of crits and suddenly you wasted energy because you went form 4 combo points ot overlapping because of crit.

Compare that to FF14 Samurai who uses 1-2-3 1-2-4 1-5 Boom. Or monk that procs off crits. its an OGCD skill for their 5 chakras. You don't have to worry about your next crit over capping you. because you can instantly use it before you attack next.

[zorkuus]

This is simply not true, if you queue for the most recent dungeon it takes like 3 runs per lvl. I would know thats how I lvl basically every class.

That sounds sus. Unless you're talking about leveling low level characters. At higher levels there's no way you're getting 3rd of the xp bar without duty roulette xp bonuses.

[subsidalos]

The funny thing is WoW has degraded so terribly over the past few years that I'm finally giving FF14 a proper shake and to be perfectly honest with you, I'm enjoying it.

[alturic]

God forbid a game feels good to play from the start. But this is common for a lot of MMORPG's. They start very slowly, it's just that FFXIV takes the slowness to a whole new level though.

I don't even remember how in the heck I gave the game three chances. That's how bad it felt, I quit two times very early on. And the third time, it didn't hook me instantly either, I forced myself to get to higher levels to see if things would get better as people were saying.

I feel like I am/would be in this camp. I've tried it twice now, albeit the first time to level 20 (Maur) and the second time for 10 minutes before asking why the hell I resubscribed, ha. At the same time, you should not have to ultimately force yourself to play a game just because you need to find a game to play.

A bit of a backstory to me, my first MMO was UO, then EQ, then WoW and every MMO between. I never understood what people would mean when they would say 'I grew up', outgrown gaming, etc. However as I've hit 30 - now 37, I might subconsciously be in that group. I consciously refuse to believe I've outgrown gaming but late in my WoW career (quit during Cata after I started drinking heavily due to people not knowing what leg to hit, how to kit spiders, how to dodge meatballs) I just started not having fun I guess it would be. The only expansion since that I haven't actually played was Legion, but even then outside of leveling to max level in each expansion I never got back into raiding. I would hit max level and then basically sit in Stormwind/dabble in the AH game again and log out.

Since stopping what I would consider "consistent" gaming in Cata, I've still tried every AAA MMORPG that's been released, and none seem to have that polish that WoW has or can hook me like WoW once did.

FF for example, the animation/movement felt clunky (as-in not smooth feeling), the combat was slow as hell (not really meaning there's "downtime" until you get more skills as others say but more... idk it felt slow/quirky/delayed when you would hit the button and it would actually happen like it was queuing). Frankly with those 2 things being the biggest part of any MMO, everything else could be utterly spectacular and the best in any game but if those 2 things detract a person from the game nothing else can "save it" for them.

I'm also probably not the target demo for FF as I never care about story, cutscenes, voice-overs, or anything like that in any game. It's always about the end-game raiding for me, but outside of (and I shudder at saying this as I do *NOT* mean it derogatory) casuals who do play WoW, FF, etc for the story the actual gameplay is huge and nothing could make up for the actual gameplay shortfalls.

[zorkuus]

I'm also probably not the target demo for FF as I never care about story, cutscenes, voice-overs, or anything like that in any game. It's always about the end-game raiding for me, but outside of (and I shudder at saying this as I do *NOT* mean it derogatory) casuals who do play WoW, FF, etc for the story the actual gameplay is huge and nothing could make up for the actual gameplay shortfalls.

All is not lost yet. I usually skip story aswell, so it's not the thing that hooked me.

[starstationprofm]

The funny thing is WoW has degraded so terribly over the past few years that I'm finally giving FF14 a proper shake and to be perfectly honest with you, I'm enjoying it.

Of course you are, you have years of content and story to access. The issue is when people compare one WoW patch to years of already built FF14 content. Once they run out of that, they'll see it for what it really is.

[Katchii]

I think people like you are looking at endgame dungeons and thinking everything else has same queues. That's not the case. Maybe it has changed now, that FF14 supposedly has so many more players, but it was like that at the time of writing the thread.

I've leveled 3 alts through the game up to Shadowbringers and my experience is pretty much the same as what I stated, admittedly with a few exceptions, but queue times in excess of 20 minutes for DPS were not common. Except for Ifrit, Garuda Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium which were all awful. That said, because of my experience, I leveled 2 out of 3 of those alts as a tank so I could get faster queues.

Also, I'll admit that during certain time periods queues could be longer because of lower population, there's a LOT of variables to consider so I'm not trying to say anyone is wrong or that their experience isn't accurate or anything just that overall my experience differs and to maybe think about some of the factors involved (role, time of day, server, peak times for that server, time period like if it's in between patches and it's a dead period or something so population is lower, etc...) before writing the game off because of it, or as a way to possibly improve your experience if you want to continue playing.

I agree, somewhat, that the story progression being directly tied to and having group content required to progress has it's downsides. This is one of them. In Shadowbringers (and they are continuing the trend in Endwalker) they fixed this issue with the dungeons where you can now use NPCs as your party so you can go directly into it as soon as you unlock it without having to wait for a queue so they've alleviated it somewhat, since trials still require a queue, but it's something SE has acknowledged as a problem.

[Azerate]

There's also the fact that 90% of "Criticism" from WoW andys is "LOL WEEB GAME" "COMBAT TOO CLUNKY (I played to level 7)" "ECONOMY SUCKS (I farmed some level 3 logs and they didn't sell for anything)" and whatnot. It's like, long time players can spot in an instant the disingenuous "Criticisms" of the game coming from players who barely even gave it a chance. I never see any criticism of late game, overall game design, overall story, journey, etc. There's no criticisms of the mid or late game.

When I first played WoW, we ran around with 2 abilities, trying to kill murlocs that would swarm us then spawn camp us. We mined copper only for it to sell for 10c. Vanilla WoW was awkward as fuck, and by today's standards was complete garbage. I've definitely heard some criticism of FFXIV that is genuine, valid, and sounds like the person played for more than 10 hours, but it's rare.

There will always be people who choose to be shallow and lazy with their criticism and trying to understand the game. That's something that happens to every game. That doesn't mean you should just brush anything anyone says that is negative as a part of that misunderstanding. I don't know about "90% of criticism" but I never complained about the anime/ff theme, and in fact it's that thing that is mostly alluring for me because other aspects of the game fall short.

Also, you are yet another person in the "I don't understand what combat being clunky means" club. It has nothing to do with the amount of your abilities, nor the simplicity of mobs you are fighting. It's about how it feels, not about how complex/hard/deep it is. If a lot of people are telling you, including some of the big ff14 fans, that the combat is clunky, maybe it's worth entertaining that it's more than just their imagination?

Aren't they? The story of the expansions passes through the raids. They basically make you skip the story like it doesn't exist. FF is giving you a complete experience. Yeah, it might take a bit with the queue at times but you are getting it. It's not like there is nothing to do while you are queued.

Not sure if you barely played wow ever, or just playing dumb. Due to FF14's quest structure, everything being basically one long quest chain, you just cannot skip dungeon/raid quests. Wow did not have such a thing prior to the newer expansions, and even when it had a somewhat main story line in a zone, it was never a requirement for the main line for you to finish a dungeon and for SURE not a raid. Wow doesn't "let you skip" anything. It was never part of the leveling experience to begin with. Wow intentionally features lots of questing that is purely endgame content that is not a part of the leveling experience in any way.

These are all opinions.

For the game to be "plagued by some serious problems that make it unplayable in the long run" you need to actually show that the way things are designed will stop the game from being enjoyable or accessible over a longer period of time for the vast majority of players.

I don't need to do anything. If something stops me from enjoying the game to the fullest, then it is a problem plaguing the game. Neither me, nor you, can show "proof" of subjective things. And whether a game is good or bad is always subjective, unless there are actual coding errors that crash the game or make it unplayable from a technical perspective. So yes, these are all opinions, like almost everything else said about any game ever.

Now we're just into semantics. People trying to fit words like "clunky, fluid" etc. to fit their own narrative, rather than listening what critics have to say.

It's possible that people who haven't played wow a lot genuinely have no idea what we mean by those things. In this thread, as well as outside of it from other players, I keep hearing the same arguments. As I was leveling and complaining about the combat to my friend he kept telling me "as you level up you will get more abilities!" or "the enemies get more interesting in the next expansion"...etc. It's like you're talking about one thing, and they keep on talking about something completely different. As if the number of keys you hit makes the combat system feel better...no, it has nothing to do with it.

I don't even remember how in the heck I gave the game three chances. That's how bad it felt, I quit two times very early on. And the third time, it didn't hook me instantly either, I forced myself to get to higher levels to see if things would get better as people were saying.

The thing with me is I either go all in, or not at all. So for me to just stay and continue playing FF14 it would have to be a better experience for me than WoW. I also don't really have the time and willingness to give it more chances. It had its one chance when I was farming Soundless for 3+ weeks in BfA. To give it more I would have to actively skip wow gameplay that I prefer. It turned out to be a pretty good game, but as the topic states, with some issues that make it unplayable for me, combat being the most important one. If WoW suddenly disappeared forever, I would probably go and play FF instead, but that's not happening anytime soon.

[Aliven]

What would proof be for you a link?, two, three?

How could I even prove *some number* of people in a given community have a trait to a level you personally would find compelling? Hell if you haven't noticed this weird near messianic aura Yoshi has among the fans already, you're probably never going to see it.

Dont need to be defensive, just asked to backup your words.

For a little mental gymnastics - if i dont agree with your words then would you label me as one of those highly defensive ff14 fans?

[Katchii]

Also, you are yet another person in the "I don't understand what combat being clunky means" club. It has nothing to do with the amount of your abilities, nor the simplicity of mobs you are fighting. It's about how it feels, not about how complex/hard/deep it is. If a lot of people are telling you, including some of the big ff14 fans, that the combat is clunky, maybe it's worth entertaining that it's more than just their imagination?

I agree that it's definitely clunkier than WoW, but it doesn't feel "clunky" to me, especially in comparison to some other MMO's like Lord of the Rings Online where there's really no debating it's clunkiness or jankiness.

Like, there's a spectrum with WoW being the pinnacle of the "good" end of it. FFXIV is lower than WoW, but not even close to being on the complete other end of the spectrum so calling it "clunky" when there are many games that feel much much worse just doesn't feel right to me.

Maybe it's semantics, but calling anything in FFXIV clunky, janky, etc.... when they're just a little bit worse than WoW (aside from some class design and game play in mid game when you don't have your full kit and things just feel...off), is just weird to me because there are so many other MMO's that are so much worse and literally are clunky and janky. It just feels like sometimes are using the terms as a way to say "worse than WoW" or something.

I don't need to do anything. If something stops me from enjoying the game to the fullest, then it is a problem plaguing the game. Neither me, nor you, can show "proof" of subjective things. And whether a game is good or bad is always subjective, unless there are actual coding errors that crash the game or make it unplayable from a technical perspective. So yes, these are all opinions, like almost everything else said about any game ever.

You claim it's unplayable. It's not. You just don't like it and therefore won't play it (which is perfectly fine). That's not unplayable, that's you using the term unplayable to describe why you won't play it. Unplayable literally means it cannot be played, it's not intended to be a subjective term as you're using it here.

[Swnem]

Not sure if you barely played wow ever, or just playing dumb. Due to FF14's quest structure, everything being basically one long quest chain, you just cannot skip dungeon/raid quests. Wow did not have such a thing prior to the newer expansions, and even when it had a somewhat main story line in a zone, it was never a requirement for the main line for you to finish a dungeon and for SURE not a raid. Wow doesn't "let you skip" anything. It was never part of the leveling experience to begin with. Wow intentionally features lots of questing that is purely endgame content that is not a part of the leveling experience in any way.

Yes, i said it twice now but you are being incredibly difficult. Yes, the questline in FF takes you to every story related main story place and gets you in. WoW skips it after it isn't current. You play through the while story in FF including patch content. WoW lets you skip it.
This does not make WoW better. End of.

If you are ok with skipping story just to get to end-game, fine. Buy a boost if it pleases you. That is what WoW wants you to do, but that is not what FF wants you to do. Either adapt or leave. If you are still locked into the way things work in WoW and cannot free yourself from it, you will not be able to join any other mmo. FF is not about rushing to end-game, it's about enjoying the journey. If you don't enjoy the journey, you will not enjoy the game. You are not being "locked" from anything, you are just being asked to be a bit patient with some queues and delivered a complete story experience. You simply do not get that in WoW. It is what it is. FF does things differently.

[Scathan]

I've played on and off FFXIV since HW I have every job except dancer and monk capped.
FFXIV combat is janky as shit, slide casting, animation locks, (o)gcd clipping, server tick nonsense, the telegraph engine issue. That's all without comparing the game to wow.
Comparing the game to WoW, ignoring the above the game 'feels' less fluid because of how WoW handles how you see combat client-side compared to FFXIV (this is why people often describe FFXIV combat as floaty).

Does that mean FFXIV combat is 'bad'? No; I prefer WoW? No. But that doesn't mean I run around denying the truth.
Anyone who thinks FFXIV's combat is 'fluid' has either never played wow, doesn't understand what people mean when they say clunky/janky/floaty (which is fair most people don't think about this stuff and resultantly don't have the vocab or technical knowledge to explain themselves properly), or won't hear a bad word said about their baby and will actively attempt to shut down any criticism.

Long time player of both as well. Imo wows combat is very responsive and clean. However, after adjusting to ffxiv I can say I enjoy ffxiv combat more. What seemed clunky at first became natural and had its own flow.
Telegraph engine is fine honestly. It's safe to step in when the telegraph disappears, which is different than the attack animation. I would personally also argue that animation locks and slide casting are a good thing. Realizing when to use your ogcd during your cds to not clip. It's all fun gameplay that makes wow feel stale to me when I go back.
Different strokes and such.

Tldr keeping uptime on a complex boss fight in ffxiv feels more skillful to me, staying in long enough to eek out that Gcd, but not get clipped by a damaged own. Wow feels a bit sterile in comparison

[doodle90]

That sounds sus. Unless you're talking about leveling low level characters. At higher levels there's no way you're getting 3rd of the xp bar without duty roulette xp bonuses.

Not sus, Earring 30% bonus Armory 50-100% bonus depending on level, using highest level dungeon. By the time you have the whole armor set of the dungeon it is usually time for the next dungeon. Queuing for a lvl 20 dungeon at lvl 72 is not gonna lvl you up. You need the lvl 71 dungeon.


>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eons_question/

Note these %s are before the new 30% earring for preorder and before the extra 50% it will get when the expansion comes out.

Also note Heat of the battle 3 is a guild buff for 15% exp but can be gotten from an item you get from Squadron missons in the grand company. This is for 70-80 the highest leveling bracket with the least amount of exp bonuses.