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

[minteK917]

This doesn't change the fact that abilities exist which prevent you from moving. It's precisely what people are talking about.

Them being common or not is not the issue. EVERYONE has seen an animation locking move, whether through LBs or otherwise. They function EXACTLY like Dragoon jumps - You have no control over your character, and if you're a melee DPS, it even drags you to the boss and keeps you there till the animation finishes.

What you're showing is not "animation cancelling" - Those animations aren't animation locking you in the first place. You're showing something completely unrelated, which is just normal use of oGCD abilities with no animation lock.

Again animation lock is only on two things. LB, and moving. Now it sucks for dragoon. But if you never play dragoon, the player might never even seen it beside LB. But LB is purposefully made this way, it also makes perfect sense for most people, you can cancel the LB cast, but once you have casted it, you are locked into doing the full animation, its the entire purpose of LB, its a huge finisher in final fantasy games, usually very cinematic, if anything being able to cancel it, makes it a bit too strong. I mean being able to finish 5% hp of a boss or rez and fully heal the entire group, is a very heavy and strong ability, making it the only hard part to manage where/when do i start it, is more about fight knowledge. When animation lock is a problem is for the movement spells, which is pretty much almost all dragoon, which really sucks. So if you encounter someone that doesent feel animation lock ruins it for them, chance are they just never played dragoon lol. Most people wouldnt really think LB lock is a thing, it make sense for LB to be like this, specially LB3, thematically and just mechanically.

And my gif is showing animation cancelling, Animation cancelling is just how its named, you cancel the animations. As my gif shows, my abilities dont have all the time to finish before the new one is shown. Its super evident in the first global cooldown, where the second ability stops the entire animation of the first one midway.

[minteK917]

This simply isn't true, and even then, they would see it with LB. Literally EVERY class suffers from it with LB.

And Dragoon isn't the only class with movement abilities, no matter how many times you keep repeating it.

They would see it, but the lock of the LB is not by itself a problem. Its a power move, where the only weakness is being able to plan, that once you casted it, you have to finish it. So they see it, but they wont register it as a problem, doing your LB is not your usual gameplay or part of your rotation. Its the move you pull off to kill that special add before a wipe or rez everyone while boss is at 10% hp. So watching the animation is part of it. Now movement, it mostly fucks dragoon, because they have unnecessary travel time upward. Ninja assassinate still has one, could be sped up, where they jump. The rest is charges, those dont do too much, because the lock is over once you are in range to do another ability. What im saying is, you expecting new players to all feel ability lock seems wrong to me. LB is one, but its not part of your rotation, hence for most non dragoon players they might not feel it, if at all.

[Katchii]

That is absolutely not what a block is. A block would be if you couldn't progress to the next quest until the next week's reset like the covenants in Shadowlands. It's a pause since all you need to do is wait for a queue to pop to continue.

While this is a true statement, it significantly understates just how profoundly it affects you sometimes.

If you've never had an abnormally long queue gating your MSQ progression, you won't understand. But when the only thing you care about doing in the game is progressing the MSQ, and that's what you have set aside your evening/some period of time for and your progress gets halted because the queue for this specific trial/dungeon JUST.WON'T.POP.....it's incredibly frustrating.

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Yeah, you are doing that.
What is the difference between being locked by the press of a queue button and the looting of 3 items on the floor? Time.

Let's not pretend 10 seconds is the same as however many minutes it takes the queue to pop.

What did i say this was? Patience issue.

Patience may be part of it, but that's irrelevant. There is content in this game locked behind the MSQ.

Why don't you stop dancing around the issue? There is no block.

This is a disingenuous argument and you know it. You're not even denying that there's a block, youre just saying it's not that big a deal because the only thing that's blocking you is time or patience.

Block would be complete inability to progress. Heck, i'd even grant needing to do a savage mode raid.

No, a block is the inability to do something for some reason.

You're blocked from entering Ishgard until you've progressed the MSQ to a point that allows it. You're blocked from entering certain dungeons that you might be the appropriate level for until you get to the portion of the MSQ that unlocks it.

Queing for a trial or dungeon is peanuts and only takes the click of a button and some patience. Get over it. It's an mmo. If a random queue is "blocking" you, might as well go play a single player RPG.

Can a new player enter Ishgard? Ghyr Abania? Doma? The First? Even when they eventually get to the appropriate level?

It's not JUST a random queue.

Stop lying.

[Velnora]

LB arent really a good example, they are deliberately made like this. So you have to wait at the correct time to use them. Again animation lock in actual rotation its pretty much a dragoon problem, animation lock in regular combat is only for movement ability with travel times. Animations themselves are cancellable, again if there was no animation cancelling, it would not be possible to do double weaving, because your animation would be running during the global cooldown. But it doesent, you can use 2 spells in the 2.5 second of the global cooldown.

Made this gif to show animation getting cancelled. 3 global cooldown: 8 abilities.

One Dragoon jump locks them into place, the other acts as a "movement" ability.

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The issue isn't so much a matter of "animation lock", it's the crazy delay after attacking that makes it feel clunky. It's fun watching your character slide across the ground after using an ability.

[Advent]

One Dragoon jump locks them into place, the other acts as a "movement" ability.

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The issue isn't so much a matter of "animation lock", it's the crazy delay after attacking that makes it feel clunky. It's fun watching your character slide across the ground after using an ability.

I always found that part of the combat to look very janky. It happens in a few games, but because the animations of some abilities are so long, it becomes very obvious that my character is floating in the air during some of those attacks. If they modified attack animations to be somewhat modular based on player movement input that might solve the issue. But that's probably well beyond what this dev team is capable of.

[minteK917]

I always found that part of the combat to look very janky. It happens in a few games, but because the animations of some abilities are so long, it becomes very obvious that my character is floating in the air during some of those attacks. If they modified attack animations to be somewhat modular based on player movement input that might solve the issue. But that's probably well beyond what this dev team is capable of.

They need to let your lower body be modified while moving and attacking, would probably take huge amount of rework of animations to be honest. It only looks cool on monk imo lmao, you look boss when you are sliding across the floor on your back like a break dancer haha, or elix field in the air and move around, looks funky haha.

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One Dragoon jump locks them into place, the other acts as a "movement" ability.

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The issue isn't so much a matter of "animation lock", it's the crazy delay after attacking that makes it feel clunky. It's fun watching your character slide across the ground after using an ability.

Make it looks weird for sure while moving, but those animations can all be cancelled, only by other animations lol. But its more about how it looks, to me clunky is the dragoon situation, not the limit break. There very good reason why limit break works like that, its your cinematic save the day move once per raid, if you use it wrong, you die in it. But the original post made it sound like literally every animation locks you into it and its impossible to do any action until its over, thats not even true of 99% of the abilities in the game.

[erifwodahs]

You must have a crap computer because I have NEVER experienced this. I've never seen anyone make this comment before when talking about FFXIV.

Amm, if you go to FF reddit there is a whole topic talking about this lol and there are guides on ogcd weaving which is based on this lol. it even gives you MS values for delays for certain skills. Crap computer you say xD you must have crap internet if this is normal for u.

[Saltysquidoon]

This is why talking about FFXIV can get wearisome sometimes.
*Person says thing that is objectively untrue*
*Respond explaining that is in fact not true*
*If the above could be interpreted as a negative it must be defended, minimised, explained away or attempted to be diverted for 15 posts lest the game look 'bad'*

Animation locks exist in the game. Dragoons are literally a meme about it, it affects nin, although square has done work over the years to clean it up (which only reinforces the point they in fact exist), technically every charge is an animation lock.
I don't even understand, I wasn't even trying to impute they were a bad thing, just that they exist.

[Cthulhu 2020]

But the big question is, despite the issues, is FFXIV fun and maintaining a huge user base who have been playing for years at high end, end game levels? The answer is yes. FFXIV is insanely popular and in the long run, it's beating out WoW for systems.

[Thelxi]

Geez people must really hate a lot about this game as there are not one but two of these threads trending here. Must be awful! I'll just stick with WoW.

[Vasilisa]

Geez people must really hate a lot about this game as there are not one but two of these threads trending here. Must be awful! I'll just stick with WoW.

Few things to remember: this is mainly a Wow forum, so no wonder that a lot of people say what they don't like about Wow competition. There is far more topics what's bad in Wow then what's bad in FF. Speaking of which FF is not perfect but it's fun. Did the game spark your interest? The check it out by yourself, free trial is really big (e.x. max trial level is max level of the 1st expansion) and it gives enough to let you decided whether you like the game or not.

[Swnem]

While this is a true statement, it significantly understates just how profoundly it affects you sometimes.

If you've never had an abnormally long queue gating your MSQ progression, you won't understand. But when the only thing you care about doing in the game is progressing the MSQ, and that's what you have set aside your evening/some period of time for and your progress gets halted because the queue for this specific trial/dungeon JUST.WON'T.POP.....it's incredibly frustrating.

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Let's not pretend 10 seconds is the same as however many minutes it takes the queue to pop.



Patience may be part of it, but that's irrelevant. There is content in this game locked behind the MSQ.



This is a disingenuous argument and you know it. You're not even denying that there's a block, youre just saying it's not that big a deal because the only thing that's blocking you is time or patience.



No, a block is the inability to do something for some reason.

You're blocked from entering Ishgard until you've progressed the MSQ to a point that allows it. You're blocked from entering certain dungeons that you might be the appropriate level for until you get to the portion of the MSQ that unlocks it.



Can a new player enter Ishgard? Ghyr Abania? Doma? The First? Even when they eventually get to the appropriate level?

It's not JUST a random queue.

Stop lying.

You are making such a disengenious case.
Is there ANY game that isn't locked by progress? What a silly case to make. That is why you progress the game. You are calling progress a lock. Yeah, you need to play the game. That is the point.

[TheRevenantHero]

There's no way you've never seen animation locks.

Every single LB has one. Once you start it, you are locked in place until your animation finishes. Even if you've never used one yourself, almost every party uses LBs. Don't play dumb.

It's one of the few things I'd agree with Bov on, unfortunately.

If other people are using a LB, am I supposed to just fucking stop and stare? I don't use LB so once again, I haven't seen it for myself.

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Why do you always do this?

You've never seen animation locks? Seriously?

Why the actual fuck would I lie? I get you hate the game but that doesn't make other people liars just because they don't agree with you.

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Geez people must really hate a lot about this game as there are not one but two of these threads trending here. Must be awful! I'll just stick with WoW.

It's mostly WoW diehards that are pissed that FFXIV is seeing more popularity than the dumpster fire that is Shadowlands so they make threads like this.

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While this is a true statement, it significantly understates just how profoundly it affects you sometimes.

If you've never had an abnormally long queue gating your MSQ progression, you won't understand. But when the only thing you care about doing in the game is progressing the MSQ, and that's what you have set aside your evening/some period of time for and your progress gets halted because the queue for this specific trial/dungeon JUST.WON'T.POP.....it's incredibly frustrating.

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Let's not pretend 10 seconds is the same as however many minutes it takes the queue to pop.



Patience may be part of it, but that's irrelevant. There is content in this game locked behind the MSQ.



This is a disingenuous argument and you know it. You're not even denying that there's a block, youre just saying it's not that big a deal because the only thing that's blocking you is time or patience.



No, a block is the inability to do something for some reason.

You're blocked from entering Ishgard until you've progressed the MSQ to a point that allows it. You're blocked from entering certain dungeons that you might be the appropriate level for until you get to the portion of the MSQ that unlocks it.



Can a new player enter Ishgard? Ghyr Abania? Doma? The First? Even when they eventually get to the appropriate level?

It's not JUST a random queue.

Stop lying.

Then you must really hate MMOs in general because it happens in every game. The biggest criminal in gating is WoW. Once again, at least in FFXIV all you need to do is wait for a queue. Sounds like you're purposely making a mountain out of a molehill.

[Graeham]

I don't think WoW has nearly as much gating as FFXIV does. You can't even access most content until you finish a lot of other content which makes it tedious for those who don't care about the game's story and maybe just want to log on and play with friends - which makes up a decent chunk of potential players. Furthermore, there's those of us who used to care about the story who have since grown weary of it due to a shift in tone, certain characters overstaying their welcome, ridiculous levels of plot armour and various other factors. I'd consider myself to be in that category.

I'm hoping the game remains story driven but that future expansions are standalone and accessible 'whenever' with scaling that allows new and veteran players alike to play with each other at the same time whenever a new expansion goes live. It works for other MMO's.

[Daffan]

Animation lock is only on a few abilities. Ninja assassinate, Dragoon jumps, movement charges ability that have travel times. Most class do not have much animation locks, i think you are thinking of the global cooldown, if there was animation lock on all or most ability double weaving would not be possible. Most classes can pull 3 ability in one global cooldown, not being animation lock and ogcd will cancel the animations, monk being the exception because their gcd is faster.

There's really 2 "GCD" in game.

2.5s main

0.5s secondary "animation lock" (for weaving / dual weave)

People who don't have good ping literally can't weave properly. If you don't live in California or Japan, you aren't getting the 'true' ffxiv experience without a plugin because the game code is so bad it adds your ping onto the animation lock delay (e.g 500ms + 100ms = 600ms delay, x2 = 1200ms so harder weave)

That's a reason why some people might say it feels laggy or weird. Because it's just non-stop clipping and single weaves.

[Katchii]

You are making such a disengenious case.
Is there ANY game that isn't locked by progress? What a silly case to make. That is why you progress the game. You are calling progress a lock. Yeah, you need to play the game. That is the point.

Thanks for admitting there's a block.

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Then you must really hate MMOs in general because it happens in every game. The biggest criminal in gating is WoW. Once again, at least in FFXIV all you need to do is wait for a queue. Sounds like you're purposely making a mountain out of a molehill.

I love MMO's, actually.

No in FFXIV you don't just need to wait for a queue. If a new player (or even one who isn't new but hasn't progressed that far in the MSQ) wants to play with friends who are already in Shadowbringers their options are; spend hundreds of hours progressing through the MSQ, which includes dungeon and trial queues, or buy a boost to skip to Shadowbringers and THEN they still have to spend dozens of hours playing through that story.

Saying "it's just a queue" is incredibly disingenuous and reductive and doesn't even come close to honestly addressing the concerns people have.

At least in WoW the catch up to Shadowlands takes a few days, at most.

[Dakhath]

I don't know why you guys are engaging with RevenantHero anymore, he literally makes stuff up whenever he pops up in these threads to feed his own narrative. People such as that are bad for having a civil and honest discussion.

[TheRevenantHero]

Thanks for admitting there's a block.

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I love MMO's, actually.

No in FFXIV you don't just need to wait for a queue. If a new player (or even one who isn't new but hasn't progressed that far in the MSQ) wants to play with friends who are already in Shadowbringers their options are; spend hundreds of hours progressing through the MSQ, which includes dungeon and trial queues, or buy a boost to skip to Shadowbringers and THEN they still have to spend dozens of hours playing through that story.

Saying "it's just a queue" is incredibly disingenuous and reductive and doesn't even come close to honestly addressing the concerns people have.

At least in WoW the catch up to Shadowlands takes a few days, at most.

There are several servers with a buff that gives you something like double or triple exp up to level 70. I leveled a character from 1 to 65 in like two days.

It is literally just a queue. you are absolutely making a mountain out of a molehill because you are desperate to try and prove FFXIV is worse than WoW. Saying that you're content blocked because you have to wait for a queue is the real disingenuous comment being made. A block is like how you were prevented from progressing the covenant campaign until the following week's reset in Shadowlands. Calling waiting for a dungeon queue a progress blocker is laughable.

[KrayZ33]

spend hundreds of hours progressing through the MSQ, which includes dungeon and trial queues, or buy a boost to skip to Shadowbringers and THEN they still have to spend dozens of hours playing through that story.

Saying "it's just a queue" is incredibly disingenuous and reductive and doesn't even come close to honestly addressing the concerns people have.

At least in WoW the catch up to Shadowlands takes a few days, at most.

Ehhh... depends on how you look at it.

"hundreds of hours" is a huge exaggeration first of all - at least if you actually just want to progress.
The trials and dungeons are done in like 5 minutes each if you have a friend "waiting".
And once you are max level, for relatively very little Gil, you are basically ready for savage raiding in like 5 hours without being a hindrance.

What really takes time and isn't as fun is unlocking all the side-content that isn't part of the main stuff.
You basically have to look up everything on the internet because hardly anyone remembers where each quest was.

[Katchii]

Ehhh... depends on how you look at it.

"hundreds of hours" is a huge exaggeration first of all - at least if you actually just want to progress.

It's not much of an exaggeration, or at all, if you count the time it takes to get from level 1 as a fresh player, to level 80 and all the way through the Shadowbringers MSQ and latest patch.

The trials and dungeons are done in like 5 minutes each if you have a friend "waiting".

Not everyone has a friend waiting, though, and even if they do that friend or friends may not always be available to hold your hand and babysit you as you go through your journey. Expecting everyone to have friends be at their beck and call through the many MANY hours of MSQ whenever they hit a trial or dungeon is not a reasonable assumption to have.

And once you are max level, for relatively very little Gil, you are basically ready for savage raiding in like 5 hours without being a hindrance.

Again, though. How long will it take someone who just started the game to get to this point?

What really takes time and isn't as fun is unlocking all the side-content that isn't part of the main stuff.
You basically have to look up everything on the internet because hardly anyone remembers where each quest was.

I find it fun, but not when I'm aiming for max level stuff. The side stuff is just a distraction or time waster when on that path.