What's so good about FFXIV?

[Toybox]

I wish I knew I tried it at 2.0 launch, Steam launch, & again recently... I just can't get into it. I think if you're after an MMO that's got a good chunk of single-player content that you're in for a treat, but as someone who'd rather walk on hot coals than sit through an MMO story, it just felt like a chore.

Glad to see it's doing well though! I know a lot of people who've played & loved it for years, so there's definitely a lot about it that's good.

[Biggles Worth]

Why is everyone migrating to this game now? what makes it so good?

Personally, I've played lots of past Final Fantasy games so going into the game gives me a lot of nostalgia seeing characters I'm familiar with. That being said, if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have given it as much of a chance as I already have.

[kaminaris]

Most mounts have their own theme music that plays when you ride that mount. I feel like this should have been on your list :P

I dont listen to game music, ever, so maybe, but not for me.

[Wrecktangle]

See that bit about coming in thinking about FFXIV. Afterall, my original reply doesn't apply to WoW: WoW's balance is shit and always has been shit. The difference between playing meta and not-meta there is far bigger than FFXIV:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...amount&boss=77
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...ount&boss=2435

I snipped out your raid size bits, but know that I'm largely in agreement. I prefer smaller sized raiding as well.

But this example you tried to paint is comically bad. You can't compare these sample sizes at all. You should be comparing Nathria, which I've already done in another thread and the balance really isn't that far off (especially when you account for outliers (the 2 dead specs, and the one stupidly overtuned one) and the fact that FF14 has incredibly simplistic tuning knobs and WoW's are at the very least 3x more complex).

The point I'm making is that Asmongold isn't the reason for the large playerbase as many people on this forum like to say.

Can you find a single person who stated that Asmon is the reason for the large playerbase? I haven't seen a single person state that. I have seen people say he's responsible for the RECENT spike, of which he is a large piece of that no doubt.

[TheRevenantHero]

I snipped out your raid size bits, but know that I'm largely in agreement. I prefer smaller sized raiding as well.

But this example you tried to paint is comically bad. You can't compare these sample sizes at all. You should be comparing Nathria, which I've already done in another thread and the balance really isn't that far off (especially when you account for outliers (the 2 dead specs, and the one stupidly overtuned one) and the fact that FF14 has incredibly simplistic tuning knobs and WoW's are at the very least 3x more complex).



Can you find a single person who stated that Asmon is the reason for the large playerbase? I haven't seen a single person state that. I have seen people say he's responsible for the RECENT spike, of which he is a large piece of that no doubt.

...There was an entire thread on these forums of people claiming that Asmongold is the reason FFXIV is doing so well right now and that it was basically dead before him.

[TheRevenantHero]

Do you have a link to that thread? The content of it would be completely false, of course, so I would be unable to refrain from informing them of such.

The name of the thread is literally called "The Asmongold Effect". You can see it if you go to the FFXIV section of these forums.

[Daffan]

Imagine if WoW stuck with a consistent, quality focused experience ever since WotLK.

Consistent patch cycle, QoL improvements and general game refinement (for the most part) without compromising the integrity of the experience, and experimental features were separated into a side section of the game where they can be tested and enjoyed for what they are without affecting the main experience.

Typically it isn't doing anything revolutionary, just a good, enjoyable, quality product.
And seriously look at their patch history/release dates. It's almost mind blowing how consistent they are with content delivery.

You are joking right. WOTLK 5 mans had better gear than Ulduar and TOC. The integrity of the traditional experience was non-existent.

FFXIV has same problem tho, so can't really say most games get away with anything these days.

Yeah their content delivery, 4 ultimate bosses after 20 years. Bigger delays than WoW in last 12 months as well. COVID went 2.0 for them compared to others. FF14 is very lucky they have dooty finder and all job on 1 char, it keeps most people appeased very well. Whereas in WoW, everyone would go rabid evil at such a concept imo, it's psychologically crazy.

[Drindorai]

There is also the Zenos backstory which was included in a book you had to buy, but it seems to have been retconned as of patch 5.1.

I've seen you say this probably around 3-4 times now but just because you subjectively came to a conclusion that makes you say it was retconned does not mean, in fact, that it actually was retconned.

I've noticed you do this a lot. You come to a conclusion and if the game does not support that conclusion, you complain that the game did a bad. When it's just...no, your subjective analysis was incorrect.

Yeah their content delivery, 4 ultimate bosses after 20 years. Bigger delays than WoW in last 12 months as well. COVID went 2.0 for them compared to others. FF14 is very lucky they have dooty finder and all job on 1 char, it keeps most people appeased very well. Whereas in WoW, everyone would go rabid evil at such a concept imo, it's psychologically crazy.

It's probably because you can make everything on one character. And even the tomestone gear sets can be used across multiple jobs. It's not getting to max level on every single job, having to play through the story on every single job, and having to grind gear for every single job. Even the relic weapons, once completed once, can be acquired for alternate jobs in a much, much easier way.

It's magnitudes less annoying, and done so purposefully. It's not like they accidentally happened into this. Also unsure what metric you're using to say that they had bigger delays than WoW.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

moving it to the spoiler/story thread

[Tyrick]

Well, you're posting on a WoW fansite, and the tastes of the WoW fandom seem to not really align with the tastes of the FFXIV fandom. WoW fans want their hardcore aesthetics, not nice and fluffy weeb aesthetics. WoW players generally seem to skip through the quests text and rush to endgame, while in FFXIV there isn't really an emphasis on endgame and you're forced to wade through 200-300 hours of story before you can reach it. FFXIV cultists have become especially annoying since Shadowbringers launched, trying to force their beloved game on everyone else (to the point it has become a meme). They've hyped up FFXIV so much it's going to disappoint when people finally check it out.
<snip>

Yea, well mmo-champion.com is not a WoW fansite.
It has a huge WoW forum but also this section of the website is dedicated to FFXIV, just like we have a thread for Heartstone, Diablo, Guild Wars 2 etc...
So it's really obvious many people only visit these sections of the website to convince people how much they should hate the game.
Oh man, you gonna HATE it once you realize there is no endgame, seesh, how can you even play this game...
In reality there is end-game and as far as I know it has some of the hardest raids out of any MMO's.
People are just not forced to do it as in WoW.

[Echo of Soul]

Yea, well mmo-champion.com is not a WoW fansite.
It has a huge WoW forum but also this section of the website is dedicated to FFXIV, just like we have a thread for Heartstone, Diablo, Guild Wars 2 etc...
So it's really obvious many people only visit these sections of the website to convince people how much they should hate the game.
Oh man, you gonna HATE it once you realize there is no endgame, seesh, how can you even play this game...
In reality there is end-game and as far as I know it has some of the hardest raids out of any MMO's.
People are just not forced to do it as in WoW.

Turns out, when people aren't forced to do the hardest content for their gear there will be less people participating but those that do participate do it because they want to.
It's a much better model than making casuals feel like second class citizens and force them in to raiding or m+

[Osmeric]

Why is everyone migrating to this game now? what makes it so good?

For me, it was mostly, (1) a bunch of former WoW friends were there now saying good things about it (some actually started in BfA), and (2) it's not WoW or Blizzard.

Will this keep me? Perhaps. But I had left WoW back in December, long before I picked up FFXIV, so even if I drop the latter I doubt I won't be going back to WoW. I am well rid of that game and it feels spitefully good, although watching it die completely would feel even better. Come on WoW, cough up some more blood now.

[Thestrawman]

The game has also never added a new zone outside of an expansion launch either. This is taking too long but I'd be happy to go on about if people have questions about certain aspects of the game. I will give you an unbiased description. I enjoy both games.

This part is a complete lie. Stormblood added four post expansion zones and Shadowbringers added two.

[BrintoSFJ]

I dunno. People got bored with WoW but still need their MMO fix? Not sure.

I played with the 30 day free trial a couple of years ago, and again recently with the free weekend. I can say that the one thing I liked about FF14 is that you don't need alts. You can level up one character through every class/job and can mix and match some abilities between the two.

However, I could not stand the GCD. The GCD is like, 3 seconds or something. Combat feels kind of unresponsive too. Like, it'll only show damage at the point the attack animation hits, but will not calculate it until the entire animation is finished. It feels clunky.

If the combat were not to be such a shitshow, this game would have been perfect! I can't stand the combat so I just craft and gather and craft! Best crafting and gathering I have seen in all the mmorpg I have played.

[Subrias]

MoP had excellent raids though.

The one thing wow just objectively does better is raids. Its one of the reasons i wont ever be playing it properly

Mop had 1 excellent raid. The others were garbage.. I hated every moment of mop outside throne of thunder.

[minteK917]

This part is a complete lie. Stormblood added four post expansion zones and Shadowbringers added two.

Can tell he probably never made it to level cap so he never tried eureka or bonzja. Probably just googled the raid names and stuff lol.

[Tyrick]

If the combat were not to be such a shitshow, this game would have been perfect! I can't stand the combat so I just craft and gather and craft! Best crafting and gathering I have seen in all the mmorpg I have played.

Hmm that's strange, I was thinking the same, coming from WoW I really was afraid of the longer GCD.
But the abilities off the GCD making this much better.

[Arewn]

You are joking right. WOTLK 5 mans had better gear than Ulduar and TOC. The integrity of the traditional experience was non-existent.

FFXIV has same problem tho, so can't really say most games get away with anything these days.

Yeah their content delivery, 4 ultimate bosses after 20 years. Bigger delays than WoW in last 12 months as well. COVID went 2.0 for them compared to others. FF14 is very lucky they have dooty finder and all job on 1 char, it keeps most people appeased very well. Whereas in WoW, everyone would go rabid evil at such a concept imo, it's psychologically crazy.

I wasn't presenting WotLK as some sort of perfect ideal to build off of, it was a very loose comparison I thought would resonate with WoW-only players.

Ultimate bosses are niche content that they release basically once per expansion (and the game is only 8 years old). I don't know why you'd look at that as an example of their content release pace (okay I do know why, it's a cherry pick used to dishonestly paint the game in a worse light).
And what delays? The 3 month delay to patch 5.3 from covid? Are you really comparing that to the pre-shadowlands release content drought, or the delays to WoW's 9.1.

Here's what I meant by consistent releases:
Heavensward Stormblood Shadowbringers
X.0 June 2015 June 2017 June 2019
X.1 Nov 2015 Oct 2017 Oct 2019
X.2 Feb 2016 Jan 2018 Feb 2020
X.3 June 2016 May 2018 Aug 2020
X.4 Sep 2016 Sep 2018 Dec 2020
X.5 Jan 2017 Jan 2019 April 2021

August 2020 is the 3 month delay from Covid. The patch cycle resumes at their normal pace after that, but with a 3 month offset compared to previous years.

Just a note, there are lots of smaller patches in between these larger ones.

edit: fml table formatting

[Deneios]

The 2-3 second gcd (depends on your skill speed stat) is there for you to dodge the shit that will kill you if you fail twice. There is so much more to dodge than in wow since group sizes are smaller and everyone has to do the mechanics of the fight.

[Wrecktangle]

...There was an entire thread on these forums of people claiming that Asmongold is the reason FFXIV is doing so well right now and that it was basically dead before him.

Another example of you spreading misinformation. Please link some actual quotes of posters saying that. No one said it was dead before him, because we know that's categorically false. What we do know is that him and other streamers have resulting in significant new players trying the game out. That is an undeniable fact.