What's so good about FFXIV?

[The King in Yellow]

What's good about FFXIV? It's fun?

It's been a very long time since I forgot what time it was and saw the sky getting brighter while playing a game. The only game which still does that for me is EU4.

I've played the first iteration of the game, played the new release for a while but lost interest. But now, playing with friends, the game is kinda growing on me. No goal of being top tier, server first attempts etc. Just blatant good fun. I do think that is the charm of the game currently, at least for me it is.

[Rogalicus]

............*stares blankly, thinking of skills off the GCD that are supposed to be used between abilities that are on it*

Again, your exact quoute is

I ALWAYS have a button to push, that isn't on cooldown

If it's about cooldown in general, most GCD buttons are never on cooldown. If you mean you always have a button to press between GCDs, it's easily disprovable bullshit.

[Jastall]

The thing I don't get here is that the premise isn't true.

Looking at logs for both Eden's Promise Savage and Sanctum Mythic, Eden fight durations seem to range from 8 to 11 minutes, while Sanctum fights range from about 6 to 15 minutes.

Eden has the edge on average fight length by a little bit, Sanctum's average is a little lower with Sylvanas being much longer than any in either game. So the idea that WoW fights are just these zippy little zergs while XIV fights are these long affairs doesn't hold up.

And yes, someone will say, "But Ultimates!" as they always do. Top kills for TEA seem to range around the 16 minute mark, which is perfectly comparable to the fight length of Sylvanas - and less than the length of other end bosses when they were current.

To say nothing of the fact that IIRC Blizzard is intentionally trying to not have 20 minutes fights like Heroic Rag anymore. Even Sylvanas is long for an endboss, and IMO it's a slog. I'd much rather fight Gul'dan, Argus or Jaina for 11-12 minutes than Sylvanas for 15, and a 20 minute fight that gets hard towards the end only sounds awful to me.

[Wrecktangle]

On the other hand, some of it isn't personal, it's also community driven. You see this a LOT in midcore groups, where if it's on a BiS list somewhere people expect you to have it no matter what, and if you don't you're "being carried" or something. Even if it's literally a 0.17% different in DPS over a great piece you did get. Because a lot of the time it's not even about the numbers, it's about the weird perspective they have on the game.

Granted I play above the average midcore level, but a great example is I came and helped out a buddies guild in Heroic. Some of their raiders had higher ilvl than me and poked fun that a mythic raider was worse, but there I was, consistently crushing their raiders fight after fight and on the log. They stopped saying stuff after the first 3 bosses.

If I was a midcore raider, I fail to see how this experience would differ? Your output speaks for itself and you don't need bis to put out damage.

Endwalker was up 180+% of preorders over Shadowbringers before 9.1 came out and all the WoW players jumped onto the bandwagon.

Do you have a source for this? I hadn't seen a % value, but very possible I wasn't paying attention and missed it.

I main a Dragoon.

I have absolutely zero added +skillspeed materias on my gear.

I ALWAYS have a button to push, that isn't on cooldown, and even i can't keep up with it sometimes because boss fights can be so fast paced and action packed, especially in Savage modes where you better have your rotation both memorized and your situational awareness on point or you are dead.

I think people who think that the game has slow combat haven't leveled up high enough that their class/job plays like it's supposed to play.

Take Machinist for example:

SUPER boring slow gameplay.............until you get to level 50+..and then it's a hectic, fun, fast and strong DPS rotation.

If a button you want to push on GCB? push something else then.

Not all jobs are DRG though. A lot of jobs (especially non GNB tanks, like my main) have a severe lack of oGCDs to press. Most jobs don't ALWAYS have 2 oGCDs to press EVERY single GCD. In fact, I'm fairly confident that not a SINGLE one does, but I'm open to being proven wrong.

I'd have absolutely no issue with the GCD if I consistently had 1 oGCD or even 2 to press EVERY single GCD.

[dlld]

Do you have a source for this? I hadn't seen a % value, but very possible I wasn't paying attention and missed it.

Took about 3 seconds to find


The 65th Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer LIVE lasted a marathon 14 hours. During the show’s introduction, the team divulged pre-orders for the upcoming Endwalker expansion are up 160-180% when compared to the Shadowbringer expansion.

[Lane]

I disagree entirely that going around and meeting all the major characters in the story, many of which are very much still relevant to this day, was pointless.

It's the way they did it. There is so much filler in ARR. I keep bringing up the 'wine & cheese' arc because it's the best example. Okay, maybe I do meet those NPCs again in the future, and maybe they do reference all the BS they put me through, but that doesn't make it a fun or engaging arc. It's also ultimately pointless. All those tests to make sure you're worthy don't have any value other than callbacks in the future to a point in the story a lot of people didn't enjoy.

I recently finished 2.4 and, as I said in another post, the amount of time I spent on finding out who was attacking supply shipments and why... it was thoroughly uninteresting. That whole patch could've been condensed considerably without losing any important plot points. The worst part is a lot of the mundane stuff tends to have the most text associated with it. I've never seen so many words used to say so little.

There's so many things ARR sets up that pays off in future expansions because they feel like established locations in the world instead of random new things asspulled the patch that its relevant. Like the Infinity Stones---errr, the Sigils, in 9.1. If that was FF14, you'd know about those dumbass sigils from like Legion, at least.

This is definitely true though. I read an interview with the writer of ShB about how they wanted to stay true to 2.0 lore and I thought, words you would never hear from a WoW dev. In fact, Ion at one point said they didn't want their hands tied by lore. Obviously.

It's an exhausting list and all of these things are eventually relevant to the plot. I'm not even through all the stuff they introduce in ARR. It's called world building for a reason. It's especially good when essentially all of it is brought up later on through locations, or characters from locations, or plotpoints at those locations, or references to plot advancing at those locations, throughout the entire game. They ease you into the ideas and then keep expanding them or adding more.

It could've been pruned a lot and presented better. One of the 5.X MSQs, in one patch, told me everything I ever needed to know about primals, tempering, beast tribes, and conflicts with the major city-states. I'd even go as far as to say more than what I learned or understood in ARR. Had that been the actual lead up to Titan it would've made a significant difference.

2 - Maybe people didnt quit in SL cause wow is an old game, but you gotta understand Blizzard is in a though spot trying to reinvent the wheel in wow. Imagine for a second if Blizzard suddenly dumped all attention in storytelling next xpac(like FFXIV) while having less raid bosses(Like FFXIV). Would people be happy about that? most certainly not.

would people be happy if Blizzard just stripped retail wow of progression paths at max level except gearing? I doubt so, cause they can never create a massive world like EK/K again and force players to spend ALOT of time leveling(Something people hate it wow).

Blizzard isn't trying to reinvent anything. They're stubbornly sticking with systems players have been complaining about since Legion and every expansion since seems to be worse than the last in that regard. I skipped BfA and came back for SL because it was supposed to be the alternating good expansion.

Gods help us if they have the current writing team focus any more on storytelling. Also, raiders are grossly overestimated, most players don't raid and couldn't care less if a raid tier was lost. WoW doesn't offer much in terms of alternate progression. I suppose raiding, M+, or PvP may seem like a lot to some, but not so much to the casual player let alone soloer. Getting rid of badge gear is one of the worst decisions Blizzard ever made.

[Echo of Soul]

Took about 3 seconds to find


The 65th Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer LIVE lasted a marathon 14 hours. During the show’s introduction, the team divulged pre-orders for the upcoming Endwalker expansion are up 160-180% when compared to the Shadowbringer expansion.

And this was before Asmongold and all the WoW content creators bailing on the game. Granted the mass exodus started way back in January but this last month really put the whole thing into overdrive.

[Drindorai]

Took about 3 seconds to find


The 65th Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer LIVE lasted a marathon 14 hours. During the show’s introduction, the team divulged pre-orders for the upcoming Endwalker expansion are up 160-180% when compared to the Shadowbringer expansion.

Ah it was 160-180, not 180+% my bad.

But yeah this was all before any WoW content creators jumped ship over to the game.

[dlld]

Ah it was 160-180, not 180+% my bad.

But yeah this was all before any WoW content creators jumped ship over to the game.

Asmongold started about a week (july 3rd) before that announcement (july 10th), but wouldn't have had any noticeable impact on endwalker sales at that point, the vast majority of people checking out the game because of him wouldn't have even gotten close to finishing ARR to think about buying the game, let alone pre purchasing the next expansion.

[Asrialol]

I found a thing really, really not good about FFXIV. The Seventh Astral Era Quests. Holy moly those quests are fucking boring. Legit have to do 100 quests to be able to get to the first expac. What the actual...

[Graeham]

I found a thing really, really not good about FFXIV. The Seventh Astral Era Quests. Holy moly those quests are fucking boring. Legit have to do 100 quests to be able to get to the first expac. What the actual...

Enjoy. You're dealing with a condensed version of those quests. It used to be much more painful.

I'd strongly recommend doing a handful at a time and then taking a break to do some gathering or crafting. Otherwise there's going to be a real risk of burnout.

There's much less needless filler in future expansions, at least.

[Tojara]

I think the point on previous pages is quite literally that FF14 has a wealth of content and basically 8 years of stuff to work through. Anybody who is anybody and likes the general premise of MMOs (and FF14 is a lot like WoW in general structure than other MMOs that have been released) isn't going to get bored working through 4 entries in the series, with number 5 coming out in November. Given that big difference between the games is the narrative focus, there's absolutely no reason to rush and one of FF14s strengths is that it "time walks" the entire game (even though losing abilities is really annoying IMO) and doesn't obsolete old content to the degree that WoW does. How WoW obsoletes old content is probably the biggest disservice to the game, and while I can get behind obsoleting previous expansions, they've been doing it in the same expansion for over a decade now.

Given the narrative focus, there's again, no need for people trying FF14 out for the first time to rush though. What happens at max level though when these people eventually reach it? There's certainly things to do in the game, but there isn't a limitless amount of things to do. Just like there's a wealth of people jumping into the game at the moment for various reasons (getting bored of WoW, scandals, upcoming FF14 expansion, big delay on WoW content, and influencers trying it out), a lot of these people are just going to jump out of it and get bored, just like they do in WoW.

Will people getting bored of FF14 be a bad thing? No. If they enjoyed the journey until the end and liked the experience, it's possibly left a mark on them going forward. Instead of dismissing the game they might very well check out every single expansion going forward, and jump into big patch drops between the expansion, kind of like people have been doing with WoW. This isn't even a slash at FF14 either. If you're bored, stop playing and wait for the next patch. As long as those few months were fun is ultimately all that should really matter, and there have been times in the past few WoW expansions where even the first couple months of a patch aren't all that fun. I had experiences like this back when WoTLK launched, as I found the entry level WoTLK content pretty abysmal.

There's always been a big player base in FF14, but I also don't see the game growing to exponential and massive heights either. What it's done and what WoW has done recently has shifted more players into it's play space and perhaps made people realize that other MMOs exist, or that you can play two games and enjoy them at the same time (this part is super hard for people to understand). At the end of the day hopefully it makes both games better.

As far as my experiences with the game goes. It was alright. The combat is not as polished as other MMOs, but it's not far enough off that it's awful to play either. ARR made me hate myself, but I played it back in 2016 before they condensed most of the story, so RIP me. The story is good though, granted I didn't really start liking the story until I hit the lower 40s while leveling up. Heavensward was really good, and I stopped playing before hitting the expansion after it.

[Syferite]

snip

I think the main thing is knowing how to discern between healthy criticism and unhealthy attachment to a game.

For example, I dislike WoW's writing in Shadowlands, and as a player that enjoys games that I feel a narrative-connection to, it made me quit Shadowlands about a month in. I think that there's a lot that Blizzard can do to improve their writing and storylines, but I also know that not everyone is going to enjoy a game based on the same factors I value, and that I have other games to pick from to meet my needs.

I think that there are a lot of valid criticisms that can be made on WoW's game design (and workplace-related issues) and we shouldn't build communities where offering such critics is discouraged, but I think that people should also take a step back sometimes and reflect on whether they're getting overly-invested and jaded in a company that actually owes them nothing.

[Lane]

I found a thing really, really not good about FFXIV. The Seventh Astral Era Quests. Holy moly those quests are fucking boring. Legit have to do 100 quests to be able to get to the first expac. What the actual...

I sympathize. I'm finally at the home stretch before Heavensward and if I had to do it again I'd 100% buy an ARR story skip and just level to 50 through dungeons, fates, logs, and side quests.

[Zmagoslav]

I sympathize. I'm finally at the home stretch before Heavensward and if I had to do it again I'd 100% buy an ARR story skip and just level to 50 through dungeons, fates, logs, and side quests.

Hmm i got to level 74, am almost done with Stormblood (i guess i am; just finished Doma Castle) and the experience didn't really change since ARR.
What gets better later on?

[Lane]

What gets better later on?

I just didn't like the story in ARR.

[Byleth]

What gets better later on?

Nothing. If you're not enjoying it now, you won't enjoy it at max level.

[Lane]

Nothing. If you're not enjoying it now, you won't enjoy it at max level.

As far as gameplay is concerned I'd agree, but as far as storytelling goes I'd disagree. ARR was just boring to me. I've already seen all of Shadowbringers and I loved it. I have high hopes for Heavensward too considering most say it's the second best expansion after ShB.

[Sevyvia]

Incredibly slow and boring combat, being forced to go through hours and hours and HOURS of boring main quest story. Anime artstyle and its accompanying cringe characterization. What's not to love?

Man, I don't know. I tried it out, and what's so good about FF14 is that it made me realize how good WoW is, comparatively. Scary fucking thought.

[Pannonian]

I'd say that FFXIV's moderation is worse than WoW's. In WoW you can say whatever you want and you won't be penalized for it. Maybe people will yell at you, but you're playing a social game. Develop a thick skin. And in the rare chance you do get banned, it's usually only for a few days. FFXIV is worse in that if you say something innocuous and someone claims that they were offended, you could get teleported to GM jail and possibly get a warning on your account that never goes away, and three strikes and your permabanned. Hence why many of us never use the ingame chat in FFXIV to talk to anyone because it's just not worth the risk.

For the last 2 years, i called out slackers, told people how bosses worked, kicked people from PF for low damage and also had a few fiery discussion in the in game chat. I have never seen a GM once.

I don't know, it reminds me a bit of this trope "I don't talk to girls, because then i'll get in trouble for harassment." - Do people really not know where to draw the line? Is it impossible to communicate without being an toxic asshole?

Well, if you can't, not using chat is maybe a better option...

(tldr: maybe that's more of a you problem, than a general one, because i have done all this and never been in trouble)