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

[Lane]

it genuinely plays like a single player RPG for a large portion of the game, especially the MSQ. but i don't see how a pre-set patch cycle could be considered "dragged out filler" when no other single player RPGs even have mayor content patches post release.
you get a full story with just the base game. and what could be considered post MSQ filler has always been the setup for the next expansion.
though i will say, post ARR MSQ/Pre Heavensward MSQ is a lot of content and feels like a slog.

Despite ShB having a brilliant story, there was still a lot of filler. Every time you're on your way to the next confrontation you have several hours worth of menial labor to do ahead of time, whether it's repairing a trolley, a lift, or whatever. I can't think of any single player RPG I've played that essentially has 'speed bumps' to keep you from tearing through the story too quickly. Just because the MSQ is a soloable experience for the most part doesn't make it play like a single player RPG, it's still an MMO that has to drag out a certain amount of play time.

[Short]

FFXIV is doing stat squish next expansion and it already removed tons of abilties every expansion. Look at Twintania kills at the time and compare hotbars to what you get at level 50 now. Also consider that they removed many aspects of the combat, like enmity actually mattering, MP/TP management and so on. And on top of that potency has almost doubled.

i don't see how any of these things make FF14 ARR content obsolete? like you said, they're doing a STATS squish and they're removing belts. there is no mention of a LEVEL squish like WoW has had.
most of the things they've removed, most, not all, were nothing but bloat. if every healer has access to a 5% damage reduction buff, you might as well bake that into the core system and not worry about it. and the removal of TP was a godsend for any physical DPS classs that wanted to AoE for more then 20 seconds. and they adjusted damage output and enemy health pretty well accordingly. the enmity system through tank stances was, again, a bloat. why have 3 possible option, no stance, DPS stance or Tank stance, when you only end up using 2 of those options anyway. sure you could argue that removing them took away from the lower level experience. but tanking Qarn or Cutter's Cry was a pain in the ass because you didn't get your tank stance till 40. so you'd have to have a constant tug-of-war with any decently geared DPS class over the enmity. which wasn't fun. and with the removal/pruning of the enmity system tanks have also gotten more offensively complex.
now there are some spells that they've removed that i do miss. whether these are class based or role based. i miss having an AoE dot on WHM. i miss having Flash as a tank. but looking back, as fun as they were. Flash was only there to allow tanks to keep enmity in AoE when their TP had run out. the blind effect being a nice bonus though.
the vast majority of spells they've removed were part of cutting down on bloat and streamlining classes. just as WoW has tried to do.
what puzzles me most is that the WoW community wanted to keep some of their useless spells for "class fantasy" reasons. when all they did was fill up the spellbook and never see the light of day outside of extremely obscure use cases. like when Switfy had found another insta kill exploit.
the FF14 community was pretty mild about the whole ordeal, despite the fact that a lot of the spells could have been kept for more then just "class fantasy" reasons, such as RP or event reasons.

You have more spells at level 20 in classic WoW than at level 50 in FFXIV.

ah yes, shield bash for arms warriors, lightning bolt for enhancement shamans, Raptor Strike for hunters, need i go on?
i mean, it's not hard to fill a bar with spells if the vast majority of them are for different talent trees, or extremely rare use cases.
they pruned that nicely in later parts of WoW, which is what FF14 has done as well. a good design decision all around.
but if we look at actual usage of spells you get in both games at that level. i'd say they're pretty equal.

X.1 - X.3 patches are always about finishing expansion story since HW, which is why Yoshi-P specifically had to state that 6.0 MSQ is self-contained.

alright, bit of a broad statement on my end. patch X.1 to X.3 are indeed about tying up loose ends past the initial story of the expansion but they, as well as patches past X.3, also start up the first parts of the next expansions story. so i don't get what you're trying to go for here. that they're choosing to do so differently next expansion has no impact on how they're doing things now, or how they've done things prior. all i get from your Yoshi P quote is that for the next expansion the whole MSQ will be wrapped up in 6.0 and 6.1 onward will be... about setting up the story for the next expansion... if we get another one that is.

Do you even play the game?

Yes, more so than i'm willing to admit and vastly more so than you think i do.

[BiggestNoob]

I never said that's what games should be. But XIV is absolutely full of, "It gets better later." aimed at new players, and that's absolutely what the video is about.

That's true about literally every game. It's also broadly true about movies, books, TV shows, etc. The game gets better as you play it because you have progression systems that ensure that. What's not true is that the game is really bad for a very long time then gets good for some reason. JSH suffers through a brutal hell of absolute Z-tier gameplay for 50 hours and then some 100-hour andy shows up "but you didn't even get to the good part" in his comments.

100 hours is not an "introduction"

You can try to stop being disingenuous about this 100 hours thing. He's talking about a common defense of the absolutely TERRIBLE MMOs he reviews. It's not about FFXIV, and he's providing general examples of why that's a bad argument. That's not an argument that's being made here, full stop, but that video is being used to dismiss people because some people have an opinion about FFXIV and clearly everyone who disagrees with them is a "100hourer".

And yet it's exactly those new players who come in and say that it feels boring to them. Constantly telling them they're wrong or their argument is stupid isn't going to help the game.

I disagree. I think we're talking about a vocal minority of MMO veterans who want this game to be more like their game, and with no introduction because who doesn't raid heroic and get blue parses at least? The vast majority of people playing these games aren't like us and don't think much about this, and I think if it was genuinely bad, who the hell would be playing it? The games JSH is talking about have very few players because they really are just awful. I mean so bad you could genuinely call it a challenge to even get through them.

[Itori]

Is there any real arguments here? Or has this thread devolved into a mass of "my fav streamer said such and such therefor game is bad"? The only arguments im seeing are "the combat is slow" which ill give it that, but "its a weebs game" "its full of furries" "the story sucks" and "lol boob slider" are not valid arguments because

• It's made by a Japanese game developer, who is known for incorporating western, middle eastern, indian, chinese, japanese cultures, and even steampunk into their games, which FFXIV has all of if anyone who made those arguments even cared to look into.

• The only "furry" race in FFXIV is the new Hrothgar which is a full on furry lion man, cat ears/tail and bunny ears on a mostly human model does not constitute as "furry" meanwhile these people making these arguments fail to mention that WoW has giant cow people, werewolves, fox people, pandas, which all are full on furry on a bipedal game model.

• The story sucks? That's only said by people who never given anything a chance, i mean do you pick up a new book and start reading and be like "oh this isn't harry potter, this book must suck" or "this movie isn't marvel, lol trash movie is trash" sit down, take your time, give it a shot, and if you still don't like it after that then its cool, we understand.

• Extensive character customization is a think that nearly every modern MMO being released is doing, if someone wants to make a big booby bimbo to satisfy their pixel lust then so be it, but there are also those people out there that play with every option to make the best looking characters they can. go check out Eorzea Collection, its a website dedicated specifically to FFXIV fashion and you will see every iteration of character design you can think of.

It's not illegal to play 2 mmo's at one time, people. Give it a shot before you listen to the streamer who's obviously biased entertaining a following who also share said bias and opinion. If you want an actual argument then ill throw out a few freebies. You can only talk in certain chats during dungeons/raids and can't whisper/tell anyone outside until you leave said dungeon/raid, and the limitation of glamour/transmog is something that needs to be fixed.

[BiggestNoob]

So one of the most common complaints from new players is just fake news, I guess?

Also, this: https://youtu.be/N4G4r-Xp-u8?t=348

So yeah.

I don't see any official polling of common complaints, where do you determine it's one of the most common complaints from new players? I hope mmo-champion, a WoW forum, isn't your source.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/33460320/

And the majority of that was done on stream last month after Asmongold started playing, where he was last seen in 2.2. So he basically just copypastad a commonly voiced sentiment, after putting in an hour? to get footage, literally playing the tutorial. You get an ogcd at level 2 on PLD. By level 15, you have 9 abilities, 5 of which are ogcd.

[Cren]

So Fast blade (lvl 1 attack), Riot blade (level 4 attack combos with fast blade) Total eclipse (level 6 AOE) shield bash (level 10 attack) and shield lob (level 15 ranged attack) dont count?

Pretty sure he meant that none of the abilities at level 15 that are oGCD are attacks.... Thought that was obvious

[Frostfred]

The boring start is imo also very dependent on the class. In some cases, the feel of the class completely changes from one level to the next, depending on which skills you get.

For example, i mained arcanist. From 1 to 18 it was, in 99% of the cases, just one spell. The dots didn't really do enough damage to be viable while leveling - stuff was just dying too fast. There were the odd cases where the dots made sense, but it was really rare. However, at 18 you get your first off gcd spells, one of which scales with dots, and a new resource mechanic - it's a completely different feeling then. So you basically go from 1 viable spell to 5 in one level. Still a lot of stuff missing, e.g. an aoe spell. But imo after 18 the class was okay-ish, which includes the lowest level instance. Before it was a nightmare.

Another example from the same class is scholar around 45-50. You also get the aetherflow mechanic and with it instant offGCD spells, as well as a fairly strong aoe nuke in this region. Completely changes how the job plays in instances - you can actually do quite some damage on trash, and you can risk focusing more on damage with the strong instant heal in the repertoire.

On the other hand, I'm leveling my rogue these days. And damn, that's even worse than arca in the beginning. I'm 25 now, and it's still a 1-2 and repeat combo, with one off GCD spell on a 120 sec timer. Which also means, that you're always stuck with that if you ever come to a low lvl instance in the roulette - though not sure if the ninja job changes much. Maybe some classes are even worse in that regard, and it's a tough sell to someone that the gameplay will get better after that much time. Especially for a usually (in many games) more fast-paced class like a rogue with daggers.

[e] To add another point to the topic:
- Automatically dismounting when doing something: damn how much I miss that from WoW
- Addons for better inventory management: same. I really enjoy the crafting system, and leveled all of them (between 35 and 50 now), and the inventory management is just terrible, for the most part

[Lane]

- Automatically dismounting when doing something: damn how much I miss that from WoW

Same. Likewise, being dismounted whenever I talk to someone. The two need to be reversed.

[Itori]

Pretty sure he meant that none of the abilities at level 15 that are oGCD are attacks.... Thought that was obvious

Yes, I had to read it again and then it was clear to me, so I deleted my post. My mistake.

[Rogalicus]

i don't see how any of these things make FF14 ARR content obsolete? like you said, they're doing a STATS squish and they're removing belts. there is no mention of a LEVEL squish like WoW has had.

You probably forgot that WoW also had stat squish in 6.0, which irrevocably damaged all the old content, so they had to significantly buff damage against lower level targets in certain ranges, which also fucked up leveling. It's yet to be seen how SE is going to deal with all the cons of their stat squish.

most of the things they've removed, most, not all, were nothing but bloat

I'd argue things that are still there are more bloat than a lot of removed things. Combo buttons, AoE versions of single target spells (like Dragonfire Dive for Spineshatter Dive or Contre Sixte for Flerche and so on), utterly useless crap like monk's Fists or samurai's Third Eye. The game devolved into holy trinity of Green DPS, Blue DPS and Red DPS.

ah yes, shield bash for arms warriors, lightning bolt for enhancement shamans, Raptor Strike for hunters, need i go on? i mean, it's not hard to fill a bar with spells if the vast majority of them are for different talent trees, or extremely rare use cases.

Lightning Bolt for enh shamans is the same as Enpi for samurai or Piercing Talon for dragoon though. As for your other examples, I never stated that Classic class design was a masterpiece. I do think that niche abilities are good though, as long as there is a niche. It makes playing the class rewarding by acknowledging your skill.

[Rogalicus]

Hey, don't underestimate Third Eye! It's a DPS gain if you can proc it. SAM has way too damn many buttons, though.

I do admit I didn't use the button even once, though I'm not even sure how you'd use it with most of the damage being either avoidable or raid wide while boss is untargetable.

[Short]

You probably forgot that WoW also had stat squish in 6.0, which irrevocably damaged all the old content, so they had to significantly buff damage against lower level targets in certain ranges, which also fucked up leveling. It's yet to be seen how SE is going to deal with all the cons of their stat squish.

no, i didn't forget. and it's true, we're going to have to wait and see how they're going to handle it, but i have reasonable hopes they'll not fuck it up completely.
and if we do find there's issues later down the line i'm sure they'll get it fixed quickly. seeing how their track record is with these kinds of things.

I'd argue things that are still there are more bloat than a lot of removed things. Combo buttons, AoE versions of single target spells (like Dragonfire Dive for Spineshatter Dive or Contre Sixte for Flerche and so on), utterly useless crap like monk's Fists or samurai's Third Eye. The game devolved into holy trinity of Green DPS, Blue DPS and Red DPS.

yeah, it's pretty much a trinity at this point of 3 different colored DPS roles. and a bit more differentiation between the roles would be nice. but, with the exception of monks fists, most of the other examples of bloat you named aren't really bloat... AoE versions of single target spells are either there to accommodate the resource gain/dump cycle of the class for AoE, without having to have an entire new sub system, or share a cooldown with the single target counterpart. or they don't share a cooldown/cost at all and you can use them as OGCDs in both types of combat, single target and AoE.
it's like complaining elemental shaman have lightning bolt and chain lightning... i mean... same spell, different purpose.
if i correctly understand what you mean by the combo system, then that's not bloat. that's a core system. almost every physical DPS class has that as a baseline DPS rotation. it could be that you personally don't enjoy it. but it's not bloat.
the Third eye, yeah. it wont make or break a high end boss fight. but it has more uses than say a healers Repose, seeing as how every mayor boss has a basic AoE burst attack and some 90% hit at the transitional phase, which is where it could be useful seeing as how it triggers the option for another attack or a self heal.
as for Monk's Fists. 100% agree. that stuff is bloat, they already had a small change pass on monks some time ago but that class is in desperate need of a Mechanist style redesign.
also, another great example of current FF14 bloat is directionals. having the hit an enemy from a specific angle, to trigger extra damage or even to keep your combo going, is more of a punishment than a reward. and the substantial increases most of those classes got to directional nullification abilities (True North) tells me that even the devs aren't completely happy with it.

Lightning Bolt for enh shamans is the same as Enpi for samurai or Piercing Talon for dragoon though. As for your other examples, I never stated that Classic class design was a masterpiece. I do think that niche abilities are good though, as long as there is a niche. It makes playing the class rewarding by acknowledging your skill.

that is a fair comparison on the lightning bolt to melee DPS ranged attacks. and i know you never said that classic class design was a masterpiece. i simply wanted to point out the quality/quantity argument of level 20 classic vs level 50 ff14. and i'm not saying it's bad to have niche abilities. but i don't see how playing a class around it's niche abilities could be an acknowledgement of ones skill. outside of some very niche situations like the mage tower or some strange use item ability insta kill macro. but those are pretty much isolated instances/locations/times. as awesome as they can be though.

- - - Updated - - -

Despite ShB having a brilliant story, there was still a lot of filler. Every time you're on your way to the next confrontation you have several hours worth of menial labor to do ahead of time, whether it's repairing a trolley, a lift, or whatever. I can't think of any single player RPG I've played that essentially has 'speed bumps' to keep you from tearing through the story too quickly. Just because the MSQ is a soloable experience for the most part doesn't make it play like a single player RPG, it's still an MMO that has to drag out a certain amount of play time.

true, any MMO will try and get it's playtime worth by dragging out certain parts. and FF has some egregious MSQ content.
though i feel the vast majority, even the 2 specific examples you list, repairing a trolley and a lift, have some pretty big implications for the story. i'll use spoiler warning as to not ruin it for the invested.
the trolley ends up in quite the confrontation. and is both a great character growth setup for Thancred, as well as furthering the dynamic between him and Ryne.
as for the lift Chai-Nuzz might not be a mayor character, but he does play a pretty pivotal role in taking down Vauthry. and the whole repairing the lift sequence is a good bit of character growth for him. going from a "i don't know if i can still do this, it's been so long." person full of self doubt. to literally getting the confidence to move an entire mountain.

both of those are pretty good story telling, just that they don't put you, the player, as the center piece.
but rather, focus on the development of other mayor characters.

this ain't to say there's no bussy work, and that we must enjoy story about all the side characters, but most of the story telling is top notch.
as long as i don't have to get another bottle of wine... F that...

[Wrecktangle]

no, i didn't forget. and it's true, we're going to have to wait and see how they're going to handle it, but i have reasonable hopes they'll not fuck it up completely.
and if we do find there's issues later down the line i'm sure they'll get it fixed quickly. seeing how their track record is with these kinds of things.

Just out of curiosity what are some other examples of "these kinds of things"? I'm trying to remember some other major system overhauls/fixes and nothing jumps to mind.

AoE versions of single target spells are either there to accommodate the resource gain/dump cycle of the class for AoE, without having to have an entire new sub system, or share a cooldown with the single target counterpart. or they don't share a cooldown/cost at all and you can use them as OGCDs in both types of combat, single target and AoE.
it's like complaining elemental shaman have lightning bolt and chain lightning... i mean... same spell, different purpose.

Eh, there's something to be said for having buttons that do literally nothing but add damage. No effects, no conditionals, no resource generation, etc. just a toggle between ST or AOE? I could argue one of them is redundant. Given FF14's encounter design paradigm I could easily make a case for a small potency buff across the board and scrap the ST version and just have all oGCDs be AOE instead of having an ST and AOE counterpart. Is this a good idea? No clue, but I could see it making sense if your goal is to reduce the count of shallow buttons.

if i correctly understand what you mean by the combo system, then that's not bloat. that's a core system. almost every physical DPS class has that as a baseline DPS rotation. it could be that you personally don't enjoy it. but it's not bloat.

For instance, on PLD, Fast Blade does nothing but add damage and is only pressed so that you can press the next button Riot Blade. Riot Blade does have a very fake shallow effect of additional MP gain, but this is passive and cannot be optimized due to job design. The actual function of this ability is strictly to hit your next ability, either Royal Authority or Goring Blade.

Speaking candidly, there's absolutely no reason that you can't just use the PVP template to have these be 2 different hotkeys instead of 4. Again, if the goal is to reduce button bloat, it's the low hanging fruit.

also, another great example of current FF14 bloat is directionals. having the hit an enemy from a specific angle, to trigger extra damage or even to keep your combo going, is more of a punishment than a reward. and the substantial increases most of those classes got to directional nullification abilities (True North) tells me that even the devs aren't completely happy with it.

You won't find any sympathy on positionals from me. I hate them. Everything about them. They're the #2 reason I play a tank, and it's because I am a top rated melee DPS, but hate positionals so much that I'd rather tank to not deal with them. Over the years they've "nerfed" the importance and consequences for failing positionals and added buttons to help mitigate it.

I also think tank stances are bloat. We don't need them. Just make Provoke give top threat and generate 10000% threat for xs (since threat has been made useless already). Boom, this also kills the need for Shirk, another ability I can't freaking stand.

[Santas]

WoW player for 16 years, FFXIV player for 6 months here.

My honeymoon period in FFXIV is over, so here's my feelings about the game:

It's getting boring, and fast. I feel that once I max out all the classes that I like -- I am definitely going to quit. The endgame for most people seems to be the collection of glamour (transmog) items, setting them up, making new plates etc. but it's so horribly limited that it will definitely end up being a pain once I reach 400/400 items in the wardrobe. As for 'high-end' content (AKA Synchronized swimming with a death penalty) well, I'd probably take it seriously if the combat felt better and overall less laggy, the game wants us to get used to it and play around these things, I refuse to. Also, I love to PvP from time to time, this game's PvP is virtually non-existent, it's just plain bad.

I would not call the combat horrible, but not good either, it's laggy, the 'server ping' is definitely there and has burned me more than a few times, WoW is 100 times superior in that department, it's an engine thing, not just server related. Dungeon design is the most boring & linear I've seen in any mmorpg (I've played a lot) in general the Japanese devs like to play it SAFE, something that everyone here keeps begging Blizzard to do, it seems. I mean, if it works, why change it, right? Not really, I hate both extremes. Be careful what you wish for. It does have a very good story, for the most part, ARR was mediocre and tedious and Stormblood was straight up cringey (that musical part at the end.. Jesus... if you know you know) except some parts that should have lasted longer. I could go on and on about FFXIV, but overall I'll say this: Is it a better mmorpg right now than the competition? Yes, but that doesn't make it great, it's a mediocre mmorpg and it seems they want to keep it that way.

Feel free to open fire and shoot me down, I know we are in the period were "WoW BAD!, FFXIV GOOD!" but whatever.

[Short]

Just out of curiosity what are some other examples of "these kinds of things"? I'm trying to remember some other major system overhauls/fixes and nothing jumps to mind.

Raubahn EX in early Stormblood comes to mind, at least in terms of how they handle situations that effect the playerbase in a negative way. as for something along the lines of introducing or changing things or systems they've made and their track record. i think 1.0 to 2.0 is a pretty prime example of people not being happy, things not working the way the devs wanted to, and them changing it for the better.

Eh, there's something to be said for having buttons that do literally nothing but add damage. No effects, no conditionals, no resource generation, etc. just a toggle between ST or AOE? I could argue one of them is redundant. Given FF14's encounter design paradigm I could easily make a case for a small potency buff across the board and scrap the ST version and just have all oGCDs be AOE instead of having an ST and AOE counterpart. Is this a good idea? No clue, but I could see it making sense if your goal is to reduce the count of shallow buttons.

i fully get that it's somewhat of a bland way of differentiating between AoE and Single Target combat. but, OGCD's will be woven into any rotation, regardless of if they're single or AoE. they could "fix" it in a multitude of ways, but i don't see to much of a problem with the current system, other than it not adding more then a generic OGCD button in a lot of casses. perhaps this is something that the community could push for.

For instance, on PLD, Fast Blade does nothing but add damage and is only pressed so that you can press the next button Riot Blade. Riot Blade does have a very fake shallow effect of additional MP gain, but this is passive and cannot be optimized due to job design. The actual function of this ability is strictly to hit your next ability, either Royal Authority or Goring Blade.

it's funny how you call out PLD, it's my favorite class. i get that Riot Blade's mana generation effect seems redundant, but it's actually quite pivotal in keeping up a solid high DPS rotation at high level. if you take away it's mana regeneration effect you'll miss out on capping your mana before the next Requiescat comes of cooldown. which makes you miss out on at least 1 Holy Spirit before you end with Confiteor (if you're 80, otherwise it's just pure Holy Spirit spam)
the combo system for most classes will have seemingly minor effects added if you do the combo properly, but the payoff is usually a lot bigger then it first lets on.
granted, at lower levels there are a lot of redundant effects on combo spells, other than just a big increase in damage. but they do come into their own at higher levels.

Speaking candidly, there's absolutely no reason that you can't just use the PVP template to have these be 2 different hotkeys instead of 4. Again, if the goal is to reduce button bloat, it's the low hanging fruit.

true, that would be 1 way to deal with button bloat, and to a degree you can already effectively combine certain spells/skill with macro's, even to the point where you can build an entire rotation onto 1 button. it's how you used to level/make money with crafting professions. macro everything to 3 buttons, set up an auto clicker and go walk the dog or something.
however, currently macro's do limit players somewhat in that for spells on the GCD they do trigger the max GCD duration regardless of spell/skill speed increases.
but you can still effectively combine OGCD's and buffs/role actions to other spells. like a Shield Lob + Provoke macro.

You won't find any sympathy on positionals from me. I hate them. Everything about them. They're the #2 reason I play a tank, and it's because I am a top rated melee DPS, but hate positionals so much that I'd rather tank to not deal with them. Over the years they've "nerfed" the importance and consequences for failing positionals and added buttons to help mitigate it.

I also think tank stances are bloat. We don't need them. Just make Provoke give top threat and generate 10000% threat for xs (since threat has been made useless already). Boom, this also kills the need for Shirk, another ability I can't freaking stand.

Positionals can indeed get flushed down a drain and i doubt anyone would try and stop it.
as for tank stance, provoke and shirk. that's not a bad idea. they'd have to do some balancing on cooldown and stuff for higher end content that might need a couple of quick tank swaps, but it could work overall.
but if they don't, if they could make tank stance active by default, regardless of level scaling effects, that'd be great.

[Lane]

Given that group content is required for the MSQ, I wish it was easier. I have never been the type who likes challenging group content (playing with a group at all is challenge enough :P). As far as I'm concerned, one of the reasons Wrath was the best expansion is because heroic dungeons were steamrolls. I realized with the Crystal Tower raids that I don't have it in me anymore to memorize mechanics on top of mechanics. Telegraphs are one thing, but there are at least half a dozen different things orbs that attach to you during fights do that I've encountered just between ARR & HW, for example. Kill these adds, don't kill these adds, etc.

As for dungeon design, I haven't had a problem with it. Linear is always going to be superior for completing the objective, especially if you have players new to it. I've been in several Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak groups where we end up wandering around because nobody (including me :P) knows where to go and, in some cases, end up accidentally running back to the entrance because of it. Aesthetically, the dungeons are some of the better I've seen in MMOs. The only one I might rate above it is Rift because they had a lot of 'outdoor' dungeons and I am sick to death of gloomy caverns.

Combat depends on job. I've been maining DRG, which started out extremely slow and now at 60 I have more buttons than I know what to do with already. Abilities need to be better spread out among the leveling process. Not to mention that, depending on job, your rotation keeps changing every 10-20 levels. I haven't noticed ping being an issue and I play on an awful connection on the other side of the country from the data centers. I can't recall a single lag death I've had in FFXIV and those were a common occurrence in WoW.

Story in ARR was boring unless you were into the Garlemald and beast tribe conflicts. Had the game started at the 'feast' it would've been exciting. HW so far is good, can't comment on SB. ShB is spectacular and expecting good things from EW.

[dlld]

Given that group content is required for the MSQ, I wish it was easier. I have never been the type who likes challenging group content (playing with a group at all is challenge enough :P). As far as I'm concerned, one of the reasons Wrath was the best expansion is because heroic dungeons were steamrolls. I realized with the Crystal Tower raids that I don't have it in me anymore to memorize mechanics on top of mechanics. Telegraphs are one thing, but there are at least half a dozen different things orbs that attach to you during fights do that I've encountered just between ARR & HW, for example. Kill these adds, don't kill these adds, etc.

I find the difficulty pretty good, it is on the more difficult side for content that everyone is expected to do, but not overly so and in the few cases where it goes over the line there is always the echo to help out (Think my group beat titania with 4-5 stacks of echo and that is the most wipes on a MSQ trial I had, usually do it first or second try). I believe it helps push the average player to try and get better, it also helps that not once have anyone been salty or ragequit after wiping.

I felt there is a overall increase in difficulty from ARR to ShB but that might be because of level scaling and background powercreep inbetween expansions rather new fights being intentionally made harder.

[Velnora]

Endgame progression is pretty bare. I hate how nearly all the content in the game is behind an instance queue.

[Ringthane]

First. You can disable all Spell animations (Your own, Party members or All)

Second. you complain about the combat after 20 levels? What? You should've heard by now that later in the game you get "Off global cooldown" abilities to weave in between the GCD abilities. It gets much much smoother then. If you don't like the 2.5 sec GCD try playing a Ninja. You only have a 2 sec GCD. But yeah..again..later on not at lvl 20.

It would be the same if you played WoW up to lvl 20. All you do is spam 1 or 2 spells until you get to a higher level with more skills and talents.

Come on now. If you can level to 60, then level 20 is a third of the way there. I'd agree if he said level 5, but by level 20, you're basically playing the way you're going to be playing. And don't give me that "spam 1 or 2 spells" either. I've played a warrior (Gladiator?) and an arcanist to over level 20, and I hit the same two buttons on each one. I've had to make more difficult decisions when I'm trying to decide what to eat for supper than I have playing either game.

[Jastall]

I tried to get into it again, I really did, but just stopped playing after like 15 hours. The UI is bad, I don't like the art design, the setting bores me, the story is OK nothing more, the crafting looks deep enough but I couldn't care less about crafting. More than anything, the combat just felt bad. I know low level is low level, but even leveling a Mage in WoW felt like I had more and more interesting abilities at level 20 than I had at 30 in FFIV leveling a Thaumaturge. And then I logged into my geared main in WoW and the difference was night and day. It was like going from Goldeneye to Doom Eternal. Blizzard's gameplay is just superior in every way.

OK not that bad, maybe from Fallout 4 to Doom Eternal. I looked at the gameplay of some jobs online and a few like Samurai seem more up my alley, but I truly can't be bothered to spend all that time playing something I don't like just to maybe find something I like in it sometime later. Too many games I enjoy playing right now to waste my time on such nonsense. Good for the people who enjoy it, you do you and all that, but I'll be that guy sticking to WoW for the foreseeable future.

Hey, at least it lasted longer than ESO. I put that down before my Steam refund period was up, lol.