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

[Itori]

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.

Name an MMO that lets you play the way you're going to play till endgame 1/3 of the way to max level. If that was the case then that would be an extremely boring MMO with nothing to look forward to. I can imagine that now, a lvl 20 sprout/noob trying to figure out a long complex rotation at lvl 20, getting so overwhelmed that they just spam random buttons and have to go look up a guide how to play their class just to parse their first raid.

[dlld]

Name an MMO that lets you play the way you're going to play till endgame 1/3 of the way to max level. If that was the case then that would be an extremely boring MMO with nothing to look forward to. I can imagine that now, a lvl 20 sprout/noob trying to figure out a long complex rotation at lvl 20, getting so overwhelmed that they just spam random buttons and have to go look up a guide how to play their class just to parse their first raid.

ESO/GW2 pretty much gives you a full kit right away, but they are also quite different from wow and FF14 in terms of combat, being more actiony.

[Itori]

ESO/GW2 pretty much gives you a full kit right away, but they are also quite different from wow and FF14 in terms of combat, being more actiony.

They also total in like 10 buttons unless you play a more complex class like the elementalist, which also adds weight to my comment for newer players who get overwhelmed which both of those games are bad about. GW2 unless you read an extensive guide on what combos into what to get what effect then you're going to be frustrated at end game when you die to random mobs in the world. ESO is just the same, unless you have a guide to go by then you'll end up throwing random abilities on your bar, rolling with it, and wonder why you're doing so bad later on.

Meanwhile the players in FF will know their rotation and figure it out completely with little to no help long before they even make it to the max level of 80.

[Itori]

...what?

That's not even remotely close to being factual.

Ok...so if i were playing an engineer, and i dropped down a bomb into an ele rain aoe field and created a blast combo i'd need to know what the blast combo did, and when you look at the tooltips themselves its confusing asf unless you've been playing the game for some time.

[Short]

That's just it. It's "required" but it's also just kinda there.

You don't manage the MP in any way. You can't really choose to not press it, it's right there in the middle of your only combo sequence. Nor can you choose to press it after something other than Fast Blade to focus on mana recovery over short term DPS or something. You could theoretically just skip the last part of the combo and do 1212 for MP regen, but combos are extremely backloaded.

i mean, yeah. it's extremely rigid in how it works. and it doesn't leave much in the way of reactive gameplay. though, then again, the whole games combat system is designed pretty rigidly. to the point where a boss fight can be choreographed to the finest details.
i wouldn't personally call that a bad thing though. seeing as how it flattens the skill bell-curve and thus cater to the majority of players instead of having widely varying skill levels across the board and only catering to 1 subset. but it does pretty much put a hard cap on how good/skilled/versatile someone can be compared to other players. and the game caters to that with most of the combat based content catering to the middle/middle-upper tier of player skill.
where even i, who has a good grasp of their rotation and positioning, doesn't have to use food buffs, chug potion every pull, and gather and slot materia into the perfect pieces of gear with the best mix of secondary stats. i can just, gather a max level tombstone set, slot it full of whatever materia combo is generally considered best for my class, and still comfortably kill savage bosses while parsing up to 90%+ of what my theoretical max should be. and that feels... pretty good...
now, this is just talking about savage raid content, even the newly released content. not the ultimate raids or unreal trials.

[Advent]

Name an MMO that lets you play the way you're going to play till endgame 1/3 of the way to max level. If that was the case then that would be an extremely boring MMO with nothing to look forward to. I can imagine that now, a lvl 20 sprout/noob trying to figure out a long complex rotation at lvl 20, getting so overwhelmed that they just spam random buttons and have to go look up a guide how to play their class just to parse their first raid.

Guild Wars 2. O_o

[Cthulhu 2020]

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.

I mean if you don't like the game, fair enough.

But I can't say I've ever experienced this combat lag you speak of. Some abilities don't apply damage instantly, but they do apply damage at the end of the animation, even if you've already moved out of melee range. As far as casting, it feels the exact same as WoW. You take advantage of your lag to begin moving before a cast even finishes.

[Velerios]

Well, i want to point out you are sharing the video of someone who is a fan of FFXIV and played it without boosts.

Yes for sure, but that does not invalidate this video: he is a fan, others aren't, and bringing up the argument: it gets good after 100 hours in/50-60/whatever is stupid.

[Swnem]

Yes for sure, but that does not invalidate this video: he is a fan, others aren't, and bringing up the argument: it gets good after 100 hours in/50-60/whatever is stupid.

I think people make the case of "gets better in this expansion", not X hours in.
MMORPG's do get better when you have acess to all your abilities, and the story in FF does get progressively better. I don't think it's a bad argument. It worked for me. Because i stuck to it and i finally found out how to enjoy the game and break free from the mental framework WoW conditioned me with.
Sometimes, a push is what is needed. But, sure, an open mind too.

But, this is very much on a per game basis. I don't agree with the premise as something that applies to every game. It depends on what the game does with those X hours.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I mean, I could probably name several.

GW2 for one. You pretty much get your entire weapon kit by level 10. Even in WoW you get a very large chunk of your final kit by 20.

This is another one of those arguments where I don't know why it keeps happening. XIV kits are extremely back-loaded. It's not an opinion or a mystery or something up for debate. Comparing it to other games won't change it. They simply are. I don't know why it's always something people feel the need to "defend" the game over.

GW2 is indeed a very different game. I haven't played it in awhile, but back when I did you got 5 weapon skills and that was it, it was an extremely limited kit.

Most WoW classes work on a priority system too.

FF has a lot of buttons, but most of them you need to push in a certain order. Rotations are typically about 60-90 seconds long and then repeat. The summoner opener is something like what, 3 minutes long? Before it begins to repeat. That's the big difference.

I get why people complain about having limited kits early in FF, but the early part of the game is very front loaded with lore, and much like people used to say in WoW, they didn't like people boosting, because boosters never knew how to do their rotations. The same holds true for people who boost in FF, a lot tend to just jump in and have no clue what they're doing with 18 different primary rotation buttons. They could maybe frontload more of the abilities into 1-50. But the fact that FF withholds lots of big key abilities til later levels is also reminiscent of something people used to like about WoW...

I very fondly remember when people would speak about how, as you leveled, you felt more powerful, and that certain milestone levels gave you big boosts in power. That's how it is in FF after 50. Every 10 levels you gain a major ability that makes you FEEL more powerful. The fact that WoW and GW2 frontloads a lot of abilities means you don't have a whole lot to look forward to, and leveling is just a chore, rather than a part of the game itself. Many modern MMOs have trained players to feel that the leveling process is pointless and that end game is all that matters, but that eliminates what many people felt was fun about RPGs - PROGRESSION.

The leveling process is part of the game. I wish we could go back and untrain all the people who have been changed to feel that leveling is boring and pointless, but we have about 12 years of WoW just abandoning the idea of leveling being meaningful progression in the game, and then most MMOs since have copied WoW, making leveling boring and chore-ish, and makes you want to skip. Heck, in fact it almost feels like WoW makes leveling a chore just to sell for level boosts. WoW's game design has been profit first, gameplay second for a long long time.

[Wrecktangle]

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.

Fair enough, I don't think a lot of these examples are great in the context of "fixing it quickly", but they certainly fix things that the players tend to have issues with for sure. Agreed there.

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.

More so an exercise in if we agree that there is button bloat issues, how could we fix it? There's a few points I've mentioned that are the low hanging fruit for sure. Shift the loss of buttons into shorter CDs, more impactful reusable buttons, or charges, etc.

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.

PLD's mana management isn't pivotal at all. It's completely irrelevant. If you do your rotation you will always be capped. There's no room for doing it better and getting in extra Holy Spirits and have it be a DPS increase (because it messes with DPS windows). This is generally true for other jobs as well. They've even taken away optimizations like this on other jobs like when getting 3 Nastronds used to take some setup, now it's guaranteed.

but you can still effectively combine OGCD's and buffs/role actions to other spells. like a Shield Lob + Provoke macro.

That's a bad macro. Shield lob is almost a useless button as it is, no need to tie it to an actually useful button lol.

Name an MMO that lets you play the way you're going to play till endgame 1/3 of the way to max level. If that was the case then that would be an extremely boring MMO with nothing to look forward to. I can imagine that now, a lvl 20 sprout/noob trying to figure out a long complex rotation at lvl 20, getting so overwhelmed that they just spam random buttons and have to go look up a guide how to play their class just to parse their first raid.

Blade and Soul, WoW, GW2, Wildstar, and probably more than that. It's not about "playing end game at 1/3 level", it's about better ability accrual curves. My Assassin in B&S pretty much had my whole kit by level 22, with levels after that offering me horizontal utility in my existing abilities. I found this to be one of the most fun leveling experiences in modern MMOs, just a shame the game was published by an absolute trash company.

[Velerios]

I think people make the case of "gets better in this expansion", not X hours in.
MMORPG's do get better when you have acess to all your abilities, and the story in FF does get progressively better. I don't think it's a bad argument. It worked for me. Because i stuck to it and i finally found out how to enjoy the game and break free from the mental framework WoW conditioned me with.
Sometimes, a push is what is needed. But, sure, an open mind too.

But, this is very much on a per game basis. I don't agree with the premise as something that applies to every game. It depends on what the game does with those X hours.

You should probably watch the video from timestamp 7:44, because it answers exactly your argument. Why does it need to take this long time for the game to get good? Because he answers it too. And "pulling through" an horrible experience only that it actually might get good does not change that it is still a horrible experience and for what? Why not making the experience good from the beginning. That's the most important question.

[antelope591]

Old thread but trying the game recently I feel similar to the OP. The gameplay, while better than other MMO's such as swtor still falls short of WoW's. The story doesn't seem as good to me as people hype it up to be. Just standard MMO stuff? I played every single FF so I'm quite familiar with the asthetic. Just doesn't quite resonate with me like that. And I'm sorry but these days I don't have time to put in 50 hours to get to the "good stuff". Its great that people are enjoying it but to me, the game just does everything worse than WoW. If I quit playing, it won't be for this game. Just my humble opinion.

[Swnem]

You should probably watch the video from timestamp 7:44, because it answers exactly your argument. Why does it need to take this long time for the game to get good? Because he answers it too. And "pulling through" an horrible experience only that it actually might get good does not change that it is still a horrible experience and for what? Why not making the experience good from the beginning. That's the most important question.

I didn't say that it was perfect the way it is. But sometimes, it's the preconceptions that need to be overcome. Sure, i would love if FF was amazing from the off-set in terms of gameplay (though i am also now aware this is an issue just for players coming from other mmo's such as WoW). But, because i stuck with it, i could understand what it was trying to do and how to enjoy it, rather than try to find a game like the one i was playing before in it and not finding it. The mindset you go in with is very much a big part of whether you can enjoy a game or not.

[Lane]

The story doesn't seem as good to me as people hype it up to be. Just standard MMO stuff?

I had the same complaint. The story in ARR just isn't very good. Once you get to the first expansion it becomes exponentially better and the current expansion has my second favorite villain after FFXV.

[Zafire]

I haven't played in over a year but...I wish they'd go back to making Fates a viable way to level. I used to switch up what I was doing to level, but Deep Dungeon seems to have killed peoples willingness to do Fates.

[Cthulhu 2020]

That's a bad macro. Shield lob is almost a useless button as it is, no need to tie it to an actually useful button lol.

Shield lob has one use. It's the highest single target threat ability (along with all tank ranged attacks). If you want to piss off an aggro whore in some 24 man dungeon, or a hunt train, just spam shield lob or tomahawk or whatever and then they'll just start spam provoking, at which point you can just provoke the second after they do.

- - - Updated - - -

I haven't played in over a year but...I wish they'd go back to making Fates a viable way to level. I used to switch up what I was doing to level, but Deep Dungeon seems to have killed peoples willingness to do Fates.

FATEs aren't even that much slower than potd, in fact it can be a bit faster if you have a bunch of people in the same zone doing the FATEs. FATE mob HP scales up with more people yes, but it's not a 1:1 ratio, so stuff just dies faster.

And as has been mentioned, Bozja is a good way to level as well, and that's basically a zone where you can grind FATEs (skirmishes and critical engagements) and work on your shadowbringers relic weapons simultaneously.

[Lane]

PotD bored me to tears, I honestly don't know how people use it exclusively for leveling. I went with leveling roulette and hunting log + fates while waiting for the queue. It was more enjoyable and I didn't notice getting less EXP for it. Not to mention the challenge log. I typically didn't do leves, but you get such a huge chunk of EXP for doing 5 and 20 of them.

Only thing that sucks is sitting 10+ minutes in queue and getting a trial, wish they'd significantly increase the EXP for those. Course, this was for ARR and HW, I can't comment on leveling post 60.

I would argue that the ARR story isn't bad per se - it actually has some pretty good spots - it's just the pacing that kills it. The need to stretch it out over the course of a whole MMO core game, level 1-50 experience.

Late ARR/pre-HW (2.4+) wasn't terrible, but it did suffer from pacing. The early stuff comes across as standard, generic fare for the most part with the middle just being awful. The wine & cheese arc is a meme for a reason, the Sylph stuff is a blur (I didn't realize how much until Laurentius asked me if I remembered him - nope), so was everything leading up to Garuda. I did not care about Garlemald and I've said before that 5.4 in a few quests was sufficient to know everything you needed to know about the beast tribes, conflicts with the city-states, primal summoning, and tempering (still not a fan of the beast tribes though).

I also couldn't understand why Haurchefant was a fan favorite. Initial interactions with him are not anything special neither is the Francel quest chain. It wasn't until post-feast (and obviously HW) I was like, okay, I get it now.

Course, a lot of that is subjective. Anyone who likes the Garlean conflict, for example, will probably find ARR more interesting than I did. I felt like the story elements I liked got little attention while ones I didn't like got a lot of it spread out over the course of 20+ quests per arc. The characters also ranged from insufferable (Alphinaud & Minfilia) to dull (all but 4 characters) with few exceptions that stood out as likeable and, of the 4 I can think of, two of them disappear for half or more of ARR.

HW has been better in every way. I just wish they had a grand company I could join, I'm basically a full fledged Ishgardian at this point. :P

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I would argue that the ARR story isn't bad per se - it actually has some pretty good spots - it's just the pacing that kills it. The need to stretch it out over the course of a whole MMO core game, level 1-50 experience.

The 1-15 city state intro storylines aren't very interesting. However, once you get the mission to deliver the message to the other cities, and you're exploring new cities and meeting the nation leaders, that bit is interesting. Then the game gets dull again. The game keeps hyping up Ifrit and Titan as these uber threats... only for you to kill them in 30 seconds. The Company of Heroes arc has some good stuff, like that silly liar Roegadyn, or meeting the blind wine maker Shamani and finding Drex hiding out in the woods, but it overall feels aimless. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn come across as very dull and uninteresting characters in ARR 2.0. The story only begins to pick up when the Waking Sands gets raided, and you have this sense of loss and danger, like you're on a mission all by yourself. The Coerthas arc was decent. Gaius and the Ultima Weapon feel threatening and him showing up and murking the other three primals feels threatening. The Mor Dhona segment feels pretty boring and there is a missed opportunity to infiltrate the Castrum while disguised as a Garlean conscript and talk to the other NPCs. Operation Archon starts off really hype, but towards the end you have to do some boring questing in Thanalan, and if you didn't level up on a preferred server, at this point you will be underlevelled and you'll have to stop progressing through the story while you spend an hour doing levelling roulette so you can reach level 50 and proceed. Praetorium is very climatic, but again it suffers from being braindead easy, and the other players are rushing ahead of you, which detracts from the moment.

[Katchii]

FATEs aren't even that much slower than potd, in fact it can be a bit faster if you have a bunch of people in the same zone doing the FATEs. FATE mob HP scales up with more people yes, but it's not a 1:1 ratio, so stuff just dies faster.

Depending on what level you are, FATE's are not as efficient at leveling as PotD.

PotD floor 51-60 xp scales based on what level you are. For example, at character level 49, each completion of floors 51-60 gives 255780 xp. Compared to Northern Thanalan FATEs which provide between 14,210 and 53,287 for the Gorgimaera FATE, with most giving ~21,315 xp. That means it takes ~12-14 FATEs to equal one run through PotD. A good run through PotD takes ~15 minutes or less. Most FATEs take longer than 1 minute.

And the higher level you go, the better the xp gets from PotD. At Level 52, xp per 51-60 run is 475,200. FATEs in Coerthas Western Highlands average ~15-16,000 xp. That's close to 30 FATE's per level. Dravanian Forelands FATE's average ~24-25,000 xp making it ~19 FATEs per level.

Coupled with the frenzy and focus you have to have in a FATE group to ensure you get to the FATE in time to tag mobs and get credit, and assuming the zone even has a mob of people doing the FATEs to make them take such a short time, PotD easily out paces FATEs as far as efficient leveling is concerned. It's not even a contest IMO given how much "harder" you have to work in a FATE group vs a PotD run. Neither is hard, but one takes more focus and effort than the other for maybe the same efficiency, if not slightly less.

Sources for the information I was using to make these comparisons:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=2137694813

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/List_of_FATEs

And as has been mentioned, Bozja is a good way to level as well, and that's basically a zone where you can grind FATEs (skirmishes and critical engagements) and work on your shadowbringers relic weapons simultaneously.

I'll agree here, once you have access to Bozja and are the right level, it's pretty great as far as ease of leveling and being able to kill multiple birds with one stone.

- - - Updated - - -

PotD bored me to tears, I honestly don't know how people use it exclusively for leveling. I went with leveling roulette and hunting log + fates while waiting for the queue. It was more enjoyable and I didn't notice getting less EXP for it. Not to mention the challenge log. I typically didn't do leves, but you get such a huge chunk of EXP for doing 5 and 20 of them.

PotD and HoH are mind numbingly boring, agreed. But, they're spammable and efficient, so they're a reliable source of grindable xp when you're leveling and you can pretty easily know just how much longer/ how many more runs it will take to go from X level to your goal.

It's how I leveled every expansion job I intended to play through the new expansion once they were available, along with a LOT of other people. Quarrymill and the Red Sea were absolutely inundated with people on launch days because of it, so queues for the leveling/spamming floors were instant and runs took ~10-12 minutes consistently so it was super efficient...but yes...super boring.

Apparently squadrons are just as good, if not better, than PotD and HoH. Or at least, an alternative. I never did them so can't comment, but have heard several others speak about them.