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

[Katchii]

Indeed, but the built-in Equipment Manager has been around since...Wrath? I can't remember it not being in the game now, it's been so long.

You can link specs to sets now too, which is nice.

You're right, I meant to add that too.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Equipment_Manager

Was just pointing out that gear sets have been a thing since Vanilla.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Final Fantasy inventory system is far way better than the one offered by WoW (WoW is just lazy). Why?

How so? I do agree that not having to install an addon for bagnon UI functionality is a plus in FFXIV's favor but it's not a massive improvement.

They give you a place, were all your armor/weapons are going to be stored right away.

That is a band aid for FFXIV's archaic game design. You can play multiple different classes on a single character but there are multiple different types of stat sticks. STR stat sticks, INT stat sticks, Agility stat sticks, stat sticks that can only be worn by Dragoons, etc. Gear in FFXIV isn't remotely interesting like in WoW; they're just boring stat sticks. Having to carry around 30+ different sets of stat sticks for all of your jobs isn't fun. It's a chore. Even with the armoury just for gear it's still a pain the micromanage it. FFXIV would be far better off if gear was removed entirely.

- You can make "sets" for each Class/Job you have and those items in the Armory are going to marked (as part of a set), to stop you from taking it from there.

Having the ability to designate gear as "sets" has never really been necessary for WoW. Back in the pre-WoD days you maybe carried around 2 different sets of gear depending on whether or not you alternated between different specs, or if you also participated in PvP. Then starting with WoD PvP gear was practically eliminated and the primary stats on your gear changes to whatever spec you are in, so you only just needed one set per character. BFA introduced Azerite armor that had different abilities attached to them, so sometimes carrying extra gear was helpful if you were bouncing between different builds, but again you did not need a feature to designate sets for that.

In FFXIV switching sets is just an extra, unnecessary step that stems from the game design. Just remove gear and have it so when you switch jobs, you're all good to go. No need to equip anything else.

I do agree that being able to mark items so that you can't accidentally vendor them is good.

You have 4 tabs of "general stuff" inventory. Not even with my level 80 i get those 4 tabs full of items

You have an addition Chocobo bags storage that is big enough to store even more items

You have 4 additional tabs from the retailers, that you can use to store even more items (up to 2 retailers free)

Another band aid. With the sheer amount of stuff I pick up all of the time (gear from dungeons that overflows from my armoury, foods, trash, mats, etc), I do fill up those 4 slots rather quickly. And my retainers are stuffed with mats and housing items so it's hard to unload in there. FFXIV isn't GW2 levels of bad with the inventory filling up but I never had this problem in WoW.

Opposite from the horrible WoW "transmog" system, In FF14, you can store ONLY the items you like in terms of the "item" itself (like voidstorage) using a currency called Glamour Prism. This way, you only have the items you really like and not pages and pages of ugly items that you are never going to use for Glamour (contrary of WoW, were i have tons of transmog items that are just awful, like those vanilla items).

I do not like having a 400 item cap on how many items I can store in my glamour dresser. I vehemently dislike the tediousness of having to remove stuff from my dresser to make room for new stuff and playing the inventory micromanagement minigame as I already have a near full inventory. I like how in WoW I just keep everything and never lose it.

Ascension does it the best, though. You never have to run back to town to transmog/glamour your gear every time you equip a new piece of gear. Once set, you always maintain that appearance, even when you equip new gear. And you can transmog anything without restriction. Want to be a priest that wears plate? You can do that. True unlimited customization freedom I've never seen in any other game. The only way it could be even better is if it had GW2's dye system where you could dye every part of a piece of gear (whereas in FFXIV you can only apply one dye and it only applies to part of the gear).

You can create Glamour Plates, to set the different appeals that you want to use for the equipment you are using at that moment. You can switch between plates freely and without cost.

Is a good QoL feature but only having a dozen glamour plates sucks. I have to spend time trying to writen down a list of what items and dyes I used for one glamour plate before reusing it for a different set.

Quest items have their own bag

WoW has had this for years. I actually kinda miss having quest items in my inventory as something I can interact with.

Crystals have their own bag

Pretty much turns it into a currency and you could always carry a ton of currencies in WoW.

[Katchii]

The Equipment Manager is there, but lets face it....Is ugly and outdated. We used to make use of this feature when Trinkets, Rings, Sword, Shields....etc, had different status like INT or STR. But now, they are all generic (have both status on the item), so is no longer needed.

Also, a Druid for example, make use of this feature to change from Healer, to melee dps, magic dps and tank. But a Warlock or Mage is kinda useless.

In my case, for my Paladin, i never heal and changing to heals means only change weapon and im done. Tank? weapon change. DPS? change the weapon again....and that's all.

Point is, it's there, it works and has been around for a LONG time. Gear sets/ outfits have been a thing in WoW since Vanilla through add-ons, and officially through the base game since Wrath through the Equipment Manager. None of what you said changes that, at all.

[Zyrinx]

I can't actually believe people are advocating for 14s inventory system over wow's.

To each their own... I guess.

[Tyrannica]

This old thread aged like milk.

[Katchii]

And even it its there, with the last updates in the game, like Val the Moofia Boss mention, has changed the need of it use. In FF14 is MANDATORY to use the armory and switch between Jobs, its even in the Cinematics of FF14.

I'm still not understanding why what you're saying here matters in the context of what you're saying.

In the original post being referred to here, you said:

- You can make "sets" for each Class/Job you have and those items in the Armory are going to marked (as part of a set), to stop you from taking it from there.

Implying that you couldn't do that in WoW.

You can. Full stop.

[Martymark]

I do find the gameplay a bit wonky, but the story is 10/10, so I largely ignore the gameplay and just play through the MSQ as it comes out.

[Echocho]

Ok WoW players I'm sorry that your game sucks but do you have to trash talk ours? Does that make you feel better?

[Tyrannica]

Is just that they point out "problems" that are not really a problem in the game. Inventory is definitely not an issue.

I would call a "serious problem", that the endgame lacks activities to do, other than return to old content to unlock missing collectables, raids, dungeons, etc.

Yeah maybe, as long as i have fun there is no problem, if i am really out of content to do in the endgame i could just play another game and thats really an easy thing in FF. We are looking at about 15- soon 16 FF titles that get constantly remasters and remakes where as blizzard in terms of rpg games has...nothing, but wow and a really bad WC3 remaster. FF even got rpg-strategy titles like Tactics based on ogre battle, dunno if thats still in development, tho.

So. i would say SE is holding all the cards right now in comparission to blizzard with its dead game franchises(star craft 2 developers moved to frost giant, WC3 reforge backfired) but its not just because of final fantasy XIV, but its the current strongest retail title they have, as FFXV and FFXIII didn't do as well for some, but are still good games just not of the old designs, not surprised SE makes so many different remasters, remakes of the old genius works of Hironobu Sakaguchi.

While SE is doing remasters of old FF titles, Blizzard is launching classic servers basicly both do the same nostalgia service for their audience, that could kill easily all your remaining time once you are done in some endgame retail mmorpg.

The different just is, their big MMO has a passionate game director with Naoki Yoshida, while WoW probably does not even have 1 dev who cares and i think it pretty much showed in BfA and SL so far, its just not fun and respecting my time as a player.

I agree the combat and encounter design is still great in wow, but anything else is just cringe to put it mildly.

Good combat design works great in pvp games, pure pvp games. Makes me wonder why blizzard only did the least effort when it comes to pvp in wow, would have doubled down on that, but not the esport kind of pvp, but faction vs faction, wpvp etc stuff that is in good company with mmorpgs and makes a world feel more alive and fits the theme world of WARcraft.

FFXIV is doing what it does better than wow, they are just different games.

[Tojara]

I'm going to stop you right there....

Final Fantasy inventory system is far way better than the one offered by WoW (WoW is just lazy). Why?
- They give you a place, were all your armor/weapons are going to be stored right away.
- You can make "sets" for each Class/Job you have and those items in the Armory are going to marked (as part of a set), to stop you from taking it from there.
- You have 4 tabs of "general stuff" inventory. Not even with my level 80 i get those 4 tabs full of items
- You have an addition Chocobo bags storage that is big enough to store even more items
- Quest items have their own bag
- Crystals have their own bag
- You have 4 additional tabs from the retailers, that you can use to store even more items (up to 2 retailers free)
- Opposite from the horrible WoW "transmog" system, In FF14, you can store ONLY the items you like in terms of the "item" itself (like voidstorage) using a currency called Glamour Prism. This way, you only have the items you really like and not pages and pages of ugly items that you are never going to use for Glamour (contrary of WoW, were i have tons of transmog items that are just awful, like those vanilla items).
- You can create Glamour Plates, to set the different appeals that you want to use for the equipment you are using at that moment. You can switch between plates freely and without cost.
- The only thing missing in FF14 inventory system is a search option, but its not that hard to find the item you are looking for on your inventory, because its not that huge.

Now, if you don't "clean" your inventory and armory, its your fault. Because its clear which items belongs to a "set" you already created and which item is new. Is just about putting things in order....

I mean you stopped me right there because you glossed over pretty much everything I said, lol, so I don't even know why you listed them. I already mentioned that FF14 has a bag for crystals and a bag for quest items. WoW doesn't even need a quest item section because quest items haven't actively been in the game nor take part in your inventory for ages.

If you have an appropriate amount of bags and sizes (which isn't hard to get), you pretty much get ~150 base item storage in both games. The issue here is WoW is designed around each character having a different inventory (which means more slots), while FF14 is a homogenization of every single job (class) on one character. If you're playing a single job or even a few in FF14, the inventory management doesn't get that bad. When you start adding in crafting and several jobs, your armory chest suddenly doesn't seem all that big.

Most of my post is about cataloging items in WoW versus FF14, to which I don't know in what world someone could remotely suggest that FF14 does it better. You find an item, it instantly gets unlocked across your account, and you can sell if it you don't want the item for any reason. Everything is tagged as unlocked for pets, mounts or gear and you just move on with your life. This system doesn't require inventory storage of any capacity because it's directly built into the game. Void storage is indeed awful, but void storage was a system they implemented before they automatically catalogued everything in WoW and is essentially an obsolete system that doesn't even really need to be something anybody would need to know about.

In FF14 you can't even look at multiple items at the same time in the character view, and sort of have to have a rough idea of how things look prior to trying the next piece. Furthermore, like mentioned glamour system both costs an item (which is whatever), has limited storage capacity (annoying, but kind of whatever) and you have to literally go to an area to catalogue things you like. I don't know in what world where something does all of those things for you automatically (and you can preview everything at the same time) is worse than one where you have to go to a secluded area and pick things out one by one. It's like eating ice cream out of the tub, where I take the container top off to start eating the ice cream, whereas you're stubborn and flip the ice cream upside down slowly tearing away at the plastic with your spoon before getting to the ice cream. We both get to eat ice cream sure, but one is obviously a little bit more intuitive and easier than the other way.

I think you're just way too stubborn to analyze anything about games in general and it's just pointless to have conversations with you as things just fly right over your head (which is probably why you get temporarily banned on this site constantly).

It's really annoying when people dig in so hard on games they play like they're on payroll and have to defend pretty bad things. If any of you have ever played console to PC port FPS games, you already know how awful these are usually done when ported to PC. Developers are generally lazy and make a terrible inventory systems that don't make sense on PC, but are made that way to accommodate the console version. It's playable for sure, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating.

I dislike plenty of things about WoW and there are key areas of FF14 that are really bad in comparison. FF14 gear overall looks better and a big part of that is due to the fact that you can just dye anything you get. Crafting in FF14 is actually a thing, whereas it might a well be non-existent in FF14. What's funny is a lot of things I attribute to being bad in FF14 are entirely the fault of the game being on both the Playstation and PC at the same time. There's no doubt in my mind that if Playstation just didn't exist, some of these issues I have with the game would just go away.

Overall it's just a really weird take to defend something as painfully bad as inventory, managing inventory and some of the general UI things (even though the base UI in FF14 is perfectly workable). Weird hill to die on when you can just cite the numerous things that FF14 does incredibly well. But yeah, trying to tell people a shit sandwich tastes good just isn't going to work.

[Tojara]

There is a setting to do this! It's a button on the bottom of the preview pane to "Save Outfit" or something. It'll keep each piece on as you preview more stuff.

Well that's good to know.

I'll admit that there is a billion options in the character, system settings in FF14 (along with bars along the top) to manage tons of stuff that I'm still working through. So I don't mind to admit that I might be wrong on a few things that might be fixed.

[exochaft]

I can't actually believe people are advocating for 14s inventory system over wow's.

To each their own... I guess.

There's some aspects that would be nice to have. As an example, a druid playing all four specs in WoW can have insane bag issues. Heck, even playing 2-3 of the specs while maintaining multiple sets of each spec, situational-use trinkets, and so forth can eat up even max bag size inventory fast. Having a separate inventory for gear specifically has been a wish list item for druids before even FF14's rise in popularity. Beyond druids, any person that wants to play all their specs will likely run into similar issues with gearing. Doesn't have to be an exact clone of the FF14 system, but the concept itself isn't bad considering the design of WoW's classes and specs.

[kaminaris]

There's some aspects that would be nice to have. As an example, a druid playing all four specs in WoW can have insane bag issues. Heck, even playing 2-3 of the specs while maintaining multiple sets of each spec, situational-use trinkets, and so forth can eat up even max bag size inventory fast. Having a separate inventory for gear specifically has been a wish list item for druids before even FF14's rise in popularity. Beyond druids, any person that wants to play all their specs will likely run into similar issues with gearing. Doesn't have to be an exact clone of the FF14 system, but the concept itself isn't bad considering the design of WoW's classes and specs.

Even playing one spec I had bag issues in wow. I play 2 jobs in XIV and still have bag issues (gear related).

[Zyrinx]

There's some aspects that would be nice to have. As an example, a druid playing all four specs in WoW can have insane bag issues. Heck, even playing 2-3 of the specs while maintaining multiple sets of each spec, situational-use trinkets, and so forth can eat up even max bag size inventory fast. Having a separate inventory for gear specifically has been a wish list item for druids before even FF14's rise in popularity. Beyond druids, any person that wants to play all their specs will likely run into similar issues with gearing. Doesn't have to be an exact clone of the FF14 system, but the concept itself isn't bad considering the design of WoW's classes and specs.

Fair points, granted. I mostly played Ff14 to craft, as it turned out, and whew the inventory system is really bad for that aspect of the game.

The armory chest is decent, but the interaction with the glamour system.... I guess the glamour system as a whole actually, is not good. IMO.

[Katchii]

Even playing one spec I had bag issues in wow. I play 2 jobs in XIV and still have bag issues (gear related).

Might be hard since he's on "vacation," but if anyone else can answer how this is possible I'd be interested in hearing about it. Because the only way I can think of that someone playing only two jobs has "bag issues," which I'm assuming means low inventory space, is if they're hoarding EVERYTHING they pick up, and not managing their inventory, at all.

If you're only playing two jobs, you only need two sets of gear, and maybe some extras for glamour or upcoming levels where you'll change gear so you have it on standby until you get there. Either way, every armoury chest slot has 25 spaces, along with the 200 general inventory slots, and 2 x 150 retainer slots.

So if someone is truly having bag issues related to gear, they have the armoury slots for each type of gear filled up along with the 200 general inventory slots filled up with whatever is in there (I'm assuming even more gear because they say it's gear related)....and if they're only playing two jobs, the vast majority of what's filling up their bag is gear they're not even using. I'm not even counting the Retainer because those slots don't matter out in the field if you're wanting to switch jobs or something, but if the gear that's filling up your bags is gear you're not using why can't it be placed in your retainer slots?

Inventory management is a thing.

[Tojara]

So while I haven't played every job in the game, I'll point out that most of the jobs actually feel pretty fast when you get them to a high enough level. If you're coming from WoW and are turned off from the 2.5 second GCD (which is obviously slow), it does get a lot better once you hit 60 or 70 (usually 70). Speed really doesn't speed up the GCD that much, but when you start reading into the combat system you realize that you need enough of it to hit certain thresholds based on your job and your latency. What makes it feel a lot better is just the weaving of oGCD abilities, which unfortunately leaves the leveling experience feeling really slow. That said, if you came from classic WoW where you level a warrior just auto attacking, it's probably not going to be that bad.

Not all is good though and while I feel like DRK feels fairly complete, I then play my GNB and I get sort of annoyed by what I would call button bloat. GNB for the most part feels really good to play and it's pretty simplistic from a resource management, but the button bloat sort of annoys me. To explain, one of their cartridge spending abilities has a roughly ~30 second CD, and pressing it lights up a second ability while pressing that second ability lights up the third ability. Neither the second or the third ability can be pressed without pressing the one prior, so it's impossible to mess up the combo. My problem with this ability chain though is that you can't really fuck it up, so why require three different binds for that ability? Wouldn't it just be better to have the button change to the next ability as you combo them altogether? I recognize that other ability chains in the game are meant to be chained and part of the 'skill' of the game is using them in combo, but this one operates entirely different and it just annoys me that I have to add two extra key binds for this ability.

All in all though the combat at high levels is pretty fast, so if you're turned off by slow combat you just have to endure it, it will get better. Button bloat is really annoying though and having skill speed tiers based on latency is also a big meh (IMO). Obviously the latency thing isn't that big of a deal though if you're just playing casually and don't really care about your overall performance.

I still get sort of annoyed that trying to 'game' bad zones in this game by leaving 1/3 to 1/2 a second prior to them exploding still causes you to get hit. On the flipside the opposite is true too. You can safely jump back into a bosses bad zone while it's still finishing it's cast and never take damage, and equally you move before finishing casts on casters well before the cast finishes. I'd still prefer the game to not have such outrageous server ticks, but it is what it is, and you can just game it in the opposite direction to make it more or less neutral.

[ONCHEhap]

...are you talking to someone in particular, or just yelling into the void?

He's trying to summon a Primal

[Katchii]

So while I haven't played every job in the game, I'll point out that most of the jobs actually feel pretty fast when you get them to a high enough level. If you're coming from WoW and are turned off from the 2.5 second GCD (which is obviously slow), it does get a lot better once you hit 60 or 70 (usually 70). Speed really doesn't speed up the GCD that much, but when you start reading into the combat system you realize that you need enough of it to hit certain thresholds based on your job and your latency. What makes it feel a lot better is just the weaving of oGCD abilities, which unfortunately leaves the leveling experience feeling really slow. That said, if you came from classic WoW where you level a warrior just auto attacking, it's probably not going to be that bad.

Agreed. But even as a die hard fan, saying "just wait until level 70 and it will feel OK" is pretty awful. I personally don't mind because the story and the rest of the game and game play feels good enough to carry me that far, but for those where game play plays a much larger role, that's a pretty weak and inexcusable argument. It should be fixed.

Not all is good though and while I feel like DRK feels fairly complete, I then play my GNB and I get sort of annoyed by what I would call button bloat. GNB for the most part feels really good to play and it's pretty simplistic from a resource management, but the button bloat sort of annoys me. To explain, one of their cartridge spending abilities has a roughly ~30 second CD, and pressing it lights up a second ability while pressing that second ability lights up the third ability. Neither the second or the third ability can be pressed without pressing the one prior, so it's impossible to mess up the combo. My problem with this ability chain though is that you can't really fuck it up, so why require three different binds for that ability? Wouldn't it just be better to have the button change to the next ability as you combo them altogether? I recognize that other ability chains in the game are meant to be chained and part of the 'skill' of the game is using them in combo, but this one operates entirely different and it just annoys me that I have to add two extra key binds for this ability.

This is something they know and understand and are fixing it in Endwalker. GNB specifically is getting that exact combo reworked to essentially be a one button combo where the button changes upon each key press so yuo don't need 3 different keybinds, just one. More than just GNB is getting this treatment.

I still get sort of annoyed that trying to 'game' bad zones in this game by leaving 1/3 to 1/2 a second prior to them exploding still causes you to get hit. On the flipside the opposite is true too. You can safely jump back into a bosses bad zone while it's still finishing it's cast and never take damage, and equally you move before finishing casts on casters well before the cast finishes. I'd still prefer the game to not have such outrageous server ticks, but it is what it is, and you can just game it in the opposite direction to make it more or less neutral.

Yeah, agreed. They could definitely improve the netcode, and make things MUCH smoother, but you do get used to it.

[Tojara]

Yeah, I think telling people to just wait is shortsighted, considering at the same time you're being reamed by the community to play a certain way (pay attention to the story!!!). It took me something like ~450 hours to go from ARR to finishing ShB post MSQ, and that's with only fully unlocking some of the raids and trials along the way. Essentially I missed a lot of unlocks, but I paid pretty close attention to the main story and barely skipped through any dialogue (except when it wasn't all that important).

So yeah, a couple hundred hours depending on the job you start with to make the game feel a bit more fast paced is a lot to ask. However, like you mention if the MSQ or something else grabs you then it's absolutely no problem. It's rough though because personally while I don't think ARR is as bad as people say it was (when I leveled it was the old version), it's probably the least interesting of all four current major installments.

It's good to hear that the GNB combo I mentioned is getting fixed though, and other abilities are just being rolled in baseline (I know enochain is gone, which is something).

When I first started playing I was just so annoyed getting hit by AoEs because it's pretty standard practice in basically any game I play that you can move out in the last second and be fine. A lot of people that play FF14 will tell you that you're just bad and need to get good, but realistically the game really shouldn't operate like that. However, you do get use to it and you can make the system work in you favor by literally running into things early (which you would never do in any other game). Looks weird, but it's whatever. Not big enough of a deal to hate the game over.

[Sorrior]

This game does a lot of things better than WoW, but how it goes about inventory in general is downright awful. WoW is literally just buy bags and put stuff in your bank or bags for later use. It's pretty straight forward and requires literally zero thinking and I don't even use bag addons for WoW at all.

Final Fantasy has a default inventory systems with two additional parts for key items and crystal (general crafting materials in the other). These two don't really matter because one just fills as you pick up crystals while the key item interface would never actually be filled. Your gear goes in an armory chest which the game draws on (can equip from). It causes frustration if you're new and don't clear out your armory chest because the game won't recognize new items you can equip if you go over the armory limit, and instead plants it in your actual bags. Meanwhile additional storage options come in the form of your chocobo saddle (which the game won't draw on), a storage container in the inn, a glamour thing (with limited amounts per slot, granted it's a lot), and the ability to hire retainers which is how you sell items to players in addition to holding even more items.

Cleaning out my bags in FF and going through the hassle of selling, listing, or depositing things for glamour is really annoying. Even worse was fucking around with your armory chest when it inevitably gets full and gear starts leaking into your inventory, then going through the games UI to sell things to vendors which takes far longer than WoW even with WoWs base UI settings.

But yeah, I like this game a lot but inventory and how the game catalogues things is not one of those highlights. WoW is straight forward in regards to inventory and using the auction house, and everything you collect from a gear perspective is automatically catalogued in pet, mount or gear tabs so you know instantly whether you need it or not. There's nothing that tells you that the red items in your inventory or gear you potentially pick up is something that you already have in FF.

The way you can dye your gear in FF14 is amazing and adds a lot of options for customizing your gear. But you would be an absolute fucking liar to tell me that you like having to go deposit your gear to unlock that glamour appearance in your glam closet each and every time, as opposed to just going to a cosmetic tab in WoW and cycling through what everything looks at as soon as you get an item.

It's hilarious because if this game was solely a PC game a lot of the quirks and issues I have with the game would actually just go away. It's obvious the inventory is obtuse and awful for people who play PC games because it's also designed for people on the stupid Playstation, in addition to other UI elements in the game that are limited because of this (granted the base UI manipulation in FF is actually pretty good). It's pretty much like when you play a lot of new release games with inventory systems that are available on consoles and PCs where pretty much all of the work goes into making all it functional for consoles, while they put less work into having alternate or different systems for the PC version (which generally makes the PC port or version feel really clunky).

Pretty sure the inventory issues are more a 1.0 thing rather then a console thing