Is it possible to enjoy FFXIV if I only like endgame content?

[hzjf]

I'd say LFR is easier than Alliance raids.





WoW raiding is also braindead easy outside of the last 3-4 on Mythic, what's your point?

WoW raiding will always be braindead easy until Blizzard actually takes a firm stance on what's acceptable for addons.

Many of you WoW raiders would be so lost if they broke DBM, BigWigs and Weakauras.

Bosses that got designed with Addons in Mind would confuse Players ? You dont say

FF14 raiding is also braindead easy outside of Ultimate

like whats your Point ?

[Redroniksre]

And if they are going to do that they probably need to run all of the above to get geared up, and then if they want to gear up multiple jobs they will almost certainly need to keep doing that content, not just the savages.

Not at all if they know a crafter or have money. You can get geared up and ready to raid almost instantly.

To the OP though, FFXIV has less emphasis on raiding, but it is by far easier to raidlog with. If you are interested in doing older content that can still be hard (Min iLvl, No Echo) then you have lots of content out the gate. If you are looking for relevant only, then you have a little bit of work, but FFXIV is more of a sub for patch game for raid exclusive players.

Bosses that got designed with Addons in Mind would confuse Players ? You dont say

FF14 raiding is also braindead easy outside of Ultimate

like whats your Point ?

Kind of a bad take. If it was really braindead easy then how can it take almost a week to clear some savage fights? Usually people saying braindead easy are people who have never even touched the higher content before.

[Rageonit]

Yes, really, and that opinion is shared by all the former wow raiders I play FF14 with. All of us were very exhausted with playing the UI rather than playing the fight. We were all exhausted with weakauaras being more important than playing the game well. We were all exhausted with needless gear walls that prevent us from completing content. We were all exhausted with a raid model that expected us to run the same raid 50 times on multiple difficulties.

You're mistaking auxiliary with mandatory.
9.2 the only boss-specific aura I've been using (and always require using if we take pugs in) is for the Among Us voting in the Mal'ganis/Kintessa encounter. No other boss-specific aura.
9.1 it was helpful to have the aura for Fatescribe rings. Can't remember using any other boss specific aura.
9.0 I don't think I've used a single boss specific aura.
People create auras, because they can, so yes, you can find boss-specific auras for most of the encounters. But to say you need them to progress is a huge stretch - not for 95% of the content.

[shise]

The game is all about the story. You will have cinematics and dialog maybe 40% to 60% of your playing time.

[Merpish]

I'd say LFR is easier than Alliance raids.


Least our raiding community doesn't need a third party addon telling us to move somewhere.

Imagine if Blizzard actually grew some balls and broke DBM, BW and Weakauras.

WoW raiders would be so lost XD

I think that it would actually make the game demonstrably worse to not have weakauras. The controversial weakauras that have popped up over the course of wow’s lifetime are frequently broken by blizzard pretty quickly. But breaking the addon entirely would make the game play pretty poorly without enormous changes to the moment by moment gameplay, as well as the way the interface functions.

[NineSpine]

Why are you so butthurt by the fact that mindless afk bosses are not classified as raiding?

Because it’s a lie. If someone asked if the Simpsons was good and you said “it’s a live action drama about a family of Indian immigrants” and then I corrected you, it wouldn’t be because I’m butthurt. It would be because you are lying and if you then responded “WHY ARE YOU SO BUTTHURT THAT I CLASSIFY THE SIMPSONS THAT WAY” you would look exactly as weird as you do now.

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I think that it would actually make the game demonstrably worse to not have weakauras. The controversial weakauras that have popped up over the course of wow’s lifetime are frequently broken by blizzard pretty quickly. But breaking the addon entirely would make the game play pretty poorly without enormous changes to the moment by moment gameplay, as well as the way the interface functions.

Sounds like you don’t believe Blizzard is capable of coherent encounter design.

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Do you not see that ff14 has its own version of dbm built into the game. The bosses broadcast all their moves before they happen.
Its just a matter of memorizing them, especially the ones that broadcast so fast you have to know it's coming to avoid it.
Trial and error, repetition.
Sounds like wow raids right?
That's because they are similar in many aspects.
Yet you choose to think one is superior over the other for some reason.
Guess you used to be a wow fanboi you just switched teams but kept your mentality.

All you said was “oh yeah, we’ll ff14 designs their encounters so that they don’t need addons!” Yeah… that’s exactly our point dude. Way to gotcha us.

[Yarathir]

Why are you so butthurt by the fact that mindless afk bosses are not classified as raiding?

Alliance Raids are mindless AFK bosses?

[Aucald]

Let's pivot away from the "Game vs. Game" discussion here and instead focus on FF14's endgame content, what can be done, and what might appeal to someone who prefers endgame content.

[NineSpine]

To steer back, let me try to give a breakdown of what the game would look like if you wanted to literally do nothing but raid log:

The big differences in how raids work:

1. There is no trash. All raids are a boss you queue up for and spawn directly in front of.

2. There is no running back or waiting for resurrects. When you wipe, you respawn a couple of seconds later right in front of the boss ready to go again.

3. There are infinite resurrects in combat, but there are penalties for resurrecting that make the encounter harder. This mean in most raids you will spend very little time on the floor.

4. Addons are unnecessary. You may want to use a DPS add-on for your own practice, but that's really all that the average raider ever needs to bother with.

5. You will not need to grind one difficulty to do another or anything like that. You can have the gear needed to complete the raid on the day the raid comes out. There is no need to do any other content to do raids, aside from leveling of course.

The content you will get:

1. A new 4 boss raid every 6 months. These bosses will, in general, be somewhere in the ballpark of wow's heroic difficulty. The fights will be a bit longer than wow on average and are more likely to have very distinct multi-phase designs, so you can get more packaged into one fight on average than you may be used to. This is how you get BiS gear. These raids are 8-man with two tanks and two healers.

2. 1-2 Ultimate raids per expansion. These are single boss raids that are in the ballpark of end-boss mythic. They have fixed gear levels and do not drop upgrades. They exist solely as challenges. Since they have fixed gear levels, you can't outgear them. These fights are LONG, like 20-30 minutes. They have tons of very distinct phases. They are intentionally wildly over the top. These raids are 8-man with two tanks and two healers.

3. A new Alliance raid every six month. These are 24 man (3 tanks, 6 healers). They are not very challenging, but usually pretty fun to run at least a few times and can be useful for gearing up alt jobs. These are big areas with trash and multiple bosses in one go, rather than the single-boss instances like all the other raids. They feel sort of like really big dungeons.

4. A new Trial every 3-4 months. These are basically identical to the normal raids structurally but they are set aside fro a variety of reasons. They are in the same ballpark difficulty-wise but a hair easier and are useful for filling an odd slot or gearing an alt job.

4. Sometimes there are special raids that break the normal cadence, like theres a big 72 man raid in the previous expansion.

Some other things to note

1. You shouldn't assume that because you only like raid logging in another game then you will only want to raid log here. The game is quite distinct in a lot of ways and the non-mandatory focus sometimes makes things that would normally feel like another obnoxious grind into an actually fun diversion.

2. Since FF14 doesn't like to deprecate content, there is a lot of stuff to to find and try out. There were whole systems in the game that I did not realize even existed until a year into playing. Since all of it is non-mandatory, it is easy to miss but the breadth of content is sort of insane.

3. Crafting is an actual game unto itself, not "Hit a button and make a thing".

4. Playing multiple jobs (classes) is a lot easier because you can swap job with the hit of a button on one character. The game strongly encourages you to play multiple jobs and a big feature of every expansion is two new jobs. They have committed to continuing to add new jobs every expansion.

[Yarathir]

To add to what was already said, I would also like to reiterate that, with the press of a button, you can also do older raids and trials and be scaled down, both level and item level wise while doing it. It's not as difficult as it was back when it was relevant due to job changes, potency changes, new jobs. But if you go in blind, it might still present a sizeable challenge. I think plenty of groups today would struggle with min ilvl/no echo Coils, or O12S, or what have you. This means that if you want to and can find people to play with, you have a veritable backlog of stuff spanning years that you could throw yourself against.

[hzjf]

Not at all if they know a crafter or have money. You can get geared up and ready to raid almost instantly.

To the OP though, FFXIV has less emphasis on raiding, but it is by far easier to raidlog with. If you are interested in doing older content that can still be hard (Min iLvl, No Echo) then you have lots of content out the gate. If you are looking for relevant only, then you have a little bit of work, but FFXIV is more of a sub for patch game for raid exclusive players.



Kind of a bad take. If it was really braindead easy then how can it take almost a week to clear some savage fights? Usually people saying braindead easy are people who have never even touched the higher content before.

oh please you arent on the Internet since yesterday are you ? a new Boss / Raid will always survive some time. some longer than the others. Isnt any different for WoW but Blizzard nerfs their Bosses with Gear and specific Changes. SE does not which makes a lot of People think WoW is super easy when infact its not.

i wish Blizzard would copy SE here and create a Raid difficulty that never gets nerfed.

[NineSpine]

oh please you arent on the Internet since yesterday are you ? a new Boss / Raid will always survive some time. some longer than the others. Isnt any different for WoW but Blizzard nerfs their Bosses with Gear and specific Changes. SE does not which makes a lot of People think WoW is super easy when infact its not.

i wish Blizzard would copy SE here and create a Raid difficulty that never gets nerfed.

Non-challenging content gets cleared day 1 by the average player.

Challenging content does not.

This is a lot simpler than you are making it out to be.

[Yarathir]

Yes they are

So you don't think about them for a second in order to, you know, not die to mechanics?

[Yarathir]

Same amount of attention as one would give an lrf boss.
Requirement is minimal

No lol.

LFR bosses can more or less be slept to death. If you do that to Alliance Raid bosses, you end up on the floor. It's just how it is. If Alliance Raids had actual dps checks meaning people couldn't die ad infinitum and still kill the bosses, they would be fairly challenging.

[Cyi]

So if you don't raid for gear drops, what are you raiding for? In addition, if raids are not dropping gear, how do you gear up? Genuine question as I have been interested in trying this game out.

[The Casualty]

So if you don't raid for gear drops, what are you raiding for? In addition, if raids are not dropping gear, how do you gear up? Genuine question as I have been interested in trying this game out.

You do raid for drops.

For Alliance type raids, it is usually a full set of armor, minus accessories, that is slightly less than the current ilevel cap. These raids will usually come out in between savage raid tiers, and allow people who either do not raid savage, or are looking to get some additional gear, the opportunity to gear their characters.

For Ex Trials, you will typically get a weapon (although one of the first Ex in an expansion will give accessories instead, but that will usually be the only one). This is also slightly less than the current ilevel cap.

Savage content will give you current ilevel cap gear. The final set in the series will drop the weapons which is 5 item levels above everything else. You also get tokens for turn ins to mitigate bad luck. These can be traded depending on the floor for pieces of gear, or upgrade materials for the tomestone armor/weapon pieces that tier.

Ultimates will give you one weapon per clear (to a limit of one per week while it is "current"). These will be on par item level wise with the savage weapon, but will have one additional materia slot.

When people say that you have the gear necessary to take on all of the savage floors when they launch, what they are talking about is the crafted armor/weapons that typically come out the same time. It is a catch up mechanic to get you there. These will be 20 item levels below the current cap, need to be penta-melded if you are seriously trying for week 1, and enrages for the later floors will be tight. Many people rely on getting several weeks/months of upgrades before they seriously tackle the final floors. So you/your team's performance will alter how much you need to bring your gear up. This is opposed to other games raid scenes where later bosses may be mathematically impossible until gear is acquired.

Ultimates on the other hand will require the current raid tier completed before you can unlock them, and to seriously progress them you will need best in slot. The weapon is only marginally better than what you will likely already have, and it is more for the fun of the encounter than anything else.

[Yarathir]

Hey just because someone else finds something easy which you don't, doesn't mean they are wrong?
Guess you need to git gud.

Oh, my bad for actually expecting intellectual honesty from you.

[Merpish]

Let's pivot away from the "Game vs. Game" discussion here and instead focus on FF14's endgame content, what can be done, and what might appeal to someone who prefers endgame content.

I really didn't intend to stir up any level of controversy or game v. game bickering. My motivation behind asking this question really stems from a lot of my WoW friends having left WoW entirely, or having begun to also play 14. All of the things that they are singing praises about the game for, on the surface, really didn't sound that interesting to me. I've not been able to give FF a "serious" try and get beyond ARR as of yet, but I've been worried that I'm going to put in all this time into getting to the "endgame" only to find that it really doesn't sustain itself for me.

I think my brain has definitely been "wow poisoned" over the last decade and a half where if I'm not on a treadmill of some sort, I feel as though I'm wasting my time and my eyes begin to gloss over. When my friends talk about sitting in Limsa and listening to a bard play music the first thought in my head is "does this give you something tangible b/c it sounds like a huge waste of time."

Not really sure what I can do about that

[Aucald]

I really didn't intend to stir up any level of controversy or game v. game bickering. My motivation behind asking this question really stems from a lot of my WoW friends having left WoW entirely, or having begun to also play 14. All of the things that they are singing praises about the game for, on the surface, really didn't sound that interesting to me. I've not been able to give FF a "serious" try and get beyond ARR as of yet, but I've been worried that I'm going to put in all this time into getting to the "endgame" only to find that it really doesn't sustain itself for me.

I think my brain has definitely been "wow poisoned" over the last decade and a half where if I'm not on a treadmill of some sort, I feel as though I'm wasting my time and my eyes begin to gloss over. When my friends talk about sitting in Limsa and listening to a bard play music the first thought in my head is "does this give you something tangible b/c it sounds like a huge waste of time."

Not really sure what I can do about that

It's a difficult question to assess, much less answer, because FF14 is a different type of game with a different methodology as concerns both challenge and content. As a long-time WoW veteran I can tell you I've found FF14's endgame comparable, but very different all the same - and I think the emphasis is spread more broadly than a central focus on raiding or hardcore dungeon content. FF14's design is less treadmill-like, that's for sure, but once you adjust to the change you can find that to actually be more freeing than feeling like a waste of time. A lot of MMOs have a tendency to trap you in a progression treadmill and never let you free in the name of milking that continual subscription, but FF14 isn't quite as bad as most, and you can sit the game down for a time and come back without having the sense that you're forever behind the curve until the next big reset (e.g. a new expansion).

Now for the question of whether you'll find it challenging and/or if it will hold your interest in the same way? Well, that's a lot more subjective and hard to pin down. The challenges in FF14 are a lot more organic and based more on encounter design as opposed to statistical thresholds or gearing, to the point that when related the FF14 experience to a friend I said it was a lot more like fighting the environment a raid boss is in as opposed to fighting the raid boss themselves. Probably the best advice I can give you is to watch some YouTube videos of FF14's endgame encounters and how they're tackled, and see if that kind of playstyle appeals to you. It's definitely not 1:1 insofar as other MMO experiences go - and if you go into expecting more of the same, you could be disappointed at the result.

[NineSpine]

I really didn't intend to stir up any level of controversy or game v. game bickering. My motivation behind asking this question really stems from a lot of my WoW friends having left WoW entirely, or having begun to also play 14. All of the things that they are singing praises about the game for, on the surface, really didn't sound that interesting to me. I've not been able to give FF a "serious" try and get beyond ARR as of yet, but I've been worried that I'm going to put in all this time into getting to the "endgame" only to find that it really doesn't sustain itself for me.

I think my brain has definitely been "wow poisoned" over the last decade and a half where if I'm not on a treadmill of some sort, I feel as though I'm wasting my time and my eyes begin to gloss over. When my friends talk about sitting in Limsa and listening to a bard play music the first thought in my head is "does this give you something tangible b/c it sounds like a huge waste of time."

Not really sure what I can do about that

I really get where you are coming from. I went to FF14 after many, many years of WoW and there really was a transition from the expectations that WoW had set into me. It wasn't about lowering my expectations, but about learning to appreciate a different approach to a similar design. FF14 has a sort of "Similar enough to feel comfortable but different enough to be confusing" issue. If you are really, really used to WoW and your brain has been programmed for WoW, things about FF14 have this almost uncanny valley sort of feeling. It's juuuuuuust off. On top of that, there is this ever-present feeling, as you described, of "What's in it for me?"

I can confirm that for me, and many other people I play with, this feeling did break eventually. For me, it broke playing Heavensward. Let me give you some advice that I've given to other friends that have made the transition:

Stop thinking about endgame. I know this is hard. This game is not about getting to endgame ASAP. This is a great example of where wow brain can mess you up, because I know you hear that and you think of is what it would be like to "slow down and smell the roses" while leveling in WoW. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that since FF14 doesn't deprecate content, you are not locked out of "the fun stuff" while leveling. For example, when you finish Heavensward's MSQ, you can run all of Heavensward's endgame content. You can do all the raids from that expansion. You can engage with all the systems and extra content from that expansion. The best way to play FF14, in my opinion, is to level to the end of an expansion, then do all the endgame content from that expansion and check out all of its systems and extra content, and then move on to the next expansion.