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

[Celement]

You can enjoy it perfectly fine though how long is another question. If you are used to mmos and played a lot of endgame in harder ones like wow you are going to make fairly quick work of most of the challenges.

It's a good game but the hardest fights in final fantasy cap out at roughly heroic difficulty for wow and their solo challenges are not as difficult as mage tower.

It does have a higher skill floor though.

[NineSpine]

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.

This is a good assessment. For me, I had become a very one track player in WoW, but switching to FF14 made me become much more interested in broadly playing all the different parts of the game. At first, the lack of a treadmill made me feel like "Whats the point, this is a waste of time" but that eventually turned into a freeing feeling of "Nothing is a waste of my time because there isn't something I need to be doing instead".

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You can enjoy it perfectly fine though how long is another question. If you are used to mmos and played a lot of endgame in harder ones like wow you are going to make fairly quick work of most of the challenges.

It's a good game but the hardest fights in final fantasy cap out at roughly heroic difficulty for wow and their solo challenges are not as difficult as mage tower.

It does have a higher skill floor though.

You aren't completely wrong, but Ultimates definitely can be as hard as Mythic end-boss. Dragonsong is proof of that.

As far as solo challenges go, I think Necromancer is harder to get than completing the Mage Tower. I don't think either game is stellar on producing magnificent solo challenges though.

[Celement]

This is a good assessment. For me, I had become a very one track player in WoW, but switching to FF14 made me become much more interested in broadly playing all the different parts of the game. At first, the lack of a treadmill made me feel like "Whats the point, this is a waste of time" but that eventually turned into a freeing feeling of "Nothing is a waste of my time because there isn't something I need to be doing instead".

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You aren't completely wrong, but Ultimates definitely can be as hard as Mythic end-boss. Dragonsong is proof of that.

As far as solo challenges go, I think Necromancer is harder to get than completing the Mage Tower. I don't think either game is stellar on producing magnificent solo challenges though.

I think necromancer is a lot more punishing to get since you have to be cautious for a lot longer on a lot more floors ( I failed it on a paladin mostly from traps over bosses) the skill level in terms of fights is much lower.

I've not done dragon song though I knocked out the others older ultimate fights. It's fun and worth a go for sure.

[Ghost of Cow]

I think necromancer is a lot more punishing to get since you have to be cautious for a lot longer on a lot more floors ( I failed it on a paladin mostly from traps over bosses) the skill level in terms of fights is much lower.

Yeah, PotD isn't really mechanically hard (except 180 and 190 perhaps, depending on job) but it's such a long time investment and one mistake or even just bad RNG can tank a run.

It's not an apples to apples comparison for sure. I'm confident that many more people have completed mage tower fights than have Necromancer because mage tower fights take like 5 minutes and Necromancer takes 12+ hours, but mage tower definitely asks you to put more work into playing your class well for that five minutes.

[NineSpine]

I think necromancer is a lot more punishing to get since you have to be cautious for a lot longer on a lot more floors ( I failed it on a paladin mostly from traps over bosses) the skill level in terms of fights is much lower.

I've not done dragon song though I knocked out the others older ultimate fights. It's fun and worth a go for sure.

I'd agree about Necromancer. It's really managing the unlucky situations that is where the high skill comes in.

Dragonsong is much more difficult than the older Ultimates. I'd say Ultimates range from one of the harder final heroic bosses to one of the easier final mythic bosses, except Dragonsong which is just way beyond.

[Yarathir]

This is a good assessment. For me, I had become a very one track player in WoW, but switching to FF14 made me become much more interested in broadly playing all the different parts of the game. At first, the lack of a treadmill made me feel like "Whats the point, this is a waste of time" but that eventually turned into a freeing feeling of "Nothing is a waste of my time because there isn't something I need to be doing instead".

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You aren't completely wrong, but Ultimates definitely can be as hard as Mythic end-boss. Dragonsong is proof of that.

As far as solo challenges go, I think Necromancer is harder to get than completing the Mage Tower. I don't think either game is stellar on producing magnificent solo challenges though.

I probably would argue the most recent Ultimates are a step above Mythic endbosses. You have to remember that a lot of what makes mythic raiding difficult is the gearing and external treadmill stuff and yadda yadda. Ultimates do not really have that, and yet just look at how long DSU is taking people.

[NineSpine]

I probably would argue the most recent Ultimates are a step above Mythic endbosses. You have to remember that a lot of what makes mythic raiding difficult is the gearing and external treadmill stuff and yadda yadda. Ultimates do not really have that, and yet just look at how long DSU is taking people.

Yeah, Dragonsong is a whole new level of difficulty. What's interesting is their approach to that. Instead of nerfing it, they said "The next one will probably be easier". The categories of content in FF14 (alliance, ultimate, savage, etc.) are more about classifying them by the system they fall into than classifying the by difficulty level. Its intentional that there is quite a bit of leeway in difficulty of content that is 1:1 comparable, like two Ultimates or two savage raids being compared. They are perfectly happy to have some be easier and some harder. There is no notion of achieving some specific level of difficulty, and I think it results in better design. A lot of fights in other games end up feeling like they started piling mechanics into it to hit an arbitrary difficulty level rather than to make the fight more fun.

[Ghost of Cow]

For reference, Dragonsong world first kill took six days, give or take.

The first Mythic Jailer kill took five days after Rygelon went down.

If you include all the extra shenanigans that go on in WoW regarding management of gear, the (I assume) longer hours that WoW RWF guilds play, and so on...it would seem to suggest that DSR was indeed more of a challenge than Jailer. Of course, there are more variables involved, but you certainly can't write off XIV as having no challenging raid content.

The real issue is that there's a grand total of four Ultimate fights in the entire game. That's over a nine year period. So I wouldn't bank on those being your main form of content by any means.

[Cthulhu 2020]

1. I've found a lot of people who were "only interested in end game raiding" actually get into the story once they gave it a chance. So many said they weren't interested because they always thought MMO stories were dumb, then found out the story was incredible, many rating it their #1 video game story of all time.

2. If you're not convinced to give it a shot, you'll find plenty of raiding to be done as a new player. At least if you like challenges. There's a backlog of 4 expansions worth of raids where you can set the settings as if you were doing it at current level and current gear of the time. You can experience every raid ever made if you get a group of friends together to go back and do all of the old hard raids. Depending on how hard you go, this can give you literal months of content.

3. If you aren't really interested in raids for the sake of raiding, and want a long gear treadmill, you won't find that here. BiS is gotten very quickly compared to WoW (no, this is not game vs game, it is a comparison for the sake of the OP's question). However you might find a decent substitute in chasing down ultimate weapons, which are gotten from ultimate fights. The shiniest and most noticeable weapons in the game that turn heads, only gotten from fights that are on par with if not harder than final Mythic bosses. The most recent ultimate released was killed relatively quickly (something around a week?) by the very first group, but groups that don't go 16 hours a day are going to be doing this fight for months. Many of my friends raid 4 days a week and they figure it's going to take them about 4-6 months of prog to kill the most recent fight. Another thing to keep in mind about kill times is that the people serious about doing ultimates will have BiS the day the fight releases. The challenge in the fight doesn't exist in being blocked by gear progression. It's entirely player skill.



I see that Val brought his overt and over the top negativity into this thread, but his post about how this game has less bosses lacks nuance, since you can squeeze a lot more actual gameplay and prog time out of each individual boss. It's difficult to not mention WoW at all in such a topic, since that's the OP's frame of reference and how things can be explained to them. What's important is not fighting about it or arguing things like "which is harder" or 'better' or whatever.

[NineSpine]

For reference, Dragonsong world first kill took six days, give or take.

The first Mythic Jailer kill took five days after Rygelon went down.

If you include all the extra shenanigans that go on in WoW regarding management of gear, the (I assume) longer hours that WoW RWF guilds play, and so on...it would seem to suggest that DSR was indeed more of a challenge than Jailer. Of course, there are more variables involved, but you certainly can't write off XIV as having no challenging raid content.

The real issue is that there's a grand total of four Ultimate fights in the entire game. That's over a nine year period. So I wouldn't bank on those being your main form of content by any means.

The first ultimate came out in 2017, during Stormblood, so it isn't really fair to appeal to the entire length of the game being out. Since the introduction of the system they appear to be shooting for two per expansion, so one per year but they stumbled durning Shadowbringers and only did one that expansion. The plan was two.

[Ghost of Cow]

The first ultimate came out in 2017, during Stormblood, so it isn't really fair to appeal to the entire length of the game being out. Since the introduction of the system they appear to be shooting for two per expansion, so one per year but they stumbled durning Shadowbringers and only did one that expansion. The plan was two.

That's fair, actually. Good point. Nine years wasn't a reasonable comparison.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The real issue is that there's a grand total of four Ultimate fights in the entire game. That's over a nine year period. So I wouldn't bank on those being your main form of content by any means.

At least not in the long term, but a lot of ultimate raiders are also savage raiders too. They'll come back for both savage and ultimate tiers, which -should- start releasing at intervals of -almost- every patch.

As a fresh player, having a backlog of 3 old ultimate fights plus a brand new one, and considering average clear times for each, that's a year or more of game time to beat them all if we assume a relatively average aether raid progression. And by that time even more will be out.

So yeah, while this might not be a permanent 10 year game for the guy, he'll probably burn out on raiding long before he experiences everything the game already has to offer. Or if they don't burn out, probably get at least a good 3 years before they get all caught up on everything.

People going back and progging old savages minimum ilvl became really popular at the end of ShB, and it's surging again while we're in the 6.2 waiting room.

[NineSpine]

At least not in the long term, but a lot of ultimate raiders are also savage raiders too. They'll come back for both savage and ultimate tiers, which -should- start releasing at intervals of -almost- every patch.

As a fresh player, having a backlog of 3 old ultimate fights plus a brand new one, and considering average clear times for each, that's a year or more of game time to beat them all if we assume a relatively average aether raid progression. And by that time even more will be out.

So yeah, while this might not be a permanent 10 year game for the guy, he'll probably burn out on raiding long before he experiences everything the game already has to offer. Or if they don't burn out, probably get at least a good 3 years before they get all caught up on everything.

People going back and progging old savages minimum ilvl became really popular at the end of ShB, and it's surging again while we're in the 6.2 waiting room.

They really need some kind of achievement and reward system for min ilvl clears of old stuff. It would really encourage more people than already do to hop into it.

[eschatological]

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.

Again, this is disingenuous, as organized groups rarely if ever do this content ilvl-synced. I've never heard of an FC doing this "for funsies" nor have I ever seen a PF group doing it. Most do it unsynced if they need to farm some currency or piece they want out of it.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The first ultimate came out in 2017, during Stormblood, so it isn't really fair to appeal to the entire length of the game being out. Since the introduction of the system they appear to be shooting for two per expansion, so one per year but they stumbled durning Shadowbringers and only did one that expansion. The plan was two.

And of course, the delay of only one ultimate in shadowbringers was due to COVID pushing back all of their scheduled work by 2 months. They've stated that they hope to catch up at some point, which will mean releasing 3 ultimates in a single expansion. I feel it'll be a bit of a stretch but they might be able to pull it off. We'll have to wait and see for 6.3 and 6.5.

[NineSpine]

Again, this is disingenuous, as organized groups rarely if ever do this content ilvl-synced. I've never heard of an FC doing this "for funsies" nor have I ever seen a PF group doing it. Most do it unsynced if they need to farm some currency or piece they want out of it.

My FC does this stuff all the time for fun.

[Cthulhu 2020]

They really need some kind of achievement and reward system for min ilvl clears of old stuff. It would really encourage more people than already do to hop into it.

Yeah, there are achievements for them but unfortunately you can do this unsynced. And while it's still pretty difficult to pull off a fight like exdeath or kefka (or at least it was in shadowbringers) it's pretty easily doable within an hour or two. I imagine the Eden raids will once again be popular to do savage clearouts of in the 6.4 and next expansion waiting room. Though E4S is already a joke due to not really having that much in the way of difficult to execute mechanics that wipe the raid. E8S and E12S however...

[eschatological]

My FC does this stuff all the time for fun.

Then your FC is a unicorn.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Again, this is disingenuous, as organized groups rarely if ever do this content ilvl-synced. I've never heard of an FC doing this "for funsies" nor have I ever seen a PF group doing it. Most do it unsynced if they need to farm some currency or piece they want out of it.

It's not super common, especially not within a couple of months of a new savage tier or new ultimate, but a lot of statics do it to fill the time once they've cleared shit and still want to do things together. I see advertisements from time to time in PF that are recruiting for old synced savages, so if you want to do that it's not exactly hard to find people who are doing this. There are even discords dedicated to this kind of stuff. Just because it's not visible to you or you're not searching it out doesn't mean it isn't happening.

[NineSpine]

Then your FC is a unicorn.

I've been in three, and it was a pretty common activity in all of them during content lulls.