[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Graeham]

I do hope that 4.0 is a bit bolders in regard to content but I have a feeling that they'll probably expand on stuff like the Aquapolish and Palace of the Dead to ensure that we don't end up with another 'Diadem'. As it stands, though, FFXIV is just much more enjoyable for me overall. Though with Square Enix being Square Enix that could change based on their future decisions.

[Granyala]

I actually like both games.

Though healing is much more fun in FF-XIV, because I get to feel like I can make a difference, compared to WoW.

[Faroth]

I believe that is intentional.

it gives them the ability to try new stuff w/o players feeling forced to do it (e.g. Palace of the dead).

I think there's also something to be said about a development looking at trying things they hope players will find fun rather than focusing all efforts on "bigger stats, bigger numbers."

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For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

Wait, whoa, hold on.
So unless you're running Alexander Savage, the game is pointless?

Alright, I think we've come to the conclusion we'll never agree on MMO design in any way, shape, or form. That's the most asinine thing I've ever read about MMO design.

Artifacts while terribly balanced are much better than relic weapons in FF14. Relic weapons don't do anything exciting, have no REAL progression other than nonsensical vertical progression, and just aren't fun. Literally could just be a fish on a stick that glows with better stats than some other random fish on a stick.

I would like to see Yoshia & his team intrigued by the artifact design and consider something akin to it for future relics. I also agree the world quests have a certain interesting aspect to them over FATEs for me.

[Granyala]

I think there's also something to be said about a development looking at trying things they hope players will find fun rather than focusing all efforts on "bigger stats, bigger numbers."

Agreed. Though I'd hope for them to make content that isn't as boring and tedious as PotD or Diadem.

[Lillpapps]

For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

Why is only content that boosts your character power relevant? You do know that some people play games to have fun and find other things fun than increasing your character power right? This is why to some people that has played WoW for 10 years the game just doesn't have anything that keep them hooked. If you don't enjoy raiding in Legion you can do the same content you have done every expansion.

However, exploring the world of Legion was infinitely more fun than any exploring I ever did in FF14. While the worlds are beautiful and well designed aesthetically, they're just not interesting or rewarding to traverse in FF14 which is a shame. That said, I've had a ton of fun questing in Suramar. The world quest system is tolerable, but it's infinitely better than the FATE system FF14 employs.

I find it the complete other way around. I found Broken Shore to be extremely dull. World quests and fates are not the same thing. World quests are dailies and as I said in my post I like the tradition dailies better. For reasons that you know what you are getting every day and because world quests are horribly imbalanced. Some takes 10 minutes to do and some takes seconds.

Artifacts while terribly balanced are much better than relic weapons in FF14. Relic weapons don't do anything exciting, have no REAL progression other than nonsensical vertical progression, and just aren't fun. Literally could just be a fish on a stick that glows with better stats than some other random fish on a stick.

Artifacts and Relics are nothing alike. I wish people would stop comparing them. Relics are catch up weapons first and foremost which you upgrade by running non raiding content or old raiding content. They are mainly there to give non raiders an alternate weapon while keeping the world alive with players. Artifacts are the be all weapons of WoW. It's the only weapon you are going to get and it's supposed to be the best weapon.

As far as crafting goes - WoW definitely sucks here. No contest. I don't think FF14's is as cool or useful as you guys make it out to be, (the mechanics behind it are cool, but the rewards really aren't worth it). The fact that you just macro your crafts takes away a lot of the minuscule gameplay you would normally get from it.

Personal opinions dude. You don't seem to grasp that some things are fun to others that you don't find fun.

[Faroth]

Agreed. Though I'd hope for them to make content that isn't as boring and tedious as PotD or Diadem.

Hahha, don't tell my friend that... he can't get enough of running PotD!

[Aruhen]

I like having the multitude of available World Quests. The burn out is people who think/act like they have to do every one of them. It's the same silliness of "MoP is FORCING ME to do 1000 dailies EVERY DAY!" There's a ton of world quests. What do you want to do? Do you need gear? Focus on the gear reward world quests. Do you need gold for another month sub? Do the gold reward world quests. Still working on the weapon? Do the Artifact reward quests. There's no need to do every quest in every zone every day. I mainly do the Emissary ones and if I'm near another (mainly Nightfallen for rep atm) and if there's on in the zone with a good gear upgrade, I'll do that.

I don't do them all but having 10+ ARTIFACT POWER world quests every day for me is a bit much. Its tiny increments for doing a bunch of stuff and it doesn't feel rewarding. That 500 I just got even though I have level 4 knowledge level? That gave me .25% towards my next level. Now go 9 more of those. It doesn't help that there's a lot to do already and with raids opening its even worse.

It wouldn't hurt at all if there was four a day and you got 1000 each. Or implement a system were if you missed out on the last set it gives you a tiny buff for the next set that spawn. Say 30% more if you missed out on a one or two rotations of the world quests.

I thought Legion was one of their best expansion launches to date, but then started noticing bugs here and there, hearing about rather critical bug problems for other classes, etc.

...Same. Monks Roll and Flying Serpent Kick ability being the two biggest ones and still after almost a month haven't been fixed. it also feels unpolished at times. For example why is there no epic music when you're doing the Stormheim intro? Its just empty with some very tiny background music. Bunch of moments like that throughout the expansion.

Still enjoy it even if I'm being incredibly critical of it. I enjoy things like the World Quest system a lot as it brings out people into the world and the emphasis on dungeons again is nice. Reminds me a lot of the Wrath era which is my favorite as there were people everywhere just doing stuff. Like an MMO should be ;P. What little I did of Emerald Nightmare was also pretty cool. Ursoc is one of my favorite tank fights ever made too. Really nice job on making a simple taunt rotation into something more.

[Scufflegrit]

Going back to the discussion of music, I like a good deal of the music in both games. Quite a few hits in both, but also some misses in both.

A lot of the music in WoW is very iconic:

-Lament of the Highborne and Nightsong for example. I like how they are similar yet very different and I think it's very intentional. It mimics how a branch of the Night Elves split off and became the High Elves, most of those then became the Blood Elves while an unfortunate few became Forsaken. Yet in their own way those Forsaken are still Elves at heart. Also like how their are strains of Lament in places like Black Temple; it really ties it all together.
-Grizzly Hills day music. I know that one is either love it or hate it because of the "fiddle" (it's not a fiddle). It just captures the nature of the zone to me.
-Something else that was love/hate is the Pandaria music. While I like all of them. One specific version of Valley of the Four Winds just blows me away. The addon EpicMusicPlayer calls it Valley of the Four Winds NA v6. Much like the overall theme of Pandaria, it's a perfect balance of peace, harmony and majesty.

There are more for WoW but those are the ones that come to mind right away that I love.

I do agree with someone's previous statement that they like the older music of WoW more than some of the recent stuff. Having played a good bit of Diablo III recently, I can hear a few too many similarities between D3 and the recent WoW stuff. It works in D3, but it kinda falls flat in WoW, kinda like it's trying too hard to be epic sounding for no apparent reason. It's like when someone complains about a show being boring because people are talking instead of getting straight to the action. If it was nothing but nonstop action and explosions, it'd get boring really quick. Same applies to the music.

As for FFXIV, there aren't any I really dislike. I sincerely love the day and night themes for all the major cities, as well as most of the open world themes in each region (On Westerly Winds, Praise the Sun, Serenity).
And all the primal music. I know that isn't to everyone's taste, but /shrug our differences are what make us human. And a ton of the dungeon music (The Vault... dude), most of which I don't know the names of (I don't have that many Orchestrion rolls )

having said that, there are also some pieces that can get old fast. Gold Saucer, I dont mind because I don't ever stay there very long. But if I did, yeah I'd totally kill the music. And that damn Camp Dragonhead pipe organ, The Dragon's Dirge. I like it as a stand alone piece, but it's so short and on such a fast loop... I thought I was going to hateHateHATE The Vault as a dungeon because it start out in a similar vein, but as I mentioned it above, you can see I was very quickly proven completely wrong.

Ad to be completely fair to both, WoW has been out so much longer, it has a much larger music base to pull from than FFXIV currently does. Granted there is the entire FF series, but I think they want to carefully pluck certain pieces out when they are really needed to add to their own original music instead of just using the entier FF music catalog wholesale. And I think that's the better thing to do really.
But I wish WoW would have kind of done the opposite and used more of the music from the first 3 games than it has. Sometimes you can hear a little snippet from one of the old soundtracks, but it usually fades out after 10-20 seconds. Pisses me off too because I want to stop and listen to it.

BTW... Have a wall of text!

[Aruhen]

The music that plays in Azurewing Repose in Azsuna is one of my favorites in Legion. Suramar has a nice track too. They both really add to the ambiance of the area.

-Grizzly Hills day music. I know that one is either love it or hate it because of the "fiddle" (it's not a fiddle). It just captures the nature of the zone to me.
-Something else that was love/hate is the Pandaria music. While I like all of them. One specific version of Valley of the Four Winds just blows me away. The addon EpicMusicPlayer calls it Valley of the Four Winds NA v6. Much like the overall theme of Pandaria, it's a perfect balance of peace, harmony and majesty.

The Grizzly Hills music is an iconic piece I'd argue but I personally prefer the Sholazar Basin track a lot more. Pandaria? That one I loved and is my second fav after Wrath. Songs like the Monk theme and the one you mentioned are amazing.

[Deleted]

For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

Regarding doing everything better. I disagree. It does a lot better, and some worse. I.e Combat smoothness goes to WoW. Combat animations go to FF14 (graphics in general honestly). However, exploring the world of Legion was infinitely more fun than any exploring I ever did in FF14. While the worlds are beautiful and well designed aesthetically, they're just not interesting or rewarding to traverse in FF14 which is a shame. That said, I've had a ton of fun questing in Suramar. The world quest system is tolerable, but it's infinitely better than the FATE system FF14 employs. Music in legion is nice, but it's also nothing compared to FF14.

Artifacts while terribly balanced are much better than relic weapons in FF14. Relic weapons don't do anything exciting, have no REAL progression other than nonsensical vertical progression, and just aren't fun. Literally could just be a fish on a stick that glows with better stats than some other random fish on a stick.

As far as crafting goes - WoW definitely sucks here. No contest. I don't think FF14's is as cool or useful as you guys make it out to be, (the mechanics behind it are cool, but the rewards really aren't worth it). The fact that you just macro your crafts takes away a lot of the minuscule gameplay you would normally get from it.



I was impressed in 2.0-2.3/4. I'm no longer impressed by their non-PTR/polished patches throughout HW because it's just a constant stream of retooled, useless content that follows and exact non-changing template. Shit I could probably get the cycle time down to a month if you let me use recycled art assets and a content template.

Sure they release "new content", but it's generally not that good, typically bloated, and never contributes to player power.

Woah there.... I m a savage raider myself and it's definitely not the only thing that matters. For a change I like to do stuff outside of savage that contribute nothing to my power. I like to do stuff for glamour for example. Or for completion. Or for fun! And for all of those FFXIV still offers more and better stuff to me. And about reused mechanics. As if WoW does not reuse mechanics. It's not about reusing the mechanics but about how you reuse them. Sure the platform thing on Sophia might just be leviathans platform 2.0 but it's being done differently with the scale and all and the general flow of battle. Reusing is not bad if implemented correctly. Just look at thordan.

[Graeham]

Hahha, don't tell my friend that... he can't get enough of running PotD!

I actually just had a really intense run for the last batch of floors. Loads of traps, floors with enemies all bunched together, chests exploding all over the place and a good three floors had that horrid 'No HP Recovery' penalty. We didn't have a healer either. We had to play strategically and make careful use of potions, abilities and situational awareness.

I'm hoping the promised 'harder' floors will be a lot like that.

[Granyala]

We didn't have a healer either.

That's the problem. I AM a healer. With me in your group, every floor, no matter the traps gets faceroll, braindead easy.

[Remilia]

What we need is that FFXIV fighting game that they showed off. Better if we can have our characters as the fighter too somehow.

[dope_danny]

For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

Jesus, is this what modern WoW does to people?

Why would you ever pay a subscription fee to run one instance on repeat every few months? thats not a game. Thats repetitive tedium. Unless you have purple fever and an epeen complex an mmorpg should never just be about chasing gear and hiding off in an instance with a dozen other people or less, thats a sign the developer hasn't made an interesting and engaging world.

[lawow74]

For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

One word: Story. I mean, they do kinda spend a lot of time, effort and money on it. Otherwise the game would just be a lobby with a checklist of fights done 'cos you want loot' and nothing else. Even the Savage content your AMG MUST HAVE BIGGER NUMBAHS AMG myopic focus holds so high wouldn't exist without it.

[Mordin Solus]

it's what people want it to be, but saying that content that people arent interested isnt content is flat out stupid. in wow yeah sure the content when you get to endgame becomes either raiding, lvling alts,pvp or farming gold or gear for transmog or old mounts, while in ff xiv, it can be end game hard core raiding, lvlin alt jobs, doh, dol, running palace, doin beast dailies, farming mounts, doin triple triad, chocobo races, getting gold for housing (which is what i did, just waiting for a medium spot to open), do pvp, hunts, relic weapons and all that other jazz.

but like i said in the beggining, just cause content doesn't interest you doesn't mean its not "valid" content

[Lillpapps]

getting gold for housing (which is what i did, just waiting for a medium spot to open)

Currently doing this.
If you didn't know, when the timer resumes after the patch the residential districts will update every hour. It only updates when the clock hits .00. I didn't know this until yesterday

[Malackai]

For reference: What content actually "matters" in FF14 besides Savage? Chocobo Racing? Triple Triad? Dungeons? Normal Alex? None of those things are relevant content that boosts your player power. Palace of the dead? Nope side-game, just like pet battles in WoW. Non-relevant content.

Content for me is things to do that I find relevant, it doesn't necessarily have boost player power.
Content is what has you logging in and actually do while having fun.

It can be raids, pet battles, dungeons, pvp, mini games crafting gathering basically everything that has you busy and playing the game.
So all the things you noted as irrelevant content does not make it non content for others tho. All that content you don't find important maybe others do so its still content for them and me.

[Kazgrel]

Sure they release "new content", but it's generally not that good, typically bloated, and never contributes to player power.

So anything added that doesn't contribute to player power is useless and a waste of time?

There's this thing...it's called fun. Yes, it's subjective. However, it's often what people play games for.

I mean, WoD was a smashing success with it's complete lack of content and subsequent focus on "raid or die" for player power...oh wait.

[Anzaman]

"Yay, Rav bird dropped!"



"You rolled 1!"