To help with this, once you get to a point where you're NOT under leveled, do the daily leveling roulette while you're questing and you should never have an issue being under the level cap. That way it doesn't feel like you're just waiting around for 15 minutes for it to pop. Do the quests with the blue quest icon and cross to unlock new stuff and get xp from those. The MSQ alone isn't going to give you all the xp you need, it comes close though.
Already have to skip through all the chat bubbles and cutscenes because I estimate this already horrendous grind being over twice as long if I actually took the time to view them all. Figure I would just watch a summary video on Youtube later to catch me up on everything.
While true, the story is a very core component of the game, and takes up a LOT of time whether skipping through it or not. I'd imagine trying to skip through it to get to end game ASAP would feel horrible and burn you out on the game before you even get there. It shouldn't feel like a grind if you're participating in and enjoying the story.
If you have any interest in the story at all, I'd recommend experiencing it as you go rather than trying to catch up later as the enjoyment you get from playing will be much higher if you're actually engaged in the story rather than just trying to power through it because it's still a VERY long way through (ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers....ALL have lengthy stories) and, as I said, if you just try and skip through it, you could end up having a bad time.
With that said, if you truly have zero interest in the story, the level and story skip potions are there for you.
Why the rush? There is nothing interesting at endgame, except the same old MMO gear treadmill.
IMHO leveling and getting the story is the part in which the game feels like a game/adventure.
Later on it's mostly busywork to keep your char up to date and cap on currencies/resets.
Mr. Happy did a comparison of the length of ARR before and after 5.3. Seems like pre-5.3 was like 63 hours and post-5.3 was 47 hours. So trimmed off like 16 hours total. Not bad although I've been going through ARR with a friend recently and there are still some quests that I would've cut. They aren't very good and also don't introduce any characters that are relevant later.
I'm mostly in games for a challenge. And a long grind is not the ideal challenge I have in mind. Seeing promise in the combat system but so far pretty much all bosses I've faced have been mostly a tank and spank with no real threat of dying. (Besides some Hard Trial bosses I tried, but those guys just 1 shot everyone because we didn't do some obscure mechanic right.) Also, being able to play everything 1 character sounds like a nice enticement I wish WoW could get behind. And I heard there's also some challenging solo content one could try.
Get used to it. This is basically the only difficulty in FF-XIV raiding.
Most mechanics in savage raiding are binary pass-fail instagibs, some even gib the entire group.
The tendency of them using the above increases with each Tier and this "fake difficulty" gets tiresome rather quickly, if you ask me.
This game is far less about pushing numbers to beat stuff than doing the dance correctly. If no one fails mechanics, the boss goes down even if the groups DPS is mediocre. Only exception to that are a) undergeared world first raids b) Ultimate
Only thing that comes to mind would be the the Blue mage Carnival. BLU isn't a "real" class to begin with though.And I heard there's also some challenging solo content one could try.
I guess FFXIV endgame raiding will probably come off as underwhelming to mythic WoW raiders, but for a filthy casual like me it's perfect.
- Once your raid group is assembled, you just insta-queue for a raid and poof, you're plooped onto the boss platform with the boss. No need to bother traveling to the location, or spending half an hour clearing trash or wading through RP. You can get straight to progging.
- Minimal gear treadmill and gear bullshit compared to WoW. In WoW, in order to stay relevant, you have to be doing a billion dailies, farming world quests and mythic+ and visions and crap, and that's not even counting the four different difficulty tiers of loot from the latest raid. God forbid you resub to the game after having not played for a patch or two, as you will have to slog through several weeks of timegating and loot lockouts before you're ready to jack all. Then there are the billions of different RNG, titanforging, Azerite gear, and corruption effects to juggle. In FFXIV, once you hit level 80, you can begin doing the latest savage raiding content within a week. In FFXIV, I don't have to worry about talent trees or titan forging or different gear effects or whatever.
- Raids that aren't the latest release are still absolutely worth doing for the cosmetic rewards and are still pretty challenging (relatively speaking for a casual pleb like me)
All in all, it's just a really good environment for a casual group of friends to hang out and try raiding for a few hours a week. But I imagine if you're coming from a WoW raiding background, you'll probably be disappointed. There are only three ultra hardcore raids in FFXIV right now, the Ultimates, and once you've done all the Ultimates... well, you've done them all. And the devs don't add Ultimate difficulty raids very often.
I definitely like that aspect of the game. Also, I like that there isn't a ridiculous gap in player power between a raider and a non-raider. Sure we'll get our i500 savage equivalent a lot later down the line but at the end of the tier, we basically have the same item level.
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You say that, I had to kick a healer from Ghymlet Dark earlier because they were constantly causing us to wipe on the last boss. Okay, it was their first clear but after 45 minutes of them dying in the AoE enough was enough and they had to go. There were 3 other people getting annoyed about the fact they died repeatedly less than 30 seconds into the fight.
They took the time afterwards to rage at me for being the second person to kick them and how they needed to complete the dungeon for the story. I don't really mind taking the flak for it though. They weren't up to scratch, showed no signs of improvement or learning, and they needed to be removed from the group for the rest of us to be able to complete it.
Honestly, I miss when all you had to do to raid being show up on time with with your gear enchanted and gemmed and some consumables. Blizzard seem to have decided that Busy Work is the order of the day and they're going to force everyone to participate no matter how rediculous it is. At this point in time I'm iLevel 482 with my Paladin in my Ret gear and everything I touch during the BusyWork parts of the game just explodes. It's a pointless time sink, and Blizzard know that.
Even in Classic there's the expectation on my server that you're going to show up world buffed to ZG and AQ20 pugs. Fuck. That.
For all it's faults, it's one of the things FF14 gets right. Sometimes I just want to log in, kill a giant boss or two and log out without any of the extra nonesense WoW forces on me. It's really the only reason I keep playing. Though I may have a lot more time for FF14 when (not if, when. Totally when...) Blizzard drop the ball on Covenants. From where I'm stood, they look absolutly hideous to the point I think the person who came up with them should be fired. From a cannon.
Also, for what it's worth, you can add bullet points to your list with out having to close the tag each time. Start each point with "[*]" and you can add as many as you need before closing the list tag.
Yeah.. so what? Facerollers exist and will always exist, that has nothing to do with the topic of raid difficulty being a set of frustratingly boring 1-0 Heigan dance pass/fail mechanics. All that needs to be said is:
Well, people QQ'd for years that there wasn't enough to do on their raid mains. Don't blame Blizzard for the wannabe-tryhard community making every tiny increase in player power mandatory because "ERMAGAAWD can't kill bosses w/o it!111"
Finally remembered /playtime exists. Total since 2013 is 5,722 hours and 17 minutes or 238 days. I think i've officially in both hours put in and years actually played FFXIV more than i played World of Warcraft as my main mmo. Boy that is a weird feeling.
For me, I'd use that time to do PvP or farming transmog or something instead of having to just grind out Azerite or Essences or whatever. As things stand, I've not managed to do any Arena for the entirity of BFA simply because of all the busy work.
I'd love a return to that, but I don't see WoW doing it anytime soon. They seem to conflate the fact that people are doing their busy work content as an endorsement. So they're throwing even more of it in to Shadowlands.
True - But clearly there are people who fail with that kind of simple "avoid the AoE" type mechanic. Admitedly FF14 is getting a lot sneekier at hiding them, but it seems to be the limit of some peoples ability. And that's just in a 4 man dungeon, there's no way that player is going to be a worthwhile addition to a static raid without a serious dose of learning how to play.
Which is a shame, because as I'm sure I mentioned in this thread at some point in the past, the games actual mechanics seem to be very limited in what can and cannot be done. As much as I would love to see them break away from the standard safety dance, they seem reluctant to do so. At this point, would the players even let them? Not because it's too hard, but because it would be such a huge departure from the norm.
Well i've been chipping away via the weekly challenges and finally finished Eurka Pagos and man as a solo player since nobody i know got past lvl.5 back in the day let alone want to do it now that final bit sucked dick. Just gamble and run past one shotting lvl.40 mobs as a lvl.35 capped character hoping enough dont turn and look at you to let you click on the final thing before dying and delevelling. No wonder i didn't know a soul who got to Pyros.
Your server must be dead or sth. I never had problems finding FATE train groups when I did Pagos back in March 2020.
Pyros has a higher mob density than Pagos but Hydatos is much more relaxed.
I'd rather not request my playtime... though half if it is probably my cat AFKing in front of her fireplace or in the bathtub.