Questions about content in FFxiv

[Deleted]

Hello, i'm new and i'm trying to determine if i should play wow or ffxiv, so i have few questions for you :

1) What are you doing when you are not raiding or doing some high level content
2) How often there is new content that you can repeat without getting bored with 1 or 2 repeats ?
3) How often there they add some innovation or new mechanics in the game ? Is this more in patch or new expansions ? And what kind of innovation is it ?
4) How many time are you playing every days ? and how much time is necessary to to keep the rhythm of the game (new patchs, dungeon, raid,...) ?
5) How often they add some new major patch (like 4.2 in ffxiv or 7.3/7.3.5 in wow) ?

Bonus question for ffxiv players : what is the actual endgame (raids, dungeons, trials and other ? And what can you say about housing ?
Thanks for your time, i'm sorry if there is some spelling errors, english is not my main language and i'm still learning. Have a good day.

[Wrecktangle]

Hello, i'm new and i'm trying to determine if i should play wow or ffxiv, so i have few questions for you :

1) What are you doing when you are not raiding or doing some high level content
2) How often there is new content that you can repeat without getting bored with 1 or 2 repeats ?
3) How often there they add some innovation or new mechanics in the game ? Is this more in patch or new expansions ? And what kind of innovation is it ?
4) How many time are you playing every days ? and how much time is necessary to to keep the rhythm of the game (new patchs, dungeon, raid,...) ?
5) How often they add some new major patch (like 4.2 in ffxiv or 7.3/7.3.5 in wow) ?

Bonus question for ffxiv players : what is the actual endgame (raids, dungeons, trials and other ? And what can you say about housing ?
Thanks for your time, i'm sorry if there is some spelling errors, english is not my main language and i'm still learning. Have a good day.

1) In WoW - Nothing. In FF14 - Nothing. While both games have tons of 'side activities' and FF14 appears to have more of them, I don't find any of them terribly compelling in any fashion other than try once and abandon. Mostly due to not being terribly fun, or having no/awful rewards.

2) IMO both games suffer from "repeated content sucks" syndrome. WoW does have the Mythic + dungeon system which I find a very nice "repeatable battle content". It's the same 14 or so dungeons you've run before, but they progressively scale upward in both difficulty and reward. Every week new "affixes" or attributes that change some aspects or behaviors of enemies and force you to respond in kind.

3) In WoW - Big innovations are typically part of an expansion. Not always though. In FF14 they seem hesitant to take risks, and stick to a very formulaic content template. They've done some decent innovating over the years, but they've dropped the ball on a lot of things pretty hard too. With Legion, WoW created an entirely new scaling dungeon system, new weapon system, new level scaling system, new PVP leveling system, etc. In FF14 with the most recent expansion they've overhauled some skill systems, added underwater exploration, allowed you to run dungeons with your NPCs, PVP system overhaul, etc.

4) Personally I play both games. I raid Heroic/Mythic casually in WoW. We raid a little less than 6 hours a week. In FF14 I raid casually as well, I do not have the time investment to do Ultimate, so I stick to savage (cleared current raid). I play roughly 2 hours a week (roughly 4 during progression).

5) In both FF14 & WoW - A new patch drops roughly every 3.5 months.

Obligatory - glamour/transmog is the true endgame.

• Savage raids and Ultimate are the end game. They are boss arena fights (often with minimal trash). You zone in, kill minor trash, confront boss, kill boss, leave. Move onto the next instance. Typically released 4 at a time. Ultimate is a singular fight, a ~17-18 minute gauntlet requiring near perfection from all 8 players to clear.
• There are dungeons which are generally exceptionally easy and offer loot that is typically below the current patch's relevant ilvl. (I.e. current ilvl is ~330-340). When a new dungeon drops, it will likely drop 310-320 loot). helpful somewhat for new players, but near useless for anyone currently playing the game.
• There are "raids" which consist of 3 parties of 8 working together to clear a dungeon. The bosses here are fairly easy, but you cannot ignore mechanics, because they kill you. Mechanics are typically very trivial, stand here, kill this add, pop cooldown, etc.
• Trials are 8 man party content that is a elaborate boss fight with different phases, dps checks, and mechanics. They are singular in that there is no trash, no dungeon, just zone in, fight boss in arena and leave. This content is typically heavily farmed for "tokens" to trade in for various rewards such as weapons/accessories and mounts.
• Housing is very expensive for a new player, and even worse is the significant shortage of houses available for a player. Every few patches they try to add more houses to the game for players to buy. I strongly urge you to pick the lowest pop server if you genuinely want a shot at a house. They do have apartments which are basically houses, but you in a centralized location and you don't have access to any exterior customization.

[Faroth]

I really only played WoW for 1 month with Legion, so I'm only chiming in on FFXIV.

Hello, i'm new and i'm trying to determine if i should play wow or ffxiv, so i have few questions for you:

1) What are you doing when you are not raiding or doing some high level content
Combat
The primary options boil down into what's called roulettes. You queue for one and get a random instance to run with a random party (you can run these with others in your group. If you have 4 on dungeons or 8 on trials/raids, you won't get roulette bonuses, but if you only have 1-3 on dungeons or 1-7 on trial/raid you will).
EX - The newest 3 dungeons that have been released.
60 - An assortment of dungeons from Heavensward endgame level
Leveling - An assortment of dungeons from A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and I think leveling dungeons in Stormblood fall in this roulette (I could be wrong on the SB ones)
Trials - These are 1 boss raid fights with 8 people. They add these regularly each expansion and you can get any one of them in a Trial roulette, even the newest one.
Alliance raids - These are 24 man raids (three groups of 8) from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward (last 2 expansions).

All of these offer a currency for getting the best gear available to you outside of that patch cycle's high end crafting gear or Savage raiding.

Side Activities
The Golden Saucer is a casino like area with various mini games, including Chocobo racing, a minion (pet) battle game called Lords of Verminion, and Triple Triad. Of these, I think Triple Triad (a card game from Final Fantasy VIII) is the most popular. They have tournaments, but many just like to go around the world and find NPCs to challenge to games. Winning against these NPCs can win you new cards. Additional cards also drop from dungeons and raids.

Crafting/Gathering
This is a side activity to itself. There is an "endgame" grind of crafting/gathering higher difficulty items to turn in for a currency to build up better crafting/gathering gear sets. Some people minimize their combat and prioritize their crafting because they just enjoy it. High end crafters have a lot of options for making a lot of money and for some that's simply the fun of it. They can also offer crafting items, melding materia (stat boosts), or making furniture for housing.

Glamour
The next patch is going to make creating glamour sets a little more gentle on the inventory space and even the developers have embraced the joke that "Glamor is the true endgame." This is basically their system that allows you to change your gear to look like other pieces so you can design your own sets rather than just use the newest gear.

Sightseeing
There is a sightseeing log for you to track down various vistas. Finding them unlocks paintings of that vista you can buy to put in housing. The original ones from A Realm Reborn are given by clues and you had to find the right place and perform an action at the right time of day. Heavensward and Stormblood are better identified, but sometimes require a bit of jumping puzzle solving to get to.

Beast Tribe Quests
These are basically rep grind quests you can do daily. Typically two tribes go in an expansion that are usual fetch quests/combat quests/etc. and later in an expansion a crafting tribe goes in that offers catch up avenue for leveling up crafting.

2) How often there is new content that you can repeat without getting bored with 1 or 2 repeats ?
New patches bring new content every 3 months or so. They follow a set cycle.
Odd numbered patches add 1 new dungeon, 8 man raid/Savage raid, various side content, new MSQ story quests (FFXIV has a pretty good story and it's central to the game, no skipping it unless you buy a skip potion from the store). These can add a Trial as well.
Even numbered patches add 2 new dungeons, 24 man raid, various side content, new MSQ story quests, and will usually add something else experimental (Deep dungeon, which was a unique dungeon crawl design separate from normal 4 man dungeons, Diadem was a time limited gathering or combat thing where harder monsters were pulled nonstop and taken down by multiple groups for a shot at very good gear due to random stats though it grew dull for most quickly). These can also add a trial.
New crafting patterns,

3) How often there they add some innovation or new mechanics in the game ? Is this more in patch or new expansions ? And what kind of innovation is it ?
Hard to say exactly. They do try new things here and there, but they don't go wildly off the proven path either. Stormblood has been using more visual queues in animation and less ground indicators of attacks than Heavensward did. They've done some active "push a button repeatedly to fill a gauge" during transitions. They've had a few neat mechanics added here and there throughout each expansion, but I wouldn't say they're huge innovations that will BLOW YO MIND either.

4) How many time are you playing every days ? and how much time is necessary to to keep the rhythm of the game (new patchs, dungeon, raid,...) ?
Because of their experimental addition, Eureka, being delayed, the relic quest (grants a near "best in slot" weapon by end of an expansion for non-raiders, but takes a lot of grinding throughout the expansion, but they have their own story, unique method of growing them, and a unique model). That typically kept me in more frequently. I haven't been playing much due to real life commitments the last 4 months, but with patch next week I'm eager to get back in. I normally would hop on for at least an hour or 2 every day or every other day.

As for keeping with the rhythm, you can play as much or less and still manage to keep up. New dungeons offer a hop up towards catching up on gear. 24 mans in every other patch offer the previously best ilvl gear (1 item per week restriction on loot) and they stay populated since people with the equivalent gear get tokens for a 10 ilvl boost on their current gear. You do have weekly limits on currency for currency gear, but it's possible to cap that in just a few days if you aim for that alone. You can honestly set your pace and do what you want with it.

If you're skilled, you can usually find a group being formed in Party Finder for savage raids if you just want to hit those once in a while without a committed schedule.

5) How often they add some new major patch (like 4.2 in ffxiv or 7.3/7.3.5 in wow) ?
FFXIV patch cycle is every 3 months, like clockwork. On occasion it's late in the 3rd month or goes into the 4th, but they stay pretty close. Yoshida deeply apologized, with a low, and long, bow when Heavensward didn't release in the Spring as they announced (they were quite literally days late from the official last day of spring and in summer, yet he apologized as if they were months late). Yoshida (he's the lead dev/producer) takes their release schedule pretty seriously.

Bonus question for ffxiv players : what is the actual endgame (raids, dungeons, trials and other ? And what can you say about housing ?
The actual endgame is what you want it to be.
You can make an endgame out of dungeon roulettes, normal raid (you can use duty finder and get a random group to complete it), savage raiding with a party finder or pre-made static. You can even be a little more casual about keeping up with gear and make 24 man your endgame raid.

Or you can make crafting/gathering your endgame.

Or you can make awesome outfits and embrace "Glamour is the true endgame" joke.

FFXIV really is good about letting you live in Eorzea and make the endgame what you want it to be.

Housing is really fun if you're into it. They just made some changes to address the scarcity of housing plots for actual houses, but currently new housing plots will only be offered to Free Companies (player guilds). If you join a Free Company, you can buy a private room in the house. If you're not in a Free Company, you can buy an apartment. The private room/apartment are about the same size and a little cramped, but you can do some creative things with making it into a cozy home.

I've leveled a few alts (and this is NOT an alt friendly game - you can play every class on one character, so playing an alt means replaying through the hours upon hours of story content again each expansion) just because I got an idea in my head of what their private room would look like and I leveled them just to create it.