A decent MMO plagued by some serious problems that make it unplayable in the long run

[Lane]

All i now is y'shtola is best waifu in the game and shes my favorite.

I hadn't paid attention to it until I kept seeing this sentiment, but there does seem to be a lack of ... I don't know how to put it. The other female characters either aren't generally liked (Lyse), are lalafells (Krile, Tataru), are of questionable age (Alisaie), or don't stick around long enough to be meaningful, and that's it? Who am I missing because it seems like pickings for female "waifu" characters are slim.

[Katchii]

With a good zone with 10-15 people, FATEs can easily take 30-60 seconds. Time flying between them is just about as long, so if you're doing 10 floors in 10-15 minutes then yeah, FATEs will be close but not beat potd.

But in my experience, most players, especially newer ones, cannot do potd 10 floors in 10 minutes. It tends to be closer to 20-30. So yeah, while a player who knows what they're doing can get more, pretty much everyone who's in the queue for a random party makes it take far longer. You need a group of dedicated speed runners to go that fast.

That's fair.

There's too many factors involved to really say which one is "best" I guess.

They all work. Use the one you like most.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Not a fan of Y'shtola. She keeps getting egregious fakeout deaths, and she is rather rude to people all the time.

[Poppincaps]

With a good zone with 10-15 people, FATEs can easily take 30-60 seconds. Time flying between them is just about as long, so if you're doing 10 floors in 10-15 minutes then yeah, FATEs will be close but not beat potd.

But in my experience, most players, especially newer ones, cannot do potd 10 floors in 10 minutes. It tends to be closer to 20-30. So yeah, while a player who knows what they're doing can get more, pretty much everyone who's in the queue for a random party makes it take far longer. You need a group of dedicated speed runners to go that fast.

You are greatly overvaluing FATES and greatly undervaluing PotD. It is extremely unlikely that you'll have 10-15 people helping you in a FATE unless it's the release of a new relic step and those fates contribute to it. Not to mention that if the FATE gets cleared too fast, there's a possibility that you won't get Gold rank and won't get the full XP. As for PotD, I have never in my life seen a PotD run go for 30 minutes and I've run it quite a bit. The longest it goes is usually 20 minutes, but I'd say the average run is 15 minutes.

[Lane]

On one hand it's not like we WANT characters to die, but on the other hand if they keep putting these situations in where there's supposed to be this tension and drama and a feeling of danger...but we know no one is really in danger...well, it mutes it quite a bit.

I feel like each character gets one passable brush with death, 2 seems unlikely, and at 3+ I start to get annoyed with the writing. However, I'm not a fan of the trend of killing off characters like you see in Game of Thrones, Attack on Titan, Walking Dead, etc. It keeps me from becoming invested and also makes plot armor glaringly obvious. Conversely, one member of the Fellowship in LotR died (permanently). I thought HW did well with character deaths.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You are greatly overvaluing FATES and greatly undervaluing PotD. It is extremely unlikely that you'll have 10-15 people helping you in a FATE unless it's the release of a new relic step and those fates contribute to it. Not to mention that if the FATE gets cleared too fast, there's a possibility that you won't get Gold rank and won't get the full XP. As for PotD, I have never in my life seen a PotD run go for 30 minutes and I've run it quite a bit. The longest it goes is usually 20 minutes, but I'd say the average run is 15 minutes.

It does depend on what's going on with the relic, but every single time they've released more of the shadowbringers relics, tons of people are doing the FATEs rather than doing Bozja. That is not to say MORE are doing FATEs, but HW and SB zones have been packed with players running FATEs.

As for my experience with potd, doing it solo makes it take awhile to do 10 floors. If I go in with a party, my runs are easily 20-25 minutes AVERAGE. The only time I can be getting 15 minutes or sub 15 per 10 floors is when everyone agrees to speed run it and all beeline for the exit without bothering with chests. In a normal run, people run around to open all the chests they can find.

My ultimate point is, people are constantly undervaluing FATEs. If you're the only one out there, yeah, they can be slow. But even with 2 people, they can go significantly faster. And even more is super fast. If you're in a group, or if you're just following a herd, you won't lose out on gold either. Level however you want to level. I found potd to be more excruciatingly monotonously boring than FATE grinding, but I didn't even use FATEs to get all 80s (though FATE grinding for the relic certainly helped).


The best way to level for the casual player:

Do leveling roulette
Do main story quest roulette and pray for praetorium (or leave if it's castrum do FATEs for 30 minutes, then requeue and hope for praetorium)

Takes like an hour total to do both if you get praetorium and depending on what level you are, doing both can be 1 level to 3 levels.

[Katchii]

It does depend on what's going on with the relic, but every single time they've released more of the shadowbringers relics, tons of people are doing the FATEs rather than doing Bozja. That is not to say MORE are doing FATEs, but HW and SB zones have been packed with players running FATEs.

What about ARR level ranges? That's where I am now and FATEs are dead.

As for my experience with potd, doing it solo makes it take awhile to do 10 floors. If I go in with a party, my runs are easily 20-25 minutes AVERAGE. The only time I can be getting 15 minutes or sub 15 per 10 floors is when everyone agrees to speed run it and all beeline for the exit without bothering with chests. In a normal run, people run around to open all the chests they can find.

Which floors are you running?

The floors that get spammed the most are 51-60. And 20+ minute runs are REALLY rare for me, though they do happen sometimes.

My ultimate point is, people are constantly undervaluing FATEs. If you're the only one out there, yeah, they can be slow. But even with 2 people, they can go significantly faster. And even more is super fast. If you're in a group, or if you're just following a herd, you won't lose out on gold either. Level however you want to level. I found potd to be more excruciatingly monotonously boring than FATE grinding, but I didn't even use FATEs to get all 80s (though FATE grinding for the relic certainly helped).

After leveling through FATEs for ARR and HW and getting several relics (fuck Atmas), I'm just so exceedingly burnt out on them that I can't stand them. I know it's a relatively subtle difference, but FATE grinding feels so much more monotonous to me than PotD because it's the same thing over an over and over, watching FATEs pop running over, using AoE blindly then running to the next one. At least in PotD the floors look different, enemy placement and strategy is slightly different and you're not just following along in a pack.

It just feels different to me. I hate FATEs......so much. I still remember the Quarrymill -> Costa Del Sol -> Coerthas -> Northern Thanalan FATE trains from back in the day.

The best way to level for the casual player:

Do leveling roulette
Do main story quest roulette and pray for praetorium (or leave if it's castrum do FATEs for 30 minutes, then requeue and hope for praetorium)

Takes like an hour total to do both if you get praetorium and depending on what level you are, doing both can be 1 level to 3 levels.

Agreed, for super casual.

I still recommend unlocking PotD and getting to floors 51-60 because it really is a reliable way to level. FATEs are hit or miss with groups and quickness, and Squadrons take WAY too damn long to get to the useless stage to where they compete with PotD or even efficient FATE farming.

[dlld]

I prefer squadrons, just did a totorak with my lvl 29 conjurer, took 14min and gained about 1.2 levels, potd felt way slower then that i remember doing a 51-60 as lvl 14 or something for 20+ min and not even getting to 15 after, i just did potd until i got to 20 and could do squadrons instead, that said squadrons sucks for tanks, the healers are useless unless they are healing the OP squadron tanks, still dpsing when you are at 10% health and the boss is winding up a tankbuster..

[Katchii]

I prefer squadrons, just did a totorak with my lvl 29 conjurer, took 14min and gained about 1.2 levels, potd felt way slower then that i remember doing a 51-60 as lvl 14 or something for 20+ min and not even getting to 15 after, i just did potd until i got to 20 and could do squadrons instead, that said squadrons sucks for tanks, the healers are useless unless they are healing the OP squadron tanks, still dpsing when you are at 10% health and the boss is winding up a tankbuster..

The problems with squadrons is that they take forever to become available and then set-up and usable, with a not insignificant amount of effort to get there, spent specifically on even accessing them. Specifically, increasing your rank to the point you can get them. PotD is available pretty early (level ~20 or earlier IIRC) with no extra steps to go through.

Case in point. I have PotD floors 51-60 unlocked but not Squadrons at Archer level 43, and am only a Private Second Class because I haven't earned nearly enough GC Seals to rank up more than that as I'm focused on MSQ and dungeons. For me to get access to Squadrons I'd need to rank up 7 more times, spend a total of 42,000 GC seals (and do the content required to earn them), Complete the GC Hunting Log 1 and 2, unlock and complete 2 dungeons unrelated to the MSQ (Dzemael Darkhold and Aurum Vale) which can't even be completed until level 46 and level 49 respectively.

That's a LOT of time involved. Whereas PotD just requires you to finish the first 3 dungeons, that are required as part of the MSQ, and then do the ~5 minute intro quest you can get in Gridania.

[Axaron]

Input lag is enough for it to never feel like a very competitive game to me. Good time waster.

[dlld]

The problems with squadrons is that they take forever to become available and then set-up and usable, with a not insignificant amount of effort to get there, spent specifically on even accessing them. Specifically, increasing your rank to the point you can get them. PotD is available pretty early (level ~20 or earlier IIRC) with no extra steps to go through.

Case in point. I have PotD floors 51-60 unlocked but not Squadrons at Archer level 43, and am only a Private Second Class because I haven't earned nearly enough GC Seals to rank up more than that as I'm focused on MSQ and dungeons. For me to get access to Squadrons I'd need to rank up 7 more times, spend a total of 42,000 GC seals (and do the content required to earn them), Complete the GC Hunting Log 1 and 2, unlock and complete 2 dungeons unrelated to the MSQ (Dzemael Darkhold and Aurum Vale) which can't even be completed until level 46 and level 49 respectively.

That's a LOT of time involved. Whereas PotD just requires you to finish the first 3 dungeons, that are required as part of the MSQ, and then do the ~5 minute intro quest you can get in Gridania.

Ranking up was a bit slow until you can turn in gear, then all the random gear i had gotten on my way just doing MSQ stuff gave me enough seals to rank up to max pretty much, a piece of loot from a ShB dungeon is worth around 1600 seals. The hunting logs are super easy and quick to do with your main 80 job as you should have unlocked all aetherites and have flying, dungeons can be done solo unsynched just oneshot everything except for darkhold for some reason the countdown mechanic didn't work alone. But sure it takes time to set up and without looking it up was rather confusing but it's imo def worth working towards unlocking them if you have many jobs you want to level in the 20-60 range still, it's also great if you want to be lazy leveling a dps watching something on the side while walking between packs and just pressing engage for free xp lol.

[Katchii]

Ranking up was a bit slow until you can turn in gear, then all the random gear i had gotten on my way just doing MSQ stuff gave me enough seals to rank up to max pretty much, a piece of loot from a ShB dungeon is worth around 1600 seals. The hunting logs are super easy and quick to do with your main 80 job as you should have unlocked all aetherites and have flying, dungeons can be done solo unsynched just oneshot everything except for darkhold for some reason the countdown mechanic didn't work alone. But sure it takes time to set up and without looking it up was rather confusing but it's imo def worth working towards unlocking them if you have many jobs you want to level in the 20-60 range still, it's also great if you want to be lazy leveling a dps watching something on the side while walking between packs and just pressing engage for free xp lol.

All of this is completely true, and fair.

But you're still commenting on and referencing parts of the game that aren't accessible until you get 100s of hours into the game. PotD is accessible roughly less than 20 hours into the game with no additional work or time put in, aside from the 5 minutes it takes to do the quest to unlock it, because you meet the pre-requisites for unlocking it automatically just by going through the MSQ.

I'm not arguing against Squadrons effectiveness, just the ease of accessing and using vs PotD.

[Malix Farwin]

11 is still going on now. They started a new storyline at the end of 2020.

I never said it wasnt i said their final xpac was March 27, 2013.

- - - Updated - - -

You really didn't. You just kind of said, "because I said so" after what Val put as valid reasons NOT to expect super long lead times.

No i said why you literally just didnt read.

"assuming we do not get FF16 till 2022 at the earliest. we can surmise based off of the last time we got an ff mainline game was in 2016(so about 6 years between the two). that would speculate that FF17 will drop around 2028 by which time ff14 would be 18 years old. for context. FF11 was only 8 years old when ff14 dropped."

[Katchii]

No i said why you literally just didnt read.

"assuming we do not get FF16 till 2022 at the earliest. we can surmise based off of the last time we got an ff mainline game was in 2016(so about 6 years between the two). that would speculate that FF17 will drop around 2028 by which time ff14 would be 18 years old. for context. FF11 was only 8 years old when ff14 dropped."

I did read. But as Val said in his post, the time between the games lately should not be considered as some kind of trend due to how many issues those had, which are not typical. Are you choosing to ignore that or are you doubling down on the idea that the next games will have as many issues that delay them?

I don't care either way, was just wanting to get a sense for why you were saying 2028. I'm not trying to insinuate you're wrong either.

[Poppincaps]

I never said it wasnt i said their final xpac was March 27, 2013.

- - - Updated - - -



No i said why you literally just didnt read.

"assuming we do not get FF16 till 2022 at the earliest. we can surmise based off of the last time we got an ff mainline game was in 2016(so about 6 years between the two). that would speculate that FF17 will drop around 2028 by which time ff14 would be 18 years old. for context. FF11 was only 8 years old when ff14 dropped."

You said it "was" still going on, which implies that it no longer is. Regardless, I wasn't trying to argue. Simply inform.

[vallixas]

Half of this list is super subjective, especially considering there are many longtime WoW players such as asmon who argues the opposite, that leveling was better here. I never get this complaint about being clunky, half of the classes are smooth as butter, it never feels clunky executing any of the combos. This seems more like a "i'm not used to the ogcd's and weaving" in FFXIV issue more than anything. This game is so optimized that even on a controller the most rotation heavy class, Summoner still functions smoothly. The first MMO to have as smooth gamepad gameplay since maybe ESO. You can quite literally sprint at full speed on on a SMN and do their full burst phase without missing a beat. The rotations aren't really bloated to begin with. Out of them all, Summoner (so they say) is the most demanding, but to me even Summoner is easy to execute. Most of the classes have pretty basic and easily executable rotations. And later released classes only got easier namely the Machinist and Red Mage.

Leveling alts has never been an issue, not only are you boosted, but you don't have to go through the unecessary new start of a new character, the bloat of content that comes with it, and aren't forced to run through dated content to level. I spent more time in other games like swtor going through the story content to level an alt and traversing the same regions all over again than I did actually leveling the new class. The game gives you various ways to level quickly. I once leveled one of my jobs through pvp entirely in like just 3 hours of doing it. After Bozja it's even easier to get from 70-80 because critical engagements which pop every few seconds to a minute drop a million worth of xp each. I'm sorry but this is not an issue i'm seeing especially this being the only MMO in which you are not forced to sit through completed content just to level another class which shaves off a CRAP ton of time vs other mmos. I've boosted in other mmos. Didn't feel like I needed to when leveling an alt in this one. As for q's, a non tank/healer q is a non healer/tank q and this is the majority of mmos.

TLDR if this game was truly unplayable in the long run, it wouldn't have jumped in players with every single expansion until finally being the host of a widespread WoW exodus, it's as simple as that.

[Ethas]

The game is simply too old like Lineage 2. Combat, professions, questing are at so primitive level that I imagine FF fans play this game for some other reasons that don’t have objective assessment. I.e. the FF in the name.

Also, a lot of people coming to the game now because of streamers who are promoting it just to piss off Blizzard. They did that with GW2, Terra, TOR, WildStar etc. But people will eventually return to wow because there really are no such polished and fair mmos on the market.

[vallixas]

Also, a lot of people coming to the game now because of streamers who are promoting it just to piss off Blizzard.

A ridiculous notion, considering this exodus didn't just happen overnight. Even ZeplaHQ originally comes from WoW, and she's been on FF for years. Most people don't care about pissing off blizzard, they come over because it's good. And the content they have dropped has reflected that. Shadowbringers is currently the most well recieved content in the MMO industry right now, that's compared with EVERY mmo. ESO, Swtor, GW2, WoW etc. There's only one MMO right now sitting with the "Must play" title on metacritic and that's Shadowbringers. You keep producing quality, eventually people notice. These new streamers are the direct result of that quality, nothing else. They could have easily gone to another mmo some of them currently having fresh new expansions, eso, they did not. There's a reason. The only reason Asmon is even playing FFXIV is because his own chat and community finally convinced him to, not because he randomly decided to play, think about that, think about why that is. You keep producing quality, eventually word of mouth gets too large to ignore with "it's just for weebs".

They did that with GW2, Terra, TOR, WildStar etc. But people will eventually return to wow because there really are no such polished and fair mmos on the market.

This never happened, not only were none of these games ever competitors to WoW, but they were never competitors to XIV even, and most of these games never even peaked to XIV's numbers. I don't understand this logic from locals that somehow FFXIV JUST got big, it was already big, and the second biggest mmo on the market climbing faster than every other mmo on the market with each expansion before streamers, you just didn't pay attention. If some streamers return to WoW that's fine, it's not going to change the fact that FFXIV was already a major success and force to be reckoned with in this genre. So this idea that this game was somehow dying and needing saving from Asmongold needs to be done away with. The second biggest mmo on the market with a steadily growing population does not need saving from streamers lol.

[Aggressive]

The game is simply too old like Lineage 2. Combat, professions, questing are at so primitive level that I imagine FF fans play this game for some other reasons that don’t have objective assessment. I.e. the FF in the name.

Also, a lot of people coming to the game now because of streamers who are promoting it just to piss off Blizzard. They did that with GW2, Terra, TOR, WildStar etc. But people will eventually return to wow because there really are no such polished and fair mmos on the market.

Literally EVERYTHING you just said is stupid. I left wow 5 months ago cause it is boring as hell. I definitely did not leave to piss off Blizzard. I left cause the game just plain sucks ass, Period. Another shit and broken system on top of other broken and shitty systems. The game isn't fun any more. Even though fun is HIGHLY subjective for everyone.

When I log into a game I want to have fun playing the class and doing the things within the game. I don't want to log in to feel as if I am doing chores. And that is exactly what WoW felt like. It felt like a fucking chore. I'm sorry but to me that is not even close to fun at all. So I went to FFXIV where the game is actually fun to play. I don't feel I have to log in to do chores or else I am behind. Square-Enix is doing it exactly how gamers want and that is why WoW people are coming over to it.

The players just want to have fun without all the damn chores. FUCK trying to piss ass-grabbing Blizzard off. Hopefully the perverts will learn a lesson out of all this mess that they themselves have created and fix their shit game right now.

[Twen]

Leveling alts has never been an issue, not only are you boosted, but you don't have to go through the unecessary new start of a new character, the bloat of content that comes with it, and aren't forced to run through dated content to level. I spent more time in other games like swtor going through the story content to level an alt and traversing the same regions all over again than I did actually leveling the new class. The game gives you various ways to level quickly. I once leveled one of my jobs through pvp entirely in like just 3 hours of doing it. After Bozja it's even easier to get from 70-80 because critical engagements which pop every few seconds to a minute drop a million worth of xp each. I'm sorry but this is not an issue i'm seeing especially this being the only MMO in which you are not forced to sit through completed content just to level another class which shaves off a CRAP ton of time vs other mmos. I've boosted in other mmos. Didn't feel like I needed to when leveling an alt in this one. As for q's, a non tank/healer q is a non healer/tank q and this is the majority of mmos.

What most people mean by alt is an alternative character though, not just another job. That's a different thing and not an issue, I agree there. But in regards to leveling alts as in other characters it sucks, as much as I like the game.