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

[Azerate]

So to fill the downtime created by completing most of the activities in 8.2, as well as to clear the bad taste playing wow classic has left in my mouth, I decided to jump in and try out FF14. I've always been a great fan of FF games, so the thought of playing those old school jobs in an mmo setting and riding chocobos seemed kind of cool to me. One of my mates also plays it which gave me an additional incentive to try it.

I'm a person who gets a kick out of leveling things up, collecting stuff and all that, so every game that allows you to do that will provide me with some sort of entertainment. And I had a fair share of fun playing FF14 btw, about 3 weeks of fun to be precise. There's a lot of good things in the game, and overall it is an mmo, and everyone who enjoys that kind of gameplay will enjoy it to an extent. In this thread I will be focusing on the negatives, but that does not mean I hate the game. I wanted to make this very clear because fanboys are often unable to understand that.

At some point however, all the gameplay problems started to mar my experience to the point where I no longer feel the need to log in to play anymore. I stopped playing the game 5 levels away from the cap (at 75) because it's just unpleasant to play it now. It also made me realize how much I value some aspects of a game, ones that I normally don't think about. With that said, let me enumerate the biggest problems I encountered.

1. The combat

...is awful. Much like Rift, Swtor and all the other usual suspects in the past, it just feels clunky. It's one of those things that are hard to put into words. It's just not as smooth and fluid as you'd like. It feels like there are unnecessary delays between you using a skill on your keyboard and the character actually executing the command.

The other thing is that the rotations are extremely bloated as you advance your level. FF14 is a good example of what happens when you don't do the so called "ability pruning" that all the elitist players criticise so much in wow. At max level, or even slightly below the max level, your rotations include about 20-25 skills. And that is not including AOE skills, utility skills etc. It's just the single target rotation. I'm sure someone will argue that using 25 skills in a rotation is fun, but to me it's really not. It makes it hard to pick up a class because unless you're a gaming professor you will have a hard time learning it. It also makes it ridiculously hard to optimize your gameplay, let alone min-max, which is downright impossible. Using your actual rotation on anything outside of a dungeon boss? You wish. You'll just have to settle for using a couple random skills, using a fraction of your potential on those non-boss things. As far as the number of skills, combat below level 50 at best feels okay, afterwards it's just too much filler stuff in your rotation.

The funny thing is I didn't even think combat would matter so much, because I am mostly interested in other areas of an mmo, but it turns out that a bad enough combat system can turn you away from a game even if you aren't combat oriented.

2. Leveling and alts

MSQ Leveling is a bit weird, but it's fast and varied, which is good. Myself I am not a plot-person so I don't care at all what the game's story is about and thus I skipped every cutscene ever. Somewhat enjoyed all the leveling of my main job still, because at least it took me around the world, through all the zones, and it was close to the questing/leveling experience I know from other games. No problems here.

However, the real problem is the leveling of your alt jobs. Now some people will probably scratch their heads and start telling me how fast it is and all that...okay, I don't disagree, it may be fast, but fast does not equal entertaining or interesting. Quite the contrary, leveling alt jobs is pure pain in FF14. You use your main character for all of the jobs, and you can only do quests once per character, which means that you are pretty much left with the following methods for leveling up your alt jobs/classes:

-levequests (incredibly boring repetable quests, which are also capped hourly to make it even worse and stop you from doing them all the time)
-doing dungeons over and over (only really viable for tank and healer jobs)
-a dungeon crawler mini game that you can do over and over for levels

While those methods may be quick, they are an absolute and complete pain. I managed to level an alt tank job to a level of about 40 or so through dungeons which is where I felt I am done with it and can take no more of the same dungeons over and over. The whole system seems to be designed with blocking grinds in mind. You are supposed to just do a daily roulette once per day and level your alt job that way, over the course of like 100 days.

3. Queues are ridiculous, even during the peak hours.

It's no surprise that playing DPS results in long queue times, but even trying to queue up for a trial from the current expansion, that is required for a MSQ quest can take up to an HOUR. The game is only playable if you have a friend who can tank/heal for you, otherwise you have to wait for like an hour, and your best bet is to just do something else (but that something else can't be playing an alt job, because the best way to level that up is doing dungeons, and you can't queue for another thing at the same time).

It's pretty funny, because while I never believed all the talk about FF14 killing WoW, all the voices make you think and consider the possibility that the game is pretty active. Again, reality turns out to be different than the forum rhetoric. If you have to wait up to 1 hour in queue as a dps for current obligatory MSQ content, that means barely anyone is playing it.

4. Professions are done horribly

So with this one I don't have much hands-on experience, because after researching how those things work in FF14 I decided not to even try. Profession skills such as mining, cooking etc. work as a separate class, so they lower your level to 1. It is an interesting concept, but also means you have to switch jobs whenever you want to partake in those activities (because you will get one shot by any mob otherwise). To pile up onto that, you have mining rotations, which you have to use correctly, or you risk failing the mining activity (I mean really?).

There were some other minor things that got on my nerves, many of those probably more subjective so I won't be talking about them too much. Dungeon encounter design, un-obvious boss mechanics, UI bugs, the horrid TRUST system (doing dungeons with NPCs which takes like 1 hour longer than a normal party), retainers instead of a regular deposit place, market interface, confusing housing system.

In the end...it's just one of those games. It's fun for a while to take a break and play it. It will just make you appreciate and enjoy the proper MMORPG more once you go back to it full time.

[A Chozo]

So much of this is so subjective that I can't see the point of trying to provide counter-arguments. We could show you our opinions too, but then we would have two bunch of opinions about a game. Example: I love the combat, the professions, and the options to level the secondary jobs.

But I do have to point out that you not liking some freatures doesn't mean that a game is "plagued by some serious problems".

The only thing noteworthy are the queue for obligatory trials or whatever - they can get long, but it doesn't mean the game is lacking players, it's just that the playerbase may be diluted. I wish the player could use bots for those things. I would barely notice the difference.

[Thage]

Honestly, the games only problem is the freaking slog the leveling is. They've taken small steps to fix it, but thus far it's a con that pays because people have to buy boosts to enjoy the game. I know it's subjective, but the questing in ARR/Heavensward is garbage.

This is on the slate for an overhaul, especially the 2.0 through 2.4 quests where a lot of it can be consolidated into cinematics.

[GreenJesus]

Guy plays FF14 and skips every cutscene. Ok this guys opinion isn't valid. Stopped reading.

[DakonBlackblade]

The combat is not awefull, its slow in the start but every MMO is as well, on max level the actions per second is actually one of the higest of any MMO (this is not an opinion its a fact, OGCDs skills are a thing), specially if you are a Machinist. You don't need alts since your alt is your main character at the same time, professions are the best in any MMO with the thing being actually fully developed like any other class/job, and qs are pretty standard if you are a DPS and as fast as every other game if you are a tank or a healer. There.

Also don't play a hevay story based game and ignore the story, it won't work.

[iinverse]

1. Only a couple of classes have overcomplexed rotations. I leveled some other jobs and found those fits to my style ans speed.
Also if you do not do top content (like savages in first weeks) you can do simplified rotations for every other activity.

2. Leveling an alt is... like in every other MMORPG. You can do FATEs (like WQs in wow), PotD/HoH (dungeon alternatives), various DRs: heists, MSQs, dungs, raids, etc (like LFG/LFR in wow). Laher patches will introduce new game+ (you may level every combat class via MSQ over and over if you want )
So no difference.

3. In primetime queues for tank/heal are instant or something like 3-5 mins. Queues as dps usually are 5-10 mins for all level brackets.
(I do several dungeons every day for different roles and levels).

4. Professions are great. It has a sence (actual crafting gear/items that you can sell for gil or wear for endgame/leveling), it has its own rotations and a wide various of skills, gear and consumables.

[Budong]

That was a lot of words for saying so little. Subjective analysis is opinion and not fact. Your review is noted and rejected.

[GreenJesus]

I did not make it beyond level 35, and I have tried. Boring quests, even in the main questline, and slow, boring combat. Every class felt the same and the long GCD was awful. I would still love to play again, because the game looks good in terms of the world and the art direction, but I can't bring myself to. Some of the classes had a cool fantasy behind it, but were still boring to play, and felt the same as any other.

- - - Updated - - -



The story in FF14 is overrated, kupo.

lol.. you only got to level 35 so no shit. Everyone says ARR was shit.

[Tinytalon]

The story in FF14 is overrated, kupo.

Yeah, I can see why this game isn't for someone like you. And maybe that's for the best.

[Tinytalon]

I like story. The one in FF14 is boring and at times cringe-inducing.

I mean, you can't really shit on the whole storyline when you've only seen a very tiny portion of a part of the storyline that almost no one likes. It gets better by expansion.

[Irian]

I disagree with pretty much everything in your post, OP, and kinda think a lot of this is just you going into the game with very specific expectations and the game not delivering on those. This kind of stuff gets parroted by a ton of WoW refugees who come into the game wanting it to be a second WoW and being unwilling to adjust for the inevitability that two games will be different in priorities, feel and playstyle.

To me, other games have way too basic of rotations and I love the so-called "ability bloat" as the slower pace of combat allows you to actually learn and perfect your class, and better yet, it actually feels rewarding to do so. Pruning the ability amount just to pander to people who don't want to learn something that might have complexity or nuance is exactly what happened to WoW and what I want to never happen to FFXIV.

Skipping the story essentially takes a good 50% of the game out of it. If you don't enjoy the story that's your prerogative but at the same time you're doing yourself a huge disservice by completely ignoring it. If you enter an RPG then ignore/skip all of the story elements you're basically missing half the point of an RPG to begin with. This isn't a sandbox type of game, it's pushed on by its narrative and practically every single place and encounter you face is given context by those cutscenes you skipped.

"Professions" are an entire side style of gameplay and while I only take a casual foray into them here and there, I know many people who live and breathe the crafting system in FFXIV. I can't say that for pretty much any other MMORPG I've ever played, so sure, if you don't particularly love the amount of investment required that's fine. You can just choose not to do them.

And as for queue times...? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe a difference in datacenters? I play on Crystal and queues for basically anything I do as a DPS are sub-15 mins, at most 20. Not really a huge wait time by any means.

[Wildpantz]

The only thing i can agree on i leveling alts sucks ass it made stop playing.

[threads]

biggest problem for me is the content gets stale quicker and quicker the longer i play. there really is not much content in the game atm. most people that played on shb launch have unsubbed until something new comes out.

i will say that this has been the case for every x.0 patch so not surprised. might get better in 5.1

[Irian]

I haven't seen only a tiny portion. I've done a lot of quests. I've played the game for many hours. And fans have a habit of always doing what you are doing right now. No matter how much one has played, it's always "just keep going, it gets better". And when you've finally had enough it's "oh you never really gave it a chance".

Original level cap was 50. If the game has still not won me over at level 35, it's just over. The game had a chance. I'm not gonna waste more time only to be continued to be disappointed.

Even if the story changes, I know the combat isn't, so what's the point. Sorry but I'd rather play games that are fun.

I think that's exactly what Tinytalon meant when they said the game isn't for you.

FFXIV doesn't specifically go out of its way to appeal to people who play MMORPGs the way many WoW players do. And that's fine. The playerbase in FFXIV is a completely different set of people, from single player FF fans to people from other MMORPGs including WoW and low-budget asian MMOs. If you don't pay attention or like the story then yeah, you're not going to like the game, but saying something is "overrated" to a game you barely played is going to get some comments.

You've done maybe 10% of the whole game, and it didn't grab you, which probably just means it's not a game for you.

[Talrath]

to be honest, if you dont follow the macro which people put on the internet, you will continuesly start thinking how to get a hq item. Ive done alot of bad things regarding that but ive progressed and Always have a calculator next to me i do an profession.

The combat welllll, it depends which class you play and some people are too fixed on the WoW system. Also its quite easy to just delete the action bars on your screen.

The lore, I loved it from the start all the way to present day, but thats because im a lore nutjob, so meh everyone has their own tastes.

9 minutes qeue is quite healthy instead of WoW 15 minutes of qeue.

[Beastiel]

It's pretty funny, because while I never believed all the talk about FF14 killing WoW, all the voices make you think and consider the possibility that the game is pretty active. Again, reality turns out to be different than the forum rhetoric. If you have to wait up to 1 hour in queue as a dps for current obligatory MSQ content, that means barely anyone is playing it.

I've literally never waited more than 10 minutes as a dps. usually, it's less than 5.

[Irian]

I've literally never waited more than 10 minutes as a dps. usually, it's less than 5.

If I had to guess, OP probably waited a long time for some weird niche dungeon that doesn't pop up in any popularly ran roulettes, got a decently long wait time, then naturally came to the assumption that that singular experience meant that the game was desolate.

OP's entire post reeks of a foregone conclusion that someone is grasping at straws to fill, when the reality is that they played a game they didn't like and have to believe that means the game itself is the problem.

[agentsi]

So to fill the downtime created by completing most of the activities in 8.2, as well as to clear the bad taste playing wow classic has left in my mouth, I decided to jump in and try out FF14. I've always been a great fan of FF games, so the thought of playing those old school jobs in an mmo setting and riding chocobos seemed kind of cool to me. One of my mates also plays it which gave me an additional incentive to try it.

I'm a person who gets a kick out of leveling things up, collecting stuff and all that, so every game that allows you to do that will provide me with some sort of entertainment. And I had a fair share of fun playing FF14 btw, about 3 weeks of fun to be precise. There's a lot of good things in the game, and overall it is an mmo, and everyone who enjoys that kind of gameplay will enjoy it to an extent. In this thread I will be focusing on the negatives, but that does not mean I hate the game. I wanted to make this very clear because fanboys are often unable to understand that.

At some point however, all the gameplay problems started to mar my experience to the point where I no longer feel the need to log in to play anymore. I stopped playing the game 5 levels away from the cap (at 75) because it's just unpleasant to play it now. It also made me realize how much I value some aspects of a game, ones that I normally don't think about. With that said, let me enumerate the biggest problems I encountered.

1. The combat

...is awful. Much like Rift, Swtor and all the other usual suspects in the past, it just feels clunky. It's one of those things that are hard to put into words. It's just not as smooth and fluid as you'd like. It feels like there are unnecessary delays between you using a skill on your keyboard and the character actually executing the command.

The other thing is that the rotations are extremely bloated as you advance your level. FF14 is a good example of what happens when you don't do the so called "ability pruning" that all the elitist players criticise so much in wow. At max level, or even slightly below the max level, your rotations include about 20-25 skills. And that is not including AOE skills, utility skills etc. It's just the single target rotation. I'm sure someone will argue that using 25 skills in a rotation is fun, but to me it's really not. It makes it hard to pick up a class because unless you're a gaming professor you will have a hard time learning it. It also makes it ridiculously hard to optimize your gameplay, let alone min-max, which is downright impossible. Using your actual rotation on anything outside of a dungeon boss? You wish. You'll just have to settle for using a couple random skills, using a fraction of your potential on those non-boss things. As far as the number of skills, combat below level 50 at best feels okay, afterwards it's just too much filler stuff in your rotation.

The funny thing is I didn't even think combat would matter so much, because I am mostly interested in other areas of an mmo, but it turns out that a bad enough combat system can turn you away from a game even if you aren't combat oriented.

2. Leveling and alts

MSQ Leveling is a bit weird, but it's fast and varied, which is good. Myself I am not a plot-person so I don't care at all what the game's story is about and thus I skipped every cutscene ever. Somewhat enjoyed all the leveling of my main job still, because at least it took me around the world, through all the zones, and it was close to the questing/leveling experience I know from other games. No problems here.

However, the real problem is the leveling of your alt jobs. Now some people will probably scratch their heads and start telling me how fast it is and all that...okay, I don't disagree, it may be fast, but fast does not equal entertaining or interesting. Quite the contrary, leveling alt jobs is pure pain in FF14. You use your main character for all of the jobs, and you can only do quests once per character, which means that you are pretty much left with the following methods for leveling up your alt jobs/classes:

-levequests (incredibly boring repetable quests, which are also capped hourly to make it even worse and stop you from doing them all the time)
-doing dungeons over and over (only really viable for tank and healer jobs)
-a dungeon crawler mini game that you can do over and over for levels

While those methods may be quick, they are an absolute and complete pain. I managed to level an alt tank job to a level of about 40 or so through dungeons which is where I felt I am done with it and can take no more of the same dungeons over and over. The whole system seems to be designed with blocking grinds in mind. You are supposed to just do a daily roulette once per day and level your alt job that way, over the course of like 100 days.

3. Queues are ridiculous, even during the peak hours.

It's no surprise that playing DPS results in long queue times, but even trying to queue up for a trial from the current expansion, that is required for a MSQ quest can take up to an HOUR. The game is only playable if you have a friend who can tank/heal for you, otherwise you have to wait for like an hour, and your best bet is to just do something else (but that something else can't be playing an alt job, because the best way to level that up is doing dungeons, and you can't queue for another thing at the same time).

It's pretty funny, because while I never believed all the talk about FF14 killing WoW, all the voices make you think and consider the possibility that the game is pretty active. Again, reality turns out to be different than the forum rhetoric. If you have to wait up to 1 hour in queue as a dps for current obligatory MSQ content, that means barely anyone is playing it.

4. Professions are done horribly

So with this one I don't have much hands-on experience, because after researching how those things work in FF14 I decided not to even try. Profession skills such as mining, cooking etc. work as a separate class, so they lower your level to 1. It is an interesting concept, but also means you have to switch jobs whenever you want to partake in those activities (because you will get one shot by any mob otherwise). To pile up onto that, you have mining rotations, which you have to use correctly, or you risk failing the mining activity (I mean really?).

There were some other minor things that got on my nerves, many of those probably more subjective so I won't be talking about them too much. Dungeon encounter design, un-obvious boss mechanics, UI bugs, the horrid TRUST system (doing dungeons with NPCs which takes like 1 hour longer than a normal party), retainers instead of a regular deposit place, market interface, confusing housing system.

In the end...it's just one of those games. It's fun for a while to take a break and play it. It will just make you appreciate and enjoy the proper MMORPG more once you go back to it full time.

Their combat, while a tad slow, by far has the highest skill cap ceiling of any MMO I've played. Without question. You have to play perfectly to clear Savage content. And to be fair, if you dislike their combat system because of the 2.5second GCD, that can be a fair argument. But to call it bad, just means you weren't good at it.

Their alt system is the best ever imo. One character, can lvl EVERY CLASS. So never a need to make another toon. Ever. Every job/class on one toon? Sure.

Their professions are touted as some of the best of ANY Game available. Their jobs, and the jobs actually play a vital role in the market. Unlike again, most other crafters whos only purpose is to fulfil your own needs.

[Xyonai]

I can agree with the point that alt-job leveling feels really sluggish and, often times, like something you do more out of obligation then for fun. That's a prevailing issue for a lot of people, honestly and I really hope they do more to address this then just leaving it up to Deep Dungeon spamming.

But most people I know who play do so because they enjoy the story, and outright just skipping everything devalues the experience immeasurably ( even if pieces of the 2.x story line are awkward ). It's like going into any mainline final fantasy game, skipping/ignoring all the dialogue then poo-pooing how the world's not immersive or engaging enough.

[Irian]

Yeah the game just isn't for me. I don't like games with slow, boring combat and a boring, cringe-inducing story. That is just a personal preference. Others might feel differently.

I'm sure your level 35 opinion can really judge 80 levels and four expansions worth of story.

Stop wasting everyone's time with your hyperbole. The only "cringe-inducing" thing here is how hard you're pushing that statement. One day you'll become an adult and realize that calling things "cringe" is the most cringe thing you can say.