What problems do you have with Final Fantasy 14?

[Tyris Flare]

There's also the fact that the reason there's no competitive scene is that the content just isn't up to par. Even without the big organizations and competitive scene and such, guilds generally clear the newest raid content in XIV within a day or so. (And that's just calendar time, it's even less actual playtime. Granted, some of that is due to how XIV handles wipes and repulls, but it's still relatively much less time.)

You just can't have a big hyped up "Race to World First!" with large organizations and extremely hardcore people with content of that caliber. It'd be like an even worse Emerald Nightmare all over again, every single tier.

(In before, "but Coil took...!")

Yeah, I mean Blizzard has to specifically design around Echo/Limit for RWF - they literally despawned Nzoth on all realms because Limit was going to kill him in an unintended way too early back in 8.3. GMs actually watch their progress live so they can adjust stuff if necessary. SLG was almost certainly just thrown up as an insane block because SD might not have been tweaked yet.

Like it literally takes everything the devs have to stay ahead of these groups. They would clear FF or any other game within a day.

WoW actually has more than 4 difficulty modes now - the Denathrius that Echo and Limit killed is different than the ones Hall of Fame guilds killed which is different than top 500 guilds killed which is different than now. Mythic raiding ends up having like 4 iterations by the end of the patch because the gap between #1 and #500 and #1000 is so incredibly extreme in terms of skill/organization.

Blizzard invests a lot of developer resources is fostering the RWF scene. No other developers are willing to do that. We can like or dislike that approach, but it is very clear that WoW remains the most difficult and most competitive MMO by a huge margin.

[Echo of Soul]

The key difference is that FFXIV's developers - and marketers, by extension - are much more interested in selling their product to a more casual market looking for a more relaxed experience. That is ultimately their core audience, and it would be an audience they would drive away if they pushed the eSport angle.

I think that's the core audience of any MMORPG it's just that all developers doesn't understand that or don't want to understand that and design the game for a hardcore audience first and the casual audience will get the scraps.

[draugril]

I think that's the core audience of any MMORPG it's just that all developers doesn't understand that or don't want to understand that and design the game for a hardcore audience first and the casual audience will get the scraps.

Precisely. FFXIV is the only (decent) game out there actively designing for and prioritizing the casual crowd. But that is so outside the known possibilities for those whose views have been entirely formed by their experience with WoW, so they can only measure the game against the measures of success they've formed for WoW.

[Tyris Flare]

Precisely. FFXIV is the only (decent) game out there actively designing for and prioritizing the casual crowd. But that is so outside the known possibilities for those whose views have been entirely formed by their experience with WoW, so they can only measure the game against the measures of success they've formed for WoW.

ESO has the exact same demographic. I guess you can debate whether it is "decent" or not but there is no real hardcore content in the game, comparatively.

Same with SWTOR, though it gets basically 0 resources compared to the other games these days

[Wrecktangle]

The lack of damage meters means I don't know if I'm doing well or terrible. Just some sort of "par" DPS indicator for my level and whether I'm above or below it would be good. I don't care about others damage.

2 things to reassure you:

1) If you're simply pushing buttons I don't even care what buttons they are every single GCD you are outperforming at least 25-35% of the players you will come across. Just make sure you're rolling the GCD and using your oGCDs as often as possible. Once you get closer to end game worry about optimizations once you see your full kit. ACT is a godsend for when you're ready though.

2) Not all jobs are even remotely balanced before max level, so some you simply can't compete with so try not to worry about that either.

I'm sorry but I do not believe this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ges_over_time/

Quality is completely subjective. Popularity and market appeal is not.

But objective fact is that FF does not have the same competitive scene or viewer appeal, otherwise gaming organizations would move to play it instead since it would get more views.

To be fair, whenever an ultimate raid is out, FF14 is right there at the top of the list and that's with almost 0 investment.

[Echo of Soul]

ESO has the exact same demographic. I guess you can debate whether it is "decent" or not but there is no real hardcore content in the game, comparatively.

Same with SWTOR, though it gets basically 0 resources compared to the other games these days

ESO is a pretty good game too from a casual point of view I'd agree with that.

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I'm not sure how you could come to that conclusion, though. WoW has always been - and remains - extremely accessible to casual players.

Being accessible to and primarily designed for are two completely different things.
Can you for example get the second best gear in the game from running nothing but matchmade content in WoW? Does the hardcore content only award cosmetics? Does the game lack daily chores that you have to do in order to not fall behind?

[Kalisandra]

Just to give more detail, what I did was make a mouseover macro for each of my heals and esuna, put them on an action bar I keep hidden, and give them all specific keybinds. Only the heals with cooldowns are on my visible bars and only so I can see if they're on cooldown or not. I also put my Swiftcast/Res mouseover macro on the hidden bar and bound it as well for ease of use. Swiftcast stays on my visible bars so I can see it's cooldown and/or to use it with Holy on trash in dungeons when I typically don't need to worry about ressing people. It ends up playing very much like WoW with Clique.

I see how that'd work. And now that I think about it, once one's written one macro, the rest are just copy/paste with the spell names and keybinds swapped, so it shouldn't be too bad to set up.

[draugril]

I'm not sure how you could come to that conclusion, though. WoW has always been - and remains - extremely accessible to casual players.

That really depends on how you define "casual."

WoW seems to define "casual" as "aspiring Mythic raider." If you define casual in the same way, you have a fair point. But if you define it more broadly, including those who enjoy quality narrative, non-combat activities, housing, and just generally more community-centric features... FFXIV is for those people. My Animal Crossing loving wife? Nothing in WoW for her. My cousin who stalled levelling to breed chocobos? Nothing in WoW for him. My son who just likes to play minigames? Nothing in WoW for him. WoW's developers aren't trying to net these players, either - they're making their eSport and hoping the paintjob is good enough to hold the attention of those following in its wake.

WoW does WoW better than anyone else. And it appeals to anyone who is interested in the loot treadmill, regardless of skill level or dedication. But that is such a narrow view of what the MMO genre encapsulates, but that's a difficult viewpoint to expand when someone only has WoW to reference.

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ESO has the exact same demographic. I guess you can debate whether it is "decent" or not but there is no real hardcore content in the game, comparatively.

Same with SWTOR, though it gets basically 0 resources compared to the other games these days

That's fair. I think ESO is still a little more focused on the progression-based gamer, however. They do have horizontal progression, though, and should be lauded for that. SW:TOR... I fell off the wagon when they made my character neutral. Is the new story worth checking out? I heard they brought Malgus back, which is a plus.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Also, having female characters with large boobs, half naked, bunny ears and cat tails but not allowing/designing any sort of romance between your character and an NPC in the main story, is VERY hypocritical and psychologically speaking, points towards forbidden inner desires. Says quite a lot about a society.

I do find it interesting how there is pretty much zero romance in FFXIV at all. I'm hard pressed to think of any characters who are in a relationship with another, let alone married. I think the Chais are the only married couple in the game, and that's it.

The game gives you a pseudo harem, with Haucherfant, Aymeric, Alisae, and G'raha Tia bending over backwards to fawn over you the WoL, but you can't reciprocate.

[PizzaSHARK]

There's also the fact that the reason there's no competitive scene is that the content just isn't up to par. Even without the big organizations and competitive scene and such, guilds generally clear the newest raid content in XIV within a day or so. (And that's just calendar time, it's even less actual playtime. Granted, some of that is due to how XIV handles wipes and repulls, but it's still relatively much less time.)

Raw real-world time investment is a pretty fucking bizarre way of defining competitiveness. You could make an old school elitist MMO to end all MMOs that requires dozens of hours of material farming for just one night's worth of attempts and that would pad out the effective amount of time spent raiding by an impressive amount, but it wouldn't necessarily make it "more competitive" than another game with fights that are equally challenging. It would simply make it so that the only people that can realistically compete for server first/week one clears are people that either literally play games for a living (streamers etc) or who are so fortunate that they can take a week+ off every time a new raid comes out and no-life the game for 20 hours a day.

I'd argue that while it's fresh and there are no guides, plugins, and other cheating tools available, XIV is at least as challenging as equivalent WoW content. Savages are probably not equivalent to Mythics - they are very much "if you have the patience and willingness to learn, you can do this" content. The hardest content in XIV are ultimates, and those are probably *at least* as challenging as the toughest fights in mythic raids.

Likely even moreso because you don't get to have the game literally fucking play itself for you in XIV, you don't have WeakAuras basically putting your finger on each button as it needs to be pressed, you don't have BigWigs/DBM making it so that you damn near don't even need to be able to see the screen, etc.

I really struggle to take WoW seriously as a "competitive game" when even the biggest and baddest streamers and players are wholly reliant on mods playing the game for them.

I do find it interesting how there is pretty much zero romance in FFXIV at all. I'm hard pressed to think of any characters who are in a relationship with another, let alone married. I think the Chais are the only married couple in the game, and that's it.

The game gives you a pseudo harem, with Haucherfant, Aymeric, Alisae, and G'raha Tia bending over backwards to fawn over you the WoL, but you can't reciprocate.

Reciprocation would probably break the PG-13/Teen rating they're courting, not to mention that they either have to go full Stardew and everyone wants to bang everyone else (which does limit the ability to write your characters, it basically means you can't ever make their sexuality a facet of their personality because their sexuality in this case is simply "yes"), or different NPCs have different tastes and that will *inevitably* cause an unending tirade of caterwauling and whining when "my favorite waifu isn't into my gender/race/whatever!!!!" I think it would be pretty funny if they made Y'shtola asexual or something just to piss off as many fanboys as possible, though.

[Rogalicus]

It's not even internally consistent. The WoW players have all those "cheating tools" supposedly "playing the game for them" and so...the content is easier? Harder? Which is it? Why does it still take the best raiders in the world so much more time and effort if the mods are just playing the game for them? Why do pugs clear the raids in XIV so fast without those "cheats" that "play the game for them"?

Considering Cactbot's existence, it's kind of a moot point in general. There's probably a way to create something like WeakAuras with overlay too.

[Echo of Soul]

Considering Cactbot's existence, it's kind of a moot point in general. There's probably a way to create something like WeakAuras with overlay too.

By breaking terms of service yes there is.

[Absintheminded]

My main gripe currently is the amount of time it takes to level jobs once the MSQ is complete.

[Necromantic]

By breaking terms of service yes there is.

That is... if SE enforces their rules in FFXIV unlike they do in FFXI. In FFXI, tons of people bot, use 3rd party enhancements and never get banned no matter what.

[Rogalicus]

That is... if SE enforces their rules in FFXIV unlike they do in FFXI. In FFXI, tons of people bot, use 3rd party enhancements and never get banned no matter what.

AFAIK, SE don't ban people for using them, only for mentioning them in chat.

[deenman]

Player housing. I could go no where near it or experience it. I felt like I missed out on a big part of the game. (People usually most vocal how good housing is) I heard they might be trying to address this in the upcoming expansion? Something with a farm too? Not entirely sure didn't read a lot into it. There is burning questions the people must know.. will we have moogle workers? Namazu pond? Will there be Otter and fat cat minions? I hope this addresses the housing one way or another but that is just hopeful thinking.

if that game has actual player housing and a farm its making me extremly tempted to play

and before any genius mentions this...NO garrisons and tillers arent housing and a farm,they were systems,PLAYER POWER systems,and proffesion mats

[draugril]

At the end of the day, WoW is simply the far and away superior game in this regard. If you're looking for a robust raiding scene, tightly tuned content, a wide array of gameplay options, and a large competitive scene then WoW is definitely the game you're looking for. XIV excels in other places for sure, and it's raiding isn't bad by any means. But lets not pretend this is an actual comparison to be made.

I take issue with only that point.

WoW does the loot treadmill better than anyone else, but that's a pretty narrow scope as far as gameplay options go. It doesn't hold a candle to other entries in the genre in terms of casting a wide net because of that laser-focus on the endgame loop.

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AFAIK, SE don't ban people for using them, only for mentioning them in chat.

They ban bots in big waves pretty regularly. There's a difference in enforcement between botting as using certain mods like ACT - they wink and look the other way, but they're still technically a violation, so don't bring them up in-game.

[justandulas]

That is... if SE enforces their rules in FFXIV unlike they do in FFXI. In FFXI, tons of people bot, use 3rd party enhancements and never get banned no matter what.

They don’t enforce it in ff14 either. When I played, there was a real hush hush encouragement at the high end to have addons

Mention dps meters in game and you’ll get blasted, but also hush hush directed to 101 other addons including dps meters, that ff14 players use

My only point here is to point out that ff14 does not ban people like they should for addons. They have a very look the other way policy as long as you aren’t bragging about it or advertising

[deenman]

They don’t enforce it in ff14 either. When I played, there was a real hush hush encouragement at the high end to have addons

Mention dps meters in game and you’ll get blasted, but also hush hush directed to 101 other addons including dps meters, that ff14 players use

My only point here is to point out that ff14 does not ban people like they should for addons. They have a very look the other way policy as long as you aren’t bragging about it or advertising

this entire situation sounds more toxic than literaly anything ever in wow,and its dev created...ykes

[draugril]

Well, I meant in terms of the raiding gameplay. It's true that in terms of a wide array of other activities, WoW falls short of other entries in the genre.

Aye, I assumed as much. But I had to point that out, since so many WoW players have a pretty narrow view of the genre since their only experience with it is WoW and they can't really conceive of an MMO focusing on anything other than that endgame loot treadmill.