What problems do you have with Final Fantasy 14?

[Lynkeus]

The art and the combat does not appeal to me. I never liked FF world and that is big part of it. Also 3sec gcd and splitting just one skill into smaller parts with a name combo is not a good design.

[Swnem]

I mainly have two gripes with the game at present. Magic items don't feel actually magic as they don't provide anything beside a stat boost and not enough central characters die. We accomplish way too much with way little casualties.

I think this is a false equivilancy.

You can have an emotional story without killing main characters. WOW kills characters all the time to have that cheap emotional kick, but it's happened so much no one cares anymore when it happens. (Does anyone even care about what happened to Ursoc anymore?) The story is known to be terrible.

So, i don't think killing characters is something to abuse. It should be used rarely in order to have maximum impact when it makes sense in the story.

Even the death of villains is way more of an emotional rollercoaster in FFXIV where in WoW they are a loot pinata we strip of goods at the end, like good old grave robbers.

[Nerovar]

I can't deal with the weeb stuff.

[Wangming]

I think this is a false equivilancy.

You can have an emotional story without killing main characters. WOW kills characters all the time to have that cheap emotional kick, but it's happened so much no one cares anymore when it happens. (Does anyone even care about what happened to Ursoc anymore?) The story is known to be terrible.

So, i don't think killing characters is something to abuse. It should be used rarely in order to have maximum impact when it makes sense in the story.

Even the death of villains is way more of an emotional rollercoaster in FFXIV where in WoW they are a loot pinata we strip of goods at the end, like good old grave robbers.

Where did I say it needs to be abused? I didn't. No need to put words into my mouth. But it is hard to accept somebody as a credible threat when everyone survives and there is no permanent damage on the world. Emet gets a pass because in the bad future he killed everyone, but as much as I liked 5.3 it was waay too smooth. Not even a freaky friday body switch when we returned let alone a soul that didn't survive the road. Nael? She changed the world. Thordan? The first truly great villain of the game. Ilberd? Raubahn's arm and Papalymo were both because of him. But Zenos? For all his bravado all he killed was Varys and the death of Elidibus was more emotional than any he caused.

I'm just not really affraid because I know nobody is in any danger whatsoever. Like Y'shtola who probably has her private penthouse in the afterlife.

[KrayZ33]

Where did I say it needs to be abused? I didn't. No need to put words into my mouth. But it is hard to accept somebody as a credible threat when everyone survives and there is no permanent damage on the world. Emet gets a pass because in the bad future he killed everyone, but as much as I liked 5.3 it was waay too smooth. Not even a freaky friday body switch when we returned let alone a soul that didn't survive the road. Nael? She changed the world. Thordan? The first truly great villain of the game. Ilberd? Raubahn's arm and Papalymo were both because of him. But Zenos? For all his bravado all he killed was Varys and the death of Elidibus was more emotional than any he caused.

I'm just not really affraid because I know nobody is in any danger whatsoever. Like Y'shtola who probably has her private penthouse in the afterlife.

What are you talking about though, we had a main character / important side character and villains die in every expansion. Sometimes two or three. And "no name" casualties are always high throughout the whole storyline.

I don't think it's wise to kill off just about every main character and write off every new character that is introduced as "you will die soon anyway".
They are main/side characters for a reason. If they die, it's supposed to be a rare event. Not something that is to be expected.
I think the amount of important characters that have died in this storyline so far are reason enough for me to believe anyone of them could die at any moment.
Especially Thancred and Y'sthola are 2 candidates I expect to die for real at some point, even if Y'sthola is basically the face of the game by now.

[draugril]

That's not true. It might be they exceeded their projections. But FF14 is a game and it competes with all games on the market. One has every right to compare it within the genre and within the medium.

My issue is with it being an unfair and somewhat moot critique... like saying that an apple supplier is limiting itself by only supplying applies. I mean... sure? That would be correct. But it kind of goes without saying, and I would hardly use that point to critique the company.

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Yes. All of that resonates with me. I played WoW since 2005, and I tanked for PuGS all the way from Vanilla to Wrath, and played some in all the other expansions including SL. The tryhards just ruin everything when you try to pug anything these days.

Enjoying the hell out of FFXIV. Are there issues? Yes. But nothing like the issues I have with WoW at this time.

If you want WoW's endgame, it's already there in WoW. Go play it. FFXIV is a different sort of experience. If you like WoW's endgame, you probably won't like FFXIV. So don't go there.

YMMV.

Precisely. Nearly every interaction you have in WoW, socially, is with people who perceive themselves as temporarily inconvenienced Mythic raiders. And since the game is designed to funnel everyone onto that loot treadmill, I can hardly blame them. But it is absolutely exhausting to deal with, particularly as someone who still believes that video games exist to unwind and relax.

That being said, I do encourage people who enjoy WoW's endgame to try FFXIV. And EVE. And ESO. And a dozen others. WoW has become so hyperfocused on such a tiny sliver of the genre's potential to the point that most of its players can't imagine an MMO existing in any other structure or with any other focus. Broaden your horizons a little. Even if you ultimately don't like those games, you might like some of the ideas they're trying out. And I encourage everyone to bring those ideas back to WoW.

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I can't deal with the weeb stuff.

FFXIV has some strange people. But I will take FFXIV's brand of harmless strange over interacting with the dregs of WoW any day.

[Wildpantz]

The locking of skills when doing lower content and the biggest by far is the potd grind to lvl alt jobs

[Wangming]

Especially Thancred and Y'sthola are 2 candidates I expect to die for real at some point, even if Y'sthola is basically the face of the game by now.

Funny thing is, I think Thancred is the safest because he is the muggle and there is nobody with his perpective on the main team. After so many fake deaths I would be overjoyed for Y'shtola to actually die and stay dead. Call me heartless, but all her temporary deaths just made me annoyed and resent her. I think slowly but surely the twins are taking over as faces of the game, so who knows? I'm looking forward to the finalee in Endwalker.

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The locking of skills when doing lower content and the biggest by far is the potd grind to lvl alt jobs

So don't do that. Do FATES, hunting log, guildhests, grand company leves, all the sidequests you didn't do, FATES, duty roulettes or even beast tribe dailies.

[Ferozan]

The endgame PVE content is kinda lacking in quantity and overall tuning, the quality is good. In SHB, we had from 5.0 to 5.4
Launch
- 2 trials (Titania/Innocence)
- 4 bosses on Savage (E1S-E4S)

On Patches (5.1 to 5.4)
- 4 trials (Ruby, Memoria Misera, Spoiler and Emerald Weapon)
- 8 bosses on Savage (9 if you count door boss)
- 2 alliance raids (Nier 1 and 2)
- 2 Unreal Trials (Shiva and Titan)
- 1 ultimate. (TEA in SHB)
- Castrum Litore and Delubrum Reginae are content locked behind of Bozja, which is worse (imo) than ShB Eureka. I am trying to go through the grind, but it is really boring to farm mettle.

Looking at each separate.
- On average, all the trials were really easy. Innocence was a bit harder (probably because it was my second trial ever after titania), Ruby and Emerald were undertuned, Spoiler which was cool.
- Savage fights weren't bad (till E12S, where i am right now), although some fights were really undertuned (E7S comes to mind). Also, because of the pandemic, the 2nd tier lasted too long for 4 boss only.
- Alliance raids are cool ideas but last for 1-2 hours. No real difficulty and no real meaning to do them besides wait for a odd patch to get the solvents to upgrade even patch gear.
- Shiva unreal was utter garbage, titan unreal is fun.
- TEA was a fucking awesome fight, much better than UWU which was the other Ultimate i did.
- No Bozja content done yet.

Getting only one ultimate in 2 years also was kinda bs. Ultimates, even though a small percentage tries doing them, are synched content, which means they will last for next expansions to come. People that cleared savage on 5.4 have no PVE content besides Bozja II, maybe a trial (and unreal) and Nier III to do in 5.5. Which is kinda sad because the pve content in this game is really awesome when tuned properly.

Looking back on ShB's PVE content, I still think they should try doing at least 6 boss Normal/Savage tiers and upping the difficulty on trials and things like alliance raids.

[Advent]

Funny thing is, I think Thancred is the safest because he is the muggle and there is nobody with his perpective on the main team. After so many fake deaths I would be overjoyed for Y'shtola to actually die and stay dead. Call me heartless, but all her temporary deaths just made me annoyed and resent her. I think slowly but surely the twins are taking over as faces of the game, so who knows? I'm looking forward to the finalee in Endwalker.

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So don't do that. Do FATES, hunting log, guildhests, grand company leves, all the sidequests you didn't do, FATES, duty roulettes or even beast tribe dailies.

If they ever kill Yshtola this game is dead to me. I'd prefer Alphinuts to die, can't stand the little bugger.

As far as problems go

- Boss rooms are uninspired and feel lazy to me (How many circular/square platforms are we going to get?)
- Dungeons and raids aren't fully formed areas, they're just corridors. Feels like a linear series of hallways we're being herded through.
- The UI is terrible and bloated.
- Character abilities lack any depth or nuance, so playing jobs is a matter of memorization than improvisation and decision-making.
- Invisible walls EVERYWHERE
- End game, for me, boils down to a daily roulette for tomes, and sitting to wait for another week because nothing else is rewarding enough to bother with.
- The world is empty and doesn't feel like anyone lives in it. (This is a criticism I've had of many Asian-made rpg titles)
- While the story is often compelling, the narrative takes ages to go anywhere, and often devolves into meandering exposition, because tight, efficient dialogue and plot is a stunning weakness for this dev team IMO.

[Wangming]

- While the story is often compelling, the narrative takes ages to go anywhere, and often devolves into meandering exposition, because tight, efficient dialogue and plot is a stunning weakness for this dev team IMO.

Well it is an RPG first and an MMO second. Long cutscenes with no gameplay is completely normal for a single player RPG.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

- While the story is often compelling, the narrative takes ages to go anywhere, and often devolves into meandering exposition, because tight, efficient dialogue and plot is a stunning weakness for this dev team IMO.

Well it is an RPG first and an MMO second. Long cutscenes with no gameplay is completely normal for a single player RPG.

Oh? IMO, the brisk pacing of FFXIV's main story (after ARR) is one the key selling points, as far as long JRPG storylines go.

The Trails series has been going for 10 games - about 800-1,000 hours of playtime, by my metrics - and we've barely had any main plot progression. We're 10 games and 800-1,000 hours in and we've learned jack all about the big bad's (the Grandmaster's) motivations, her history, or her plans, and we've barely taken out any of her lackeys. In fact, we've actually had plot regression, as the handful of Anguis we've actually taken out she promptly replaced. By the end of the 10th game, Hajimari no Kiseki, there are still effectively just as many Anguis we need to take down as when we started way back with Trails in the Sky. And supposedly, Hajimari is only the halfway point of the story. So we might have another 800 - 1,000 hours ahead of us before we finally face off against the Grandmaster. I love Trails, but I've long stopped caring about the main plot.

Contrast that with FFXIV. The MSQ is about 300 hours long, and there has been a tremendous amount of plot progression in comparison. By patch 3.2 - about 100 hours into the MSQ - we have gotten a pretty good grasp of the plot: what is going on (war between Zodiark and Hydaelyn), who the bad guys are (Ascians and Zodiark), what they are trying to accomplish (rejoinings), how they are going to do it (calamities), and how we are going to stop them (kill the 13 Ascians and prevent calamities). And it feels like you're making considerable progress towards this goal as the game goes on, taking out members of the 13. And then, as of the Shadowbringers 5.X patches, they have been closing out most of the subplots/outstanding questions. Most of the Ascians have been defeated. It's pretty clear that there is only about maybe 30-50 hours of story left before we kill Zodiark (and maybe the Source of the Sound).

The only other huge JRPG storylines are can think of are the Kingdom Hearts series, the Xeno series, and the .Hack series, but they never did anywhere near as well as FFXIV or Trails. The first two Xeno storylines (Xenogear and Xenosaga) had ambitious storylines axed by budgets, resulting in the story being rushed. .Hack was okay. Kingdom Hearts had problems right from the get go, as the first game was clearly written to be standalone, and the sequels went off the rails immediately trying to create an overarching storyline, and bizzare storytelling (IIRC Sora kills half of Organization XIII in KH2 and you don't even know you did until long after).

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Endwalker is probably the most excited I've been for FFXIV. Finally, at long last, a long video game storyline that seems to actually have a good chance at being good. Well, it's a miracle that we are even actually at the end in the first place, since as far as long video game storylines go, most don't make it past 2 or 3 games.

[Advent]

Well it is an RPG first and an MMO second. Long cutscenes with no gameplay is completely normal for a single player RPG.

That's not what I meant. It's long and that's fine, but the characters themselves take ages to get to the point. They often talk around topics rather than getting to the heart of the issue, which makes the dialogue feel like needless padding for time. Maybe it's a JRPG thing, I don't know, but it definitely didn't endear me to the plot at all. By the time I get to the main meat of the story I'm so exhausted by long-winded, meandering exposition that I just don't care anymore. I believe someone else (maybe in this thread) said something along these lines. JRPGs take too long bogging the player down with meaningless details presented by interminable text. They tell too much, and show too little IMO.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That's not what I meant. It's long and that's fine, but the characters themselves take ages to get to the point. They often talk around topics rather than getting to the heart of the issue, which makes the dialogue feel like needless padding for time. Maybe it's a JRPG thing, I don't know, but it definitely didn't endear me to the plot at all. By the time I get to the main meat of the story I'm so exhausted by long-winded, meandering exposition that I just don't care anymore. I believe someone else (maybe in this thread) said something along these lines. JRPGs take too long bogging the player down with meaningless details presented by interminable text. They tell too much, and show too little IMO.

I believe it's a JRPG/anime/visual novel thing. Conversations often take a while to get to the point (usually by trying to rule out every possibility), but also there is a lot of repetition. Localizations can try to make this more natural to English readers, but the localization can't straight up remove lines of dialogue to make the scene go faster.

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My two biggest pet peeve about conversations in anime/JRPGs/VN: 1. every character has to get a word in, even if they have nothing meaningful to say. Just have them stay silent, or write them out of the scene! Maybe they're standing on guard in the background, or they are helping out with the cooking in the other room. Also, speeches. Holy crap so many speeches I start becoming numb to it.

[PixelFox]

I played it for a while but the game has a taste or a flavor that I just can't stand. It's maybe the Japanese tilt, or the vat that all the words for things are unlike anything used in any other game that makes me feel like I'm going to have a brain hemorrhage at any moment.

There are many attractive things in it, like the job system, etc. but after a while I just can't deal with it, I'm not exactly sure why.

A game that started out meh and grew on me over time is GW2 which I wasn't fond of at first yet has grown into IMHO the single best MMO game out there from a "how many things there are to do" perspective at least.

[ralph2449]

Honestly FF14 is a the perfect mmorpg for casuals imo, of course that means the tryhards and metaslaves wont enjoy it but thankfully unlike WoW SE focuses on the majority of the playerbase rather than a tiny minority.

Only main issue on my eyes is the Jobs, many of them really need to be near 60-70 to be fully engaging and fun, which of course can make playing synced content a little bad though, especially low level dungeons which can be extremely boring because of this, but since you can also que for extreme trials even ARR ones are pretty fun since you have a decent enough amount of skills and the mechanics can make them pretty fun fights.

There's always minor things like tab targeting rly needs work but those things are honestly minor and not rly a big issue that can ruin one's enjoyment.

[Apeachy]

its many duty finder options that let you do old content and such. When doing those your level gets scaled down and then you loose a lot of job ability's and your job that is usually fun to play just gets really boring and the content also gets a bit boring because yea very little skills (depends on what level you gets scaled down to).

[Th3Scourge]

I'm not Asian enough for it

[Wrecktangle]

Well it is an RPG first and an MMO second. Long cutscenes with no gameplay is completely normal for a single player RPG.

Is it though? I thought the genre was called MMORPG not RPGMMO lol . My favorite RPG of all time has some of the longest text dialogue like ever (Xenogears) and I'm 100% fine with it, and I'm fine with it in this game too, but MAN do they need to learn to utilize linkpearls to save people from traveling for no reason at all a good 50% of the time.

[Wangming]

Is it though? I thought the genre was called MMORPG not RPGMMO lol . My favorite RPG of all time has some of the longest text dialogue like ever (Xenogears) and I'm 100% fine with it, and I'm fine with it in this game too, but MAN do they need to learn to utilize linkpearls to save people from traveling for no reason at all a good 50% of the time.

Admittedly the main scenario between the first trip to the waking sands till Titan and from the end of 2.0 to the arrival of the Domans is the worst written part of the entire MSQ probably even inclusing Legacy. But I'll still take it any time in favor of what we have in WoW.

One thing that occured to me is that technically we are still wrapping up the 1.0 story. I mean this is still an exlplanation of why Dalamud had to be dropped. 6.1 will be the point where they can start telling a new story fresh from prior influence. This will be very interesting.