Wow refugees, what are you enjoying about the game?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am doing the main story and class mission + some quests near the main quest givers. Any recommendation? Am I missing something?

Sidequests give a pittance of EXP and rewards, and very few are worth doing for the story. Unless you are a completionist, or you really want to get the tiny scraps of lore or atmosphere about a people or a zone, then I'd recommend skipping them.

The only sidequests (that don't have blue icons) I'd recommend doing for the story would be:

ARR

• Whitebrim Front in Central Coerthas Highlands (gets you a feel for Ishgard, a nation worn down by war against Dragons)

Heavensward

• The Convictory in the Western Coerthas Highlands (a camp in the snowy wastes where poor men and the younger sons of nobles with no hope of a decent inheritance go to try to kill dragons in order to win prestige and try to return to Ishgard with higher social standing. Most die, however).

• Tailfeather in the Dravanian Forelands (an independent village that lives off of hunting big game). Also, Anyx Trine in the same zone.

• After you beat the 3.3 MSQ, go back to Fortemps Manor and do the short questchain you see in there.

Stormblood

• I actually enjoyed almost all of the sidequests here. You really got a feel for life under Garlean occupation in Ala Mhigo and Yanxia. The sidequests in the Ruby Sea explore a pirate nation in the East called the Confederacy. And the quests on the Azim Steppe get you acquainted with several different Xaela tribes.

Shadowbringers

• Doing sidequests in Kholusia, Fanow in Raktika, and Amh Araeng gives you a feel for how hopeless life is there. There were several good quests in Ill Mheg, though there are a lot of boring fetch quests around the starting area.

[Resiak]

They desperately need to find a way to streamline both the initial ARR leveling, and the post ARR questlines pre heavensword. Both are exhaustingly lengthy by even old MMORPG standards, and no doubt i'd bet ff14 loses it's biggest # of potential players during that. Players who never get to the really good content because ARR is kind of a slog, and the post ARR content (while the raid boss encounters are fun) is 90% just "warp here talk to this person. go here to this other person. do that 10x and 1 boss fight, repeat the process multiple times".

I like ff14, and i'm not trying to rain on its parade, i'm just being honest that they could use to streamline ARR-post ARR quite a bit.

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let's not pretend ARR story is all that interesting, at least not until the very end or post ARR. And it drags on, and on, and on....

compare it to something like SWTOR class story and it's clear that ff14 needs to revamp it's ARR experience because right now, it handicaps the game more than it helps it.

EXAMPLE: Asmongold, love him or hate him, is going to try to level up ff14 next week and will start fresh. The only reason i even bring him up is because i guarantee he's going to spend the first 50 levels crying about the painfully slow and dull leveling of ARR, and he won't even make it to the really good stuff of Heavensword and beyond.

They can't though. They tried trimming out what they could. But theres not a whole lot they can cut out without having to rewrite other story segments in other portions of the game, which would then force them to rewrite more things, so on and so on.

I replayed the arr story all the way through HW a couple years ago on another character after reading these complaints so often because I was curious how it felt since I have been playing since ARR launched and have done every msq as soon as they drop. And my thoughts are that I just couldn't see what all could be cut without breaking other parts of the story. Almost everything is referenced at later parts of the game. Or snowballs from story moment to story moments. You would need to invest valuable dev hours into rewrites and changes. I'm sure they have done analysis on the roi of that kind of work, and it probably didn't come out as worth it to them.

[Echo of Soul]

They can't though. They tried trimming out what they could. But theres not a whole lot they can cut out without having to rewrite other story segments in other portions of the game, which would then force them to rewrite more things, so on and so on.

I replayed the arr story all the way through HW a couple years ago on another character after reading these complaints so often because I was curious how it felt since I have been playing since ARR launched and have done every msq as soon as they drop. And my thoughts are that I just couldn't see what all could be cut without breaking other parts of the story. Almost everything is referenced at later parts of the game. Or snowballs from story moment to story moments. You would need to invest valuable dev hours into rewrites and changes. I'm sure they have done analysis on the roi of that kind of work, and it probably didn't come out as worth it to them.

True. It would be like wanting to cut out huge chunks of The Fellowship of the Ring because you want to get to the battles in the later books faster. However we'll be starting a new story in 6.1 and they've hinted at maybe that becoming the leveling up part in 7.0 to make the game a bit more accessible to new players.

What surprises me though is the amount of people who come into this thread complaining about the game when the thread is supposed to be about what they are enjoying about the game. How about creating a separate thread for complaining instead of going off topic in this one?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What surprises me though is the amount of people who come into this thread complaining about the game when the thread is supposed to be about what they are enjoying about the game. How about creating a separate thread for complaining instead of going off topic in this one?

Eh, discussions often oscillate back and forth. Trying to cram "all negativity must be in this other thread!" would feel artificial and diminish the amount of discussion going.

[shimerra]

They can't though. They tried trimming out what they could. But theres not a whole lot they can cut out without having to rewrite other story segments in other portions of the game, which would then force them to rewrite more things, so on and so on.

I replayed the arr story all the way through HW a couple years ago on another character after reading these complaints so often because I was curious how it felt since I have been playing since ARR launched and have done every msq as soon as they drop. And my thoughts are that I just couldn't see what all could be cut without breaking other parts of the story. Almost everything is referenced at later parts of the game. Or snowballs from story moment to story moments. You would need to invest valuable dev hours into rewrites and changes. I'm sure they have done analysis on the roi of that kind of work, and it probably didn't come out as worth it to them.

Deleting it and replacing it with a video of a monkey trying to see how many bananas they can fit up their butt would be an improvement with a brief text scroll summarizing events. I see no need to put more effort into fixing the mistake now than they did when they created it originally.

I'll be the first to say I've thought Final Fantasy's story has been pure dog shit. But the literal every single other person in the 6-7 RL friends that convinced me to play with them hated that non-sense ARR quest. Yeah anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I was enjoying the game but the insipid MSQ in ARR sucked all of that out when one of them told me about the paid skip even though I absolutely hate paying for those kind of things money could not leave my wallet fast enough.

It's bad enough even a minimal half assed hack job has to be worth the players gained.

[Selah]

One thing that I always thought XIV handled well was keeping a good continuity with characters and keeping them relevant. Not just "the big characters" either, you'll find story situations where someone you recognize shows up and it just fits and makes sense.

There are even a few "This was a surprise, but it totally makes sense that X showed up here. So much so that if I thought about it I probably would have guessed it, and that's awesome." situations with characters popping up and certain events happening.

Really glad to hear that! Definitely plays to my TTRPG side and being a DM and all.

[Qnubi]

Is it just my perception or does FF14 have more tanks/healers in general? I feel like as DPS I get into groups way faster than in WoW. Sometimes I even spotted DPS in need in the duty finder, which I have never seen in WoW, ever. For me personally, I feel DPS isn't as enticing as it is in WoW and you know why? Because in WoW I can reliably see my DPS performance via addons. In FF14 I can only "guess" if I am doing good, no actual hard numbers. That means tanking and healing is more rewarding to play, at least for me. I am a good tank if I live and have aggro, I am a good healer if nobody dies. As DPS I don't have this clear performance indicator. Maybe others see this similar and that's why they choose to play tank/heal more?

[Wrathson]

Is it just my perception or does FF14 have more tanks/healers in general? I feel like as DPS I get into groups way faster than in WoW. Sometimes I even spotted DPS in need in the duty finder, which I have never seen in WoW, ever. For me personally, I feel DPS isn't as enticing as it is in WoW and you know why? Because in WoW I can reliably see my DPS performance via addons. In FF14 I can only "guess" if I am doing good, no actual hard numbers. That means tanking and healing is more rewarding to play, at least for me. I am a good tank if I live and have aggro, I am a good healer if nobody dies. As DPS I don't have this clear performance indicator. Maybe others see this similar and that's why they choose to play tank/heal more?

If you really want to see your performance. And by that i mean ONLY your performance, you still can get a DPS Addon. But don't go around and tell anyone they are doing bad DPS because if they report you, you're done.

I mean there are even Logs like warcraftlogs.com for FF14

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#dataset=80

[ippollite]

Is it just my perception or does FF14 have more tanks/healers in general? I feel like as DPS I get into groups way faster than in WoW. Sometimes I even spotted DPS in need in the duty finder, which I have never seen in WoW, ever. For me personally, I feel DPS isn't as enticing as it is in WoW and you know why? Because in WoW I can reliably see my DPS performance via addons. In FF14 I can only "guess" if I am doing good, no actual hard numbers. That means tanking and healing is more rewarding to play, at least for me. I am a good tank if I live and have aggro, I am a good healer if nobody dies. As DPS I don't have this clear performance indicator. Maybe others see this similar and that's why they choose to play tank/heal more?

I feel like its really rewarding to main a healer. Firstly, white mage (as mentioned either here or in the megathread) is incredibly easy to play. I've no experience with the other two, (but im assuming astrologian at least is a touch more complex). On top of this you also have a lot of battles being 'dodge the mechanic', which puts less pressure on the healer, and more on the dps to move out the way (not much sitting in the puddles and turreting when many of these are one shots).

What else? Oh, the world and general questing. Once you get your soul stone and start getting a few more offensive spells under your belt, the healing tax all but vanishes. On top of this, unlike my ninja, im pretty much unkillable in fates or solo trials when i get swarmed. Throw in holy and assize on top of this, and you've got easy mode pack clearing everywhere. You also dont really have to learn a rotation. Its pretty reactive which keeps things feeling fun (especially in 4 mans where its a bit squeeky bum time). Which reminds me. Realistically, the story quest dungeons and trials arent really any more difficult than LFR. Sure, you might mess up the first time on a mechanic, but its pretty easy thereafter. Actually, LFR seems a bit unfair as a comparison... Its more like vanilla wow dungeons. Its almost certain to succeed. Some are more like SM Cath, some are more like Sunken Temple. And now and again you'll come across a UBRS, but i dont think anyone goes in there expecting more than 1 wipe. Maybe two if their healer or tank has no idea at all what they're doing (Aurum vale).

So put it all together and healer is a pretty awesome powerhouse of a general role. Fast dungeon queues and commendations (i didnt even mention these!), great pack control, nice and variable tool kit with a mix of insta cast procs, oh shit buttons, preemptive, aoe, dots and direct throughput heals. And on top of all this, zero hybrid tax in the world game making all that content pretty trivial as well. Its kind of a powerhouse.

[Qnubi]

If you really want to see your performance. And by that i mean ONLY your performance, you still can get a DPS Addon. But don't go around and tell anyone they are doing bad DPS because if they report you, you're done.

I mean there are even Logs like warcraftlogs.com for FF14

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#dataset=80

Seems like misinformation. I researched a little bit and Yoshida himself says they are all strictly forbidden, nothing about "personal use". So I am not risking my account if they one day detect I have been using an addon/mod.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_against_tos/

[ippollite]

Seems like misinformation. I researched a little bit and Yoshida himself says they are all strictly forbidden, nothing about "personal use". So I am not risking my account if they one day detect I have been using an addon/mod.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_against_tos/

Its fine. You just need to be super careful about using the information constructively and dont specifically point to ACT for your infos. If you need to use it to flame others, just understand they can report you and work within the guidelines. Saying "Lol, you suck, even the healer is beating you in dps!" is an indication youre using the addon. But translating that info to 'hey dude, ive been noticing youre using the aoe mudra combo for single target, if you need some pointers, ive got a ninja at 80 if you need some advice, just hit me up". (in a whisper of course, dont want to call anyone out in party chat).

Or something like that. Its a delicate line. Still, the best usage is obviously to make sure you're personally topping the meters and inwardly flex that you know how to play the game. You wont likely see those other dudes ever again.

[Delever]

Imagine a thread titled "What do you ENJOY about the game" being flooded with people saying what they didnt enjoy when you can literally do that in another dedicated thread of the megathread. Nothing wrong with criticizing the game but I dont think this thread is the right one to call the game garbage if thats your view of it.

[ippollite]

Its fine, val is always constructive. Plus it inspired echo to create a new thread.

[Qnubi]

Its fine. You just need to be super careful about using the information constructively and dont specifically point to ACT for your infos. If you need to use it to flame others, just understand they can report you and work within the guidelines. Saying "Lol, you suck, even the healer is beating you in dps!" is an indication youre using the addon. But translating that info to 'hey dude, ive been noticing youre using the aoe mudra combo for single target, if you need some pointers, ive got a ninja at 80 if you need some advice, just hit me up". (in a whisper of course, dont want to call anyone out in party chat).

Or something like that. Its a delicate line. Still, the best usage is obviously to make sure you're personally topping the meters and inwardly flex that you know how to play the game. You wont likely see those other dudes ever again.

It's against the TOS and is punishable with termination of your account. I find it very concerning that you are willing to direct new players into actions that are clearly against the TOS. No offence, just food for thought.

If you are careful and not make it too obvious and pay for a private hack you can also play with hacks in many FPS-Shooters nowadays. Doesn't make it any better.

[Resiak]

Deleting it and replacing it with a video of a monkey trying to see how many bananas they can fit up their butt would be an improvement with a brief text scroll summarizing events. I see no need to put more effort into fixing the mistake now than they did when they created it originally.

I'll be the first to say I've thought Final Fantasy's story has been pure dog shit. But the literal every single other person in the 6-7 RL friends that convinced me to play with them hated that non-sense ARR quest. Yeah anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I was enjoying the game but the insipid MSQ in ARR sucked all of that out when one of them told me about the paid skip even though I absolutely hate paying for those kind of things money could not leave my wallet fast enough.

It's bad enough even a minimal half assed hack job has to be worth the players gained.

Well, nothing I can say but agree to disagree. I play FF14 for the story. Thats what keeps me coming back. I don't enjoy grinding content at all, in any video game, so once my quest log is empty I usually take a break. I usually farm the normal version of the 8 man raid to get a set of gear to keep my ilvl up, and do some of the current weapon quest lines, but I get bored fast.

Final Fantasy is my favorite game series hands down. I love them all. I even enjoyed 13, even though I can see the faults in it. Not every game is meant for everyone. Usually when I don't enjoy a game's story, I quit playing it and move on, not try to force the game developers to try and change it for me and complain about it every chance I get on forums.

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It's against the TOS and is punishable with termination of your account. I find it very concerning that you are willing to direct new players into actions that are clearly against the TOS. No offence, just food for thought.

If you are careful and not make it too obvious and pay for a private hack you can also play with hacks in many FPS-Shooters nowadays. Doesn't make it any better.

Probably because so many people use ACT, it's not uncommon to recommend it. Theres nothing about it that FF14 will detect, it doesn't interact with the game itself. While the developers official stance has to be hard line do not use it for legal reasons, there have been subtle winks and nudges that they can't do anything about you using it, unless you start using it to harass other players.

[Wrecktangle]

Seems like misinformation. I researched a little bit and Yoshida himself says they are all strictly forbidden, nothing about "personal use". So I am not risking my account if they one day detect I have been using an addon/mod.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_against_tos/

I've been playing FF14 for over 6 years, and have been using ACT (the DPS meter addon) since it's inception early on in Coil. Not only that I've even actively used it to discuss openly with other players our parties shortcomings and have even used its data to remove players from parties when absolutely necessary.

I have never once been to GM jail or banned or had any action in game on my account. They also do not have any way currently of telling if you have addons. Lastly, the quality of a player who has actively used and understands ACT/FFLogs is almost guaranteed to be higher quality of a player and more in demand to groups in end game content.

It's against the TOS and is punishable with termination of your account. I find it very concerning that you are willing to direct new players into actions that are clearly against the TOS. No offence, just food for thought.

If you are careful and not make it too obvious and pay for a private hack you can also play with hacks in many FPS-Shooters nowadays. Doesn't make it any better.

A private hack that plays the game for you and negatively impacts other players experiences is massively different than a tool that aggregates unbiased information so that a player can make better decisions.

Well, nothing I can say but agree to disagree. I play FF14 for the story. Thats what keeps me coming back. I don't enjoy grinding content at all, in any video game, so once my quest log is empty I usually take a break. I usually farm the normal version of the 8 man raid to get a set of gear to keep my ilvl up, and do some of the current weapon quest lines, but I get bored fast.

The story, specifically the ARR story is easily one of the top most discussed about "problems" the game has across every media type I subscribe to. It's the reason the devs on multiple occasions have implemented solutions to it (paid skips, trimming of the fat, etc.). There's undenaiably an issue there. How big an issue is certainly up for debate and as someone who played through ARR, in ARR It wasn't that bad at all, but it's bad now that I've seen and experienced the later expansions and I would DREAD having to be a new player right now.

[ippollite]

It's against the TOS and is punishable with termination of your account. I find it very concerning that you are willing to direct new players into actions that are clearly against the TOS. No offence, just food for thought.

If you are careful and not make it too obvious and pay for a private hack you can also play with hacks in many FPS-Shooters nowadays. Doesn't make it any better.

I dont know any better?

[Resiak]

The story, specifically the ARR story is easily one of the top most discussed about "problems" the game has across every media type I subscribe to. It's the reason the devs on multiple occasions have implemented solutions to it (paid skips, trimming of the fat, etc.). There's undenaiably an issue there. How big an issue is certainly up for debate and as someone who played through ARR, in ARR It wasn't that bad at all, but it's bad now that I've seen and experienced the later expansions and I would DREAD having to be a new player right now.

I understand it's a common complaint. I personally struggle to understand it. I can't imagine picking up a new game and not wanting to play through it. ARR has some slow moments, but theres also a lot of fun stuff to go through. And it sets up not only HW, but SB and ShB. Skipping past ARR, to me, is like, and I'm going to borrow someone elses comparison above, skipping past the Fellowship of the rings and going straight to Two Tours.

But thats fine. Not everyone thinks like me and I understand that. Honestly, if they absolutely had to do something to fix the image, i'd rather they just let people skip to ShB, maybe a story recap of main story points through the other expansions. Leave the past story lines alone.

I've noticed this trend in gaming happening over the years. For some reason, some gamers seem to only care about current content in games. Even if they havn't played a game before, they refer to a base game as out dated and just want to get to the newer content. This mentality, imo, is slowly ruining gaming. I've seen these people say we shouldn't worry, if we want to play older content in a game it doesn't effect us. But it has. Wow has now added classic and tbc servers so I could play those two expansions as they where, but some of the older content is hard to go back and play through. It's either way too easy now, or some things have been changed for ever. It would be great if they let us use Chromie time even at end game, scaling what ever expansion you chose to max level if your 60.

The best example of this though is Destiny 2. They decided to create a content vault and place the base Destiny 2 content, and I think some of the early dlc into the vault. You can no longer play it. I never finished the original Destiny 2 campaign and wanted to go back a couple years ago, and was shocked to find that this was a thing. Even better, they put that content in the vault, and then brought Destiny 1 content back into Destiny 2. These are the things that those of us that like playing through story lines fear when we start talking about making early content in games optional.

[Katchii]

Seems like misinformation. I researched a little bit and Yoshida himself says they are all strictly forbidden, nothing about "personal use". So I am not risking my account if they one day detect I have been using an addon/mod.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_against_tos/

They can't tell what add-ons you have on your PC, their monitoring systems don't work like that, the only way they have to know you're using one is if you advertise it. They know that people have and use them (in general, not specific people) and understand why, their official stance is that they're forbidden and against the ToS specifically because they don't want people using the tool as a way to harass or affect the game play enjoyment of other players, NOT because they don't want you to have access to that information.

[KainneAbsolute]

Sidequests give a pittance of EXP and rewards, and very few are worth doing for the story. Unless you are a completionist, or you really want to get the tiny scraps of lore or atmosphere about a people or a zone, then I'd recommend skipping them.

The only sidequests (that don't have blue icons) I'd recommend doing for the story would be:

ARR

• Whitebrim Front in Central Coerthas Highlands (gets you a feel for Ishgard, a nation worn down by war against Dragons)

Heavensward

• The Convictory in the Western Coerthas Highlands (a camp in the snowy wastes where poor men and the younger sons of nobles with no hope of a decent inheritance go to try to kill dragons in order to win prestige and try to return to Ishgard with higher social standing. Most die, however).

• Tailfeather in the Dravanian Forelands (an independent village that lives off of hunting big game). Also, Anyx Trine in the same zone.

• After you beat the 3.3 MSQ, go back to Fortemps Manor and do the short questchain you see in there.

Stormblood

• I actually enjoyed almost all of the sidequests here. You really got a feel for life under Garlean occupation in Ala Mhigo and Yanxia. The sidequests in the Ruby Sea explore a pirate nation in the East called the Confederacy. And the quests on the Azim Steppe get you acquainted with several different Xaela tribes.

Shadowbringers

• Doing sidequests in Kholusia, Fanow in Raktika, and Amh Araeng gives you a feel for how hopeless life is there. There were several good quests in Ill Mheg, though there are a lot of boring fetch quests around the starting area.

thank you!