FFXIV Criticisms

[KrayZ33]

This video is weird, because the guy keeps arguing FFXIV dungeons serve different purpose and need to be accessible and easy for the story sake, and WoW dungeons aren't because m+ this and m+ that - like he's unaware that WoW has also normal and heroic dungeons that can serve the exact same purpose. Every argument he makes about needing to know which packs to pull together, which abilities to interrupt etc. are invalidated by the mere existence of normal and heroic, where it literally doesn't matter at all.

Not to mention that some WoW dungeons are involved in the story as well, like in Legion for example.
And not all FFXIV dungeons are mandatory either. Some are optional, and why are they not different?

It's a weak ass argument.

The reason why they are easy and always the same is because they want them to be easy and always the same.
And that's it.
Doesn't matter if it's good or bad, there is no reason as to why it *has* to be like that other than decision the devs made themselves for the players the believe this content is cut out for.
Comparing WoW dungeons with FFXIV dungeons is fair. The target audience is different though.

They want easy cookie-cutter build dungeons that story driven people who play their game can do and use their character abilities for.
Because if these dungeons wouldn't exist, you are more or less never actually pressing your abilities.
Leveling just doesn't require you to do so. It's basically an arena and ever since Trusts have been included, it's no longer different from the usual MSQ quests that are instanced. You'd be hard pressed to even call it 4 player/small group content.

It's an extension of the single player experience with an option to co-op that part.

[ONCHEhap]

The recent Rhalgr fight does show that maybe they're willing to experiment a bit (again, since the used to have different arenas earlier in the game lifespan), and Abyssos does have once again an example of nonstandard arena design. Hopefully that means we might see more interesting arenas in the future.

Would be nice, as while FFXIV's encounter design is pretty much peerless amongst MMOs, their boss arenas are honestly very boring, even if pretty to look at

[Stormdash]

It's a good thing you quit the game right? So that you don't get irrationally angry at a game you irrationally hate, right? Though it doesn't matter because your thread history already tells me that your "criticism" isn't worth the bandwidth you used to type it.

I play it every day and there is fair criticism of encounter design, including the use of arena space. Everything being some version of a quadrilateral or circle, with or without a ring-out death, is not exactly riveting. For me, I'd like to see more diversification of mechanics, with almost all FFXIV encounter mechanics falling under the rubric of "dance dance revolution" - places to stand or not stand, to be near the person or away from them.

I was horrified to see that Keeper of the Lake, which had two bosses with somewhat unique (for XIV) mechs that could wipe you if not done correctly, had had those mechs stripped away and replaced with additional layers of DDR.

[eschatological]

re: dungeon gauntlet stuff, it always comes down to the strength of trash.

In every FFXIV dungeon, trash is "too easy." Nothing outside of marked AoEs hit hard, and a tank properly cycling his mitigations will make most trash boring. It's only not boring when tanks don't know their mitigation, or someone is DPSing so poorly that tanks run out of mitigation. Both of those seem pretty rare. SE might be mitigating this with Criterion/Savage Criterion dungeons, where they say that AoE markers won't exist, though I don't know if this applies to trash. In that case, specific knowledge of trash might be necessary, which might be chaotic because AoE in FFXIV often isn't PBAoE (point blank), which just requires leaving melee of the mob for a circular AoE in WoW. Rarely is there a targeted AOE in WoW with no graphical indication of where it's going to land, and if they do get rid of it in FFXIV, people are going to have to look for a cast bar, see who it's targeting, and move from that player's location - which is not easy with FFXIV's standard UI.

In WoW's wide gamut of dungeons, you generally have the same trash mobs across four difficulties (normal, heroic, mythic, mythic+ which theoretically scales infinitely). In the first three difficulties, trash will have unique abilities, untelegraphed cleaves, cast spells (there's not much of this in FFXIV which roots ranged mobs, they all just run after you), etc and so on, and so forth. But they're so inconsequential that you can ignore almost all of it. And then, as m+ scales up, suddenly you have to kick spells or they hurt too much, you have to rotate stuns on things that hit really hard, or outright CC them to pull separately, a mechanic which doesn't even exist in FFXIV unless you count Sleep which you can only guarantee in the group via a healer, iirc, otherwise you limit ppl into ranged caster for this singular CC. And this becomes too hard for the average player.

It's almost impossible to make meaningful-but-not-casual-killing trash mechanics. Mainly because trash comes in big groups, and the minute you have to target an add to do something to it in a group of adds, it becomes an advanced mechanic. At least FFXIV has an enemy list, a function WoW has prevented addons from generating for years, but FFXIV's enemy list is severely lacking (like, for example, in showing targets of spell casts).

- - - Updated - - -

Edited to add: I should point out a good example of a habit I have in FFXIV that I would never do in WoW. In FFXIV, I AoE trash right from the middle of a pack. I'm often right on top of the tank. Even in lower difficulties in WoW, that's a mistake. Almost every trash pack has frontal cleave, and of course, WoW's proto-version of "positionals" was being parried from the front. Half of WoW melee is making sure you're behind every mob, even when you're AoEing trash.

[Cthulhu 2020]

This video is weird, because the guy keeps arguing FFXIV dungeons serve different purpose and need to be accessible and easy for the story sake, and WoW dungeons aren't because m+ this and m+ that - like he's unaware that WoW has also normal and heroic dungeons that can serve the exact same purpose. Every argument he makes about needing to know which packs to pull together, which abilities to interrupt etc. are invalidated by the mere existence of normal and heroic, where it literally doesn't matter at all.

And yet WoW dungeons don't really serve much of a narrative purpose. If they're not optimal for leveling, nobody does them. And if they are optimal, somebody boosts them. Not to mention the normals (and heroics) are also piss easy and usually have 2 mechanics per boss, 3 at most, making them roughly equivalent to story mode anyway.

But the biggest point of the video is that people are trying to compare M+ dungeon activity with FFXIV normal dungeons, when it's apples and oranges. If you want harder content, EX, Savage, and Ultimate (and soon criterion dungeons) are the content to do. Nobody does dungeons for the challenge. So again, unless you're comparing story to normal, it's a bad comparison, and in the story + normal sphere, they're all piss easy.

[xmirrors]

Could you guys please stop criticizing my favorite game? Thank you.

[ironware]

I think my main problem isn't just the arenas but also the mechanics. It's always some variations of towers, soak mechanics, getting pushed into a certain mechanic to solve it. There's not much variety in the savage and sometimes even ultimate raids. The hilarious part is that the trials are way better than some of the stuff the savage raids do lol.

[Auxis]

MSQ has roadblocks at certain points due to dungeon/trial (even an Alliance Raid) requirements. This may seem minor, but it really ruins the motion especially if you main a dps and don't like tanking or healing. I know they are adding the solo versions with the NPC parties but they are doing that in increments. The biggest culprit is the Alliance Raid. They really should have a solo version or a something, so at least you experience it and get to know that one character for later on.

The WoW Store vs FFXIV Store argument. They are as bad as each other; WoW has level boosts, FFXIV has (multiple level) Job boosts and (multiple expansion) MSQ skips. WoW has mounts, FFXIV has mounts (even a 8 seat mount). Not the mention the hundreds of other cosmetic things the FFXIV store has. People like to argue that FFXIV's dev's don't like the idea of selling stuff for money and are forced to make content for the shop by the higher ups, I have a feeling that's the same for the WoW team.

Levelling alternate jobs can feel slow. If it's a tank or healer, great you can spam dungeons. DPS are stuck with roulettes, slow-queuing dungeons, or attempting to unlock Palace of the Dead to the point that you can spam-queue that one Floor that everyone runs.

[Grinning Serpent]

I definitely prefer WoW dungeons, but I don't think one is objectively better than the other. I only have recent WoW experience with Classic, though. I haven't played retail since Legion. XIV's dungeons are incredibly stylish and beautiful and have bosses that, while extremely boring to actually play, are at least a nice spectacle your first few times through. Repeatedly running XIV's dungeons feels miserable, both because these boring bosses take a while to kill (due to often having mechanics where they disappear or otherwise force the party to stop attacking them) and because nearly every dungeon in XIV has invisible walls or other gimmicks that prevent you from pulling more than a specific amount of monsters. Meanwhile, (classic) WoW dungeons obviously lack presentation and style (though they were lovely at the time) but they're fast, especially the normal difficulty varieties.

Tying into the above, I think mundane gameplay in (classic) WoW is a *lot* better. Especially by the mid levels (varies based on class but usually in the 30-50 range), classes have a lot of fun gimmicks keeping them interesting, even while just questing. Meanwhile, XIV is laser-focused on end-game hardcore raiding, so the class designs and rotations outside of that environment feel kind of lackluster, particularly since raid design is focused on "everything goes inside 2 minute buff windows." Classes with 60 minute timers, like Warrior, feel a little less bland since you get to hit your big buttons a little more often, but XIV is just a bunch of little hits that accumulate to big damage over a 8+ minute fight. Meanwhile, my Protection Warrior gets 10 seconds of near-invincibility every 40 seconds and hits two targets every 5 seconds for huge damage by like level 25 and it only gets better as more abilities like Devastate, Shield Slam, talents like Sword and Board, etc enter the mix.

Understand, it's completely different design goals so you can't say that one is "better" than the other. But I have a lot more fun doing normal mode content in (classic) WoW than I ever did in XIV. I quit XIV after last tier (no time for DSR and I watched too many groups fall apart because of it so I think I made the right decision in avoiding it, anyway) after playing constantly from Shadowbringers and... I don't know when the last time I did non-PvP Duty Finder content, simply because normal mode content is (to me) so boring when played repeatedly in that game. The dungeons and raids are all fun the first two or three times, even on normal, because the presentation is so good (and I place a lot of this on Soken's shoulders, his phenomenal music compositions carry the action hard) but the actual gameplay is honestly pretty bland for me.

In other aspects, like the online stores referenced above, I feel like Square-Enix is more predatory than Blizzard is... but it's not a big difference. Most everything Blizzard does, particularly for cosmetic purchases, is account-wide. Buy it once, every toon you ever make gets to use it. Meanwhile, almost everything (except mounts) is *character-specific* for XIV... and yet the prices aren't substantially cheaper as compensation (new cosmetic outfits are typically $20 or more.) Supposedly, XIV is designed in such a way that you don't "need" alts... yet that's completely false, as both the hardcore raiding types and the glamour-focused types (XIV's version of Transmog) often maintain multiple active characters. Square-Enix has to know this and they continue with character-specific purchases anyway, because they know they'll make more money that way - hence, predatory. I will say that Blizzard fans regularly and rightfully give Blizzard shit for their cosmetic shop, meanwhile XIV fans adopt a cult-like "but it supports the game's development, why don't you want to support this great and wonderful game Yoshida-san gave us???" attitude towards criticism of the shop.

Blizzard wins hard in one area, though - you can always buy old seasonal event goodies using the seasonal currency every time that event pops up. Meanwhile, the only way you can get old seasonal outfits and gewgaws in XIV is by buying them from the cash shop (which is, once again, character-specific.) I also have a personal dislike that you can purchase an orchestrion roll of a specific song in XIV's store (basically the in-game mp3 player), yet it doesn't even include an mp3 or whatever of that song. Considering they're charging more than, like, a buck or two for these items (and they are, again, character-specific and consumable), it seems like at least letting players download a copy of the song would be a nice gesture (same for being able to buy poster art for the expansions as wall portraits for housing - being able to download a native high-res version of that file for use outside the game would be nice.)

I will say that I think XIV beats WoW in terms of PvP. I suppose there are world PvP diehards, but I grew out of that red=dead crap decades ago and like "PvP when you want to," and in terms of instanced PvP, I think XIV is doing it better. The new system is very enjoyable and shows a lot of creativity, but it's hamstrung by Square-Enix being... not very good at organizing or handling competitive play, and XIV's servers/netcode being infamously terrible. I played the hell out of the first season of the new PvP system and made it into the top 100 (I think I finished at 68th?) but I had no real interest in returning for future seasons because the experience is always limited by the awful servers and Square-Enix not implementing any kind of true ladder system. XIV's battlegrounds equivalents are generally more fun and feature less botting (though you do get the "I'm just here for my daily XP" types), though I think they need a lot more maps for them and some modes like Capture the Flag and Murderball are oddly absent despite how popular those modes are in other games. The biggest advantage XIV has, however, is that PvP and PvE are completely separate - not just different stats, but also different toolkits! It gives Square-Enix a lot more design room and options than WoW has. The lack of a gear grind is also a net positive for competitive play, although I do miss the ability to tweak stats and builds like in WoW - if I had my druthers, I'd arrange for WoW's arenas and rated BGs to be static stats (since this is intended for competitive play), while regular BGs have stats like normal.

Overall, I think classic WoW > XIV, but XIV > retail WoW. But since none of those things are specifically trying to be like the other, this is just pure opinion and shouldn't be taken to be objective in any way, shape, or form.

[MsSideEye]

Most of what you said is something that's a personal opinion so I ain't going to argue back against some of those points, because that's the way you feel... that said, I do have to point out something specific against this one.

In other aspects, like the online stores referenced above, I feel like Square-Enix is more predatory than Blizzard is... but it's not a big difference. Most everything Blizzard does, particularly for cosmetic purchases, is account-wide. Buy it once, every toon you ever make gets to use it. Meanwhile, almost everything (except mounts) is *character-specific* for XIV... and yet the prices aren't substantially cheaper as compensation (new cosmetic outfits are typically $20 or more.) Supposedly, XIV is designed in such a way that you don't "need" alts... yet that's completely false, as both the hardcore raiding types and the glamour-focused types (XIV's version of Transmog) often maintain multiple active characters. Square-Enix has to know this and they continue with character-specific purchases anyway, because they know they'll make more money that way - hence, predatory. I will say that Blizzard fans regularly and rightfully give Blizzard shit for their cosmetic shop, meanwhile XIV fans adopt a cult-like "but it supports the game's development, why don't you want to support this great and wonderful game Yoshida-san gave us???" attitude towards criticism of the shop.

Except... you don't need alts. Most of the hardcore raiders I know of in FFXIV, which include world first Raiders, do NOT have multiple characters and I even struggle to understand what they'd get out of having an additional character would benefit them in. Unlike WoW, there's no real way in FFXIV that gives you more gear, progress or what not to actually be worth it. As for the Glamor focused players, while I do know there are a few here and there that do indeed have more than one character, I've never seen them ever get to the point of 'I must by this ten dollar outfit on multiple characters'. Hell, most people just buy a fantasia if they're wanting to have their character looks different for the sake of glam, because they've just got more stuff on their mains that allow them to customize.

As for the shop itself, people give Blizzard shit because they not only overcharge for everything, where even simple minions are ten dollars, but also because a LOT of the stuff they put in the store was clearly meant to be put in the game originally for players to obtain, such as the Iron Skyreaver. Things like the Mystic Runesaber and the Sylverian Dreamer deny players those otherwise wonderfully designed mounts by asking them to pay for it and pay $25 regardless of the quality of the mount itself because it's a mount. This is ontop of them always going 'Hey, sign up for 6 months of Wow and you get these kind of mounts 'for free!'' and us not being told where that money goes, leaving us to assume that it just about ALL of it goes into the pockets of the higher ups like Bobby Kotick.

By contrast, Square and Yoshi-P BOTH of told us that the FFXIV store flat out has it's purchases go right back into the game, so it actually DOES support the game development. While it's incredibly likely that Square does take a cut of some sales for themselves, when the head honcho of a game whose shown to be trustworthy in the past comes out and says 'Hey, it helps fund us', you're likely going to tend to believe him.

Then you've also got to look at the things in the store that ARE those higher prices and realize something about them, especially in terms of glam. The higher priced ones are stuff that are normally wouldn't fit the world of FFXIV itself and are something that they put in for players to have fun with. Stuff like the recent Fat Cat Attire or the Street Attire are there to give the players an option to have clothing that's completely separate from the normal reality of the game, thus they charge a bit more. Notice that things that are already in game models, like anything that is NPC specific like the Scion's clothing is cheaper, because they already had the assets.

Mounts and Minions are also drastically different compared to WoW. In fact, NO MINION in the FFXIV store is something that was just put into the store. ALL of them are from past events with only the Fan Festival minions being a little bit more expensive because... well, those were set up to be from special events and ALL of them are characters from other games. Mounts fall into different catagories depending on what they are, but even then, most are fairly priced. You've got the previous holiday mounts, which considering FFXIV doesn't repeat it's holiday events and changes it every year, I think it's fair to offer older rewards on the store for a cheaper price, which they do. Any of the mounts that are a higher price, like the Shiba Mount or the Kingly Peacock, are ones that are fairly unique and wouldn't really work as in game rewards from a faction or reward. And the rest are special in many ways, with something like the Lunar Whale being not only an 8 Person mount but also something that was a Fan festivial specific reward.

Finally, there's just the simple fact that it's overall cheaper to get these things in FFXIV than it is in WoW. Did you know that for 3 dollars more, I can race change in XIV 3 times for what WoW charges for their race change? AND that's with the added benefit of being able to just carry an item around that does that and letting me choose to change when I want. And most things that I could really want that aren't mounts (Minions, Orchestration Rolls, Emotes, Armor and more) fall into the price range to where I could not go to Starbucks for a day and be able to get them for the one character I play.

Sooo, yeah... kinda a big difference there.

[Myradin]

All the alts I know of on FF are just people making a toon of another race for RP stuff.

Honestly, its more likely Square's making a killing people buying Fantasia's rather than through buying store items for multiple characters.

[Darkeon]

All the alts I know of on FF are just people making a toon of another race for RP stuff.

Pretty much. But it's quite expected with how the game's systems work.

[Grinning Serpent]

Except... you don't need alts. Most of the hardcore raiders I know of in FFXIV, which include world first Raiders, do NOT have multiple characters and I even struggle to understand what they'd get out of having an additional character would benefit them in. Unlike WoW, there's no real way in FFXIV that gives you more gear, progress or what not to actually be worth it. As for the Glamor focused players, while I do know there are a few here and there that do indeed have more than one character, I've never seen them ever get to the point of 'I must by this ten dollar outfit on multiple characters'. Hell, most people just buy a fantasia if they're wanting to have their character looks different for the sake of glam, because they've just got more stuff on their mains that allow them to customize.

You *need* alts if you want to gear characters quickly. You run A/B alt-groups to get 2 chest clears multiple times per week and funnel the drops to specific players. You can do it up to A/B/C/D if you really want to. It's very easy to gear one class or role quickly in XIV, it's very slow to gear multiple.

Additionally, if you want to play with friends that progress at different rates from you or who simply raid on different nights than you, you *MUST* use an alt or you will take loot away from them. I've never, ever seen a multiplayer game adopt such an absurd mentality - gotta remove loot from the pool if people get help, such as by playing with the friends they made in a game where socializing and teamwork is a core focus. Allegedly, the point was to prevent people from gearing too quickly, but as I explained above, it literally fails to accomplish this goal, so there is no rational basis to maintain it.

As for the shop itself, people give Blizzard shit because they not only overcharge for everything, where even simple minions are ten dollars, but also because a LOT of the stuff they put in the store was clearly meant to be put in the game originally for players to obtain, such as the Iron Skyreaver. Things like the Mystic Runesaber and the Sylverian Dreamer deny players those otherwise wonderfully designed mounts by asking them to pay for it and pay $25 regardless of the quality of the mount itself because it's a mount. This is ontop of them always going 'Hey, sign up for 6 months of Wow and you get these kind of mounts 'for free!'' and us not being told where that money goes, leaving us to assume that it just about ALL of it goes into the pockets of the higher ups like Bobby Kotick.

You can say the same for XIV. Cruise Chaser was a cash shop mount, when there's a ton of activities it could have been earned from in-game. You could have earned the Megashiba in-game, but instead it's a cash shop mount. And so on. I'll agree that XIV generally has more variety with earned mounts than does WoW (except for Ex mounts, the achievement mounts are usually not "it's a dragon but slightly different color oooh!")

By contrast, Square and Yoshi-P BOTH of told us that the FFXIV store flat out has it's purchases go right back into the game, so it actually DOES support the game development. While it's incredibly likely that Square does take a cut of some sales for themselves, when the head honcho of a game whose shown to be trustworthy in the past comes out and says 'Hey, it helps fund us', you're likely going to tend to believe him.

I genuinely cannot care less. I'm paying a monthly fee - in fact, I'm paying *additional* monthly fees to be able to expand my storage by buying extra retainers, meanwhile I can upgrade my bag space in WoW by buying/crafting better bags (it's also a LOT easier to maintain and manage mules in WoW than in XIV.) If that ain't enough money for them, too bad. Maybe they should control their idiot CEO chasing NFTs and wasting expensive IP licenses with the money XIV is earning them.

Then you've also got to look at the things in the store that ARE those higher prices and realize something about them, especially in terms of glam. The higher priced ones are stuff that are normally wouldn't fit the world of FFXIV itself and are something that they put in for players to have fun with. Stuff like the recent Fat Cat Attire or the Street Attire are there to give the players an option to have clothing that's completely separate from the normal reality of the game, thus they charge a bit more. Notice that things that are already in game models, like anything that is NPC specific like the Scion's clothing is cheaper, because they already had the assets.

That's nonsense. Fat Cat and Mameshiba are literally minions you get from exploration ventures, and they first appeared in Heaven on High, literally in-game content. You can have a Chocobo house or a Carbuncle house or an Odder Otter house, you can have tons of silly and immersion-breaking things in-game. You're trying to create reasons to justify them selling us something they could, if they actually wanted to, just have us earn by doing things in-game instead.

You cannot justify MTX in a game that also charges a monthly fee. It's absurd. But that ship has long since sailed. Square-Enix is marginally less worse than Blizzard about it, but neither of them have any justification to have it at all, not while they're still charging a monthly fee to play.

[Vilendor]

My criticism is that every ffxiv boss feels too procedural, they feel like doing a choreographed dance instead of a fight. Like "at 2:34 move to that pixel on the ground or you die, at 2:42 to that pixel and 2:48 to this one"

Sure WoW has a ton of positional boss mechanic, but they feel naturally part of the fights, or they are personal tasks, not just "lets make the whole raid run left from right then up from down for shits and giggles". And it's every single boss in ffxiv.

But that's just how it feels to me

[Grinning Serpent]

My criticism is that every ffxiv boss feels too procedural, they feel like doing a choreographed dance instead of a fight. Like "at 2:34 move to that pixel on the ground or you die, at 2:42 to that pixel and 2:48 to this one"

Sure WoW has a ton of positional boss mechanic, but they feel naturally part of the fights, or they are personal tasks, not just "lets make the whole raid run left from right then up from down for shits and giggles". And it's every single boss in ffxiv.

But that's just how it feels to me

That's exactly how it's designed. They're like a dance, with choreographed moves you know in advance. They are very, very fun to learn but rather boring to clear repeatedly since they use "shortcuts" like role bucketing extensively in lieu of true RNG.

[Vilendor]

That's exactly how it's designed. They're like a dance, with choreographed moves you know in advance. They are very, very fun to learn but rather boring to clear repeatedly since they use "shortcuts" like role bucketing extensively in lieu of true RNG.

Memorizing pixels and times is not fun at all and already got boring during leveling on the 263th instance/raid boss

But again, that's just me.

[Ludek]

I've never, ever seen a multiplayer game adopt such an absurd mentality - gotta remove loot from the pool if people get help, such as by playing with the friends they made in a game where socializing and teamwork is a core focus.

I’m pretty sure you heard about at least one game with similar system - it’s called World of Warcraft. Since in a flex group every loot eligible person gives a boss +20% chance of dropping an item, if you decided to help your 9 friends killing the boss you already killed, then you basically would lower their chance of getting second item to 80%.

Of course it’s not as big as removing 50% of the loot if just one person joins, like in XIV, and the scenario to get „negative” loot in WoW is very specific, and requires some RNG… but XIV is not the only game punishing for helping (in WoW there is whole mythic lockout debacle on the other hand)

[Grinning Serpent]

I’m pretty sure you heard about at least one game with similar system - it’s called World of Warcraft. Since in a flex group every loot eligible person gives a boss +20% chance of dropping an item, if you decided to help your 9 friends killing the boss you already killed, then you basically would lower their chance of getting second item to 80%.

Of course it’s not as big as removing 50% of the loot if just one person joins, like in XIV, and the scenario to get „negative” loot in WoW is very specific, and requires some RNG… but XIV is not the only game punishing for helping (in WoW there is whole mythic lockout debacle on the other hand)

The solution is to just do personal loot for everyone, in both games. Every time you kill a boss on that specific character, each week/lockout (since WoW has multiple difficulties), you get a token that goes towards a piece of loot. For XIV, you would do it **exactly** like it works in Normal. Get rid of books, get rid of "tiered" progression except for the weapon (which instead drops a sword plus the standard array of loot, and you need 2 swords or 4 swords to trade for the weapon you want), just literally run it exactly like normal does. It would actually *slow down* initial gearing speed since you can't funnel gear to specific players, but it would substantially accelerate gearing alternate classes/roles, and while I have no objective data for this, I'm fairly positive that for the overwhelming majority of raiders, being able to reclear on off-specs is more likely to keep them engaged than being forced to spend 4 or 8 weeks clearing on a single spec until they finally have a full set of gear for *one* off-spec.

Full disclosure, I think games that lead towards "raid logging" are terrible and it encourages an unhealthy gameplay mentality. While no raid environment (not even WoW, which tend to have far more bosses and things going on than XIV's) can keep players engaged for the long interim period between raid pushes (8+ months), I think making it a lot easier for players to help other players without penalizing them, and to quickly gear up off-specs, will maximize the amount of time that they stay engaged in it.

[Swnem]

Full disclosure, I think games that lead towards "raid logging" are terrible and it encourages an unhealthy gameplay mentality. While no raid environment (not even WoW, which tend to have far more bosses and things going on than XIV's) can keep players engaged for the long interim period between raid pushes (8+ months), I think making it a lot easier for players to help other players without penalizing them, and to quickly gear up off-specs, will maximize the amount of time that they stay engaged in it.

If you make a game only for full time players, you aren't gonna get enough players to populate it or make enough money to support it.
Mmo's cater to different kinds of players. Not forcing them to engage with specific content is why ffxiv is successful.
Players play more if they can/want and there is plenty to do if you want to do it. That makes for a positive experience.

I mean... surely we haven't forgotten how AP grinding in WoW went. All it does is make players hate the game and leave it.

[MsSideEye]

You *need* alts if you want to gear characters quickly. You run A/B alt-groups to get 2 chest clears multiple times per week and funnel the drops to specific players. You can do it up to A/B/C/D if you really want to. It's very easy to gear one class or role quickly in XIV, it's very slow to gear multiple.

I'm sorry, but that split-run bullshit that WoW Players put up with not only 1) just affects the top 1% of the players in the game but also 2) Can't happen in XIV. Savage by it's very nature is designed to once you get a piece of loot from that fight, you're done for the week. PERIOD. Now you can still funnel gear to players and get them up there, but not only does it matter less in this game than it ever did in WoW, you're still hit with that restriction in that fight. Once you're done with Proto-Carbuncle? Guess what... no matter what shit you do, you ain't getting more loot from him until reset.

Additionally, if you want to play with friends that progress at different rates from you or who simply raid on different nights than you, you *MUST* use an alt or you will take loot away from them. I've never, ever seen a multiplayer game adopt such an absurd mentality - gotta remove loot from the pool if people get help, such as by playing with the friends they made in a game where socializing and teamwork is a core focus. Allegedly, the point was to prevent people from gearing too quickly, but as I explained above, it literally fails to accomplish this goal, so there is no rational basis to maintain it.

The point of a 'raiding team' is to raid with it. If you're going to go off and do stuff without them, that's on you for screwing over the loot drops. The system in game is designed to encourage statics to get together as one to complete the content and to encourage people who've not done the fight that week to join in to help teach newbies. And frankly, their system for loot is still superior to WoWs where, after that content isn't the end game of end games anymore, I could get ALL the loot in there without issue.

You can say the same for XIV. Cruise Chaser was a cash shop mount, when there's a ton of activities it could have been earned from in-game. You could have earned the Megashiba in-game, but instead it's a cash shop mount. And so on. I'll agree that XIV generally has more variety with earned mounts than does WoW (except for Ex mounts, the achievement mounts are usually not "it's a dragon but slightly different color oooh!")

Cruise Chase is about the only one I'd, and other XIV players, could agree on as something that could probably be earned in game, but even then we're faced with the fact that it was probably never intended to be a mount in the first place. And when they were adding it into the game, it was LONG after anything related became relevant. It would be like WoW adding the giant metal scorpion boss from Siege of Orrgrimar as a mount now. It's kinda out of place for the content that they want players to be doing (Dragonlands) to offer a Pandaria mount all the sudden.

And as far as the EX mounts... that's kinda been a thing since the game STARTED. Get up a bunch of different colored variation of mounts to earn a big specail one at the end. Oh, and get to enjoy the music of those fights every time you ride them.

I genuinely cannot care less. I'm paying a monthly fee - in fact, I'm paying *additional* monthly fees to be able to expand my storage by buying extra retainers, meanwhile I can upgrade my bag space in WoW by buying/crafting better bags (it's also a LOT easier to maintain and manage mules in WoW than in XIV.) If that ain't enough money for them, too bad. Maybe they should control their idiot CEO chasing NFTs and wasting expensive IP licenses with the money XIV is earning them.

If you're that overflowing on inventory that you felt like paying more for more retainers, that's on you. I'm a notorious item hog and I have yet to fill up the two default retainers I've got right now. The only reason I'd even buy another myself would be so I could have access to the retainer specific missions that drop minions without having to relevel my gatherer retainer over and over again.

You can't also can't get mad at the FFXIV team for the shit that Square is doing. Same reason why, when most of us talk shit about Blizzard, we mean the higher ups like Bobby, not any of the lower workers. Just because some asshole above you decideds to make a bad call doesn't mean that you yourself are an asshole. The fact that Yoshi-P is on the Board of Directors because of how freaking good he is at making his game is probably why Square hasn't dug themselves even deeper at this point, like some companies have.

That's nonsense. Fat Cat and Mameshiba are literally minions you get from exploration ventures, and they first appeared in Heaven on High, literally in-game content. You can have a Chocobo house or a Carbuncle house or an Odder Otter house, you can have tons of silly and immersion-breaking things in-game. You're trying to create reasons to justify them selling us something they could, if they actually wanted to, just have us earn by doing things in-game instead.

Yes, and how much of those are going to actually be things other players are going to have to deal with?

If I wanted to, I could never deal with/know of a player having a Fat Cat minion, mount, or even house because once I'm done with the dungeon I'm in, chances are I'm never going to see that player again. The clothing, on the other hand, which was my whole point on the 'silly and immersion breaking things'? THAT directly effects me. Going through the Dead Ends can lose some of it's impact if I see someone come in dressed in a outfit.

Now, considering your responses you've done before, you'll probably whine about 'But there are other silly clothing in game', but my point still stands. Those actually have a LORE reason for existing. The fat cat outfit, on the other hand, was something that was created because players got such a kick out of the Minion/Mount. Because realistically... how the fuck do you work the idea of making an outfit mimicking a creature whose described in game as a bloated CORPSE into something people would want to wear?

You cannot justify MTX in a game that also charges a monthly fee. It's absurd. But that ship has long since sailed. Square-Enix is marginally less worse than Blizzard about it, but neither of them have any justification to have it at all, not while they're still charging a monthly fee to play.

I don't have to justify micro-transactions in a game that also charges a sub fee. It's a thing now. You either get used to it or you stop playing the game that does it. Using it as your criticism point means nothing. And even then, compared to all the other stores in games like what XIV has, it's still one of the most fairest priced shops that avoids pay-to-win bullcrap that we see everywhere else.