FFXIV Criticisms

[Grinning Serpent]

Y'all need to understand, the fact that you can rez people in XIV directly feeds into increased use of FUCK YOU, YOU/EVERYONE DIES mechanics in challenging content. Because otherwise, deaths aren't meaningful. Well, you could implement really strict DPS checks, but people tend to pitch temper tantrums and blame each other when wipes happen due to enrage. Also, the game has no official means of even viewing or tracking DPS, so making DPS checks a big part of design would be pretty fucking unfair to most players when the official stance is "don't talk about DPS meters or we'll ban your account."

[MsSideEye]

A lot of WoW raids boil down to that.

WoW even invented the term 'Patchwork fight', the 'just sit in one spot and dps like your heart depended on it' fights. Those were pretty common up all the way to Legion at least, and I don't think that design is just magically going to change anytime soon when it comes to Blizzard.

[KrayZ33]

Quite the scientific analysis there.



I mean, also coming from WoW here, and I really don't like the "infinite rez" capability in XIV, either.

If nothing else, it's what necessitates the fight design to be the all-or-nothing way that it is. It sounds neat on paper ("I get to play more and not be dead!") but the results are kinda eh.

It really doesn't, you lose DPS. DPS checks can be the measure just like how they are in WoW.
1 minute debuffs that remove 25% of your damage are rather significant - or at least it's not a problem to make them significant so that 2 rezzes are what the average group of people can use before they can no longer meet the DPS checks.

The fight designs are the way they are because this game's netcode just wouldn't work any other way without making everything a patchwerk borefest. Random placements of buffs/debuffs would end in disaster in this game. You can't even see where the other player is moving and you end up on the same spots because the delay is that bad. Most of the time you can't even tell when a debuff/zone/buff is actually put on the character and they drag it along and drop it on the wrong spot because snapshotting happens at different times for every other ability or so.

Take P11S for example, when the guy dashes through everyone's clock positions. The debuffs happens before the dash, the dash follows and the "AoE" you drop happens after that.
So neither the dash nor the debuff are actually pointing out the invisible "drop zone". It's some random amount of time after that which you have to "feel".

WoW even invented the term 'Patchwork fight', the 'just sit in one spot and dps like your heart depended on it' fights. Those were pretty common up all the way to Legion at least, and I don't think that design is just magically going to change anytime soon when it comes to Blizzard.

BS.

[Zoibert the Bear]

Take P11S for example, when the guy dashes through everyone's clock positions. The debuffs happens before the dash, the dash follows and the "AoE" you drop happens after that.
So neither the dash nor the debuff are actually pointing out the invisible "drop zone". It's some random amount of time after that which you have to "feel".

He doesn't know how to look at castbars yngmi

This fight is incredibly consistent with when shit goes off, give me a fucking break. This is the classic cope excuse someone throws when they move early, or don't get into position in time because their brain went full pepega.

[KrayZ33]

He doesn't know how to look at castbars yngmi

This fight is incredibly consistent with when shit goes off, give me a fucking break. This is the classic cope excuse someone throws when they move early, or don't get into position in time because their brain went full pepega.

Too bad that the castbar doesn't tell you the dropzone either, because that's how I usually play mechanics by default and I already tested that first.
Better luck next time. You are simply wrong and you can test this yourself. If you move on the castbar-end you will drag the donut along with you, depending on how you play that mechanic, you will drag the deathzone from the shadowinfusion into the safespot, to the point where you can actually make it almost overlap half the way or more when you use sprint and I bet you could kill yourself entirely if you use BLM/WHM Pull right after the cast end asap. It's like 0,5ish seconds after the castbar is gone. edit: 0,5s is actually way too much. but it's on the same frame or the next, lets say it like that.
I didn't talk about the whole fight either, just that specific thing. And that happens quite often throughout the whole game.

Sometimes you can walk INTO the zone after the castbar and it's just an animation (left/right dividers P12 for example), sometimes you can't.
Sometimes it's an actual effect that is represented visually like an extending AoE (SB Ramuh) effect, meaning you can be slower and still make it, or walk into it before it actually happens. (SB Wolf with Sword boss and his void zones.)


don't get me started on the tower beams from P10, that are twice as large as the actual animation.

[Ghost of Cow]

WoW even invented the term 'Patchwork fight', the 'just sit in one spot and dps like your heart depended on it' fights. Those were pretty common up all the way to Legion at least, and I don't think that design is just magically going to change anytime soon when it comes to Blizzard.

Well, Patchwerk itself is a reference to Avatar of War from EQ, but that's neither here nor there.

This is why it's hard to have these discussions, though. You guys will just start throwing out things that are blatantly false just to keep stirring up the argument. It's absurd.

While Val is generally contrarian to a fault and has little positive to say, he's at least usually being honest.

[Zoibert the Bear]

Too bad that the castbar doesn't tell you the dropzone either, because that's how I usually play mechanics by default and I already tested that first.
Better luck next time. You are simply wrong and you can test this yourself. If you move on the castbar-end you will drag the donut along with you, depending on how you play that mechanic, you will drag the deathzone from the shadowinfusion into the safespot, to the point where you can actually make it almost overlap half the way or more when you use sprint and I bet you could kill yourself entirely if you use BLM/WHM Pull right after the cast end asap. It's like 0,5ish seconds after the castbar is gone. edit: 0,5s is actually way too much. but it's on the same frame or the next, lets say it like that.
I didn't talk about the whole fight either, just that specific thing. And that happens quite often throughout the whole game.

Sometimes you can walk INTO the zone after the castbar and it's just an animation (left/right dividers P12 for example), sometimes you can't.
Sometimes it's an actual effect that is represented visually like an extending AoE (SB Ramuh) effect, meaning you can be slower and still make it, or walk into it before it actually happens. (SB Wolf with Sword boss and his void zones.)


don't get me started on the tower beams from P10, that are twice as large as the actual animation.

You are wrong though, it happens exactly as the castbar completes. I'm calling brain/muscle coordination or skill issue here.

[KrayZ33]

You are wrong though, it happens exactly as the castbar completes. I'm calling brain/muscle coordination or skill issue here.

*sigh* even if it does.
It still doesn't change how Ramuh worked and it's always a test for each and every skill.

[Zoibert the Bear]

*sigh* even if it does.
It still doesn't change how Ramuh worked and it's always a test for each and every skill.

*sigh* Sorry to be blunt but I don't give a flying fuck about Ramuh. I very specifically responded to the p11s comment.

[KrayZ33]

*sigh* Sorry to be blunt but I don't give a flying fuck about Ramuh. I very specifically responded to the p11s comment.

Which was in context to the whole post that you can't even be sure when a cast drops of or triggers because it's different for every spell and you don't know where anyone was at that point in time because the netcode/delay has everyone 2 seconds behind on your screen.

I don't give a fuck about that mechanic in specific, that was just a mere example that could lead to all kinds of problems if FFXIV adapted WoW boss design.

[Wrecktangle]

You're the minority. Especially from those of us who came from WoW, nearly everyone I've talked to or met online has pretty much said the same thing. They'd rather be active or doing something than dead on the ground. It's the literal difference between active or not.

Look up the definition of confirmation bias please. This is not a valid argument to defend your stance.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I'd rather be PLAYING the game then afking to make a sandwich because I died and the rest of the team decided that it was more important to fight without me. And I still stand by what you quoted. Having a boss showing a predictable, understandable attack that I could probably time down to the second IS better design then 'Oh, hey, the boss has this ability he'll randomly cast every once in a while that wipes out the entire party and there's no way to predict it' that WoW has suffered through in the past.

Again, still moving the goalposts. I quoted your LITERAL statement. I understand you're trying to really hone in on this infinite res being superior design argument and I don't have a problem with that so there's minimal value to discussing that piece further because that isn't what you were originally stating, and what I had replied to.

Can you name a SINGLE WoW instance where a boss has a RANDOMLY casted ability that instantly wipes the entire party with no way to predict it? I certainly can't think of one off the top of my head so this sounds made up as fuck to push an agenda.

Your focus on seems to be entirely on Ultimates here, which I already told you that isn't for me and I don't care for them. Savages have this to a certain extent, but I'll still fully state that I've had more fun in a learning group (Something wow never had), trying to peace together what we'd do then I ever had in all my years raiding in WoW.

No it applies to savage as well. Savage is FULL of mechanics (assuming you are actually progging and not just waiting to watch a video a few days/weeks later that tells you what to do) that require you literally just stop, take screenshots of debuffs and talk it out with the group to solution it. Then you test. At any point during this process if someone is dead, your info is bad and can't be relied on.

WoW has learning groups, I join them LITERALLY all the time. You do it the EXACT same way you do in FF14. You go to the PF, you look for the fight on the difficulty you're progging, find one that's on a level of prog you're working on. People will leave and join rapidly as they feel they're ahead or behind the curve. It's quite literally identical if you actually play both games. It's asinine to suggest otherwise.

My comment is that unless the situation is B, there should be at no point where you can't rez party members. Engaging with the game should be paramount. WoW has made it so that you're limited on how many Battle Rezs your allowed before the game just tells you 'no'. And that's when it even allowed it, since I seem to recall that it was only druids who could battle rez in the past? Going off years old memory in that instance.

Yeah dude, your old ass info is old. 5 different classes can now battle res, for nearly 1/3 of the total specs. Some healers can, half of the tanks can and a large handful of DPS specs can.

As someone else in this thread said, there's maybe one ability per boss, if that, which can be an instakill? And 9 times out of 10, those abilities are 'We're going to kill you if you stand around like a dumbass'. It's designed to make the play react, everyone from the tank to the Machinist in the corner whose not moved once the entire fight. And having the game interact with the player is much more enjoyable then saying 'Oh, you don't make the gear check, so you lose', another WoW failing.

In Savage? There's dozens of mechanics in each fight that if you don't have the required number of people alive it's an instakill. Each mechanic is generally a set pattern that if it isn't done correctly by each individual player it's a full part. Sometimes the mechanic just kills 2 people (the person who made a mistake and the person who was unlucky to be targeted together/space near each other), but if BR's aren't instant and the next mechanic goes out and selects target's it's usually a wipe here too.

You make this comment about "oh you don't make the gear check you lose", but for the average savage player this is 100% true as well. Sure it can be cleared week 1 by absolute optimal play, so many are incapable and NEED that gear to cover for mistakes or average performance.

A lot of WoW raids boil down to that.

See above. In theory this statement is correct, but in practice it's hardly different between each game.

WoW even invented the term 'Patchwork fight', the 'just sit in one spot and dps like your heart depended on it' fights. Those were pretty common up all the way to Legion at least, and I don't think that design is just magically going to change anytime soon when it comes to Blizzard.

Patchwerk is defined by SimC as a high uptime single target fight. I don't know the origin of it (whether it was Patchwerk himself in Nax classic, or if like the other poster mentioned originated from EQ), but you're heavily implying this is somehow a negative thing? It's not as long as it's not a whole raid. More importantly though, there a DOZENS of fights in FF14 that are Patchwerk in nature. They are high uptime single target fights.

*sigh* even if it does.
It still doesn't change how Ramuh worked and it's always a test for each and every skill.

Zoidbert's right. Every now and then they introduce a mechanic that didn't follow their past examples, but they're rare. The only time they get inconsistent is if the servers are cucked which thankfully haven't been as bad this or the last expansion, but before that if you were EST and had to go through an NTT node, good fucking luck doing savage+ without a VPN.

[Ghost of Cow]

There's definitely some "jank" in how XIV handles combat events, but nothing that I've seen that makes it unplayable outside of actual internet/server issues. It's just a feel that takes getting used to.

Being able to "heal" damage that hasn't gone out yet is still my favorite one.

[Yarathir]

WoW even invented the term 'Patchwork fight', the 'just sit in one spot and dps like your heart depended on it' fights. Those were pretty common up all the way to Legion at least, and I don't think that design is just magically going to change anytime soon when it comes to Blizzard.

Not speaking Patchwerk fights specifically. Just that a lot of mechanics exist literally just to gear check you. Don't meet the arbitrary ilvl? You're not surviving/going to keep up with this unavoidable AoE. It's at least one part of why mythic raids take so long to clear. It gets a little less stringent later on as the fights are nerfed, but early days? It's quite ridiculous how much of the progression wall comes from obscene overtuning and completely ott gear checks.

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Do tell, what WoW raid boils down to, "Don't interact with the game, just make a gear check."?

Nop. Of course you gotta interact. I'm not saying WoW has no mechanics. Just that a fair lot of those mechanics are "have the gear to survive it," in a nutshell. You would never be able to take on any mythic raid in day 1 crafted gear. Not because every mechanic demands the skill to resolve them, but because unavoidable attacks will wipe the floor with you.

[Ghost of Cow]

Nop. Of course you gotta interact. I'm not saying WoW has no mechanics. Just that a fair lot of those mechanics are "have the gear to survive it," in a nutshell. You would never be able to take on any mythic raid in day 1 crafted gear. Not because every mechanic demands the skill to resolve them, but because unavoidable attacks will wipe the floor with you.

Oh, well that's fine. The games do have different gearing curves. No reason to disagree with that.

It's the other posters comments that seemed to suggest that WoW raids are ONLY stat checks with little to no interaction that I objected to.

[MsSideEye]

BS.

Nice retort there, buddy.

Look up the definition of confirmation bias please. This is not a valid argument to defend your stance.

I mean, you want me to go out and poll 100 people and come back with their responses to it? Fuck, Wreck, I could even do what you did to me with the last post and say 'It's your opinion' when it comes to the rez system being bad/good/made of cheese/whatever here. Just slapping 'that's your opinion' on something doesn't make me wrong or my argument invalid. And before you can say the fact that 'you're the minority' can be cast in the same way, the difference there comes with the fact that the only time I've seen people complain about the rez system has been here, in these forums, on a World of Warcraft fansite with people who hate FF14 just to hate it and that WoW can do no wrong despite it been doing wrong for YEARS.

Yeah, I'm not going to be taking what people say here as gospel or even correct most of the time. Heck, I JOINED the forums here to smack down someone legit trying to spin the story of 14 of the Ancients being some pure paragon race and what Venat did was the most evil of evils. Believe it or not, I've held the discussion about the rez system before with people and the response to anyone outside of these forums has always been positive about it.

Again, still moving the goalposts. I quoted your LITERAL statement. I understand you're trying to really hone in on this infinite res being superior design argument and I don't have a problem with that so there's minimal value to discussing that piece further because that isn't what you were originally stating, and what I had replied to.

My original statement that you had a problem with was this:

Also, let's be fair that it's much more appealing to see people master a dance and work together as a unit to do things then watch you entire party die because 'oh, the boss used an ability randomly, lol'

Ignoring the whole 'your opinion' bullcrap I've already pointed out, the entire point of this statement was the fact that it's more engaging to play something than it is to be a spectator. The 14 rez system encourages the playerbase to freely bring back dead party members as soon as they're able to encourage this fact. Warcrafts did not and does not, even to this day by the fact that they've got a hard cap on Battle Rezs.

One of the most important tenants of game design is to encourage your playerbase to play. You can't do that dead on the ground.

Can you name a SINGLE WoW instance where a boss has a RANDOMLY casted ability that instantly wipes the entire party with no way to predict it? I certainly can't think of one off the top of my head so this sounds made up as fuck to push an agenda.

Lich King had a plague that, if you didn't resolve it's effect, killed you effortlessly. It was instant cast, with no voice lines, no animations, no warning outside of either someone paying attention to their debuff bars or, because this is WoW, you had Deadly Boss mods. Fuck, the fact that DBM EXISTS should tell you how the design for WoW works if you need a separately made addon to tell you when a boss is going to throw something at you.

Say what you will about 14 game design, but even the Ultimates at their core have a tell in WHAT they're going to do with their abilities.

WoW has learning groups, I join them LITERALLY all the time. You do it the EXACT same way you do in FF14. You go to the PF, you look for the fight on the difficulty you're progging, find one that's on a level of prog you're working on. People will leave and join rapidly as they feel they're ahead or behind the curve. It's quite literally identical if you actually play both games. It's asinine to suggest otherwise.

If times have changed here, then neat. I'm glad WoW's social structure has improved since I left. As I've said before, in this thread no less, I come from a bygone era of WoW. You either knew your shit and had everything already finished and thus could get into more groups, payed your way in, or got lucky with a guild willing to let you do shit. Getting a group together of complete randoms just wanting to try a raid out was impossible back then and I never saw it happen.

Yeah dude, your old ass info is old. 5 different classes can now battle res, for nearly 1/3 of the total specs. Some healers can, half of the tanks can and a large handful of DPS specs can.

Cool, and just how many times can you Brez now? Doesn't matter if everyone can do it now if the game locks you out of doing it too often.

You make this comment about "oh you don't make the gear check you lose", but for the average savage player this is 100% true as well. Sure it can be cleared week 1 by absolute optimal play, so many are incapable and NEED that gear to cover for mistakes or average performance.

That's the difference, though. You can clear Savages (Hell, even Ultimates), with crafted gear right when it comes out. You can't do that in Warcraft and that's by DESIGN. You hit the limit in near every raid where the game expects you to have higher stuff because the way it was designed was for players to spend time just farming the other bosses in the raid wings for gear upgrades that would allow them to kill the later stuff. This is part of the reason gear funneling is such a huge thing in WoW, because it's people trying to get their most important members in the raid kitted out to actually be able to KILL the boss.

It's also the reason we see constant nerfs to bosses in WoW too, considering they're designed for the cutting edge of most cutting edge players and not for the playerbase as a whole.

Patchwerk is defined by SimC as a high uptime single target fight. I don't know the origin of it (whether it was Patchwerk himself in Nax classic, or if like the other poster mentioned originated from EQ), but you're heavily implying this is somehow a negative thing? It's not as long as it's not a whole raid. More importantly though, there a DOZENS of fights in FF14 that are Patchwerk in nature. They are high uptime single target fights.

Patchwerk was defined by, my group at least, as a fight with little to no mechanics that mattered that you could only lose if you didn't hit the gear check. Because, in the end, that alone decided if you continued that wing of Nax or not, if you could kill Patchwerk before his enrage hit. Now was he the hardest gear check in the world? No. But that doesn't stop the fact that he existed and flat out ended raid progression if you weren't up to snuff gear wise.

FF14 is designed, on the other hand, that if you've got the minimum item level to enter into the instance in the first place? You can beat it. It may take a lot of learning and improving, but I can only think of one instance where that statement wasn't true and that was a dev fuck up.

Not speaking Patchwerk fights specifically. Just that a lot of mechanics exist literally just to gear check you. Don't meet the arbitrary ilvl? You're not surviving/going to keep up with this unavoidable AoE. It's at least one part of why mythic raids take so long to clear. It gets a little less stringent later on as the fights are nerfed, but early days? It's quite ridiculous how much of the progression wall comes from obscene overtuning and completely ott gear checks.

Nop. Of course you gotta interact. I'm not saying WoW has no mechanics. Just that a fair lot of those mechanics are "have the gear to survive it," in a nutshell. You would never be able to take on any mythic raid in day 1 crafted gear. Not because every mechanic demands the skill to resolve them, but because unavoidable attacks will wipe the floor with you.

Pretty much what I said above.

[Ghost of Cow]

And before you can say the fact that 'you're the minority' can be cast in the same way, the difference there comes with the fact that the only time I've seen people complain about the rez system has been here, in these forums, on a World of Warcraft fansite with people who hate FF14 just to hate it and that WoW can do no wrong despite it been doing wrong for YEARS.

This is how you view EVERY conversation here - you think literally every thread of conversation is some kind of WoW-player conspiracy to get XIV - and that combined with the flat-out lies you post is why discussion is honestly impossible.

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If times have changed here, then neat. I'm glad WoW's social structure has improved since I left. As I've said before, in this thread no less, I come from a bygone era of WoW. You either knew your shit and had everything already finished and thus could get into more groups, payed your way in, or got lucky with a guild willing to let you do shit. Getting a group together of complete randoms just wanting to try a raid out was impossible back then and I never saw it happen.

Just straight up bullshit. Hell, I ran many of the larger pug/learning groups on my server and that goes all the way back to TBC/Wrath. Just more lies to prop up this weird "WoW bad" narrative.

That's the difference, though. You can clear Savages (Hell, even Ultimates), with crafted gear right when it comes out. You can't do that in Warcraft and that's by DESIGN. You hit the limit in near every raid where the game expects you to have higher stuff because the way it was designed was for players to spend time just farming the other bosses in the raid wings for gear upgrades that would allow them to kill the later stuff. This is part of the reason gear funneling is such a huge thing in WoW, because it's people trying to get their most important members in the raid kitted out to actually be able to KILL the boss.

The only people hardcore funneling are RWF guilds. Most people actually have a pretty natural gear progression, and LFR/Normal are often just skippable altogether.

Again, more spin about topics you sound like you've never actually touched.

Patchwerk was defined by, my group at least, as a fight with little to no mechanics that mattered that you could only lose if you didn't hit the gear check. Because, in the end, that alone decided if you continued that wing of Nax or not, if you could kill Patchwerk before his enrage hit. Now was he the hardest gear check in the world? No. But that doesn't stop the fact that he existed and flat out ended raid progression if you weren't up to snuff gear wise.

FF14 is designed, on the other hand, that if you've got the minimum item level to enter into the instance in the first place? You can beat it. It may take a lot of learning and improving, but I can only think of one instance where that statement wasn't true and that was a dev fuck up.

Uh-huh. And what fights in WoW - this should be easy since they're so common - have "little to no mechanics" and are just a gear check?

This is all such nonsense, it's absurd. Your posts read like someone who never touched WoW but are regurgitating talking points from other people.

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Lich King had a plague that, if you didn't resolve it's effect, killed you effortlessly. It was instant cast, with no voice lines, no animations, no warning outside of either someone paying attention to their debuff bars or, because this is WoW, you had Deadly Boss mods. Fuck, the fact that DBM EXISTS should tell you how the design for WoW works if you need a separately made addon to tell you when a boss is going to throw something at you.

Say what you will about 14 game design, but even the Ultimates at their core have a tell in WHAT they're going to do with their abilities.

Literally not how plague worked. Again, someone who hardly played WoW, if at all.

Also, Ultimates are often pretty arcane. Again, someone who hasn't touched ultimates.

This is doubly amazing because you picked a debuff-based mechanic ("someone paying attention to the debuff bars") when that's exactly what you have to do in XIV, and often with less information AND you picked one of the more interactive mechanics on that fight while claiming you don't interact with mechanics in WoW.

Just amazing all around.

[Arlette]

Man this subforum is so fun when its the same 3 people saying the exact same untrue bullshit over and over again just to attack this game lol

[Ghost of Cow]

Man this subforum is so fun when its the same 3 people saying the exact same untrue bullshit over and over again just to attack this game lol

I wish you'd get the idea out of your head that someone is "attacking this game".

Most of the discussions don't even start that way, they just get twisted around because some people say such absurd things that we can't help but start comparing and contrasting things to actually stick to something resembling truth.

If anything, I'd say most of us play XIV a lot more than SideEye, who barely seems to know how either game works.

[Arlette]

I wish you'd get the idea out of your head that someone is "attacking this game".

Most of the discussions don't even start that way, they just get twisted around because some people say such absurd things that we can't help but start comparing and contrasting things to actually stick to something resembling truth.

If anything, I'd say most of us play XIV a lot more than SideEye, who barely seems to know how either game works.

Your entire existence on this subforum is nothing but you and the other two agreeing with one another about why everything is bad lol

Please cut the shit that you're trying to actually be impartial.

Especially when you're on a soap box declaring that other people haven't played the game because they disagree with your nonsense. Doubly so when you're whining about other people saying another game is just "game bad."

[Ghost of Cow]

Your entire existence on this subforum is nothing but you and the other two agreeing with one another about why everything is bad lol

Literally no one talks this way. (Except Val, who is pretty critical of literally everything in every game, so eh. Not sure why you guys take it personally here.) This is just the weird lens through which the two of you view every single conversation, even when people are talking about the things they like.

Seriously, this happens every time and it's why no one posts in this sub anymore. You guys won't allow anyone to say much of anything without jumping on them about it, and we've been over this time and again.