FFXIV Criticisms

[Grinning Serpent]

It gets even better (read: worse). For example, the whole FFXVI team was dispatched on other projects, and none or almost none were put back on FFXIV.
Why? Because DA POOPOO must flow! Must keep releasing dead on arrival titles and not work on FFXIV.

That said. It is clearly their graphics artists are fixing a lot of stuff, but clearly, they are lacking people to fix the game itself and all the old systems

At least they're not chasing NFTs again. Right?

[Tomana]

At least they're not chasing NFTs again. Right?

"You won't believe what happens next!" (c)

[Wrecktangle]

I can say without hesitation that FFXIV has the worst combat I have encountered in any mmorpg ever. I have played twenty or so. I have not played the runescapes or small worlds... so I cannot speak for those games. Now the last mmorpg square enix released had a much slower combat yet it felt rewarding. Why? because it was not a 2 minute looped rotation. The combat system in FFXIV is an actual rotation unlike most other mmo where you are given quite bit of freedom to have your way. It has to do with the fact that the basic abilities run on a combo system. Then the special abilities run on another combo system. And then the buffs all line up. Then the two looped rotations lead to a third rotation. So what you have is a non stop sequence that either runs for 1 min 30 seconds or 2 minutes. Anything that dies too quickly feels weird and awkward to go up against. You don't get your good stuff outside of long fights, and that's what the combat system seems to have been designed for.

It most certainly doesn't have the worst combat in any MMO ever. I'm not even sure who would take that honor tbh, for me the Elder Scrolls/LotR series take that cake. Now I do agree that the rigidity is NOT a strength of the combat design and an area I'd love to see improved.

Making things worse is that the outer world has mobs who are HP sponges with zero personalities. All they do is stand still and do some telegraphs. Almost every mmorpg that exists right now the mobs tend to be somewhat interesting. So the grinds in FFXIV in the outer worlds are true grinds because you hate every second of having to do them. In other mmorpgs I have just went on taking on mobs I didn't need to; the combat felt strong and bad ass.

Agreed. I miss Blade and Soul the most here.

To reply to another post. Blizzard's venture into charging extra for a headstart and now a bruto mount with very high utility is borderline pay2win territory. I think they crossed it a while back because it is much easier to get consumables with real life money than it is to have to farm for them. If Blizzard keeps that up I won't go back to their game. Though the war within was an amazing expansion so I have to give kudos to them. Blizzard's preference for high paying customers is not going to make me give a pass to Square Enix though, nobody said I must have that one mmorpg I play no matter how much I hate playing it.

I'm a CE raider and my brother and I both skipped the headstart knowing it wouldn't impact us at all. Our friends got to max level before us grind dungeons that didn't matter so overall it was no impact. My brother and I didn't want to support this behavior hence why we didn't pay. I don't have the mount and haven't found a need for it, but it's obviously helpful that ONE person has it for keys/raids. It's not P2W, but it's certainly pay for convenience and I don't like that.

[Ereb]

nvm, honestly being called delusional for a difference of how a game plays and interacts with (that I never said it didn't have, just that I have had no issues with) is just not worth interacting with.

Sounds like a skill difference honestly

[Fasruhdah]

Even if I could put up with a lack of weight to the combat and the combat being literally strict rotations. Bro what makes it so bad in FFXIV is that it fails bigly at basic combat mechanics. This game has managed to have a clicking system that is worse than games that were made over 20 years ago. How do devs develop a game, and fail at implementing proper clicking mechanics. Clicking must be the first godamn thing a dev tests out when they make a game? someone in another post be like FFXIV is a revolving door for devs to get their feet wet before they develop other games. How is that my problem again? and broooo its not a skill issue. Really?

If a character is moving the clicks literally do not register. They are out of sync bro lol. Characters move way fast and it is faster to click party list. People are like well brother just use party list. No it feels damn awful. Hold up let me grab a video to explain little bit of what I am talking about here. Clicking in step 1.



- - - Updated - - -

I enjoyed the combat in ESO. It was fun. Isn't ESO combat considered good? Never played LOTR. I don't recall why I quit ESO... think it was lack of content. Maybe I give ESO another try.

[Grinning Serpent]

Was flicking through XIV news of the past couple weeks and noticed that SE is *still* having issues with DDOS attacks. Why is Square continuing to have such a hard time with them? DDOS attacks are a fact of life for any online game and everyone has suffered from them, but I swear they're the only ones of their size to have such a hard time controlling them.

[Byleth]

Was flicking through XIV news of the past couple weeks and noticed that SE is *still* having issues with DDOS attacks. Why is Square continuing to have such a hard time with them?

If I had to guess, it's because the game has a lot of straight up haters, who refuse to let it be.

[Arlette]

If I had to guess, it's because the game has a lot of straight up haters, who refuse to let it be.

I mean there's at least 3 people who are doing it on this dumbass nothing forum so I can imagine the weird haters who obsess over it elsewhere too.

[Byleth]

I mean there's at least 3 people who are doing it on this dumbass nothing forum so I can imagine the weird haters who obsess over it elsewhere too.

Word.

I also find it funny that most of FFXIV's DDOS problems started around the same time there was an influx of WoW players fleeing Shadowlands. I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but it's something to think about for sure...

[Arlette]

Word.

I also find it funny that most of FFXIV's DDOS problems started around the same time there was an influx of WoW players fleeing Shadowlands. I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but it's something to think about for sure...

It definitely was dramatically increased at that exact time.

[Tech614]

Was flicking through XIV news of the past couple weeks and noticed that SE is *still* having issues with DDOS attacks. Why is Square continuing to have such a hard time with them? DDOS attacks are a fact of life for any online game and everyone has suffered from them, but I swear they're the only ones of their size to have such a hard time controlling them.

Actually I'm pretty sure XIVs biggest issue with connections are ISP limited with how the traffic flows into their servers. I know I would always have issues maybe once a month when I was with spectrum and running tests the connection would always fail at some node in San Jose before ever getting to the XIV server. I changed to my phone hot spot(verizon) and it would magically connect. Since switching to a local owned fiber isp I haven't seen this issue prop up again yet.

So I'm not sure exactly what the problem is but its always limited to certain ISPs at a time and I'm pretty sure the biggest issue is not DDOS attacks. Granted yes, I know there was a recent article about DDOS attacks I'm just saying I don't think its the biggest issue with the common connection problems that keep happening. Blizzard also regularly posts the same message as that XIV news post on the battle net launcher, see it all the time. It's just acknowledging that there is a DDOS attack happening it doesn't mean it has killed the servers just explaining if you are having dc issues at the time. I usually play both XIV and WoW fine when these messages are up, just usually a slower login at most.

[KrayZ33]

Word.

I also find it funny that most of FFXIV's DDOS problems started around the same time there was an influx of WoW players fleeing Shadowlands. I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but it's something to think about for sure...

It definitely was dramatically increased at that exact time.

That's petty and also not true.
Unless you consider Stormblood to be the time when WoW Players fled Shadowlands.

11x in 2017
19x in 2018
7x in 2019
2x in 2020 (shadowlands release November)
2x in 2021
3x in 2022
2x in 2023
26x in 2024

+- 1 or 2 in each year.

funny how that goes, isn't it?
(source: official forum status threads)

[Ghost of Cow]

That's petty and also not true.
Unless you consider Stormblood to be the time when WoW Players fled Shadowlands.

11x in 2017
19x in 2018
7x in 2019
2x in 2020 (shadowlands release November)
2x in 2021
3x in 2022
2x in 2023
26x in 2024

+- 1 or 2 in each year.

funny how that goes, isn't it?
(source: official forum status threads)

Yeah, but how else are some people around here going to explore their weird victimization fetish if you throw around facts like that?

[Arlette]

Yeah, but how else are some people around here going to explore their weird victimization fetish if you throw around facts like that?

God the irony lol

[Byleth]

I wasn't going to respond to Kray or Cow as their posts are in obvious bad faith.

But the numbers above only account for a small percentage of what we're actually seeing when playing the game. I mean on my OCE server alone we had minor DDOS events 3 times in the last 4 days. They are resolved relatively quickly though, but still cause major headaches when raiding.

Not every event gets an official post, especially if they are small.

[KrayZ33]

I wasn't going to respond to Kray or Cow as their posts are in obvious bad faith.

lmao

can't make this shit up.
Perhaps you should look into a mirror sometimes. Or perhaps you just don't know what arguing in bad faith actually means.


What makes you think your problems are DDOS related in the first place, lags in raid instances are very common in FFXIV and the usual fix is to get something like mudfish, a VPN.
There is and has been an issue with routing ever since (at least) heavensward.

[Pivotal]

Going to take a different route than combat, which seems to be the main topic here so far... so my biggest critisism is that the environments in the game are very boring. Even with the 7.0 visual update I still find most outdoor zones so flat, rushed and empty. Zone border mountains are just big distorted messes with an unfitting rock texture. Grounds are flat planes with a texture and no variation in height. Everything is so cube-y and doesn't come across as natural, which takes me out of the immersion of the world, sadly.

....Compared to the character models it's just not up to par to the point it almost feels like two different games.

[Grinning Serpent]

Going to take a different route than combat, which seems to be the main topic here so far... so my biggest critisism is that the environments in the game are very boring. Even with the 7.0 visual update I still find most outdoor zones so flat, rushed and empty. Zone border mountains are just big distorted messes with an unfitting rock texture. Grounds are flat planes with a texture and no variation in height. Everything is so cube-y and doesn't come across as natural, which takes me out of the immersion of the world, sadly.

....Compared to the character models it's just not up to par to the point it almost feels like two different games.

There's a pretty obvious difference in fidelity and size from expansion to expansion, but I get what you mean. I think it's because zones became increasingly less about representing a believable world, into being a theme park, the farther into the game's design we go. WoW shares this problem, and it tends to be why vanilla's world design is so consistently praised - it was not built to be a theme park, it was built to be a believable virtual world. The farther you go into WoW's expansion history, the harsher the design shifts towards "theme park." Having recently leveled through Cata Classic, I think Cataclysm is the point where I think things crossed the middle line from "believable world" to "theme park."

For XIV, I'd place that in Stormblood.

[Yarathir]

I like the Chaotic armor sets. I just hope that within the next few years, most gear becomes cross-role glammable. Pretty much nearly everything except the explicit DoW/DoM job artifact gears.

[Grinning Serpent]

Can't have mages wearing plate, that would ruin immersion! People running around in bikinis totally fine though.