FFXIV Criticisms

[Grinning Serpent]

I play FFXI and FFXIV (and all the other mmos you listed) I would say the rigidity in classes is FF14s biggest draw back. Lets take FFXI (14s predecessor) the INSANE amount of build customization you have there compared to 14 is unreal. Each class usually shines in a specific role but a RDM can easily main heal or dps or enf or buff or tank if needed.

Your other drawbacks about alts is completely pointless though, as there is ZERO reason to have an ALT in 14. As your ONE character can be everything and you can even revisit story with that character. The gear is shared for most classes making gearing quicker for alt jobs. Which is far superior to WOW account unlocks. If I could change classes at will in WoW I would never level an alt again. Gearing would be so much easier.

I really wish XIV had a talent system like MoP-era WoW. Where you have a few different skills across a few different tiers and they serve to allow you *some* degree of customization of the playstyle. People argue that the "best choices" will be mathed out and so there's usually only a couple choices that are genuinely up to preference, but I don't see anything wrong with that. It's rare that the "best choices" are the best choice for *ALL* content types. I think as long as you can justify each of the abilities or passives in a tier in some type of content, the system is working fine.

I certainly don't think we'd ever see anything like DF's talent trees, although I think they're quite lovely for the most part. People math out the best choices there, but even then there is still often a wide array of possible choices based on what kind of content you're doing or even just playstyle. Storm of Swords/Annihilator is probably weaker in general than a typical Raging Blow Fury build, but unless you're pushing top end content early in the tier, it doesn't really matter that much - you can zug zug all you'd like if that's what makes you happy. Each tree tends to have a fairly even distribution of "core" skills, "preferred" and "optional" skills. Each tree also has its share of "never take" skills, but theoretically that's something you can address with balance patches. It would probably be a lot easier for XIV to achieve that since each class is just the one class, rather than each class kinda-sorta being three in one like in WoW.

I keep thinking back to Blue Mage. Sure, you always have a certain core set of spells you use for pretty much everything, but those last 4-6 spell slots are *highly* variable based on what content you're doing, even down to the specific fight and even specific strats *within* that fight. Combined with not losing ability access for being synced down and is it any wonder that BLU players tend to greatly prefer BLU to normal classes?


Shit, they could do the specialization thing for XIV, too. Although I'm sure it'd be messy, but what if you could pick between Warrior and Berserker? Berserker is melee DPS, Warrior is a tank. Or I guess if you want to discount the probably severe amount of code fuckery, you could just have Marauder be melee DPS and Warrior is tank and players get an ability to swap seamlessly between them (while out of combat/not bound by duty) at will. Same gear is used, too. Tenacity can still function for "tank DPS", since I think it would still be dead last in gemming priority even for a DPS class because the extra mitigation on a DPS wouldn't likely ever be relevant. It would be like a more involved version of DPS stance/Cleric stance, except it'd also change up your toolset and not just your modifiers.

[OokOok]

All the people saying XIV needs more classes/specs/a talent system are the same ones crying every month that Blizzard doesn't know how to balance their game cause they have 16 classes and 40 specs.
Thankfully SE doesn't listen to you, go back to WoW. XIV has amazing class balance and I would take that over specs/talents any day.

[Ghost of Cow]

All the people saying XIV needs more classes/specs/a talent system are the same ones crying every month that Blizzard doesn't know how to balance their game cause they have 16 classes and 40 specs.
Thankfully SE doesn't listen to you, go back to WoW. XIV has amazing class balance and I would take that over specs/talents any day.

I honestly don't know where people get this from. The class balance in the two games is pretty close, both games have periods where one class/spec remains awful for a while, or a specific fight makes certain jobs shine or look bad.

This whole, "XIV is balanced, WoW isn't" thing has ascended to meme status at this point, and it's just silly.

[Shinchi Migi]

I honestly don't know where people get this from. The class balance in the two games is pretty close, both games have periods where one class/spec remains awful for a while, or a specific fight makes certain jobs shine or look bad.

This whole, "XIV is balanced, WoW isn't" thing has ascended to meme status at this point, and it's just silly.

Facts can be hard to digest sometimes. But in my opinion both games have never ever been balanced. Instead of making ALL specs fun to play for everyone, BOTH companies like to cherry pick specs that will be FOTM in their eyes. Neither company knows how to balance classes, and in my opinion never ever will.

[Katchii]

Community being toxic or not is only relevant when you are playing a game and not when you are choosing a game to play. If the community is not toxic is it a huge incentive to keep playing but what initially hooked you up was the gameplay/story etc.

Knowing whether a community is toxic or not prior to playing can and does have an impact on someone's desire to play an MMO.

Multi-class does punish me because if i have already committed myself to one character it means i spend a long time finishing msq and if i want to make an alt i have to do this over again or i can spend over 20 euros to skip the story. In wow there are many things that are account unlocked, so if i do them on one character there unlocked on all my characters.

You don't have to start a completely new character to play a different class in FFXIV. A single character can be every class, there's no NEED for alts. You only start another completely new character if you want to.

One spec per class is lazy design, let me prove it.

No, it's different design. None of your examples prove it's "lazy design" just different from other games.

[threads]

All the people saying XIV needs more classes/specs/a talent system are the same ones crying every month that Blizzard doesn't know how to balance their game cause they have 16 classes and 40 specs.
Thankfully SE doesn't listen to you, go back to WoW. XIV has amazing class balance and I would take that over specs/talents any day.

balance is easy when you make almost every thing play the same lol

[hzjf]

what the classes needs is less buttons

[Shinchi Migi]

what the classes needs is less buttons

In FFXIV, for sure. 13 to 18 button combos are utterly ridiculous.

[Ghost of Cow]

The debate about "not doing content if community is toxic" thing is kinda weird to me, too.

Because of the rigidity of fights in XIV, how rotations are expected to be planned out, and how people in PF almost always copy very specific strats, I find that I'm usually far more put off by the raiding community in XIV than I ever was in other MMOs.

Sure, they're not directly verbally rude, but you can clearly see the intent when the group dissolves into thin air after someone doesn't perfectly execute the "Jimbo Bobby Banana Two Color Partner Swap Hootenanny" strat from some YouTuber.

At least in other games it's just "generally know the fight" and have some level of gear. XIV groups expect you to have been one of the developers working on the fight or something. That level of scripting just isn't much fun to me, I guess.

[KrayZ33]

The debate about "not doing content if community is toxic" thing is kinda weird to me, too.

Because of the rigidity of fights in XIV, how rotations are expected to be planned out, and how people in PF almost always copy very specific strats, I find that I'm usually far more put off by the raiding community in XIV than I ever was in other MMOs.

Sure, they're not directly verbally rude, but you can clearly see the intent when the group dissolves into thin air after someone doesn't perfectly execute the "Jimbo Bobby Banana Two Color Partner Swap Hootenanny" strat from some YouTuber.

At least in other games it's just "generally know the fight" and have some level of gear. XIV groups expect you to have been one of the developers working on the fight or something. That level of scripting just isn't much fun to me, I guess.

At first I thought you wanted to bash the community for that, but then you got the right turn and blamed the fights - which is where the "problem" is.
Because lets be honest, you kinda have to do a very, very specific strat and the "community" kinda has to decide which one to use, otherwise you'll just wipe due to how the boss fights are scripted out.

It's kinda fun when you know the people you are playing with, especially if you don't "spoil" yourself and try to figure them out yourself imho. But it's obviously a "only this will work" when you do a pug.

[TheRevenantHero]

I honestly don't know where people get this from. The class balance in the two games is pretty close, both games have periods where one class/spec remains awful for a while, or a specific fight makes certain jobs shine or look bad.

This whole, "XIV is balanced, WoW isn't" thing has ascended to meme status at this point, and it's just silly.

It's not a meme. It's 100% accurate.

- - - Updated - - -

If you are worried about having to only use community strats, you can make your own/post them in your PF group, or make/join a static, done 2 savage tiers now where we strat-make our own, sometimes yeah our strats are similar/exactly the same as common-place strats, but not always and solving the mechanics is its own reward too. If you are a PF raider, then it's probably harder, but the option is still on the table. I don't join PF groups specifically because half the strats in abyssos are different to what my group did and can't be arsed learning the community strats.

The irony of people saying you "can only use community strats" is that the same people saying it absolutely use DBM lol

[Ghost of Cow]

It's not a meme. It's 100% accurate.

I mean, why even bother lying about something like that, the data is right there.

[Grinning Serpent]

It's not a meme. It's 100% accurate.

It's like 110% accurate, to the point that it's a detriment to the game. Classes are so well balanced that people freak out over absolutely inconsequential differences in parse scores, and they've cut away enormous portions of utility and unique gimmicks and kit from classes in order to keep them balanced. I've said before, I think XIV is way too fucking big of a project for the size of the team they have working on it, and I know Yoshida has talked about the difficulty in hiring more staff in the past (not really a budget issue so much as a labor pool issue.) So in order to keep producing content on schedule, without avoidable delays (I'm sure the decision to extend patches to 3 per year instead of 4 per year wasn't a decision they enjoyed having to make), they *must* cut complexity wherever possible. They apparently decided to cut the complexity on the class design side of things while preserving encounter complexity as much as possible - which is probably the right decision.

But I don't think "XIV is balanced!" is as good of a thing as people seem to believe it to be. I think it's cost us a great deal. Worse, I don't think the dev team will ever see any reason to try and walk back some of this streamlining/simplifying/homogenizing, either.

[TheRevenantHero]

It's like 110% accurate, to the point that it's a detriment to the game. Classes are so well balanced that people freak out over absolutely inconsequential differences in parse scores, and they've cut away enormous portions of utility and unique gimmicks and kit from classes in order to keep them balanced. I've said before, I think XIV is way too fucking big of a project for the size of the team they have working on it, and I know Yoshida has talked about the difficulty in hiring more staff in the past (not really a budget issue so much as a labor pool issue.) So in order to keep producing content on schedule, without avoidable delays (I'm sure the decision to extend patches to 3 per year instead of 4 per year wasn't a decision they enjoyed having to make), they *must* cut complexity wherever possible. They apparently decided to cut the complexity on the class design side of things while preserving encounter complexity as much as possible - which is probably the right decision.

But I don't think "XIV is balanced!" is as good of a thing as people seem to believe it to be. I think it's cost us a great deal. Worse, I don't think the dev team will ever see any reason to try and walk back some of this streamlining/simplifying/homogenizing, either.

I've never had a single person flip on me about my numbers in the same way I've seen people lost their absolute shit on people in WoW. I like that everything is balanced because then I won't get pressured to play a specific class. As long as I'm playing well, that's all that matters. I don't worry about people not taking me to a group because I'm not one of the current meta classes. It's a great feeling.

Classes feel like they have their own identities without feeling like it is the MUST PLAY class. And that's why I love it. I can just play whatever is most fun for me.

[zealo]

I mean, why even bother lying about something like that, the data is right there.

The only way the data shows that is if we are ignoring spec differences on the classes in WoW despite that people might not want to play the top performing one on their class for mechanical reasons. If we're not ignoring that element there are gaps as big as 20%+ in that game.

[Wrecktangle]

I've never had a single person flip on me about my numbers in the same way I've seen people lost their absolute shit on people in WoW. I like that everything is balanced because then I won't get pressured to play a specific class. As long as I'm playing well, that's all that matters. I don't worry about people not taking me to a group because I'm not one of the current meta classes. It's a great feeling.

Classes feel like they have their own identities without feeling like it is the MUST PLAY class. And that's why I love it. I can just play whatever is most fun for me.

There never has been and there never will be proper class balance in WoW.

I've been playing WoW off and on for nearly 20 years. I've NEVER had anyone "flip out" on me about my numbers if I'm "playing well". Mind you I've never had anyone flip out about my numbers negatively, but I certainly can't see a case where "as long as you are playing well" you're being ridiculed. That's a dishonest take and you know it.

I've played Ret Paladin since 2004. I've been top 10 in the world before. Ret's hasn't been Meta in like a decade until recently, and we're barely meta at this point since our scaling is garbage. I've had my fair share of pug issues so I share the pain, but I also play PLD in FF14 and there have been whole ass tiers they wouldn't take me over DRK/WAR and vice versa despite my logs saying I'm a good and safe pick.

When you say there has never been and never will be proper class balance in WoW what does that even mean? What exactly is "proper class balance"? Define that.

The only way the data shows that is if we are ignoring spec differences on the classes in WoW despite that people might not want to play the top performing one on their class for mechanical reasons. If we're not ignoring that element there are gaps as big as 20%+ in that game.

No, the data shows the current split from absolute top to bottom is currently ~16% spec to spec. Not 20%+. Not only that, but the bottom ~1/3 specs have an alternate option to DPS with so "class" balance is actually ~ 8% top to bottom.

FF14's top to bottom is ~7.5%.

You want the data you can go to Warcraftlogs and FFlogs just like I did. For how on rails and few knobs FF14 has 7% differential isn't an impressive standard.

[TheRevenantHero]

I've been playing WoW off and on for nearly 20 years. I've NEVER had anyone "flip out" on me about my numbers if I'm "playing well". Mind you I've never had anyone flip out about my numbers negatively, but I certainly can't see a case where "as long as you are playing well" you're being ridiculed. That's a dishonest take and you know it.

I've played Ret Paladin since 2004. I've been top 10 in the world before. Ret's hasn't been Meta in like a decade until recently, and we're barely meta at this point since our scaling is garbage. I've had my fair share of pug issues so I share the pain, but I also play PLD in FF14 and there have been whole ass tiers they wouldn't take me over DRK/WAR and vice versa despite my logs saying I'm a good and safe pick.

When you say there has never been and never will be proper class balance in WoW what does that even mean? What exactly is "proper class balance"? Define that.



No, the data shows the current split from absolute top to bottom is currently ~16% spec to spec. Not 20%+. Not only that, but the bottom ~1/3 specs have an alternate option to DPS with so "class" balance is actually ~ 8% top to bottom.

FF14's top to bottom is ~7.5%.

You want the data you can go to Warcraftlogs and FFlogs just like I did. For how on rails and few knobs FF14 has 7% differential isn't an impressive standard.

Then you must not have been a hardcore raider. Because in guilds that are raiding at the highest level, people will absolutely ridicule you if you aren't pulling the numbers they think you should be. They don't care if you're downing bosses. Based on your comment, I don't believe even for a second that you were in the top 10 of....anything. You're also lying about not being taken as a result of your class in FF14.

What I mean by class balance is that there is always a handful of classes that are just flat out not viable and nobody will take those specs to raids. But based on your other statements, it's pretty clear you are being purposely obtuse.

[Wrecktangle]

Then you must not have been a hardcore raider. Because in guilds that are raiding at the highest level, people will absolutely ridicule you if you aren't pulling the numbers they think you should be.

I'd genuinely be curious if you're comfortable sharing. Where does this negativity come from? It's obviously anecdotal and I'm 100% fine with that, but when is it from? What expansion? What tier? What was your example that has you vilifying the WoW community with such absolute zealotry?

Make no mistake, I was criticized if I was playing poorly, I've been criticized in both games for poor play, but at the highest level that's to be expected and you have to be able to own your mistakes. I've NEVER once been attacked for playing well in either game. I want to hear more about your experience in WoW where you were ridiculed despite playing well, because frankly this hasn't been my experience ever.

What do you mean the numbers they think you should be? We have logs. If your logs are bad, you're bad. There's nothing wrong with that in a vacuum and why it's always important to play with like-minded and like-skilled players whenever possible.

What I mean by class balance is that there is always a handful of classes that are just flat out not viable and nobody will take those specs to raids. But based on your other statements, it's pretty clear you are being purposely obtuse.

What class is not viable currently in WoW and why?

[Ghost of Cow]

What I mean by class balance is that there is always a handful of classes that are just flat out not viable and nobody will take those specs to raids. But based on your other statements, it's pretty clear you are being purposely obtuse.

The weird thing about this is that you're also describing XIV - communities can be weird about crap like this, and this one is no exception.

[Xilurm]

I've always been a casual player in both games.

When Shadowlands launched I tried playing a healer after really liking healing in FF. Got to max level, decided to queue for a random despite being nervous about healing. Got Plaguefall. Gonna be honest, I can't remember if it was Normal or Heroic, but since I only just got to max lvl it was probably Normal.

Tank starts rushing like a madman, despite the fact the expansion came out only a few days ago, but whatever. My mana could barely keep up which makes me doubt I'm even good enough to play this class, though I suppose maybe I was doing something wrong. Idk, I kept hearing Disc Priest is hard to play.

We get down to the pools where you have to jump around on the platforms where there's tons of slimes. My healing can't keep up and one of them calls me a trash healer before we even wipe, which we did a bit later. Anyway, one of them leaves then another comes and we clear the dungeon, but it wasn't pleasant. That's just one of many bad experiences I've had with the WoW community during the years, since Wrath. And this is only at casual content too, so I can't even begin to imagine how awful it is on higher difficulties.

I can tank/heal wall to wall in FF without any issues, but even if there was some issue, I can guarantee you this shit wouldn't fly there.

Yes, there's 100% a toxic positivity kind of community in FF, but I'd much rather have that, than have the kind of community WoW has. WoW's community is 70% douchebags, and there's little anyone can say to make me think otherwise.