FFXIV Criticisms

[Ghost of Cow]

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.

I mean, they don't generally say "trash healer" in XIV, but they come up with all kinds of other passive-aggressive ways to express it.

Not to mention the classic "drop group at the first sign of trouble" that sends the message all the same.

[Grinning Serpent]

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.

I've seen people tossing up PFs that exclude "non meta" classes all the time. It doesn't matter that it's an inconsequential difference for a PF group (you aren't doing serious week 1 prog with a full PF group, at most you're just filling an empty slot or two), some people are just stupid.

[Granyala]

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".

I concur. If you are playing well, there is no issue, even if you play an underperforming class.
How do I know?

I played and raided as an SPriest for like umm almost 10 years?

Sure, you will encounter the occasional asshat at virtually any level of play but that's just the Internet for you.

The only thing that happens if you truly play at the bleeding edge, is that your class gets benched in favor of some freaky setup to facilitate world first kills. But at that level, any player plays multiple classes anyway and automatically chooses what is currently needed most to get to the world first.

And this is only at casual content too, so I can't even begin to imagine how awful it is on higher difficulties.

MUCH less drama.
Why? Because high level content is typically run with premades of people of your friend list and guilds.

Random matching? Yah, it's a cesspool in both games. Though since FF-XIV employs rather draconic punishments, most people there just quietly drop from the group.

[Ghost of Cow]

MUCH less drama.
Why? Because high level content is typically run with premades of people of your friend list and guilds.

Yeah, this is one of the biggest misconceptions I think people have about "hardcore" raiding. They think that the drama and infighting and screaming is just inherent to the content, and therefore the groups that perform even better must have even more of it.

The funny thing is that the opposite ends up being true in most cases. Yet you'll still hear people claim that you must not have done "hardcore" raiding if you don't know that everyone is ripping each others heads off 24/7.

[Grinning Serpent]

Yeah, this is one of the biggest misconceptions I think people have about "hardcore" raiding. They think that the drama and infighting and screaming is just inherent to the content, and therefore the groups that perform even better must have even more of it.

The funny thing is that the opposite ends up being true in most cases. Yet you'll still hear people claim that you must not have done "hardcore" raiding if you don't know that everyone is ripping each others heads off 24/7.

Biggest difference to me is that it's pretty normal to be raiding with people outside your guild in XIV. Statics are rarely comprised of a single guild. But in WoW, it's like you can only raid with your guild.

[Ghost of Cow]

XIV reminding me why I've never raided seriously in this game, people already raging on day 1 of a patch about why people aren't already pros at the new EX.

Probably why I haven't even zoned into an EX since 6.0

[Wrecktangle]

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.

I want to preface that this discussion is not me trying to "gotcha" or "find blame" or belittle you. I really want to understand HOW you came to that experience and what if anything could have been done to prevent it and cross reference it with FF14's expectations it places on a player.

1. With that said how did you get to max level? Grind dungeons? quest?
2. Did you do it as Disc or Shadow (DPS spec)?
3. How long if you had a to estimate did it take you (# of hrs played)?
4. Was this your first dungeon in WoW? first dungeon as a healer?
5. You heard Disc was hard to play. How did you hear this? Did you look up any external info on how to play the class effectively? How about for FF14? Did you ever look up info how to play healer or was it all just learned from doing?

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.

My PLD main, pops sprint and runs through FF14 dungeons, yes even the first time I ever set foot in it.

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.

It's not awful at all on higher difficulties because you tend to get very like minded players.

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.

To be fair, FF14 is borderline trivial short of EXs and Savage+. This shit happens all the time in matched content too. Just go read the tales from DF thread/reddit post. Lots of examples of this stuff.

[Sharby]

2 big things keep me from playing XIV currently.




Rigidity, virtually everything about XIV feels weird and clunky.


Open world feels awkward and limiting (tons of invisible walls.) Tons of loading screens because every zone is disjointed, can only imagine how bad it is for people without SSD's/Console players.

Everyone has the same animations/height/body-structure, only Lalafells look really distinct and it feels like all of the character budgeting went into them and Miqote to a lesser extent.

450 Tomecap feels super outadted, especially since the cap doesn't increase as weeks go on, directly punishing you for not capping for the week. As trivial as it might be to cap, its still dumb.

Over-reliance on instances, but having them be clunky as well. having to leave the instance to replace party members, every instance having a time limit. This was rather disruptive when trying to prog.

Bad UI/Inventory, having a cap on glamor dresser, the aesthetician being inconsistent and mostly useless. No way to increase inventory, forcing useless items into your bags with no toggle.

Rotations being janky, I don't think XIV is hard at all presently, and when I see people discuss the gameplay its mostly them talking about how clunky gamedesign forces you to play around it in dumb ways. Biggest example being tank-mitigation and how snapshotting works, I don't think manipulating the game's terrible latency engine is particularly skillful even if it does take good timing to pull off.


There are a lot more things, but when I raided hardcore and thus played often these really stood out to me. Felt like I needed a ton of plugins and shaders to make the game playable.




The second thing being its terrible content schedule.


Feels like the only time XIV is worth playing is the start of an xpac and the X.5 patch due to how glacial the game moves forward. Waiting months and months for basic content and balance fixing is terrible. Especially when often times content doesn't even release on patch and instead you're forced to wait even longer.





XIV is a good game, but to me its terrible to play regularly because of the above, seems best played in short bursts. WoW has struggled with this too, but recently has been very good for near constant entertainment, and being able to buy a sub with gold helps too.

[Grinning Serpent]

Yeah. My biggest complaint with XIV is, honestly, the fact it costs me a monthly fee. Cut my XP and tomestone gains in half or something and let me play for free, or add "XIV Tokens" that I can buy with like 50 million gil or whatever and it'd be permanently installed/updated. I might only play for a dozen hours in a month, but that's fine. I just feel like it's hard to justify that $16/month (the sub is only $12 but gotta pay extra for those retainers so you can have decent inventory space) in a lot of cases.

All of the (IMO) flaws in the game and how it's run would be mitigated if it wasn't tied to a monthly fee. I think the game would function a LOT better if it was a GW2-style experience, where basic access is free and the income comes from MTX and add-on sales - retainers, "premium access pass," etc. But it would almost certainly make SqEx a lot less money.

[Arlette]

The idea that you need ANY retainers (Even though they give you two for free, conveniently just not mentioned), let alone paid ones for inventory is just so patently untrue unless you're hoarding literally every single item you ever get for no reason.

Also all this suggestion about adding in a WoW-token and turning everything into a MTX store so it could be free to play would absolutely kill the game.

Which based on this subforum seems to be the primary goal of like the same 4 posters who constantly post on it.

Also hard to take anybody seriously who extols WoW while saying FF14's content schedule is too slow, my god lol.

[Arlette]

I love ff14 but 2 retainers is lacking, 4 would be adequate, mostly because once you start hunting relic weapons or crafted gear potentially using old mats too, plus the immense amounts of gear/glam items too.

The rest is just whatever; a f2p option to the last xpac would be great, at the very least.

Yeah there definitely isn't a thingy where you can put 800 glam items that you would want to use that exists in the game.

Also are you actively keeping every single expansions' relic weapon in your actual inventory the whole time you are using it? The one and only way I can ever imagine somebody actually saying its mandatory to play the game to have more than 2 retainers if if you're an omnicrafter trying to do every crafting profession's progression at the exact same time. Even then, that's a stretch.

I swear every post on this subforum is some of the most dramatically overexaggerated statement about the reality of the game.

Also the entire point of having HW be free was to show how dramatically the...well...everything...changed after ARR. I am not opposed to having SB being free (Or even ShB honestly) but its weird that its somehow a ding against the game that it's not giving multiple expansions for free instead of just being a good bonus.

[Xilurm]

I want to preface that this discussion is not me trying to "gotcha" or "find blame" or belittle you. I really want to understand HOW you came to that experience and what if anything could have been done to prevent it and cross reference it with FF14's expectations it places on a player.

1. With that said how did you get to max level? Grind dungeons? quest?
2. Did you do it as Disc or Shadow (DPS spec)?
3. How long if you had a to estimate did it take you (# of hrs played)?
4. Was this your first dungeon in WoW? first dungeon as a healer?
5. You heard Disc was hard to play. How did you hear this? Did you look up any external info on how to play the class effectively? How about for FF14? Did you ever look up info how to play healer or was it all just learned from doing?

In WoW I got to max lvl by doing quests, that's my preferred way of playing the game.

I did quest as Disc yeah. I don't want to level using one spec then switching when I reach max lvl.

I already had my Priest leveled up a little while before SL came out, so I was ready to jump in and do the new zones. Getting to max lvl took me like 3 days maybe? I don't like rushing.

It was my first max level dungeon as a healer yes.

I heard from friends that also play WoW, said that Disc is one of the hardest healers to play. The only time I ever looked up how to play a healer effectively was when I was learning it in FFXIV. Like when to use shields or regen. Basic stuff. You don't really need a rotation for healers in XIV as opposed to when playing a dps or a tank. The hardest content I've ever cleared as a healer in XIV was E1S in ShB and O6S in SB. Never been above the 2nd floor in a savage raid, just didn't bother trying to do them.

I tried applying the same logic in WoW with the exception that healers in WoW don't have to do as much damage as the healers in XIV. Thing is Disc actually required you to do damage to heal, but it was very miniscule. So maybe it was my gear or something.

[Ghost of Cow]

Also hard to take anybody seriously who extols WoW while saying FF14's content schedule is too slow, my god lol.

I mean, XIVs content schedule IS pretty slow. This is another one of those things that there's really no point in arguing, the data is right there.

- - - Updated - - -

I tried applying the same logic in WoW with the exception that healers in WoW don't have to do as much damage as the healers in XIV. Thing is Disc actually required you to do damage to heal, but it was very miniscule. So maybe it was my gear or something.

This is actually a pretty big misconception, WoW healers should be doing a lot of damage whenever they can, too. (Especially in M+, your damage contribution can be a huge deal.)

[Grinning Serpent]

The idea that you need ANY retainers (Even though they give you two for free, conveniently just not mentioned), let alone paid ones for inventory is just so patently untrue unless you're hoarding literally every single item you ever get for no reason.

Also all this suggestion about adding in a WoW-token and turning everything into a MTX store so it could be free to play would absolutely kill the game.

Which based on this subforum seems to be the primary goal of like the same 4 posters who constantly post on it.

Also hard to take anybody seriously who extols WoW while saying FF14's content schedule is too slow, my god lol.

Bro, even fucking Blizzard understands that people need more bag space as more items are put into the game. That's why add-on bags get bigger over time (increasing default backpack size is apparently really complicated), why they added the reagent bag and reagent bank, and why they're frequently increasing stack sizes, shifting things to currency instead of items, etc.

If XIV added a fifth "reagent" bag, and added a "reagents" tab to retainers, that would likely resolve major inventory space issues for 7.0 at least. Two retainers is plenty *unless* you're a crafter. Because then you're going to fill them with reagents you can't buy from beast tribes and which are an annoyance to gather manually (typically because they're timed, or they have to be purchased with currency, etc.) FWIW, WoW's ability to pull things from your bank for crafting is something that should be default in both games. If it's in any of your bags/retainers, it should be treated as you having it on hand.


WoW's content pushes are inconsistent. XIV's are consistent, but slow. Neither is really ideal. Both are, IMO, good examples of why neither should be operating on a monthly subscription fee model, at least from a consumer standpoint. I'm not really sure how adopting a GW2-style system would kill XIV. There is *already* an MTX store, and it's quite frankly aggressively predatory. The prices are obscene - $10 to change skin tone or face, which can be done for free in WoW. $20 for an outfit for *ONE CHARACTER*. WoW's are no better, and the prices for race change are quite a lot higher than a bottle of fantasia, but at least the stuff there is account-wide. Neither game is exactly free of predatory MTX bullshit.

Being able to exchange gold/gil for gems/tokens also *kills* RMT. It means you can quite literally buy gold/game time direct from the dev, so why the fuck would you ever buy it from some sketchy third party? So long as gil/gold cannot buy power (and they can't), there is no downside.

[Reive]

Played xiv 2 months ago when the game was on sale. Managed to finish the story and do a bit of endgame.

what i liked: the story, the music, the trials and the cat girls

what i didn't like:

1) the gameplay is lacking in terms of rpg elements. No talents, gear is mostly homogenized, rotations are static and combo based. The difference between you and any other player with the same job is the name.

2) the game feels clunky to play. Movements and netcode are weird. the animation lock can be awful with certain jobs (dragoon)

3) the world is uninteresting. the zones serve no purpose other than being spots to progress the msq. No secrets to find, the exploration is mostly on rail and there is a huge lack of verticality. The flying is basically useless because its only purpose is to make travelling faster but by the time you get it, you're mostly done with the zones of that expansion.

4) everything is instanced. Loading screens and invisible walls everywhere. They're really off putting especially when the msq makes you through a bunch of them in the span of 1 minute.

5) the levelling is bad. if you want to lvl up, you're mostly forced to do it thrugh the msq because 1) almost all content is gated behind it; 2) the sidequests reward a ridiculously low amount of experience.

6) the dungeon design is the incredibly linear. every dungeon is a corridor designed like this: 2 packs of trash>boss>2 packs of trash>boss>2 packs of trash>last boss.

7) the endgame is like a large but shallow puddle. there are many activities, but unless you're into raiding, most of them are basically once and done.

[Sharby]

-snip-

You are not smart, just angry. I won't even bring up WoW since it would be too easy.

Its very obvious that XIV's content cycles are a downside of the game, they even increased the amount of time between patches but have not added new content to make up for it. Releasing two Ultimates is a good improvement, but even that isn't enough, an Ultimate should release with a new Alliance Raid Wing every odd patch at minimum.

Most of the content they release on patch doesn't even last an entire month of sub, there is no reason for the rest to be staggered for weeks at a time.

Which again is the reason why I say the best time to play XIV is at the start and end of expansion. It removes this downside entirely and leads to quite a fulfilling experience.


--

If you only play a single Job or role then yes, the inventory is adequate. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people do not only play one role, and that's where the problems arise.

When I played the game seriously, I was a big completionist and wanted to get every job to max and get all of their associated sets and relic weapons. Including crafters and gatherers. My inventory quickly became a nightmare, so I mitigated it with the available storage options, but soon, those also became a nightmare to the point where I only ever had one to two bag windows of freespace. Everything else both on my character and off was filled to the brim. This has probably been alleviated by the addition of more glamor dresser slots, but it is a band-aid that will become a problem later on. I never paid for more inventory space however, so it is possible to manage with the default tools, but I also never said it was mandatory so idk where you got that from. You can blame me for being such a collector I suppose, but in a game that encourages me to collect it is a needless punishment.

The devs have also have gone on record stating that due to server/coding limitations they cannot address inventory permanently, they agree that it is a problem that they only have temporary solutions for, so I'm not sure why you are even bothering to argue the point.

--

As someone with ~ 150 million Gil in XIV and a fully furnished estate at the time of uninstalling, gil is largely meaningless to me. Especially since I stopped raiding, there is virtually nothing to spend it on aside from overpriced treasure map cosmetics that freefall after two weeks.

I would like to spend gil on a sub because it would give me something meaningful to regularly spend my gil on and would lead to me playing more due removing the only paywall.

There is nothing underhanded about the sentiment, so I don't know how you got to the conclusion I want to kill the game.

[Ghost of Cow]

I never understood the bag space issue. What exactly are people saving? I still barely scratch all my inventory space, and that's as an omnicrafter with a decent stock of materials at any given time (don't just hoard everything, most things depreciate pretty badly.) materials and parts stocked up for three FC houses worth of subs, a section of bag space just for saving relic/quest materials, all jobs at 90 with sets of gear, and so on.

It's hard to envision what exactly people are doing that requires SO much space.

[Sharby]

I never understood the bag space issue. What exactly are people saving? I still barely scratch all my inventory space, and that's as an omnicrafter with a decent stock of materials at any given time (don't just hoard everything, most things depreciate pretty badly.) materials and parts stocked up for three FC houses worth of subs, a section of bag space just for saving relic/quest materials, all jobs at 90 with sets of gear, and so on.

It's hard to envision what exactly people are doing that requires SO much space.

Its simple, do roulette/farm/etc , find piece that I hand't considered before but think looks nice, add to the pile.


Repeat, and this is only one example.


I think the focus should be moved away from "does this happen?" Because it does and the devs have taken action based on it happening to enough people.


Though I will concede that there really isn't more to discuss, since they've also stated that they will work on a much more permanent fix once they're able to.

[Arlette]

Yeahhhh....I have over 300 million gil and have never once ran out of space. Not even on my base character, let alone with the free retainers.

I dunno what fantasy world you're living in but yeah.

[Grinning Serpent]

Its very obvious that XIV's content cycles are a downside of the game, they even increased the amount of time between patches but have not added new content to make up for it. Releasing two Ultimates is a good improvement, but even that isn't enough, an Ultimate should release with a new Alliance Raid Wing every odd patch at minimum.

Hot take: fewer Ultimates, not more. The number of players who even attempt ultimates, let alone clear them, is absurdly low. It's an extremely poor cost-benefit production. It's like Mythic in WoW - it's something they can advertise and something that might get their game some publicity during RFW, but I don't think it's a good investment of dev resources. Especially when it's pretty clear that ultimates are very costly from that standpoint.

If we're concerned about patches "not having enough stuff to do," ultimates are most certainly not the answer. Not for the vast majority of players. Maybe 20-30% of players participate in savage while they are current, it's like... a third of that at most for ultimates.

I'll plug my idea of "unreal dungeons" again. Every patch brings 5 old dungeons refurbished to be roughly on par with an Ex in difficulty (bosses have generous enrage timers and their mechanics must be respected, probably also make trash hit harder), one from each expansion period. Let players vote on their favorites during the first 4 weeks of a patch, winners are chosen to be the next 5. Can't pick the same dungeon twice before all other dungeons in the expansion have been selected. This is in addition to Criterion dungeons (which IMO should be on even patches together with savages and drop a single coffer each week as personal loot for clearing, with chest/weapon coffers excluded.) Blue Mage would be permitted in Unreal dungeons, but enemies would mostly be immune to Death and Gravity (Missile/Launcher) type effects and might have increased resistance to effects like Deep Freeze (reduced duration.)

I don't think the majority of players want sweaty content. But there's tons of shit they can do with preexisting content and they just... don't. The challenge would be coming up with rewards to make people want to keep doing Unreal dungeons after two or three weeks. That's always been the issue with a lot of content... they aren't providing enough incentive for people to do it. It's an MMO, people need a carrot.

- - - Updated - - -

I never understood the bag space issue. What exactly are people saving? I still barely scratch all my inventory space, and that's as an omnicrafter with a decent stock of materials at any given time (don't just hoard everything, most things depreciate pretty badly.) materials and parts stocked up for three FC houses worth of subs, a section of bag space just for saving relic/quest materials, all jobs at 90 with sets of gear, and so on.

It's hard to envision what exactly people are doing that requires SO much space.

It fills up really fast if you want to keep a comprehensive selection of materials on hand. Even if you don't stock anything that you can go buy from a vendor, it adds up fast across five expansions. This, without taking into consideration keeping dyes, glamour pieces (800 is *not* enough, trust me), etc.