Final fantasy XIV any good?

[Delterius]

The Golbez trial was fairly complicated.

I was there. The point was not about complexity. Of course the game grew in complexity over time. It also developed an affinity for certain raid mechanics over others, which is how you notice that a given ARR fight was re-designed.

 

[Joggerino]

She's not wrong - Raiders make up a minority of the player base, especially outside JP.

I did a bit of a dive into the recent Lucky Bancho data and ordered it by normalised raid clear rates:

At best, a fifth of active level 90 characters have cleared the current Savage tier. And that's JP, on Chocobo - JP raiders run many alts to do "merc" runs, it's a big part of raiding on JP, so that's probably not a fifth of all players, just of all level 90 characters.

Outside of JP it's even worse - Under 10% of level 90 characters clear Savage.

The majority of this game's player base are honestly terrible - They can often barely clear dungeons, let alone trials or raids. The difficulty of jobs is geared around ensuring that these players are able to clear "normal" content even if they sit there with their thumb up their arse and cast one spell every other GCD. Raiders check out of the game after a little while generally, I'm certainly down to raidlogging as I mentioned above, and my static is all pretty much the same - Log on once a week to do Savage, and once or twice for FC events where I drag them through Thaleia or something.

Raiden? More like Raidin'


Anyway, very interesting info. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Hirato]

The Golbez trial was fairly complicated.

I was there. The point was not about complexity. Of course the game grew in complexity over time. It also developed an affinity for certain raid mechanics over others, which is how you notice that a given ARR fight was re-designed.

Honestly, I can't think of a single redesign I like.
I genuinely hate every single one I've noticed, even the one for Copperbell Mines.

My first introduction to them was rolling Keeper of the Lake in roulette.
My only reaction to that entire dungeon was an utterly baffled "What have they done...? The first two bosses feel awful and Midgardsormr is a joke; why have they done this...? who was this for...?"

My second was The Aery, where I was dumbfounded to see that Estinien was no longer part of the concluding boss fight, considering his role and the thematic nature of it.

I did go through Hullbreaker Isle thinking "oh wow, a redesign I actually like!"
Then I looked up the "original" to find that it is completely unchanged.
It's just been so long that I had no memory of ever clearing it.



I think I'm going to uninstall the game for good if Dawntrail doesn't shake things up.
Endwalker kind of concluded everything, so it's the perfect time.
I find the current design direction repellent
And I'm growing increasingly despondent that things will never change or get better, including my favourite job (scholar) soon reaching its 5 year anniversary of being a wretched empty shell of its stormblood iteration.

 

[Delterius]

Honestly, I can't think of a single redesign I like.
I genuinely hate every single one I've noticed, even the one for Copperbell Mines.

I'll be honest, I'm more than ok with things like the Copperbell Mines redesign. Streamlining 'puzzle' dungeons that were never noteworthy in the first place is a good thing. These and others like Brayflox or Tam-Tara I categorize as good, since they involve content that had always been either too easy or boring in the first place. Besides with the way classes keep getting their buttons expanded at high levels and pruned at low levels you get, like, one healing spell for many of these and it's often a hard GCD.

The redesigns I dislike are, like you said, the Aery. They change the 'story' of the fight. Granted Moggle Mog normal was always a bit too easy, but it was possible to wipe on it and the ad mechanic is just gone. The 'moglesguard' is absent from their 'episode', just like Estinien is absent from the Aery.

Where I think things go from dislike to where I find them to be genuinely bad are when the intensity of the learning curve is messed with. Keeper of the Lake used to be a major teaching moment as it was a relatively hard dungeon, but with Midgardsorm's mechanics pruned it's just a dungeon like any other. Now that I'm relevelling from the start the first content that posed a challenge was ARF, and even then most bosses were nerfed (understandable, this is ancient content) or had mechanics pruned (like with Ascian Prime's black holes). That said ARF's final boss was still fun, but I'm sad to see everything before it was made more tame.

To give credit where it's due, the way I see it the crowning jewel of the overhauls was the ARR finale. With all the build up around Van Baelsar's coterie, their content was always pathetic. Even at release. Now at least it's entertaining, though easy. I wish they'd do an overhaul for Thordan's story trial. I don't expect it to be actually hard. Just make it more than sastasha levels of pathetic. Make it at least as 'hard' as Ravana's hard trial and it would be fine.

And I'm growing increasingly despondent that things will never change or get better, including my favourite job (scholar) soon reaching its 5 year anniversary of being a wretched empty shell of its stormblood iteration.

On healer design I'm as despondent as you are. And as I mentioned in this thread, there's no reason to believe anything will improve given that the designers just don't play healers themselves.

Ironically I started playing scholar because I just can't get into Astrologian the way it is today. It's kind of sad to realize that so much time has passed that people now argue between the Shadowbringers and Endwalker versions of AST, rather than about the time it had an actual card system.

 

[Trithne]

I think I'm going to uninstall the game for good if Dawntrail doesn't shake things up.

It won't.

They're committed to this design path. The wife and I have already decided that we'll check out 7.0 and then probably quit. We won't have time to raid anyway what with starting a family, and it's unlikely to be worth trying whatever shit they make for the raid series, which will likely be just as bad as the current one.

Ironically I started playing scholar because I just can't get into Astrologian the way it is today. It's kind of sad to realize that so much time has passed that people now argue between the Shadowbringers and Endwalker versions of AST, rather than about the time it had an actual card system.

Stormblood was peak job design, with a few exceptions. Then they just threw everything out the window in Shadowbringers.

 

[Hirato]

I'll be honest, I'm more than ok with things like the Copperbell Mines redesign. Streamlining 'puzzle' dungeons that were never noteworthy in the first place is a good thing. These and others like Brayflox or Tam-Tara I categorize as good, since they involve content that had always been either too easy or boring in the first place. Besides with the way classes keep getting their buttons expanded at high levels and pruned at low levels you get, like, one healing spell for many of these and it's often a hard GCD.

I didn't mind them.
They were nothing exciting, but they were unique mechanics.
Unique mechanics, even bad ones, are significantly more entertaining than just recycling extremely simplified mechanics from shadowbringers with a similarly anaemic hotbar.

On healer design I'm as despondent as you are. And as I mentioned in this thread, there's no reason to believe anything will improve given that the designers just don't play healers themselves.

Ironically I started playing scholar because I just can't get into Astrologian the way it is today. It's kind of sad to realize that so much time has passed that people now argue between the Shadowbringers and Endwalker versions of AST, rather than about the time it had an actual card system.

I see it more as a sign that people are just desperate for any sort of stimulation.
I played Noct Ast a lot in shadowbringers, since it got kind of close to the same high I felt from stormblood's SCH, but that too is now gone.

 

[Tyrr]

They had to streamline all the main story dungeons for the Duty Support.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

They had to streamline all the main story dungeons for the Duty Support.

There are also plenty of raids that are not in duty support. Coils of Bahamut, All the Alexander, Omega, Eden, Nier, and the other chains of trials. The Save the queen storyline raids.

 

[Dadd]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

The game is pretty nice. Plays mostly like a Jrpg excellent writing and a lot of gameplay gimmics. The world is overall interesting. Has ton of content too. The graphic is a bit outdated but this will change a bit with the 7.0. Music is just perfection.

 

[Dadd]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

The game is pretty nice. Plays mostly like a Jrpg excellent writing and a lot of gameplay gimmics. The world is overall interesting. Has ton of content too. The graphic is a bit outdated but this will change a bit with the 7.0. Music is just perfection.

What do you mean, it plays mostly like a JRPG? Like Dragon Quest? Rance?

 

[Tyrr]

They had to streamline all the main story dungeons for the Duty Support.

There are also plenty of raids that are not in duty support. Coils of Bahamut, All the Alexander, Omega, Eden, Nier, and the other chains of trials. The Save the queen storyline raids.

Yes. That's why they only changed the old dungeons that got Duty Support. The AI couldn't handle the old mechanics.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

The game is pretty nice. Plays mostly like a Jrpg excellent writing and a lot of gameplay gimmics. The world is overall interesting. Has ton of content too. The graphic is a bit outdated but this will change a bit with the 7.0. Music is just perfection.

What do you mean, it plays mostly like a JRPG? Like Dragon Quest? Rance?

The game is a 400+ hour long visual novel. The visual novel is mandatory to go through because all content in the game is unlocked by story progression. It's not like WoW where the story is meh but unobtrusive and you can skip past it and jump straight into the endgame. 200+ hours watching canned cutscenes, another 100 hours is reading NPC dialogue boxes, another 50 hours is travelling to the next NPC to talk to or picking flowers or two shotting a couple quest mobs out in the field, and then another 50 hours is running through boring corridor dungeons and solo instances.

ARR is boring (even after the rework) but still has the most interesting setting. The story is somewhat engaging up through Stormblood, when it was about localized geopolitical turmoil and conflict between nations and the protagonist hadn't become superman yet. After Stormblood, the writing goes off the rails and becomes about mastrubating to the player as much as possible at the expense of the setting, the country vs country conflict is pushed to the background and then eventually forgotten altogether as everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, every country you visit turns into a boring democracy, and you have to put up with the obnoxious Scions who are now in the foreground. And then you had the incredibly hypocritical Endwalker storyline. Fuck that was awful.

Once you finally beat the story, there is nothing to do except do the same current raid over and over again (and FFXIV raids have design issues that make them unenjoyable compared to WoW's or even GW2's), or do the farmville island. This was the first expansion without an endgame grind zone to progress through like Eureka or Bozja, which kept players occupied after they had beaten the story. There is no talents or character customization. Every job plays the same. Almost every boss fight is against a single boss on a flat circular or square platform is about moving out of AoEs or you die. The engine is unresponsive which makes the PvP feel awful.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

The game is pretty nice. Plays mostly like a Jrpg excellent writing and a lot of gameplay gimmics. The world is overall interesting. Has ton of content too. The graphic is a bit outdated but this will change a bit with the 7.0. Music is just perfection.

What do you mean, it plays mostly like a JRPG? Like Dragon Quest? Rance?

The game is a 400+ hour long visual novel. The visual novel is mandatory to go through because all content in the game is unlocked by story progression. It's not like WoW where the story is meh but unobtrusive and you can skip past it and jump straight into the endgame. 200+ hours watching canned cutscenes, another 100 hours is reading NPC dialogue boxes, another 50 hours is travelling to the next NPC to talk to or picking flowers or two shotting a couple quest mobs out in the field, and then another 50 hours is running through boring corridor dungeons and solo instances.

ARR is boring (even after the rework) but still has the most interesting setting. The story is somewhat engaging up through Stormblood, when it was about localized geopolitical turmoil and conflict between nations and the protagonist hadn't become superman yet. After Stormblood, the writing goes off the rails and becomes about mastrubating to the player as much as possible at the expense of the setting, the country vs country conflict is pushed to the background and then eventually forgotten altogether as everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, every country you visit turns into a boring democracy, and you have to put up with the obnoxious Scions who are now in the foreground. And then you had the incredibly hypocritical Endwalker storyline. Fuck that was awful.

Once you finally beat the story, there is nothing to do except do the same current raid over and over again (and FFXIV raids have design issues that make them unenjoyable compared to WoW's or even GW2's), or do the farmville island. This was the first expansion without an endgame grind zone to progress through like Eureka or Bozja, which kept players occupied after they had beaten the story. There is no talents or character customization. Every job plays the same. Almost every boss fight is against a single boss on a flat circular or square platform is about moving out of AoEs or you die. The engine is unresponsive which makes the PvP feel awful.

That is indeed largely inaccurate. Is not just questing and story you have Crafting, Glamour, Sporty Pvp, Lot of side content, Player driven and organized social activity, a fantastic community,housing, island sanctuary,variant dungeon and so on so forth. With your post you describeb world of warcraft that may have talents or character customization if you can pass the horrid artstyle of modern wow and the same fetch quest galore the game presents with a terrible narrative and cringe inducing cutscene. The pvp feels nice FF14 is not unresponsibe at all but lacks the fluidity of wow not by much.

FF14 is a better mmo in pretty much everything but pvp (if you look open world pvp) raiding in wow is terrible not only is almost unplayable if you don't use addons but the community is ubertoxic. Not to mention that Wow timegates you in stupid rep farms or make you farm like crazy to obtain stuff that will be useless the next expansion has a screwed up economy (thanks to the wow token making a sub game effectively pay to win).

You clearly are a wow shill.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Is this game more deeper and compelling than Project Quarm?

The game is pretty nice. Plays mostly like a Jrpg excellent writing and a lot of gameplay gimmics. The world is overall interesting. Has ton of content too. The graphic is a bit outdated but this will change a bit with the 7.0. Music is just perfection.

What do you mean, it plays mostly like a JRPG? Like Dragon Quest? Rance?

It has basically a great narrative focus. With curated characters and arching stories that goes from an expansion to another pretty great storyline as well it makes you get attached to the character the setting even the villains. Is not a game to be played in the classical mmo term like skipping dialogues and not following the events. Just like a final fantasy game.

 

[Hirato]

They had to streamline all the main story dungeons for the Duty Support.

They got rid of everything.
I'd estimate 90% of the mechs were perfectly approachable by the bots, but they just didn't want to put the effort in.
The other 10% were mechs like the Yeti's snowballs in Snowcloak, where I'm sad it's gone, but I'm at least understanding in that the bots have extremely limited ability to actually react on the fly.

That said, the bots are absolute garbage.
They were not worth ruining the game for.
In its current state, Duty Support and Trusts aren't worth using unless you average 30m+ wait times for dungeon queues.

Even when you use them, the tank is timid, the healer is impotent, and the DPS are useless.
And all of the mare too dumb to ever use an AoE, which is a big reason these bots turn a quick 12-15m dungeon into a painful 40m slog.
That's assuming you make no mistakes, especially during pulls, because the tank AI makes tanks that never activate their stance in Duty Finder look competent.
I can understand the "But if we make them too good then no one will play with others" perspective.
But this is so awful, I don't understand why they even bothered.

Outside of The Mothercrystal, which is like the one instance where it feels like Duty Support was part actually properly incorporated into the design.

 

[Trithne]

That said, the bots are absolute garbage.
They were not worth ruining the game for.
In its current state, Duty Support and Trusts aren't worth using unless you average 30m+ wait times for dungeon queues.

Duty Support was put in to cater to the increasingly large subset of players that, for whatever reason, don't want the MMO in their MMORPG. Basically, they had to make FFXIV into FFXII.

That is indeed largely inaccurate. Is not just questing and story you have Crafting, Glamour, Sporty Pvp, Lot of side content, Player driven and organized social activity, a fantastic community,housing, island sanctuary,variant dungeon and so on so forth. With your post you describeb world of warcraft that may have talents or character customization if you can pass the horrid artstyle of modern wow and the same fetch quest galore the game presents with a terrible narrative and cringe inducing cutscene. The pvp feels nice FF14 is not unresponsibe at all but lacks the fluidity of wow not by much.

FF14 is a better mmo in pretty much everything but pvp (if you look open world pvp) raiding in wow is terrible not only is almost unplayable if you don't use addons but the community is ubertoxic. Not to mention that Wow timegates you in stupid rep farms or make you farm like crazy to obtain stuff that will be useless the next expansion has a screwed up economy (thanks to the wow token making a sub game effectively pay to win).

You clearly are a wow shill.

Nah, that's an accurate depiction of the game from the perspective of most people:

• Long ass story. If you like the story that's fine, I do and I read it all, but I've been playing since ARR, and I don't have to catch up. if a new player wants to both appreciate the story and play endgame, they'll have to rush through literally hundreds of hours of cutscenes or buy a skip from the cash shop.
• Frankly the story does go to shit after Stormblood when it goes from interesting geopolitics and a fairly grounded setting to saving-all-of-time-and-space.
• Crafting exists to fuel three things - Raiding, Housing, and Glamour.
• Half the player base can't afford a house and the other half can't buy one because of shortages, and if you do have a house, it's basically impossible to make it look decent without using third-party tools like BDTO, and you'll end up using one floor of a three-story building because you've levitated shit all over the place and the basement looks like an Escher painting.
• Glamour is just "Do the other content in the game to make an outfit". It has the same issues that half the good glams are gated behind sitting through more goddamn story and doing the braindead content, or becoming an omni-crafter, or buying it from the cash shop.
• FFXIV PvP has some nice ideas ruined by unplayable levels of shitty netcode. They don't care because it works okay in Japan.
  • Not even joking, Titan EX was nigh-impossible in NA back in ARR because of the shit netcode and they didn't believe anyone until someone made YoshiP try it.

FFXIV has a lot of cute and fluffy features that ultimately come down to either "More combat content that is ruined by the absolutely braindead design of classes and encounters now" or "Great Community By The Way, by which we mean playing fashion fantasy and ERPing in 'nightclubs' or just straight up in Limsa."

Stop being a prime example of the GCBTW - The game has issues and pretending like it doesn't will just make the game worse.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

That said, the bots are absolute garbage.
They were not worth ruining the game for.
In its current state, Duty Support and Trusts aren't worth using unless you average 30m+ wait times for dungeon queues.

Duty Support was put in to cater to the increasingly large subset of players that, for whatever reason, don't want the MMO in their MMORPG. Basically, they had to make FFXIV into FFXII.

That is indeed largely inaccurate. Is not just questing and story you have Crafting, Glamour, Sporty Pvp, Lot of side content, Player driven and organized social activity, a fantastic community,housing, island sanctuary,variant dungeon and so on so forth. With your post you describeb world of warcraft that may have talents or character customization if you can pass the horrid artstyle of modern wow and the same fetch quest galore the game presents with a terrible narrative and cringe inducing cutscene. The pvp feels nice FF14 is not unresponsibe at all but lacks the fluidity of wow not by much.

FF14 is a better mmo in pretty much everything but pvp (if you look open world pvp) raiding in wow is terrible not only is almost unplayable if you don't use addons but the community is ubertoxic. Not to mention that Wow timegates you in stupid rep farms or make you farm like crazy to obtain stuff that will be useless the next expansion has a screwed up economy (thanks to the wow token making a sub game effectively pay to win).

You clearly are a wow shill.

Nah, that's an accurate depiction of the game from the perspective of most people:

• Long ass story. If you like the story that's fine, I do and I read it all, but I've been playing since ARR, and I don't have to catch up. if a new player wants to both appreciate the story and play endgame, they'll have to rush through literally hundreds of hours of cutscenes or buy a skip from the cash shop.
• Frankly the story does go to shit after Stormblood when it goes from interesting geopolitics and a fairly grounded setting to saving-all-of-time-and-space.
• Crafting exists to fuel three things - Raiding, Housing, and Glamour.
• Half the player base can't afford a house and the other half can't buy one because of shortages, and if you do have a house, it's basically impossible to make it look decent without using third-party tools like BDTO, and you'll end up using one floor of a three-story building because you've levitated shit all over the place and the basement looks like an Escher painting.
• Glamour is just "Do the other content in the game to make an outfit". It has the same issues that half the good glams are gated behind sitting through more goddamn story and doing the braindead content, or becoming an omni-crafter, or buying it from the cash shop.
• FFXIV PvP has some nice ideas ruined by unplayable levels of shitty netcode. They don't care because it works okay in Japan.
  • Not even joking, Titan EX was nigh-impossible in NA back in ARR because of the shit netcode and they didn't believe anyone until someone made YoshiP try it.

FFXIV has a lot of cute and fluffy features that ultimately come down to either "More combat content that is ruined by the absolutely braindead design of classes and encounters now" or "Great Community By The Way, by which we mean playing fashion fantasy and ERPing in 'nightclubs' or just straight up in Limsa."

Stop being a prime example of the GCBTW - The game has issues and pretending like it doesn't will just make the game worse.

Dude come on i got wow as primer example when wow had no feature is always the same cycle of: Go kill mob leveling-Do dungeons- Raid rinse and repeat. The story does not go to shit and not all the stories must always be about geopolitic considering the other expansions have totally different themes.

"

• Half the player base can't afford a house and the other half can't buy one because of shortages, and if you do have a house, it's basically impossible to make it look decent without using third-party tools like BDTO, and you'll end up using one floor of a three-story building because you've levitated shit all over the place and the basement looks like an Escher painting.

Again wrong most players have apartments and you can make it look good with no addons. Wow has no housing.

• Glamour is just "Do the other content in the game to make an outfit". It has the same issues that half the good glams are gated behind sitting through more goddamn story and doing the braindead content, or becoming an omni-crafter, or buying it from the cash shop.

You want stuff you do content. That is actually how to design rewards for doing content. The content is not braindead at all again this is not wow. It has a lot of variations and never gets the same as long you progress with the storyline trough the expansion.

• FFXIV PvP has some nice ideas ruined by unplayable levels of shitty netcode. They don't care because it works okay in Japan.
  • Not even joking, Titan EX was nigh-impossible in NA back in ARR because of the shit netcode and they didn't believe anyone until someone made YoshiP try it.

Pvp is working now. But is not as expansive people want it to be is implemented more like something people do for fun rather than being forced on you.

I am not a prime example of the GCBTW i just compared a game with a lot of different content and diversified one with a game that does the same things from years timegating the player behind useless grind in wich the late expansion story consist in "Oh no Cromie is sad".

Heck even BDO this days is far more engaging than world of warcraft no surprise wow hardcore player shill for classic since the latetst expansions were one more cringe than the other.

Come on dude.

 

[Trithne]

I am not a prime example of the GCBTW i just compared a game with a lot of different content and diversified one with a game that does the same things from years timegating the player behind useless grind in wich the late expansion story consist in "Oh no Cromie is sad".

Heck even BDO this days is far more engaging than world of warcraft no surprise wow hardcore player shill for classic since the latetst expansions were one more cringe than the other.

Come on dude.

Where did I mention WoW? You're the only one who keeps comparing FFXIV to WoW here.

The whole point of my argument is that "FFXIV is not as good as it used to be because they've dumbed it down and the community pretends there's nothing wrong with it."

WoW doesn't enter into it.

Stop mindlessly defending the game.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

I am not a prime example of the GCBTW i just compared a game with a lot of different content and diversified one with a game that does the same things from years timegating the player behind useless grind in wich the late expansion story consist in "Oh no Cromie is sad".

Heck even BDO this days is far more engaging than world of warcraft no surprise wow hardcore player shill for classic since the latetst expansions were one more cringe than the other.

Come on dude.

Where did I mention WoW? You're the only one who keeps comparing FFXIV to WoW here.

The whole point of my argument is that "FFXIV is not as good as it used to be because they've dumbed it down and the community pretends there's nothing wrong with it."

WoW doesn't enter into it.

Stop mindlessly defending the game.

I did tho. Not you but the other poster did the comparsion and spew missinformation.

 

[Myobi]

I swear, every time I pass by this thread the local fangirl here is triggered because someone was slightly critical about the damned thing, pathetic.

You were far more likable when you deleted your fucking account, you should had kept it that way.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

I swear, every time I pass by this thread the local fangirl here is triggered because someone was slightly critical about the damned thing, pathetic.

You were far more likable when you deleted your fucking account, you should had kept it that way.

Ciricism is well accepted lies are not.

 

[Myobi]

Ciricism is well accepted lies are not.

If you interpret "This shit is boring as fuck boiiiiiiiii!" as factual information then that's a you problem.

Plus, you were just saying that WoW's raiding is "almost unplayable", but thats "ciricism", am I right? ^^;

 

[Dr1f7]

i dont like that ffxiv has giant red circles or columns that appear in areas that you're supposed to move out of
totally ruins the immersion for me

 

[Trithne]

i dont like that ffxiv has giant red circles or columns that appear in areas that you're supposed to move out of
totally ruins the immersion for me

Back in the day they used to provide an in-universe justification for that - Since all player characters have the "Echo", an ability that basically makes them the Kwisatz Haderach, you see the danger markers because you've seen the future and know it's going to happen. Also, every time you wipe on a fight you were just seeing a potential future in which you failed.

That's still technically the given reason for the markers, but they don't really bother to justify it with how mechanics are presented anymore.