Final Fantasy XIV: My Thoughts

[Aikouka]

Recently, I had stumbled across a video showing that Square-Enix had added not only God Kefka, but also Phantom Train and that one completely forgettable boss from Final Fantasy VI into Final Fantasy XIV as a raid encounter. Well, as you can expect, this got my nerdy nostalgia all rev'd up and excited. I wanted to play this. I purchased A Realm Reborn (ARR) many years ago, but to be honest, I hated Ul'dah so much that I quit the game. Let's just say that it's bad when you think a city is laid out worse than a Horde city from World of WarCraft. Amusingly enough, I think that if I had started in Limsa Lominsa or Gridania that I would've had far less qualms, but I'll get into that.

I've played the game quite a bit so far, but I'm also at the breaking point where I'm strongly considering quitting again. I thought it might be interesting to discuss why.

1. I don't think the game respects the player's time. Let's be real here... MMOs are meant to be a time sink, but that nature has to be properly balanced. You give the player the agency to choose their own adventure or provide an adventure, but you need to make sure that adventure feels somewhat meaningful. The biggest problem here is with the Main Scenario Quest (MSQ). For anyone that hasn't played, the Main Scenario Quest is essentially the main quest line in the game. You can arguably skip all other quests that aren't the MSQ, and complete the main story of the game. Essentially, they've attempted to craft a single-player game into an MMO. There are two main issues with it (1) you cannot progress until you've completed each quest, and (2) the quests aren't always impactful.

These two points sort of tie together in that the base game and each expansion have their own set of MSQ quests. However, the part that becomes awkward and arguably annoying for new players is that Square-Enix also added MSQ quests with major patches (e.g. 2.1, 2.2, etc.), and you must complete these as well. ARR has 184 MSQ quests and its subsequent patches add another 101 quests. About half of those patch quests feel incredibly menial, and given that they're gating the next expansion (Heavensward) on these quests, it's a bit frustrating. I'll be frank in that I nearly blew my lid when the game gave me a quest to get tea leaves. That is an example of not respecting my time. What's worse is that each patch introduced about 15-20 quests, and half of them are boring and trivial, and the other half lead to fighting another primal.

2. Crafting is based on RNG. When I first started crafting, I found it interesting that it was far more involved than WoW's simple provide the mats, press the button, and watch the bar just go to 100%. However, it became quite apparent that anything beyond the most basic, normal quality (NQ) crafting would involve RNG, and the result can be awkwardly frustrating. I'd love to give a quick explanation of crafting to help make it more understandable, but as I was writing it up, I realized that there's no such thing as a "quick explanation" of FFXIV's crafting. Basically, the best way to get an HQ item is to use an ability that raises quality but has a low chance at succeeding (50%). You attempt to modify this with an ability that grants a bonus to the success rate (+20% or +30%). I'm not sure if that's additive or multiplicative, but when the ability fails on you six times in a row, you start to get a bit irritated. (There's a .4% chance of that occurring.)

The best way to get around this is to level multiple crafting classes to attain abilities (granted at a specific level) that are also cross-class abilities. For example, getting Careful Synthesis at Weaver 15, Tricks of the Trade at Alchemist 15, Byregot's Blessing at Carpenter 50, Steady Hand 2 at Culinarian 37, and Careful Synthesis 2 at Weaver 50 are very important to being able to successfully craft a recipe. Let's be clear that this is a lot of work, and leveling crafting classes can be quite expensive if you don't also level your gathering classes at the same time. This also segues nice into the next problem.

3. Retainers are a racket. Retainers are a feature that you unlock earlier on in the game, and they serve multiple purposes. The retainer is able to take on a job (normal or gathering) and perform ventures to attain a random item, hunt a specific creature (normal jobs) or gather specific items (gathering). However, they also serve another important role: extra bag space. FFXIV has no bank system, and consequently, retainers effectively serve as your bank. In the beginning, the storage system in FFXIV seems nice as there's no such thing as bags as you simple have a large, immutable amount of space. However, the biggest problem is that FFXIV has so many items that the storage space simply isn't enough. I have four retainers at this point. The first one holds mostly monster drops (skins, fangs, etc.), the second holds botany items, the third holds mining items, and the fourth holds fishing items.

So, it would probably help if I got to the crux of the issue. The problem is that only the first two retainers are free. After that, you have to pay monthly for more retainers. Normally, you might want to try and save space by getting rid of older items, but recipes do use older items ever so often. The only real answer that sort of works is that HQ variants of older items aren't really necessary. Removing them can free up some space, but there are still so many items. What makes this whole thing worse is that Square-Enix attempted to fight gold sellers by making it impossible to mail items to other characters on your account, which makes it harder to make other characters as a mule. (Mules are characters created just to hold items.) After asking about it, the only way to do it is to put the items into the Free Company (i.e. Guild) storage on the mule and remove them on the main.

4. Lag is pretty unbearable. If you took a look at my character and its classes, one thing would stand out... I've largely ignored my caster classes. The reason why is that I keep running into issues with moving and casting. What happens is that I interrupt my casting to move out of an AoE, stop moving, and start casting again. About .2 to .3 seconds later, my new cast gets interrupted. My assumption is that while my game shows me being stopped, the server thinks that I'm still moving. I don't know if this is my connection to the server or the server's update rate that's causing a problem; however, I am in NA playing on NA servers. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to see my latency with the server.

5. The GCD is too long. I spent about ten, non-contiguous years in WoW, and over that time, I got fairly used to WoW's 1.5 second GCD. In FFXIV, the GCD is 2.5 seconds, and it not only makes things feel slower, but it can also make things a bit frustrating when you need to execute things quickly but you're stuck on the GCD. For example, when I'm pulling mobs in a dungeon, I have to face pull in most cases, because using a ranged attack usually leads to me being stuck on the GCD when I need to be using AoE threat moves. Of course, this isn't a big deal when mobs are close together, but you don't always get that luxury.

6. The UI has no modding capability. This is a bit of a nitpick, but I really don't like the UI much. All UI modifications are limited to whatever is built into the game, which isn't bad for a start, but there's a ton of room for improvement. A good example is that your HP and resource bars are stuck in a horizontal line with no simplification available. I prefer simplifying it like I did in WoW with a single block split into bars (HP, Resource, Alt-Resource, EXP (if necessary)).

7. Classes determine your starting city. This can lead to some awkward situations given that you cannot swap between cities until you reach the point in the MSQ when you're sent to the other cities. The lands are connected to a degree, but if you try to make the walk to another town, you must do it without dying. If you die, you have to either be rezzed by another player or get sent back to your Aethyrnet home point. Also, even if you go to another city, the MSQ quests are split between the three cities at the beginning, which means you can't advance the main story if you attempt to go elsewhere. So, all of this means that if you want to be an Archer (Gridania) and your friend wants to be Gladiator (Ul'dah), you have to either (a) play apart until you get to the MSQ to go to another city, or (b) have someone play another class that's in the same city until you get a chance to go to the other city and learn the class. I play on a server with the Road to 60 buff (+100% experience as long as your class/job is below 60), and I was level 30+ when I finally got sent to another city. (You have to be level 15 to swap classes.)


All in all, there are a lot of other smaller things that I'd love to see change. For example, I wish I didn't have to log into the launcher each time I want to load the game. However, I'd be here forever if I listed everything.

 

[nurturedhate]

I agree with 90% of what you said though three things stand out.
1) the GCD being 2.5 sec is far, far worse than you make it out to be.
2) FF14 has by far the worst combat of any MMO possibly ever due the the purposefully introduced lag. During fights you have the standard damage area of a boss ability. You have to move out of the ability several seconds before it goes off. Even more confounding you can move back into the area before it goes off as well and suffer no consequences. You have to play the boss mechanics 2.5 seconds in the future and your own mechanics 2.5 seconds in the past. It is completely disjointed and broken.
3) crafting isn't RNG, it just requires a player to hit certain caps on a multitude of stats while also leveling other specs for abilities (as you mentioned). Very tedious and time consuming.

Wife loves the game, especially crafting. Just finished getting all her gear and melding it to where it's needed. I can't stand the combat in the game to the point where I won't play it. I miss Wildstar's combat.

 

[Aikouka]

1) the GCD being 2.5 sec is far, far worse than you make it out to be.

Oh, no... I've ranted about it a few times in FC and NN chat. I feel a bit bad being "the negative guy", so I try not to rant too often, but I just can't help it. I've always had the most trouble with the GCD on tanking in a dungeon. I feel like it's just too limiting... especially when your DPS are a bit too trigger happy.

Although, speaking of dungeons and pulling, the game bases dungeon running far too much on AoE threat abilities. What makes that even worse is that I mostly play Paladin for tanking, and for a good portion of leveling, you have one AoE threat ability that all it does is apply Blind. It deals absolutely no damage, which makes it really boring... and it also forces you to start pushing diminishing returns on Blind when all you might want is threat. Contrast this to the Warrior whose AoE ability is slightly limited due to it being in a frontal cone, but it deals damage. If you combine it with the ability to make all damage crit and direct hit, you can deal with large packs of enemies quickly. Also, the lack of a real taunt can be quite annoying and seemingly lead to boring boss design. To note, there is a taunt in the game, but it's on a 40-second CD and only places you right at the top with no buffer. The MSQ involves multiple 8-player dungeons (2 Tank, 4 DPS, 2 Healer), and a good chunk of those have nothing for the second tank to do.

Oh, and as a fun aside, playing FFXIV is like dealing with the military... you have to learn all the abbreviations, or you may end up confused. People mostly refer to classes by their abbreviations, and having to constantly look them up or ask just gets tedious.

2) FF14 has by far the worst combat of any MMO possibly ever due the the purposefully introduced lag. During fights you have the standard damage area of a boss ability. You have to move out of the ability several seconds before it goes off. Even more confounding you can move back into the area before it goes off as well and suffer no consequences. You have to play the boss mechanics 2.5 seconds in the future and your own mechanics 2.5 seconds in the past. It is completely disjointed and broken.

I always figured that the AoE telegraph was purposefully done that way. To be honest, it does feel really weird that as long as you weren't standing in the telegraph area when the telegraph goes away, you don't get hit... even if you're visibly getting hit. It's even more weird when you deal with a boss that has a telegraph yet the ability is actually a persistent damage ability, which means you shouldn't move back in.

Although, one thing that I never got into about combat was the absolutely insane glut of abilities. My favorite in WoW was always my pre-WoD Enhancement Shaman. I thought it had just the right amount of abilities and debuffs to track. For my Shaman, I mostly used 1-5 on my keyboard with two modifiers. (I had more abilities and another modifier, but they were mostly for long CD buffs.) In FFXIV, on my Paladin, I use 1-8 on my keyboard with three modifiers.

3) crafting isn't RNG, it just requires a player to hit certain caps on a multitude of stats while also leveling other specs for abilities (as you mentioned). Very tedious and time consuming.

Eh... there's definitely RNG in crafting. I've used all HQ mats in a recipe, and still came out with an NQ item due to bad RNG. I mean... my 40-durability rotation looks something like... Inner Focus > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Master's Mend I > Hasty Touch > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Master's Mend I > Hasty Touch > Byregot's Blessing > Careful Synthesis II > Careful Synthesis II. Now, this changes a bit depending on the item. I may not need two synthesis at the end. Also, if I'm at a Steady Hand II or Master's Mend I step and I get a Good or Excellent proc, I will use Tricks of the Trade (+20 CP). If I'm at a Hasty Touch step and get an Excellent proc, I may use a different Touch ability to try and guarantee success. (Giving up an Excellent is generally a bad idea.) I also have to keep track of my CP at each point depending on my crafting class's level. On my non-48+ crafters, I have to use Steady Hand I first or else I'll be at 23 CP when Byregot's Blessing requires 24 CP. (80-durability crafts don't have that restriction.)

Your crafting stats only affect two things: progress per synthesis step (Craftsmanship) and quality per touch step (Control). If you're super unlucky like me and miss a bunch of your Touch steps, you are far, far less likely to get an HQ item on a high-level (for your crafter's level) recipe. Inner Focus is designed to get ramped up to a high stack count to give you tons of bonus quality, and missing out on those really hurts... especially when you go to use Byregot's Blessing at the end. (Although, I think the level 51 ability that's similar to Byregot's is better when you have less stacks.)

Although, to be clear, I'm only at about 52 on my crafters, which means I'm just starting HSW crafting. If I recall, there is another level of Hasty Touch that I don't have yet, but it also has a CP cost. However, I am finding HSW crafting to be more annoying so far. At first, I ran into a problem that the gathering nodes had higher requirements and I had something like a 75% chance to attain. I was eventually able to buy more gear and finally get to about 83%, which I spent some time and got my off-hand that gave me even more stats. (The off-hand can only be attained through crafting or quests.) As for crafting the off-hand, some of them require items that I can't even get yet, because the zone (Dravanian Hinterlands) isn't open... unless I can go through CWH?

 

[Rebel_L]

The main quest line requirements are a bit out of hand I have to agree, especially since there is a fair amount of group content you cant skip over on the way to cap. I have always liked playing at my own pace for leveling and enjoying story and dont like it when group forcing becomes a part of that making you either hold up others or not really get to see the whole story as you play. Non impact quests are a so so thing for me, if they fit somehow I dont mind too much. Honestly the worst example of bad quests to me in recent history where the broken shore quests in wow.

While I do like the crafting mini game its the components that for me are out of hand. It plays into the storage problem, but also is just confusing with sometimes components coming from other professions and just trying to figure out what materials you will actually need to make something is more work than collecting it and making the item. If you already have multiple resources per tier you really shouldnt add another layer of multiple components between making items as well.

Out of all the mmo combat systems I've played, lotro is still the one I have the hardest time adapting too. I dont play casters though so I cant speak to much to casting time and lag, but I imagine that would be really annoying. I do tend to only play one game a time so adjusting just takes a little bit of time played and then so long as I can figure out how to effectively kill stuff I'm fine. Slower paced combat doesnt bother me either, I actually prefer slower paced games of twitchy trigger finger games.

The starting area's seem like an odd complaint to me. If you really want to play your class to start its only a few hours of played time separate from someone starting in a different area, and if your friends are more important its not that much time lost if you start together and swap classes as soon as your quests take you to another city. If anyone in your group is interesting in crafting gathering and leveling those gives lots of time for people to do their own thing to some degree anways.

 

[nurturedhate]

Eh... there's definitely RNG in crafting. I've used all HQ mats in a recipe, and still came out with an NQ item due to bad RNG. I mean... my 40-durability rotation looks something like... Inner Focus > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Master's Mend I > Hasty Touch > Steady Hand II > Hasty Touch > Hasty Touch > Master's Mend I > Hasty Touch > Byregot's Blessing > Careful Synthesis II > Careful Synthesis II. Now, this changes a bit depending on the item. I may not need two synthesis at the end. Also, if I'm at a Steady Hand II or Master's Mend I step and I get a Good or Excellent proc, I will use Tricks of the Trade (+20 CP). If I'm at a Hasty Touch step and get an Excellent proc, I may use a different Touch ability to try and guarantee success. (Giving up an Excellent is generally a bad idea.) I also have to keep track of my CP at each point depending on my crafting class's level. On my non-48+ crafters, I have to use Steady Hand I first or else I'll be at 23 CP when Byregot's Blessing requires 24 CP. (80-durability crafts don't have that restriction.)

Your crafting stats only affect two things: progress per synthesis step (Craftsmanship) and quality per touch step (Control). If you're super unlucky like me and miss a bunch of your Touch steps, you are far, far less likely to get an HQ item on a high-level (for your crafter's level) recipe. Inner Focus is designed to get ramped up to a high stack count to give you tons of bonus quality, and missing out on those really hurts... especially when you go to use Byregot's Blessing at the end. (Although, I think the level 51 ability that's similar to Byregot's is better when you have less stacks.)

Although, to be clear, I'm only at about 52 on my crafters, which means I'm just starting HSW crafting. If I recall, there is another level of Hasty Touch that I don't have yet, but it also has a CP cost. However, I am finding HSW crafting to be more annoying so far. At first, I ran into a problem that the gathering nodes had higher requirements and I had something like a 75% chance to attain. I was eventually able to buy more gear and finally get to about 83%, which I spent some time and got my off-hand that gave me even more stats. (The off-hand can only be attained through crafting or quests.) As for crafting the off-hand, some of them require items that I can't even get yet, because the zone (Dravanian Hinterlands) isn't open... unless I can go through CWH?

The crafting only gets worse in Stormblood. They even recently released new patterns that upped the requirements for them without actually increasing their lvl or star rating... I just look at it and shake my head. I really want to like the game, I just can't.

 

[ImpulsE69]

There was not that 2.5 lag issue back when I was playing it, but its been over a year.

 

[DaveSimmons]

This is a very helpful thread for me since I was thinking of giving it a try.

I'm used to free-to-play MMOs like Marvel Heroes Online (R.I.P.) and Star Trek Online (going strong, DS9 - Dominion story starts in June) where playing the main quest really is free and they sell cash shop items to keep the lights on.

It sounds like I should wait for a free weekend before trying out FF XIV instead of spending $20-60 only to find it isn't fun.

 

[Aikouka]

The main quest line requirements are a bit out of hand I have to agree, especially since there is a fair amount of group content you cant skip over on the way to cap. I have always liked playing at my own pace for leveling and enjoying story and dont like it when group forcing becomes a part of that making you either hold up others or not really get to see the whole story as you play. Non impact quests are a so so thing for me, if they fit somehow I dont mind too much. Honestly the worst example of bad quests to me in recent history where the broken shore quests in wow.

I didn't mind the group stuff too much, but it did sometimes become a bit of a wall when it would be late and I'd spend 10-15 minutes trying to find a group. Keep in mind that's 10-15 minutes as a tank trying to find a group, and tanks have the shortest queue in FFXIV. Although, on that note, I find it interesting that they've never considered adjusting party size to allow for more DPS. As is somewhat standard, DPS have pretty bad queues everywhere outside of major raids, but it's even worse if you consider that the group make-up consists of only two DPS. If the game had five people with three being DPS like WoW, you're able to stretch the smaller tank/healer resources further.

While I do like the crafting mini game its the components that for me are out of hand. It plays into the storage problem, but also is just confusing with sometimes components coming from other professions and just trying to figure out what materials you will actually need to make something is more work than collecting it and making the item. If you already have multiple resources per tier you really shouldnt add another layer of multiple components between making items as well.

Apart from the good cross-class abilities, that's why I pushed to level my crafting classes together. I think I originally started just leveling Weaver, and once I kept noticing that I needed leather and you could only buy the first tier of leather from vendors, I decided to just level all of them. At that point, I realized that buying mats was going to be prohibitively expensive, so I started leveling the gatherers too. As you mentioned, I then started running into space problems.

The starting area's seem like an odd complaint to me. If you really want to play your class to start its only a few hours of played time separate from someone starting in a different area, and if your friends are more important its not that much time lost if you start together and swap classes as soon as your quests take you to another city. If anyone in your group is interesting in crafting gathering and leveling those gives lots of time for people to do their own thing to some degree anways.

Well, that came from when I was talking to my friend who was considering playing. He plays with his wife, and they want to play together the whole time... not spend 3-5 hours apart to eventually play together. He had played WoW with his wife in the past, and arguably, your race and class don't matter. You have to travel a little out a starting zone, but that's about it. So, I told him which classes were part of each city (Ul'dah = Gladiator, Thaumaturge, Pugilist; Limsa = Marauder, Arcanist, Rogue; Gridania = Archer, Lancer, Conjurer). Another amusing part was he suggested that his wife would like Rogue, and I had to break the news that... for some reason... Rogue requires you to reach level 10 in another class to be able to swap.

The crafting only gets worse in Stormblood. They even recently released new patterns that upped the requirements for them without actually increasing their lvl or star rating... I just look at it and shake my head. I really want to like the game, I just can't.

Ugh, that doesn't sound fun at all. There's one thing that came to mind as I was sitting there milling away at my crafting -- the game's crafting may be more involved, but it's really not any more interesting than WoW. Sure, it gives you classes and abilities so you have to actually think about your craft, which may seem interesting for a while, but in the end, low-end recipes become a joke to craft and crafting other recipes is usually just following the same routine. (People create macros for it.)

So, what I was wondering is... why don't they actually make an interesting crafting system? That sounds a bit nebulous, but it comes from an idea that I had where I joked about becoming a "major label crafter" on my realm. In reality, all crafted gear is the exact same apart from NQ or HQ. What if crafting simply required a certain number of pieces of a certain type of material (e.g. cloth), but that cloth could be any type? For example, if I wanted to create a piece for a warrior, I could use "strength cloth" and maybe some "vitality cloth". You could also make it the idea that the more times you complete a recipe, the better you are at it rather than using silly Touch moves or requiring HQ ingredients to make a better version of an item. At first, I figured that might be bad because you'd be pushed to make more of a recipe just to make better ones, but what if the game also promoted people to buy from each other rather than vendors? Crafting could become a daily job for people in the game... and now that I put it like that, I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

It sounds like I should wait for a free weekend before trying out FF XIV instead of spending $20-60 only to find it isn't fun.

Nah, you don't need to worry about that. There's a free trial for the game, which is limited in some aspects (mostly social in an attempt to curb gold seller abuse), but my friend said it works up until level 35. We both looked into it, and there doesn't appear to be a time limit either.

I mean... the game isn't all bad. I think that if you try to be an all-rounder (all jobs/professions), you might run into some of the issues that I've had problems with. If all you want to do is play a specific class, it isn't too bad. Although, as I mentioned, I think the one thing that gets most people is that the patch content is required to progress to the next expansion. I talked about it a bit, but it does feel like a hefty slog to do 190-some quests just to finish the main game (A Realm Reborn, 2.0), and then think you're going to go to Heavensward only to find out that there are 101 other quests (from patch 2.1 through 2.55) in your way. To be fair, some of the story content from those patches does relate to the content in Heavensward (such as Lady Iceheart), but I'm pretty sure the tea leaves didn't matter one bit!

 

[Rebel_L]

I didn't mind the group stuff too much, but it did sometimes become a bit of a wall when it would be late and I'd spend 10-15 minutes trying to find a group. Keep in mind that's 10-15 minutes as a tank trying to find a group, and tanks have the shortest queue in FFXIV. Although, on that note, I find it interesting that they've never considered adjusting party size to allow for more DPS. As is somewhat standard, DPS have pretty bad queues everywhere outside of major raids, but it's even worse if you consider that the group make-up consists of only two DPS. If the game had five people with three being DPS like WoW, you're able to stretch the smaller tank/healer resources further.

Yah as a dps if im on a story dungeon and I only half maybe a half hour then its not worth it to even log in. I also play more as a way to kill time, other things often take my attention away for a minute here and there and in dungeons with a group thats not usually good. For me doing a dungeon takes extra planning on my part so I would prefer if they were optional for going through the story of any game these days.

Well, that came from when I was talking to my friend who was considering playing. He plays with his wife, and they want to play together the whole time... not spend 3-5 hours apart to eventually play together. He had played WoW with his wife in the past, and arguably, your race and class don't matter. You have to travel a little out a starting zone, but that's about it. So, I told him which classes were part of each city (Ul'dah = Gladiator, Thaumaturge, Pugilist; Limsa = Marauder, Arcanist, Rogue; Gridania = Archer, Lancer, Conjurer). Another amusing part was he suggested that his wife would like Rogue, and I had to break the news that... for some reason... Rogue requires you to reach level 10 in another class to be able to swap.

Those 3-5 hours just dont seem worth mentioning to me with the time investment one makes into any mmo over the long term. One can also just agree to each pick a class in one city. Its a problem that I can come with enough solutions for that it wouldnt bother me. Could give you an opportunity to try a new class you dont normally play. I usually try a few different ones in any game I play just to see what there like so for me to play with someone, I could easily try a different one and switch later if I dont like it. Especially with final fantasy where one character can be any and everything eventually it seems like a trivial issue. I have never played any mmo where I always played in a group with the same people. Even if your playing together staying the same levels you spend some time running around doing different things working on different crafts, spending time fishing etc.

 

[Aikouka]

Yah as a dps if im on a story dungeon and I only half maybe a half hour then its not worth it to even log in. I also play more as a way to kill time, other things often take my attention away for a minute here and there and in dungeons with a group thats not usually good. For me doing a dungeon takes extra planning on my part so I would prefer if they were optional for going through the story of any game these days.

Those 3-5 hours just dont seem worth mentioning to me with the time investment one makes into any mmo over the long term. One can also just agree to each pick a class in one city. Its a problem that I can come with enough solutions for that it wouldnt bother me. Could give you an opportunity to try a new class you dont normally play. I usually try a few different ones in any game I play just to see what there like so for me to play with someone, I could easily try a different one and switch later if I dont like it. Especially with final fantasy where one character can be any and everything eventually it seems like a trivial issue. I have never played any mmo where I always played in a group with the same people. Even if your playing together staying the same levels you spend some time running around doing different things working on different crafts, spending time fishing etc.

Well, I think all of this sort of ties together into one aspect of Final Fantasy XIV: the story. If there's one thing that I would say is a bit different in the game, it's that Square really seems to push for the idea of it being an MMO... yet still a Final Fantasy game. So far, in my experience, this is sort of a mixed bag. To some degree, I think it makes aspects almost feel a bit too wordy. For example, I ignored just about all dialog for crafting and gathering professions, but when I have to click through about 10+ dialog boxes just to join the mining guild, that just seems a bit much. On the other hand, being an MMO creates some rules that somewhat limit your storytelling, but the game doesn't seem to always keep that in mind. For example...

Spoiler

When Telejadi turns on you and tries to kill the Sultana, you have to escape from Ul'dah because the Crystal Braves turned on you. However, after that, you can literally just walk right back into Ul'dah like nothing has happened. You can even do a /dance in front of the random Crystal Brave units walking around.

...which is an example of how being an MMO (they can't restrict it) affects the story (which dictates that it should be restricted).

 

[Rebel_L]

Well, I think all of this sort of ties together into one aspect of Final Fantasy XIV: the story. If there's one thing that I would say is a bit different in the game, it's that Square really seems to push for the idea of it being an MMO... yet still a Final Fantasy game. So far, in my experience, this is sort of a mixed bag. To some degree, I think it makes aspects almost feel a bit too wordy. For example, I ignored just about all dialog for crafting and gathering professions, but when I have to click through about 10+ dialog boxes just to join the mining guild, that just seems a bit much. On the other hand, being an MMO creates some rules that somewhat limit your storytelling, but the game doesn't seem to always keep that in mind. For example...

...which is an example of how being an MMO (they can't restrict it) affects the story (which dictates that it should be restricted).

I would say that is currently a limitation of the genre in general, I dont know if I've played an mmo that doesnt tell the same single player story to everyone. You do have some group tasks, but even in those you are always treated as the leader of said group who made it happen when you turn in a quest. Just imagine the sheer amount of content required if quests, instances and bosses could only every be done once per server. Sure you could reset the really basic gather and fetch quests regularly but nothing with any meaning.

I like the long life of mmo worlds with regular additions, being able to work and trade with other players but when it comes down to stories I really think it should always be accessible in some way in a single player fashion as in the end its always written from that perspective. I enjoy raids and teamwork, but in such a setting your coordination and such is always in a meta gaming sort of state that is not really conducive to story telling.

 

[Aikouka]

There were a few other points that I found that I had written down at some point...

• Enemy leashing is too strict. I can pull an enemy at max range on an Archer/Bard, walk back a little bit, and the enemy will leash before it reaches me even if I am still attacking it. The only way to avoid this is to literally run circles around the mob near its spawn point.
• There should be an option to hide low-level quests when applicable.
• Classes/Jobs below a quest's level are (sometimes) allowed to accept a quest, but they cannot turn it in even if the quest is wholly completed by the class/job that's below the level.

I would say that is currently a limitation of the genre in general, I dont know if I've played an mmo that doesnt tell the same single player story to everyone.

What I mean is that Square's focus seems to be on pushing a strong narrative in the game, but when the requirements of an MMO undermine your narrative, the point is somewhat diminished. My spoiler bit from Patch 2.55, and while the effect on the player should be pretty big, it's as if nothing happens in the world. You might forget that something happened if it wasn't mentioned in a later cutscene.

 

[Rebel_L]

There were a few other points that I found that I had written down at some point...

• Enemy leashing is too strict. I can pull an enemy at max range on an Archer/Bard, walk back a little bit, and the enemy will leash before it reaches me even if I am still attacking it. The only way to avoid this is to literally run circles around the mob near its spawn point.
• There should be an option to hide low-level quests when applicable.
• Classes/Jobs below a quest's level are (sometimes) allowed to accept a quest, but they cannot turn it in even if the quest is wholly completed by the class/job that's below the level.

I know what you mean about the quest handing in, it would be good if the accept and hand in levels of quests would match. I am guessing that the whole thing came about at some point when they were trying to eliminate power leveling low level jobs via high level quests but not having accept/hand in levels match is silly.

What I mean is that Square's focus seems to be on pushing a strong narrative in the game, but when the requirements of an MMO undermine your narrative, the point is somewhat diminished. My spoiler bit from Patch 2.55, and while the effect on the player should be pretty big, it's as if nothing happens in the world. You might forget that something happened if it wasn't mentioned in a later cutscene.

Those kind of discrepancies are just part of the genre and I accept them in trade for the other mmo advantage's. I never noticed FF doing a worse job of it than other games. I suppose a game like starwars might have a bit of an easier time with this as you can always send people to new planets so you dont have reuse locations, but the main cities in any fantasy mmo will always be a timeline mess. In general levels really are more of a measure of time than anything else, if you are in a zone with low level mobs you have traveled back in time and are not just revisiting the place after having been gone a while.

A dynamic world could be fun, but if your not part of the forward pushing crowd you will always miss out on a lot of interesting things as much of the content will disappear on a regular basis. It also would mean that the dev's would have to push out far more content than normal as replaying older content with a new class or going back to see some of the things you missed would no longer be possible.

 

[Aikouka]

Those kind of discrepancies are just part of the genre and I accept them in trade for the other mmo advantage's. I never noticed FF doing a worse job of it than other games.

I don't know... I'd argue that WoW has done it better. A good example would be the Battle for the Undercity event that took place during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The event took place at the Undercity, but it used an instanced version of it using their phasing technology to seamlessly (and sometimes, annoyingly) create an alternate version without loading. But I think what's worth noting is that they handled it better from a story perspective. They were able to present an actual event that took place in a major city, but they ended it within the event, which meant the effect on the player was very minimal. That meant you could go back to the Undercity afterward, and apart from them enabling a few flags to use different dialog, nothing else really had to change.

 

[Rebel_L]

I don't know... I'd argue that WoW has done it better. A good example would be the Battle for the Undercity event that took place during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The event took place at the Undercity, but it used an instanced version of it using their phasing technology to seamlessly (and sometimes, annoyingly) create an alternate version without loading. But I think what's worth noting is that they handled it better from a story perspective. They were able to present an actual event that took place in a major city, but they ended it within the event, which meant the effect on the player was very minimal. That meant you could go back to the Undercity afterward, and apart from them enabling a few flags to use different dialog, nothing else really had to change.

Wow is so disjointed I would not call it better. While to some degree I like the idea of having zone toggles the overuse of them will make the world a confusing mess. The phasing they use I was never a big fan of, as when it first came out it could be hard to give someone a hand with some quests because of different phases. I never played the horde side of the undercity event so I cant really speak to that in particular but my understanding is the event was pretty much a zero change to the city other than I would have thought one or two npc's should have been removed from the city which I dont know if they did or not as both would have had some quest turn-in's. In the FF event was the faction that turned on you thrown out and replace wholesale in the event or just the leadership replaced? If all the traitorous guards were replaced with loyal ones then there should be pretty much no effect, and in FF its harder to do the kind of single npc toggles because you can change the level of your character on the fly while those kind of toggles tend to be do once and flag kind of things as far as games go. Too many chances for bugs if those kind of toggle checks are made on an ongoing basis.

If you want to talk about the game overall I can still go pick up a quest to talk to varian in stormwind although hes been dead the whole expansion. After the zone revamp in cata the whole timeline is so messed up that you dont even follow it while leveling anymore as BC and Wrath now happen before level 1-60 in the timeline. Blizzard while being very good with making emotionally involving cut scenes and mini story arcs has done about the worst job of overall story I've seen with constant re-writing of prior events at the whim of whatever moment they want to create right now.

 

[Aikouka]

Wow is so disjointed I would not call it better. While to some degree I like the idea of having zone toggles the overuse of them will make the world a confusing mess. The phasing they use I was never a big fan of, as when it first came out it could be hard to give someone a hand with some quests because of different phases. I never played the horde side of the undercity event so I cant really speak to that in particular but my understanding is the event was pretty much a zero change to the city other than I would have thought one or two npc's should have been removed from the city which I dont know if they did or not as both would have had some quest turn-in's. In the FF event was the faction that turned on you thrown out and replace wholesale in the event or just the leadership replaced? If all the traitorous guards were replaced with loyal ones then there should be pretty much no effect, and in FF its harder to do the kind of single npc toggles because you can change the level of your character on the fly while those kind of toggles tend to be do once and flag kind of things as far as games go. Too many chances for bugs if those kind of toggle checks are made on an ongoing basis.

If you want to talk about the game overall I can still go pick up a quest to talk to varian in stormwind although hes been dead the whole expansion. After the zone revamp in cata the whole timeline is so messed up that you dont even follow it while leveling anymore as BC and Wrath now happen before level 1-60 in the timeline. Blizzard while being very good with making emotionally involving cut scenes and mini story arcs has done about the worst job of overall story I've seen with constant re-writing of prior events at the whim of whatever moment they want to create right now.

I don't bring up phasing because all instances of it make the game better; I brought it up specifically in reference to the Undercity event. The reason why I say this event works far, far better than what Square did with Ul'dah is because Blizzard knew to contain the changes to that specific event, and by changes, I mean both in looks and in story. When you finish the event, you can go back into the Undercity, and it makes sense that you can return there. The fact that I can teleport back into Ul'dah and do a /dance in front of an NPC that should be hostile to me makes no sense. I think it's worse because it's obvious that Square wants to push the narrative in their game -- why else would they force you to play the patch content's storyline and not just go to the next expansion? -- but that just doesn't always work in the realm of an MMO. If it was a single-player Final Fantasy game, they could easily lock the player out of a city.

Not only does Square wants to have its cake and eat it too, but also force the player to sit there and watch them.

 

[Rebel_L]

I don't bring up phasing because all instances of it make the game better; I brought it up specifically in reference to the Undercity event. The reason why I say this event works far, far better than what Square did with Ul'dah is because Blizzard knew to contain the changes to that specific event, and by changes, I mean both in looks and in story. When you finish the event, you can go back into the Undercity, and it makes sense that you can return there. The fact that I can teleport back into Ul'dah and do a /dance in front of an NPC that should be hostile to me makes no sense. I think it's worse because it's obvious that Square wants to push the narrative in their game -- why else would they force you to play the patch content's storyline and not just go to the next expansion? -- but that just doesn't always work in the realm of an MMO. If it was a single-player Final Fantasy game, they could easily lock the player out of a city.

Not only does Square wants to have its cake and eat it too, but also force the player to sit there and watch them.

Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that square did a good job of that story arc, I'm just saying they are not generally handling things worse that anyone else. From a quick search on google it looks like the changes to undercity (change in guards, and removal of npc's removed in the event) came in at a specific wrath patch for all players of all levels, regardless if they had done the battle for undercity or not. While this might be a nice change for the higher level players it makes zero sense for anyone at an earlier point in the game. If you want another big bad screwed up timeline in modern wow take the whole of allied races. While being recruited to each side after the defeat of the big legion bad, they then start off at level 20 questing in time periods where they were never part of faction they represent and in the case of void elves not even in existence yet. While wow has made perhaps more changes to the game world they have also destroyed older content to the point where you cant even do any of the original games content at this point, not to mention major story arcs from several expansion being completely unavailable to new players. It is a different approach and while you can say you like it better I dont think you could make an argument for it actually being better.

Like I had said earlier going back to old zones for me is not to go and visit them as they are according to where your level places you in the timeline, but rather as to what level the zone is. Considering in FF that you start in the capitals when you teleport to ulda to go see a trainer/bank/hang out you are going back in time to the start of the game and so everything is back to normal. MMO's try to make you feel like things have changed a bit by changing npc dialog or making some minor cosmetic changes, but all huge changes will wreck things for lower level players as they start from the beginning and if you only make major events that dont end up in any real change then in the end they were never that major of an event to begin with.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The Final Fantasy XIV free trial has been fun so far (level 20 conjurer). Warning: after the initial big install download, there is another 21 GB patch.

Did you run into the awkward INTERRUPT problem that I did when playing? Essentially, when I walk out of a telegraphed AoE, which interrupts my cast, I resume casting again to only run into another interrupt even though I'm not moving (on my screen).

It helped to know from the start (from your posts) that you needed to get out of the AOE areas while they were lit, not during the attack animation after that. I'd still get bit (clawed, pelted with stones) at first but I'm now mostly used to it.

I haven't noticed the lag, but I'm on a low-population XP bonus server and am probably not hitting my keys at the optimal speed. If I'm 0.2 seconds late to hit my attack after moving then I won't notice that much lag.

I'm still in the training wheels levels but the only time I was KO'd was one of the main quest battles where I was healing others and didn't pay attention to my own health. There have been a few challenging battles like escorting a slyph when the path led through a FATE area. I don't have any AOE of my own yet so when mobbed I have to work on one target and heal myself as needed.

 

[Aikouka]

It helped to know from the start (from your posts) that you needed to get out of the AOE areas while they were lit, not during the attack animation after that. I'd still get bit (clawed, pelted with stones) at first but I'm now mostly used to it.

The bummer about this is that most fights are kind of boring with the AoEs. Typically, on bosses, you run into two types of AoE: frontal cone (the "tank check") and melee range. So, they're not always something that a ranged caster has to worry about. While I haven't done every dungeon, probably the most involved fight that I've been in when it comes to AoE was Midgardormr as that AoE affects everyone and occurs down lines that encompass the entire fight's area. Ifrit is another interesting one, but mostly just for the tank. (The tank should stand in a specific spot that's near a dead zone for both the outer rim AoE and the inner cluster AoE.)

I haven't noticed the lag, but I'm on a low-population XP bonus server and am probably not hitting my keys at the optimal speed. If I'm 0.2 seconds late to hit my attack after moving then I won't notice that much lag.

I've never been too sure if my problem is just that I'm not on a server that's close to me, but I can't imagine that I'd be so far from any NA server or have such bad routing as to cause a problem. I do know that when I went to create a new character, my realm, Goblin, was not the one that FF14 selected for me. However, I already had a character there that I was "replacing" to get the Road to 60 buff.

I'm still in the training wheels levels but the only time I was KO'd was one of the main quest battles where I was healing others and didn't pay attention to my own health. There have been a few challenging battles like escorting a slyph when the path led through a FATE area. I don't have any AOE of my own yet so when mobbed I have to work on one target and heal myself as needed.

I'm pretty sure I did the same thing one time, and back to Ul'dah I went! Although, thankfully, I have my Chocobo fighting with me almost all of the time, so it isn't too often that I get into trouble. If you're wondering when you get a shiny new mount, it comes after you get the option (via the MSQ) to join a Grand Company (not a guild AKA Free Company). To get it to fight with you, you have to go to the town all the way at the bottom of South Shroud, talk to the Mi'qote, and she'll send you to Bentbranch Meadows to learn how to have your Chocobo fight with you. Unfortunately, most online database don't list that South Shroud quest as a pre-req, but it is required.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Thanks! Since the years of content is all new to me I'm thinking seriously about upgrading from the free trial and subscribing. I might pause and finish Pillars of Eternity first, before I start to forget my tactics for it.