FF14 is NOT the better "RPG" imho

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
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As a hardcore WoW fan who has dabbled little in the FF universe in general; hearing all the news about it of course piqued my interest. With all the praise it’s getting, I truly did expect something at least on par with WoW in terms of being an in depth RPG. I know most people will laugh at me associating “in depth RPG” with WoW, but man, did FF really open my eyes to how great WoW really is in terms of having actual choices and feeling immersed in the world. Here are my thoughts of my experience so far.

Races all lack depth - When making my character, it was cool at first. Until I decided to make an alt and found out pretty much every race has a recycled intro and starting area. Unlike WoW races all each having their own zones, cultures, stories to get you to understand who they are and what they’re about; instead you get put in the same exact zones and pretty much the races feel they were made solely for aesthetic purposes.

There is no magical feeling of starting off in Mulgore as a Tauren, and truly feeling a part of tauren culture. Then swapping to Worgen and finding out you’re city is under attack from the undead and their Banshee Queen. Or playing as a pandaren and pledging yourself to the Alliance or Horde. This is one of the biggest things that got me into WoW, as it felt I hadn’t seen even close to everything until I saw all the races starting zones.

The world doesn’t feel dangerous at all - I know what you’re thinking. Neither does WoW’s. But with WoW at the very least you have not only the generic mobs like every MMO, but with Warmode, you get that extra tension when worrying about Horde / Alliance also traveling the world. FF as I was questing, the world felt so tired and dull after awhile. I mean, I get it, so does WoW’s when I’m just doing generic questing. However, there’s not even an option in FF to add that extra tension. It feels like there isn’t really anything that can threaten me even from the very first level. Maybe this’ll change as things go on?

The story doesn’t make me think. - OKAY, I heard Shadowbringers was where it really gets good, so I’m probably wrong here. But so far, the story doesn’t make me question myself or decisions at all. I mean, when I was playing WoW, especially over the last few years, I was questioning things early on. I actually STARTED AS HORDE and swapped Alliance because I found out about the “Path of Glory” and was like, oh hell naw and dropped my Tauren quick. I made a worgen and never looked back. However, even on Alliance I still question myself, like when I quested in Camp Taurajo area because I’m fond of tauren and I felt really bad as Alliance. Or the twisted questing in Tirisfial Glades with the scarlets torturing the forsaken.

Mainly what I’ve gotten from FF is there’s a very distinct line between good and evil so far. I mean, I’ve never really gotten this feeling of “Am I the bad guy?” or just questioning my morality or what I’m fighting for. Whether I’m a hero or villain. Reminding myself of why I fight and where my choices lie. WoW made me do that from the get go at least, from my experience as a worgen who had his city destroyed. Then saw what Alliance did in Camp Taurajo etc. It’s so far a clearcut story of me being this hero of light and goodness.

The class system truly feels rigid and confusing - SO, I know from other players that you get to play any class on one character. However, it still sucks I’ve gotta be forced into something else for awhile. I disagree with AR system in WoW for the same reason. I wanted to be a samurai in FF, but for some reason I couldn’t even play one from the get go. It’s like the old hero class system in WoW, except for FF it feels like a lot of classes are hero classes? I can’t just pick what class I want to play and go with it. I have to go through these other classes first?

The small things - As a player on an RP server, I guess this is something nobody is really gonna care about but it’s a big thing to me. There is nothing like the text bubbles and active talking emotes we have in WoW that just happen naturally. Your character just stands there awkwardly and doesn’t do anything when you’re talking to other people and it feels really stoic. Idk, unless I’m doing it wrong or something.

HOWEVER, I still want to get to Shadowbringers cause that’s the one everyone’s saying is really great and I’m excited to get there. I DON’T DISLIKE the game, but I definitely think people are stretching it when they say it’s SO much better than WoW, cause imho, it’s definitely off the mark by missing these things I feel makes WoW so amazing in my eyes. Two cents and all that jazz, okay, I need to grind.

TLDR: Despite FF’s praises, it still falls short on a lot of WoW RPG aspects. Races like culture, depth, and their own unique starting zones. The class system isn’t flexible. There is no questioning of deeper morality in the story like there is with Ally vs Horde. There’s also a lack of smaller things like text bubbles and active talking animations for RP purposes. My thoughts so far.

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All i read was imho.

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Get ready for your post to be transferred to the Off Topic forum.

If you look there, every recent post about this type of subject or with FF in the topic title has ended up there…

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It’s a good game, but people are desperate for anything they can hold up on a pedestal because WoW jilted them or something.

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I’m more annoyed that people talk so much trash about WoW’s graphics yet SE hasn’t updated the character model textures since the game launched, and that’s AFTER dropping support for PS3.

The better your PC is, the worse that game actually looks. Aside from spell effects/particle effects.

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That’s it? Man there are so many arguments you could have made against FFXIV that would have been way better.

How about the GEARING? The fact that gearing and itemisation is so dull in FFXIV that there’s not even a single special effect to any of the loot, that there’s nothing like trinkets, nothing like crafted special effect gear or crafting affecting gameplay beyond food buffs or basic dps boost potions? Because FFXIV has none of these things at all. Even worse, they simplified the few stats they do have over time.

But one of the major issues, it’s a very restrictive and rigid mmo as you say. Open world lacking, raid environment just not being there with rooms you teleport into, apparently a very restrive budget and engine because everytime they use it as a reason why they didn’t do more with something, etc etc.

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I haven’t gotten to the end yet, so I was just thinking it was probably the leveling gear. But to hear that’s how gear is at the very end is… hmmmm… guess we’ll see. But that makes me feel sad for sure.

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I have the benefit of having played FFXIV extensively, it’s absolutely not the shining beacon they pretend it to be. It’s good, but it’s not really a true MMO. You burn out of content very quickly and what is there is rather barebones compared to what you get in WoW or other games. I think it’s because their fans are just so attached to the devs, it’s really going to hurt in their numbers once the story starts slipping and not being as good. You saw a little of this in Stormblood at one point, people really disliked the ala mhigo side of things.

Dungeons are another example of the barebones and very rigid/restrictive approach they have. It’s all very samey, with little use to them because at best it’s for leveling or tomes and that’s not useful for long. You end up doing expert roulette for tomes and that’s always the same 1-2 dungeons with absolutely no deviation, always the same approach. WoW dungeons are more flexible even if you play on the same difficulty, in FFXIV you know what and where to the last detail.

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I think the big distinction, is that FF has gotten better over the past few years and WoW has been getting steadily worse since Legion. Blatant design issues, terrible dev communication, extreme lack of content vs patch cycle.

I’m looking at what they are doing for domination sockets, and I don’t see that kind of contempt for my time coming from FF. I’d rather give FF my money, than continue on this depressing train wreck (I really love WoW combat, have played for many, many years and I want it to be great).

I have more faith that FF will provide engaging end game content / future PvP than I do for WoW putting out an expansion or patch that actually makes players feel like the game is worth the time and money.

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People have different tastes and wants from an RPG and that’s okay.

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like wow is anything to brag about lol. subs tell it all. i will give wow one thing they haandled the managed downfall quite well still making tons of money from people even though the game sucks. people here always talking crap about other games knowing wow in it’s current form is quite sad.

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That’s a smart move! I didn’t know they did that.

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That’s not entirely true either, there’s a fair few that disagree with the way they made tanks more samey and similar to eachother for example. The story has evolved but the pvp is still as dead as ever and they’ve steadily cut down on things they add each patch. They are even removing belts for some reason because their engine is so bad they have to do it to “make room” for the load of adding a few more inventory slots.

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Did we really need another thread pro or con that mentions FF14

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I’d rather lose a belt, than have to re craft legendaries.

I mean, at least FF is making a change to improve the gameplay experience - do you remember playing epic BGs? It’s a lag fest, Blizzard’s engine can’t even handle the current game. Even current raids have massive lag issues.

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I’m gonna go ahead and guess that’s an oversight and something they are gonna change. I don’t think that’s something they wanna force on players.

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A lot of streamers keep shouting out info that’s clearly wrong as well, if WoW has a bad grind then FFXIV is worse.

Has anyone actually done the grind for a relic weapon? Or grinded an alt class? Do you know how many times you have to run deep dungeons or roulettes to get to an appropriate level only to have to run Fates in Bozja? It’s a slog greater than even some korean FTP games I’ve played.

And unless you do extremes and love dealing with what I call “Jump rope” mechanics (Where everyone dies if anyone fails) there’s not much content for you, you can’t even really participate in housing cause SE still can’t get that right, it’s always a race to buy a plot as soon as a new xpac comes out.

Plus I wouldn’t call their crafting fun either, nobody PvPs, what else is there? It’s really only a “Good” game if you’re already at the top and enjoy that content, or you’re just starting out and are enjoying the buffet.

Which right now with all these people thinking they’re somehow sticking it to blizzard and implicitly WoW fans by playing it, it’s really just people enjoying the buffet, they’ll see the shallowness of it all pretty soon.

At the very least FFXIV has a better patch cycle than most games, and the dev team is a LOT more communicable than Blizzard’s.

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Idk…it’s feeling a lot like Azerite armor in 8.0 or corruption (no vendor) in 8.3 lol.

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Races - yeah, I can see it, I think it mainly comes from most characters in any FF game are pretty much a basic human, it’s not really a focus of a FF game

not dangerous - there are some places that do, but for the most part you;re right

story - Personally, I only hated the storyline of ARR. It’s pretty generic, while it does have some interesting moments nothing really sucked me in, but right into Heavensward I really enjoyed it. Started liking more of the NPCs once I got out of ARR.

classes - It’s really not that confusing. You could compare Red Mage/Samurai to say something like Death Knights or Demon Hunters. Those jobs were introduced during their expansion, as you’ll notice jobs have their own specific questline for the role… yeah, I dunno, I don’t think its that confusing. It is rigid, with each job just fulfilling a role, personally I don’t mind that. You’re playing that job to do that role.

I remember in one of my old guilds we had a shadow priest main, there were times the guild asks/pressured him to heal when it was clear he had no interest. He wasn’t very good at it and didn’t enjoy it. This kind of fixes that. You have no interest in playing a healer? Don’t learn a healer job.

there’s a lot of things I think FF does way better than wow, but they are two completely different games. they’re similar, but there are some things that wow still clearly does better.

and for RP purposes use your emotes. there are a TON of emotes in ff. you can even add them to a hotbar if it’s something you use often. ff has far more depth in emote animations and whatnot, just gotta know to look for them.

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Fake because:

Never, in any FF games, “race identity” has been important, at most ethnicity (place people come from) because FF are driven by philosophical/political/historical commentary :

Cool looking example
That FF is a commentary on imperial Japan and even dropping nukes and stuff like abusing nature (like in FF7) and much more if you analyze the themes.
But in none, the main focus is “oh I am a poor tauren oppressed by humans”

Have you played FF games? Furthermore, there are places in FF14 where you do see cultural settlements…

FF14 and many others are like USA, a melting pot where many races/ethnicities/illegal aliens from Canada have come together and form a new culture that takes characteristics from all of them. Cat girls are living together with bunny girls, why do you want them to act differently? Is not needed, is like asking a White/Black person to “act White/Black otherwise you crazy”… in FF

False, there are zone events in intervals of time that initiate a mob invasion that you must fend off and you will aggro all of them automatically. Also when you go to higher level areas there are dangerous mobs, as dangerous as WoW ones.

You don’t think by yourself and you expect the game do it for you? FF lore is so vast and great, full of meaning… but did you even paid attention?

ON THE OTHER HAND, DO YOU BELIEVE WOW LORE IS GOOD? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

It literally can’t be more flexible
Change weapon/gear set and boom, you are another class and ready to go (but you will need to level each one separately, but you can have every profession and class on a single character at once, is a good tradeoff)

You technically can…
You start with basic classes that evolve (unlock) into other classes in their final form. Like Lancer >>> Dragoon and if you are lvl 30 you can also unlock machinist , then at lvl 60 gunbreaker and stuff like that.
You will go unlocking every class in your questing, at the end you will have every single one.
Is not about the destination, but the journey.

There are more emotes, the guilds with guild housing (beds ;D) and ect make more than enough for anything lacking that you could mention. Like bards being able to play songs.

Not really, I look into each thing that it lacks (like dungeon guide with the loot that drops, collection tab and other stuff) and each stuff that it lacks (also guild finder) makes the game more community dependent, which is something that WoW has lost.
So those “losses” make FF stronger.

Never has been necessary nor part of any Final Fantasy game.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, WTF DO YOU MEAN?

In every Final Fantasy game, including FF14 there’s that. you do not need “2 factions” in order to understand complex topics.

Have been empty and full of nothingness

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