I decided to give Final Fantasy XIV another try and I’ve been playing it for the last week or so, my early re-impressions are pretty positive so far.
I still don’t like the art style. I’m not a fan of the JRPG/Anima look. I find the game to be goofy looking. Graphic wise, I think WoW is definitely more my style.
Combat is fine. Maybe it’s a bit slower then WoW but it’s not bad. It’s pretty similar.
The game is heavy on the RPG elements. Seems like leveling is more about the journey and less about the destination. That being said, so far, the story isn’t anything special. It seem like standard JRPG stuff. I’m thinking it’ll get better.
The mentor system is cool. Everyone I’ve interacted with has been nice.
I’m enjoying the game, but if you’ve played one MMO, you’ve played them all. All these types of games seem to be very similar. So far, I’m failing to see what makes FFXIV so much better then WoW, ESO, GW2, ect.
I’ve been playing FF for about a month now and am mid way through the latest expansion.
My general impression has gone from ‘eh’ (when I first logged in to the small barren zones) to ‘okay this is vaguely fun’ (around level 20ish) to being a huge fan (from the end of ARR onwards).
It does a lot right. Like… a LOT right.
WoW’s got this horrible habit of forcing players to race to max level then playing the latest patch. Unless you like grinding old mounts/pets or tier sets? There’s not much point in doing anything they spent years developing. Legion weapons for example? It’s almost worthless collecting yours if you’re levelling through that expansion now.
FF is more focused on the story rather than the level as many have said - but it means nothing ever really feels abandoned. Old features are still useful. Old instances are constantly run by people levelling other classes or just getting the daily Gil (gold) and xp rewards from doing a raid or instance. Sure, there are bits that aren’t as useful anymore but most of the time nothing feels pointless.
Which means when I’m playing WoW I actually feel like I have a lot less to actually play as most of it is irrelevant.
Then there’s the story which is… brutally better in FF. ARR is very… standard until the final patch which explodes into the kind of storytelling that would have made Game of Thrones fans scream with excitement. You stick with the same characters. You get to know and care about them. Your hero goes from being a nobody to someone on who the fate of the world(s) depend.
It’s hard not to see the latest cutscene and wince in comparison. In FF you’re front and centre in most of them. In WoWs? You’re not even THERE lore wise. It’s Thrall, Jaina etc doing the cut-scene in game lore stuff. You’re a fan insert at best.
This is a game I desperately want to like and it keeps letting me down.
I spent the last two months there and while there are plenty of positives going for it, there are a few glaring issues that prevent me from fully enjoying it.
1.) Level locked classes that revert in level when you switch over to them. Can’t play that new expansion job till you are lever 60 but when you switch over you are level 30. Why not just make it unlockable at level 30 then?
2.) Stiff, clunky combat. Don’t tell me about all the off gcd stuff I get later, that’s not what I mean. Trying to kite mobs between the two games is night and day. For all its faults, no other mmo has been able to replicate the buttery smooth and responsive combat of WoW. In ff14 I keep feeling like I’m waiting for stuff to happen long after I push the button.
3.) Excessive amount of cutscenes. I felt like I spent as much time watching the game as I did playing it. Story and narrative is important but if you have to warn your players several times to get comfortable because an extremely long and unskippable cutscene is coming up, maybe it’s time to dial it back a little.
4.) One of the biggest deal breakers is mandatory dungeon and raid content. This should never be a thing, especially when the content is years old and no longer relevant
5.) The community. It really isn’t that different from this one aside from being less overtly hostile due to bans for bad behavior. Other than that, I still see a lot of the same things. Gold sellers, people selling runs through stuff, When you join a group the tank pulls half the dungeon in a couple of pulls and everyone is gogogo and not much is said aside from hello and goodbye.
I’m not saying FF is a bad game, far from it. All I’m saying is hold that game to the same standards you hold WoW to and don’t give these things a pass because you want to stick it to blizzard and you’ll see FF isn’t the savior of mmo’s that some people are making it out to be.
I’m surprised to hear your group wiped in a FFXIV dungeon. I have yet to do one but I’ve been hearing from most people that the dungeons in the game are mind numbingly easy.
Shadowbringers is how an expansion should be done. Blizzard needs to take note. In fact, FFXIV has only IMPROVED every expansion and AAR (the base game) remains the weakest imo compared to Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringer.
If the free trial players do make it to Heavensward, there is a good chance they’ll stick around.
As a player who has left WoW myself (been playing since TBC) and started to play FF14 more, there is a few things I enjoy that FF14 does better than WoW in very massive ways:
The story. While to be fair I did skip alot of story except Shadowbringers whole MSQ, I really got connected with the overall characters involved in the story, it seemed like your own little group of friends even inside a massive MMO game. It also has a narrative set something WoW has lost in their storytelling.
Raid attunements, as a fresh Level 80 recently I just learned about this myself. FF14 does not just unlock Raids and let you go in freely at the start. You have to do a little quest chain to unlock each wing but it’s nothing crazy like how BC attunements were. Raids have their own story around it as well (some tied in MSQ some not)
Duty Roulette, this I absolutely love, this system keeps ALL old and current things relevant, from dungeons, to “heroic dungeons”, to trials to even raids. Finish the quests (if there is one or just do the specific dungeon first) and then unlock it forever and gets thrown into a pool when you do your random dungeon que for the day. (Imagine if WoW had a system like this, every past dungeon you have ever completed in the LFG random finder for your daily VP or anima as a reward after daily reset. Would bring more interest into the Random LFG tool now)
Alt system, as I just recently leveled and finished my first 80 toon, I love this system but seem to maybe hit a block in it (IDK how FF14 vets feel or I’m doing something wrong) but it seems daily roulette and challenge log is fastest way to level alts but either way it’s much more simple to keep everything on one character (just gear one class at a time unlike me lol)
And I do love the art style imo. Feels more real than how WoW is more cartoony which I enjoy in most games is realism. While these are not all the topics between the 2 games. These are the simple systems or QoL things FF14 does that have kept me logging in pretty much daily if I have time. Everything is relevant in FF14 from your first dungeon all the way to the current Savage Raid.
Content in FFXIV is never irrelevant. That’s what I love about it! I can go back and do trials / raids I loved with a group and still have a similar experience to the first time I ran them years ago.
all you’ve been doing is insulting people on these forums simply because they disagree with your opinion of Shadowlands being this amazing awesome MMORPG. It’s pathetic.
The only people I’ve insulted were the FF14 trolls who flood GD with wow is dying topics because they want to push some Refer-A-Friend benefits for themselves. The only people i’ve seen that get insultive is folks like you the second one bit of Final Fantasy 14 flaw is brought up. So in a sense, don’t be surprised if that’s the response you’re getting>
Nobody here, not even me, are praising Shadowlands of being this awesome perfect MMO. The ones pushing that narrative is you because folks aren’t jumping on the “SL sucks” bandwagon. Meanwhile, the second we bring up anything bad about FF14, you show up to play apologist for some of the issues
