I also think that certain recent events going on have been turning a lot of players off lately too. The hype of Classic WoW has died down some, and some recent events have caused players to go “um no thanks” and well, there’s XIV that is going stronger than ever, steady stream of new content every few months, by a company that isn’t embroiled in so many scandals.
Who could blame people for enjoying XIV?
Another thing I like about XIV is that they seem to actually know what they really want to do with the game. It is structured, its endgame structure is well defined and most importantly, consistent where as WoW likes to reinvent the wheel every expansion because they can’t make their minds up on just what exactly they wanna do with their endgame and it always seemed to me like they are just throwing pasta at a wall to see what sticks and what doesn’t.
I would say that World of Warcraft’s end game is a lot more focused though. Focus on a few things, but do them right. And in the case of WoW that’s the raids and the dungeons. WoW raids huge, they have a lot of encounters, they have plenty of difficulty levels, and most bosses are mechanically interesting. (Or at least that was the case back when I raided.) Blizzard has truly mastered the art of making raids. FFXIV is most likely #2 for raids but they’re still very far behind.
When’s the last time you actually played XIV? I haven’t seen any of the ShB raids, but I did Omega back during Stormblood and dude, you want mechanically interesting encounters, Omega had some ridiculously awesome fights (Doom Train, anybody? How about Kefka? Or that Painting Boss that I forget the name of? What about the Gravity Boss?).
And being a one-trick pony is something that is very rarely a good thing. You want variety in your endgame, to appeal to as many people as possible, and throwing everything on Mythic Dungeons and Raids is… a bit stagnant. It’s either Mythic Dungeons, Raids, or nothing. If you don’t like Mythics (I hate Mythics because of the lack of automatic matchmaking), and you don’t have the ability to join a raiding guild (my work schedule wouldn’t allow it), then all you get is world quests and grinding in Nazjatar. woo. That gets old fast.
At least XIV’s raids are on the matchmaking system, and at least they don’t lock dungeons behind a non-group finder system. I do dungeons every day in XIV. In WoW, I haven’t found a reason to touch a dungeon since the early days of BfA’s launch because they reward worse items than what you get out of questing if you’re leveling (not to mention it takes 60+min as a DPS to get a dungeon unless you got a quest for it, which tells you how many people are actually doing dungeons) and heroics are worthless, they don’t give you much of anything other than azerite power.
At least back in MoP, you could do a daily heroic for badges and slowly work towards getting last tier’s raid gear and have some actual progression… but I suppose that was too good and they decided to remove any and all progression from the casual non-Mythic players.
The only thing FFXIV raids does better than WoW’s is having its hardest difficulty content be 8-man instead of 20-man, which is a real pain to organize and more politics and drama to deal with. 8 would have suited my guild much better in our raiding days.
I played all of Omega in Stormblood, and yes I find WoW bosses more interesting mechanically in the end. I also find them a lot more subtle and refined: instead of mostly cheap one-shot mechanics all the time, Blizzard also puts a lot of mechanics that just accumulate (typically things that pulse raid damage or leave permanent puddles) and your raid has to figure out how many it can tolerate before having to deal with it, as to not sacrifice too much boss DPS. And as you get better this changes. It also has a lot of things like soft enrages which I don’t remember existing in FF. (They might do but frankly I can’t remember any.) Those make WoW bosses feel a lot less scripted simply because there can be a lot more variation from an attempt to the next. Even though in reality they’re just as scripted. (Otherwise DBM couldn’t exist.)
And WoW also had incredibly cool fights at the time I raided. You can’t seriously tell me that Gorefiend, Xul’horac, Archimonde or Gul’dan were bland fights, they were just as cool as the stuff you encounter in FFXIV. It didn’t have unique soundtracks per boss I’ll give you that, but I’ll take a cut in production value if it means I get to have 10-14 bosses in a raid tier with more difficulties, that way my guild won’t be over raiding after a month or two.
I also can’t pass over the absurdity of the healing endgame in FFXIV, where the devs are somehow incapable of making encounters that are challenging to heal, and thus the “good” way to play is to spend 95% of your GCDs spamming Stone IV or refreshing 2 dots, which is mindbogglingly boring and effectively makes healing dungeon trash and Eureka more fun than healing savage bosses.
I don’t actually hate FFXIV, I’d even say it’s much better than retail WoW overall, but the raiding scene just isn’t anywhere close the level of refinement that Blizzard puts when they create a raid for WoW, that’s the truth of it. I wish I could say it were because I’m really angry at Blizzard for what they did last week, but right now it’s not.
I suppose we are going to have to agree to disagree, then.
I rather like the more laid-back nature of FFIXV’s content. Yes, healing tends to be simpler, but I like it that way. I don’t like having to chain-cast heals every GCD or someone will die. I tried healing in WoW before a couple expansions back and I hated it.
I tried XIV’s WHM back in Heavensward and I fell in love with it once I got to Lv50+ and I still love it to this day. And I dunno how one could possibly spend “95%” of their GCDs casting DPS spells… well, okay. I do remember Stormblood days of two WHMs keeping Medica II up constantly and that being enough for 10, 15 seconds at a time, but it ain’t like that in Shadowbringers.
Medica II isn’t keeping anybody alive by itself. You do cast some DPS spells, but I find I cast far fewer of them. Also, I find that there’s fewer one-shot attacks in Shadowbringers Trials, though I’ve yet to try Eden. Shadowbringers seems to love the Vulnerability debuff, because a Lot of bosses will dump that on you anytime you screw up.
Not one-shot, but 75% of your health missing + Vulnerability. And if you do it again… you might have 10% left and 2 stacks of Vuln. Do it a 3rd time and you’re full on dead and enough people getting Vuln means the healers are running out of MP dealing with what should be mild AoE, it ends up being “everybody’s almost dead and you gotta get them all back up before the next AoE or people are gonna die and HOPEFULLY people can stop standing in crap and getting Vuln so it can wear off”.
But anywho.
I like FFXIV’s more casual and laid back nature, I like how accessible the content is, but yet it still feels fun and meaningful, and I like how consistent it is and how the game developers seem to know what they really want to do with the game as I mentioned before.
And yeah, what happened last week, well… let’s not talk about that. I don’t want to get banned.
While I won’t deny that WoW raiding has interesting mechanics, I’m generally not fond of it for one simple reason:
Too much focus on throughput
Specifically, too much focus on optimizing DPS. It’s never been an aspect of WoW I’ve enjoyed, and really does feel like it detracts from the overall experience. At most, the throughput aspect only really becomes enjoyable in short bursts; but WoW makes it an overbearing presence throughout their raid encounter design. It has also led to one of the longest running issues with WoW, which is runaway stat inflation essentially allowing people to outgear content to the point they can start to IGNORING mechanics.
Use of soft-enrages is fine… but I tend to prefer the “Boss Arena Urgency” variant in particular where the mechanic progressively covers the entire floor or the floor disappears after specific attacks (Shinryu being an easy example of this).
But overall, the domineering focus on throughput actually detracts from the interesting parts of encounters for me.
FFXIV takes a more mechanically-inclined and admittedly gimmicky approach to most encounters… but I enjoy it far more than WoW’s approach. Throughput is only really a concern for the DPS checks (usually a boss’ intermission phase with adds), while the rest is largely about dealing with the mechanics accordingly.
In contrast to WoW, I can focus on the parts of the game I enjoy (the mechanics) while the bits I don’t enjoy (throughput and optimization) are mostly a secondary concern. It also ages FAR better, as the mechanics rarely become entirely irrelevant (at least when sync’d for content) like they do in WoW on a regular basis.
Also far less “basic” bosses which are light on mechanics and heavy on throughput. While genuine “Patchwerk” fights aren’t really seen in WoW anymore (they have at least SOME mechanics), there’s usually at least one early boss per raid with minimal stuff to do besides beat the enrage timer. Bosses like that don’t exist in FFXIV, at least once you’re into Heavensward (a few early ARR bosses may qualify).
So we can look at that as “agreeing to disagree” on that particular matter.
I prefer FFXIV’s approach to raiding and other post-level-cap content, while WoW’s endgame heads off in the one direction I don’t enjoy… at all.
… and I’ll say out of “Great FFXIV Healer Debate”.
That’s too messy to get into.
In savage, the “meta” pushed by the community is quite literally that healers are DPS with oGCD heals. (And tanks are DPS with defensive cooldowns.) Using Cure II to heal is viewed as bad because you could have used that GCD to spam Stone IV instead. (Or Glare now I guess.) Due to the frequency that unavoidable damage comes, it is entirely possible for two healers to heal fights with almost exclusively oGCD cooldowns, and almost ever use Benefic or Cure spells unless someone messed up mechanics. And then you cast nothing but Stone IV and Aero II for 10 minutes except when you have to move. Which is as boring as it sounds.
Now of course if you are in a chill static that raids late in the patch cycle with the Echo buff and upgraded tomestone gear from the 24-mans people will rarely care about your DPS parse as a healer, but if you’re in a static that pushes progression you will be expected to play optimally, and unfortunately that means playing your character in the most boring way possible.
To be honest, I don’t use Progression Raiding as a yardstick for any MMO, I didn’t for WoW, I don’t for FFXIV, because Progression Raiding tends to be a crapshow when it comes to game balance.
It’s 1% of the gaming population that does it, and a lot of times people will seek unconventional/unintended methods to do just about anything, cutting any corners they can find, and in the case of WoW, using exploits that WILL get them banned and they dang well know it, but they do it anyways just for those world firsts.
I refuse to look at Progression Raiding, as some sort of standard with which to judge the rest of the game, not when it is such a small slice of total activities done by all players collectively.
Progression raiding is way more than 1%, actually.
41% of the playerbase had the normal HFC clear achievement.
37% of the playerbase had the heroic HFC clear achievement.
5% of the playerbase had the mythic HFC clear achievement.
Regardless or whether you are in a guild that progresses in normal, heroic or mythic, raiding is meaningful content for a large part of the WoW playerbase and binds a lot of guilds and communities together by giving them repeatable and challenging group content.
On the other hand, raiding is far less important in FFXIV. Yoshi-P said that only 5% of the player has at least one savage kill (~heroic level ) and less than 1% have cleared an ultimate boss. (~mythic level) But as I said their raids are simply inferior compared to WoW’s (not bad at all but certainly not as good) so they naturally attract less raiding-focused players.
Which is totally okay, WoW focuses on raids to the detriment of many other features it could have and the FF team chose to not put all their eggs in that basket. And frankly, GW2 used to have no raid at all and it did better back then than it does today. But, as the topic title asks, FFXIV is probably not going to trend unless it improves either its raiding or its PvP. And I don’t think they will, they are doing very well with the formula they have and I don’t think they’d want to sacrifice other content to make their raids bigger and better.
I suppose we have different definitions of “Progression Raiding” … I tend to look at the world first, hardcore type crowd when you say “Progression Raiding” … I don’t really view all those guilds out there doing normals as “Progression Raiders” to be honest, but… shrug
Either way. Yes, I would agree that WoW dumping all their eggs in the Mythic Dungeon/Raiding scene is what has really hurt my enjoyment of WoW, there used to be other rewarding things to actually do in WoW. I remember back to MoP when I used to Q for Heroics back when those gave actual rewards you cared about (badges), for example. Or how LFR SoO actually gave decent rewards while making the content reasonably meaningful (I remember someone naked tanking a boss in that ogre raid in WoD, lol that was horrible).
WoW came up with an awesome idea when it came up with the matchmaking system that would be later be used by FFXIV and others, but sadly they decided to just chuck that to the side and make it far less important in the endgame and that’s a sad mistake, IMO.
Meanwhile, FFXIV’s Duty Finder content is still good, and it’s there, and it’s relevant to everybody, so those who have unpredictable work schedules like me, thrive in a game like that. WoW? If it weren’t for the fact I put so many hours into my characters already, I would have never touched WoW if I were to join Post-WoD and actually knew what the game was like. I’d go “nope” and stick to FFXIV.
Just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because it’s good doesn’t mean it’s popular.
That being said, FFXIV is a very good game, and I applaud SE for making the basic game F2P. If it’s anything like FF11, I expect to see a strong community in the game with enough friendly players to outnumber the trolls. Granted, it’s not my cup of tea at the moment, but for a lot of people who don’t or are unable to subscribe to WOW, I can see this as a very good alternative.
FFXIV is like if someone were trying to make a good game, whereas WoW is like someone trying (and failing) to make a good MMO. The games are super different but if you’re just a regular person FFXIV has a lot more to offer, whereas if you’re just looking for hardcore raiding and logging in only once a week to do that and only that, then WoW is what you want.
It just goes to show you that many of WoW’s discarded ideas were actually very good and by constructing a game around discarded ideas and giving it a casual focus instead of the raid or die mentality that it creates a game that can easily be argued to be better than the one that spawned it. FFXIV is a fabulous game and I barely even notice that raiding isn’t as present because I’d rather raiding be only 30% of the game and have the other 70% be fantastic than have WoW which is 70% raiding and the other 30% is dreadful.
Way different games and styles, though some FFXI-like content (OPTIONAL content!) creeps in (Diadem, Eureka, etc) from time-to-time and they re-used some monsters and such from that game (with remastered models of course). Otherwise FFXIV plays a lot like WoW in terms of its general gameplay structure.
RE: Everybody else: Yeah, I love how you can still go back and do most content, and it still feels good. I love the Level Sync system which beats Timewalking by miles, I like how old content is still run quite regularly with some exceptions (again, Diadem and Eureka and similar things). Just the other day, I Q’d up for a dungeon and I got Copperbell Mines on my daily Roulette, which is the 2nd dungeon in the game you go to.
It’s really nice. And you don’t miss out on one-time events, and miss half of the story behind the game, and they don’t release huge chunks of the story in out-of-game books that you have to go read to understand what’s really going on in the game. The entire plot is right there in front of you for you to enjoy, and the release of a new expansion doesn’t stop a new player who starts today from enjoying and understanding the whole thing.
Of course, not everybody likes story and so that’s a turn-off to some people, but that’s like walking into a Pizzeria and complaining that they only serve Pizza and very little else.
And uh, not sure why you decided to bump a 2 year thread, lol. Apparently, something made you search for this thread. Could it be, that FFXIV is really trending and it caused you to do a forum search on FFXIV threads?