I've figured out why I can never stick with FF14 and tend to come back to WoW

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

The feeling of becoming more powerful.

So, let me get this one thing out of the way - the concept that needing the best gear isn’t needed for people who don’t complete the hardest content, and as long as “casuals” can still complete their content, it’s fine.

I believe that’s total horse dung. You can survive on army rations but that doesn’t mean you’re thriving. Same goes for gear progression in video games, which very purpose is fun to begin with.

And beyond “deserve or not deserve,” the majority of people, at any level of play, play to become better at whatever is they are doing and to have a tangible feeling of progression as a reward. WoW’s current system allows players to feel power progression at every level of content completion.

So in 14 - there’s two major problems.

Problem #1: There’s only really a few ways to get better gear.

  1. Two difficulty raid encounters that have a rather large gap in difficulty.
  2. Currency Vendor, time gated.

Problem 2: There’s nowhere to use this gear except in current raid encounters because dungeons are irrelevant in both reward from drops themselves (see point #1 above) and secondary rewards (see point #2 above), and literally everything else is iLVL synced rendering your power useless.

So in WoW, no matter your level of play, no matter if you get your gear upgrades from LFR or Emissaries, every bit of that power you gain, transfers into every facet of your life. You will feel your enemies that you faced last week crumble before you this week because you completed content.

In 14, because of a lack of non synced combat-centric activities outside of raiding, you never get the chance to feel the power you’ve gained. It feels pointless. Even for savage/ultimate raiders…you get the gear to complete the next tier…and then what? You get no rewards of being more powerful than the “lowly casuals” beneath you in content that they can do, either.

Yes, I know every patch in WoW effectively resets this floor, but you get the joy of going through all that power progression again, and at least in this game, you actually feel it as a reward at the end.

So that’s it.

1 Like
2

Regardless of how bad the current expansion is, It will always be the best MMO game.

#fact

1 Like
3

I tried FFXIV once and like all FF games after the NES/SNES days, I can’t get over that art style. I know a lot of people say WoW is “cartoony” (although I find SW:ToR just as cartoony) but I like the art style and animation.

4

I actually like both art styles for different reasons.

I like the actual gameplay in 14, and i like some of the systems, but there’s never enough things to do and generally speaking nothing feels rewarding.

I think it may be a cultural thing where in western cultures, individual achievement is encouraged vs. eastern culture is less focused on the indivudal.

5

You better stick around Old Wolf, having too much fun with you.

1 Like
6

Been playing on/off since 2005. Unlikely I’ll ever completely quit.

1 Like