Dude , from one baddy to another, I just mail my alts 454 Dreamsurge coalescence gear , so when they turn 70 , they are Instant , jiffy pop alts.
I haven’t done any pvp with them but from dueling in Val, I can tell it’s still super squishy, but I sure can skip a lot of content .
Add-ons are actually forbidden in FFXIV, you can be banned from the game if caught using them. Enforcement of that rule is generally following the idea of how much trouble a person is causing and/or visibility; so the majority of add-on usage is underground (because you can’t stop everyone).
You can level up all classes on one character, so you technically don’t have to repeat doing the MSQ if you don’t want to. The catch being that, with one exception (Summoner & Scholar, as they share the Arcanist base class), they’re all leveled independently. So you end up doing a lot more roulettes while leveling up alt classes/jobs. This system also extends to all gathering and crafting classes, which have their own abilities; they also have their own story content, though recent expansions have opted for a “consolidated” route for roles (4-5 questlines depending on the expansion, and often a “bonus” questline after doing all of the ones for each expansion) rather than a storyline for every class.
But regardless, it’s essentially like a giant single-player JRPG when it comes to the structure… which means tons of dialogue, exposition and strongly emotional moments. It’s very different from WoW, but also a very different type of time investment as it’ll be largely dedicated to doing quests and story-related content for the sake of seeing the story rather than some other goal or reward. One of the most popular optional questlines has minimal combat content, and the reward is always cosmetic in some way (gear, different dance emotes, pets/minions, and a mount).
… but that’s probably enough about FFXIV’s specifics, the native population of these forums doesn’t like seeing it brought up too much.
1 Like
not entirely true. You can use a meter. But if you use it to harass people that’s when you get banned.
The official rule is that add-on usage is a bannable offence. The rules as written are heavy-handed, but they aren’t going to scan your PC in search of them.
The moderators for FFXIV don’t go looking for players using add-ons UNLESS the user of said add-ons is causing trouble. Using damage meters to harass other players is just one of the better-known ways for them to have a reason to drop the ban hammer.
But it also more or less reinforces the notion that add-ons are entirely unnecessary to playing the game at any level.
1 Like
Definitely have run into this issue in World of Warcraft. Honestly the game should be designed not to need them. But if people would stop caring about how much DPS, HPS, or TPS that they are doing, and just enjoy the content that would become a non-issue.
Other than possibly UI add-ons I agree most add-ons should not be needed. Because of the way WoW was coded more or less makes people need them. I run very minimal add-ons in WoW, the only game I have ever used them in, and I’ve played Asheron’s Call, Ever Quest, EQ 2, Star Wars: The old Republic, Ultima Online, and WoW.
That’s not the entire picture here. Many, many players use meters as a way of guiding themselves or checking their DPS / HPS. There are many reasons why you’d want to, and the vast majority of people running meters are running all around you without even knowing.
The few that act like pricks with them are a very small minority.
Details has 2 million downloads.
Skada has 38m, overall.
Recount has 119m total downloads.
The amount of rude people because of it is a slim fraction.
that’s not true at all. plenty of us are nice and enjoy the current game.
2 Likes
Leveling has never taught anyone how to play the game correctly at endgame.
2 Likes
I don’t understand how people end up vilifying everyone like that. Majority of people are nice. Most just don’t say anything. Striking up a conversation once in a while would easily disprove that the community is so “bad and evil and toxic”
2 Likes
I don’t think leveling needs to be slower for people to learn their classes. The primary issue is there is no challenge and or place to actually “learn”.
None of the mobs can even really kill you as long as you don’t pull way too many. There’s no place to learn interrupts, CC, or even maximizing damage potential
It’s really pretty simple… most of us alliance players learned back when Defias pillagers were a thing to not just sit there and let spells go off… why did we learn?? Damn near 3 fireballs would kill you.
If they made the mobs deal actual damage and their spells impactful people would quickly learn to cc and interrupt… imagine a mob can cast a heal (yes there are some but it often heals 5-10%). Imagine if they could completely top themselves off resulting in a mob that never dies if you don’t interrupt (unless you completely outgear it).
Imagine mobs who can deal 30+% of your HP in damage per spell or even a slow casting one shot on some mobs.
A mob that casts rain of fire and it actually melts you… you learn not to stand in junk.
Tune the debuffs in leveling dungeons to actually cripple players to teach the importance of dispels…
Thats how you teach players the basics of the game.
I think that is because they have dumbed down the leveling experience, to make it easier and faster. The game does try to give the basics on the exile isle, least I think it did, been a while. But if the leveling experienced was slowed down just a bit to make you earn that level with tougher encounters, then you would learn those abilities that you don’t use until we get to endgame.
At least that’s how I learned all my characters by the slower leveling experience. I just think by time I got to endgame, there is just way too much button bloat as well which doesn’t help.
This is the only way I know how to play. Level my characters by playing the character in the spec that it will end up being and if that means going slower then so be it. I push myself to get to max level without dying and even after that try to stay alive. Sadly only my Vengeance Demon Hunter in 494 ilvl gear is the last to not die (Wrathion bug at the obsidian citadel clamed 8)
Exile’s Reach is a travesty of an introductory experience. It’s much faster and has higher production values than the cataclysm revamped zone but I can’t honestly say it teaches players how to play the game better.
Interrupts/CC/Awareness and learning your rotation are important and none of those things are tackled by Exile’s reach.
Just because the leveling is slower doesn’t mean people learn more if it’s just full of damage sponge mobs that can never kill you.
This is what every MMO does now, and why the genre might as well not exist.
There are no new MMO’s coming out, and the ones out, do not gain players.
1 Like
Tbf with the way the tree is right now some classes wont learn how to play there class till 60 70 anyway
Sure, but leveling hasn’t taught you how to play that class at endgame.
Which is the whole purpose of this thread.
Because classes don’t start with those things. For those who do, like Mage who gets their CC, Paladin who gets a defensive, they are taught to use them. Other classes don’t get an interrupt until their mid-twenties though.
And that’s a design issue on the part of blizzard.
Interrupts/CC are CORE and BASIC functions of the game. To not include them and also not design classes to get those tools early on, is an objective failure.
Particularly with the reduced time spent leveling.
You’d think you’d want players to have more time to learn core and basic gameplay elements, not less.
I dunno about whatever point OP is trying to make or whatever, but I agree leveling in Retail is out dated and bad. By bad I mean I don’t desire leveling in Retail because I don’t like it, but I enjoyed leveling in Cata and SoD.
A lot of why I don’t like leveling in Retail is because they made all the animations ugly and sound weird, I dunno, it feels bad when you’re leveling, have like 1/5th of a kit, are using these ugly spells, you move slow af for no reason, it’s not a good time.
Actually now that I think about it, Classic and Retail are completely opposite for me: I like leveling in Classic, but don’t like the end game and I don’t like leveling in Retail, but I like the end game.
I’m going back to my DK in TWW and I didn’t level ten 70’s in Remix, I didn’t even level one character.
1 Like
Eh, it depends. Interrupts, generally speaking, are core components of the class. Except for the handful of healers, Priest and Druid, that don’t get them, and their importance changes significantly depending on the character and content being run. In Amirdrassil, for instance, there’s very little reason to run them at all. Similarly, not every class gets a baseline CC tool, many have to talent that and have little reason to depending on the circumstance. Again, in many fights in Amirdrassil a CC is entirely worthless to talent into and won’t be cast.
1 Like
Thats why, I said they also need to make the encounters tougher, like it used to be before they dumb down the leveling experience. But I can understand why the system is the way it is now. More people don’t enjoy that leveling experience and most of the time it is an alternate, so they want to get back to endgame content to play that character, not spend weeks leveling again.
I know of one game that is trying to be bring back that old style of hard to play game style. Sadly, they have been in development for 8 years now and have been in Alpha phase for about 4-5 years now.
By time I am at endgame I have gotten most of my skills and utilities down and I know them backward and forward. There really isn’t anything more for me to learn at that point. How to stay alive? Nope learned that as I leveled. Trust someone to keep me alive, yah that can be an issue because I have to put trust in another person.
But it also comes down to the content you choose to play, if you’re doing Heroic, Looking for Raid, Mythic or Normal Dungeons and Raids, all that is about is learning the content, not your character. Most people just don’t learn their characters because they expedite the leveling experience.
Again, I make sure to learn my characters as I level, not try and get to max level as fast as I can. It’s also why I rarely die accept because of others not knowing how to play their characters classes.
- Game bugs are the one thing I detest in this game while leveling. Wrathion up at the Obsidian Citadel has killed 8 of my characters dropping them to their death. Otherwise, 9 of my 24 retail would have 0 deaths in 490-505 ilvl gear instead of only 1.
I know for myself I loved leveling from Vanilla (Classic), Burning Crusades, Wrath of the Lich King and I stopped midway through Cataclysm. When they announced Mists of Pandaria I bailed on the game and played Star Wars: The old Republic. When I came back a month before Shadowlands, it definitely feels that the leveling experience has been expedited.
It definitely harder to learn all of your characters kit’s and I think some of that is because of the amount of stuff thrown at you by time you get to max level. Some classes definitely have it easier with less button bloat. If given the chose I would choose the old leveling over retail any day, but that’s me, and I’m the minority.