Long time FFXIV player thoughts on general gameplay

Long time FFXIV player, huge fan of WC3, strayed from WoW in TBC due to the time commitment and finding it unhealthy (better than FFXI / EQ, sure, but still quite needy lol).

Some thoughts and fears as I was playing (as the FFXIV forums loves hearing about WoW I’m sure here loves FFXIV… heh… But comparison can be helpful).

  • [+] Love the movement compared to FFXIV, abilities feel snappy and 3d. Unlike FFXIV where movement abilities are flat (they don’t have a 3d component, you slide on the ground even if it’s a jump). In line with movement, there seems to be better encouragement for exploration with chests and more unique quests- FFXIV’s FATEs tend to be kill X quests and there is near zero reasons to explore.
  • [-] I dislike the vanilla UI’s ability to communicate, and I find mechanics themselves “tend” to be less interesting mechanically. Perhaps because FFXIV’s jobs are mechanically more straight forward it makes up for it in the fight. Here though I feel like I have to have 3 or 4 different addons to get the same amount of info I get by default in FFXIV, and those addons have millions of installs which makes it clear that… imo… they should have been default in some way. Info, that to my eyes, feels like it should be default. Like some stuff that comes from plater, at least.
  • [+] The roleplay gameplay of classes is way better than the roleplay of jobs in FFXIV. Even simple things like a double jump and glide on DH makes me KNOW I am a DH… can’t forget it. When I switch classes I’m immediately aware of the difference. In FFXIV they are not a can of paint difference, but they’re damn near lol. The pets are tangible and meaningful, in FFXIV they struggled with pets so much the system was removed (essentially). There is less of a fear to have a neat standout feature, and it makes classes more pronounced for it.
  • [-] Having watched WoW long term, but also recently, seems to have a issue with just pure abandoning classes / specs, and will allow bugs to exist for long periods of time. Bugs happen in FFXIV but they seem to be taken care of faster. With rare exception jobs will be adjusted quickly to ensure there is a tight relationship (less true in early expansions, but has been true for a while). My opinion is that it seems to be doing better, but while FFXIV isn’t perfect I feel will issue a temporary adjustment sooner (and will fix bugs faster). FFXIV has rarely nerfs, so you rarely feel worse about your own job (reworks can be a fun time though)- here WoW is very comfortable nerfing things. Also WoW is comfortable taking away things in general from players*, like your artifact weapons (power)… Something I doubt FFXIV would ever do. *I would say this might underlay the fears I have itself, where it seems like maybe not spite but an absolute willingness to have the ends always justify the means. Not sure I’d say a disrespect but I would say I definitely feel FFXIV respects their players more often, more consistently.
  • [+] Warbands is awesome as it lets me have a different roleplay vibe while approaching jobs. This is actually a primary feature of why I gave WoW a chance again. Delves and being more solo friendly game being another. I don’t think I will EVER seriously try an MMO that doesn’t have semblance of a job system, it’s just way too cool and useful (doesn’t literally have to be jobs, but functionally works-- Warbands isn’t quite perfect but it is approaching what I’d consider close to a job system).
  • [-] FFXIV jobs are still more streamlined and certain things I don’t like in WoW, significantly, that I appreciate in FFXIV. For example I understand there would need to be compromise on lockout systems, but I don’t like this warbound vs soulbound stuff. I would prefer account bound everything. FFXIV’s armoury also is easier for me to organize my thoughts around, when I change specs and want different stats I find it more annoying here (not impossible just liked the separate nature of active equipment). Ideal situation for me would be account bound all items and quests, so I can do MSQ on Paladin and continue it on Demon Hunter. Lockouts and vaults would need adjusted though… its not a simple thought, but FFXIV I feel ends up respecting my time when wanting to multi-job and while WoW is trying… is not nearly as kind to multi-classing. Professions might fit in here a little, I know you can do most of it through orders / bank sharing but not really entirely. To note I play multiple jobs because I find it fun, not because I want to check 60 garrisons and do 20 great vaults (so when I want to multi-class in this game, it’s not because I want a second job from my real job… I just want to experience the variety without the pain of doing the same content again and again to get the things I’ve already got). Prior to warbands I would never have thought such a desire was reasonable, but now that it exists I feel fair to express it (as you’re pretty close).
  • [+] Delves, I enjoy the mutations and different locations. I appreciate the added ability to progress fairly substantially with them. I can see mutations in other systems, it’s interesting. I also like the companion leveling… FFXIV has companions but they’re wet noodles and their leveling is near meaningless which feels bad. I would say in general both on these delves but content as a whole that WoW scales content way better than FFXIV. Yes I have seen the scaling system issues, so I know it isn’t perfect. Yet in FFXIV when you scale you scale your kit, messing up muscle memory and often feeling really bad gameplay wise… content has poor scaling so its likely you’ll destroy it but with bad gameplay lol. I haven’t touched Mythic simply because I greatly dislike the idea that I could use the limited time I play to achieve nothing because someone didn’t do what they needed to, but I can see why some people like to do it with their core groups and I imagine theses mutations makes replaying them more tolerable than in FFXIV where it will be exactly the same as last week and the week before that. if I had people that fit the whim of my schedule, mythic slaves lol, I’d probably try it… but that doesn’t exist unless you’re rude and powerful and so PUG mythic sounds like torture akin to FFXIV savage PUG from Duty Finder (therefore a no ‘not for me’ from me).
  • [-] This is strongly a FFXIV perspective, but I think the group finder tool is a not very good / powerful. I imagine much of this is intended as you want players to ‘go to location’ but… I don’t like it lol. Especially awful the exit when solo entering content is using a hearthstone or walking back out. The system feels clunky and annoying coming from that perspective. While I’m not asking for it to be removed, cause clearly many players play it, there is no way I’m interested in content that has such a huge range of potential time cost (raids being like 2 - 4 hours)- so I would say I appreciate FFXIV has a goal duration and even a timer that prevents excessive banging you head against the wall. The raids look cool, to be fair, just that I can’t be not knowing what I’m doing in that time scale. If my wife wants to go out, I need to know how long (and 2 - 4 hours is way too much variance, with 2 being dangerously long and 4 being I wouldn’t join it even if I knew it was guaranteed). I am definitely more on the Duty Finder end of player in FFXIV, I greatly appreciate the DF.
  • [+] Items in WoW have way more flavor, though this goes along with roleplay on classes I guess. From battle effects to goofy effects, it’s quite fun. Even silly toys with no gameplay purpose, I really appreciate this. I wish FFXIV did this, like at all lol.
  • [-] Item treadmills require 20 minute youtube videos to understand. " It’s simple. Just take the hydraulic phase shift emulator, and attach it to the transdimensional photon particle emitter. Bam! New gear.". The system is also very RNG and I feel that FFXIV makes many attempts to ensure your success, if you do the activity (and win) you will get your goal, while WoW will take you for a ride with potentially no hope in sight lol.
  • [+] Systems seem to be willing to be different, and accessible to all. Hard to pinpoint as a general concept, but say Garrisons are for all (unlike FFXIV housing, which is getting better but is not for all in all senses). Ideas tend to be comfortable being gamified and using interesting things. Like plants vs zombies in Pandoria. In FFXIV they added an island, which was incredibly pretty and you could upgrade, but they paired the gameplay with primarily an excel experience… I imagine in WoW it would have had way more gameplay elements.
  • [-] If you do get a house in FFXIV, the customization is incredible (some glitches or addons needed…) and you’ve nothing comparable in WoW. Even garrison doesn’t really customize (though it does have more gameplay)
  • [+] Events have many mechanics and feel really interesting, at least as a new player. In FFXIV it’s usually a talk to X people and complete the quest experience, with one item that then goes into the cash shop afterwards.
  • [-] WoW, from watching from affar, and playing now, loves to remove content from the game. There is no general idea that it’ll come back. You can tell there is someone who loves FOMO. This is probably one of the reasons I stayed away, and does press in my mind if I really should be playing. FOMO to me is an emotionally abusive tactic. I never mean to say some cool item has to be given away meaninglessly later, but temporary FOMO items to me is a toxic behavior (strong wording intended…). It’s a game, not real life. I can imagine someone trying to lore or ‘realism’ a reason why, but then I will simply counter with all the one of a kind legendary items that are not. There is no reason to have FOMO except to emotionally manipulate them. It can work into giving people a sense of superiority / pride, but I think it’s a toxic emotion to feed (even I can feel this, I’m a legacy player on FFXIV for example… I do feel special, but I feel weak minded and petty if there was button to allow all players to have it and I refused just cause I wanted to be special). Don’t confuse that with wanting it to be handed out like candy though, it’s a game, make it fun (but don’t emotionally manipulate me). Reoccurring or delayed exclusivity is fine though, imo. I don’t appreciate the cash shop but even that would be ‘different’ in my mind than just purging (reoccurring should be expected though, not “maybe next week, maybe 15 years from now”). I’ve had it happen quite a few times already where I saw something interesting and then learned it’ll never be obtainable again, its a sucky feeling. I do not want to have something others cant have, I just want to enjoy getting the things I want to get.

  • [+] The open world aspect with the flying is insanely cool and makes the world feel very tangible. In FFXIV they use instances (‘zones’), the zones look nice (the game looks nice) but this means everything is contained and connections between locations is all in your head. The game doesn’t help provide the sprawling landscape, you have to imagine the journey.

  • [-] After playing FFXIV jobs, most magic effects in this game seems very old era PvP / raid game. Which is probably literally because of that being true. Essentially any job in FFXIV makes almost any job in WoW look weak (in sense of visual power). For example immolation in WoW is, imo, massively underwhelming and as a huge Illidan player (in wc3, thousands and thousands of hours in that game… lol), I feel it looks worse than WC3’s immolation somehow. In general, many, not all, effects just kind of whimper visually. Now it must be said in FFXIV if you don’t use the graphic setting to control effects on your screen, in big content, it will turn into a blinding light… But when you turn on full effects self, partial effects party, and low effects everyone else. God you feel awesome and look awesome (visually at least), and be able to easily read the battlefield. Mechanically I think WoW tends to do much better; however, FFXIV’s pvp is showing some ideas that mechanically might approach better WoW-like flow (just the normal content side of jobs is a bit less dynamic).

  • [+] There are artsy moments in the story with custom cinematic, they are very well done and I greatly enjoy them. Voice acting is more consistently landing here (though there are many characters that do great in FFXIV too, but I find myself wincing less often for someone I might feel miscast). The story was very quick / broken into sections that allowed me to get to the content I wanted relatively quickly.

  • [-] I dislike (my imo) the hyper reverence of certain characters and the concept that Thrall is like over 9000 and we’re a solid 1000. The story moments to me feel more silly due to that, and to me, trips over trying to handle this. Sure FFXIV does go very cliche Japanese RPG with you feeling like you can’t go up from here cause you’re practically fighting the god of the universe, maybe there is an issue with that lol, but I feel the story itself is told and absorbed more easily when the story revolves around what I’m doing. Watching Thrall take a small nap during the WoD intro after a few spells, I was like “pfft” and felt it was obvious the story was trying to make them present, powerful, but yet absolutely not lol. Metzen actually alluded to this story challenge in a recent interview. Sure keep them big powa, but personally I’m not interested as much in story where I’m someone else’s backdrop (especially when the story struggles to tell it that way, imo). I’ve not done all the MSQ(s) yet, but my generally feeling so far “could be better if they just made my characters /also/ one of the big deals”. I’m aware you can argue you are, but the presentation of it doesn’t really feel so much that way (especially if you’re coming at it from a FFXIV perspective).

I’m enjoying my time so far, but there are definitely some underlying fears. I can already tell that it’s true that FFXIV respects my time more and is not interested in holding me captive (I can play other games when I want), where I don’t feel so with WoW-- even such that it might say something like EA where loot boxes provides a sense of player satisfaction lol. I can also tell that the WoW devs love goofing off and just playing around, and it makes a lot of really fun mechanics, meanwhile FFXIV’s devs are exceptionally streamlined polished (sometimes way too ‘polished’, where your biggest “oh those people do have fun at the office” is in the game text or game story (but definitely not in the job expressions lol).

Since it’s my first post here… my childhood memories were done dirty with WC3 Reborn. Which adds to my leeriness of being here, some statements by TWW (like wanting players to play the way they want), actions (like adding delves and warbands), and potentially new leadership, has made me want to try, but am leery. I call out leadership as I doubt WoW’s problems were primarily due to the peons busting their butts on their passion, and more specifically for those “you think you do but you don’t” type people. Something I can call Naoki Yoshida out on, in compliment, as that guy is clearly (and self proclaimed) hardcore old school gamer (its massively his bias), yet he will still design content that he knows others will enjoy regardless of his own bias… which is an achievement.

Um, thank you for coming to my terrible TED talk. Both games have interesting pros, both have some substantial negatives. I believe both also look at each other for ideas. Rising tide floats all boats, hopefully, so just my 2 copper on some FFXIV / WoW. Please take each others best ideas :slight_smile:

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I played both quite avidly. You raise some good points.

FFXIV has over WoW:

  • FFXIV does boss encounters/boss music far better. You get a sense of the dramatics with the music and the paired visuals. You actually learn the mechanics quite intuitively instead of having an addon essentially play the game for you.
  • Aside from Dawntrail I’ve enjoyed FFXIV’s story far more than anything WoW has done since legion.
  • Balancing. As they don’t have talents/complex battle systems, their balancing tends to be quite tight making you feel like anything you play is a viable choice.
  • Being able to play every class/profession on one character.
  • More to grind (maxing everything takes AGES). I enjoy leveling and being able to do this on so many classes/professions is a long term investment which feels quite rewarding when you need to fill in any gaps for priority.

WoW has over FFXIV

  • Much smoother gameplay.
  • Bigger patches with more to do.
  • A superior transmorg/glamour system.
  • Releases expansions/patches more frequently with far more content.
  • New zones released each major patch.
  • Addons are encouraged and won’t get you banned lol.
  • Mythic+
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This is the main reason I can’t stay interested in FF

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For real, FF14 raids/trials always made me go “whoa” like stepping into a raid in WoW for the first time way back in Vanilla.

Only, it’s like (almost) every raid/trial in FF14 still evokes that feeling of spectacle.

WoW’s Nerubian Palace? Meh, it was neat, but kinda expected lol.

WoW raids don’t have as much luster.

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It’s true. WoW is leaning more into the importance of raids being a core part of the story but the entire raid feels like a side story quest.

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FF14:

  • [+]Catgirls

WoW:

  • [-]No Catgirls
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Can you give some examples of what information is being displayed differently?

I’d reckon FFXIV hasn’t hit the age where system bloat impacts game design. One of the hallmarks of FFXIV’s combat is the “level scaling” (I don’t know what it’s officially called over there.) So we can do content almost exactly as it was when it was current. WOD (6.0) is when pruning started becoming more of a thing.

The issue is playing your main to gear your alts. (Objectively, that is the optimal route.)

You characters are literally soldiers of the Horde or Alliance. And it’s your choice on what type of soldier you want to make. (Within reason, of course.) That’s also why specializations and talents vary so much.

Teleporting to the instance is reserved for matchmaking systems. Else, we’d just sit in the capitol city doing nothing. It may be minor, but this is still a game to be played, and exploration is part of it.

I didn’t really understand this section. RNG is RNG. Bad luck protection does exist in select cases. In the case of rare items/mounts from legacy content, it could be made better, definitely. But I’d be wary of defaulting to a token/currency system for everything. (That’s just more information to bloat the UI with.)

Objectively, the best time to play any modern game is within a few weeks of launch day. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pokemon, WoW, FFXIV, or Helldivers. This is because the sense of community and shared interests is extremely powerful.

It’s important to play games for fun. The reward is your experience, and claiming FOMO keeps you away is literally FOMO preventing you from enjoying things. There are definitely some business tactics, like sales and bundles. But you can ignore them entirely and still get the full experience. So don’t let some marketing ploy prevent you from experiencing something new. :slight_smile:

This is fair. Final Fantasy largely has no art direction, whereas WoW is very much “Warcraft.” This gives FF the freedom to play the “rule of cool” card, but it doesn’t have a distinct visual style. While WoW isn’t as flashy, it makes up for it with superior combat, so your powerful abilities feel more weighty than your fillers.

Metzen is a god-tier world builder. But he can’t do complex character stories. “Green Jesus” was a meme for a while for very valid reasons.

Great mentality.

I gave a real attempt at FFXIV, got through ARR and got to lvl50 BLM. But my experience helped me enjoy the differences each game has. While ARR isn’t a great intro to the game, I hear nothing but praise for their expansions, specifically the story. But because I don’t play for the story, it’s not “my first choice.” I absolutely love PVE combat, and I wish I could slot into FFXIV’s endgame, but I also didn’t like how mechanics snapshot/resolve.

But in that same breathe, I’d kill for a storyline that got me feeling invested in WoW’s narrative. I’d love for datamining to be mostly dead in WoW too. FFXIV does a lot of thing well, and it’s a great game for its audience.

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Main reason why I took a break lol. I’ve played it since beta (hence the legacy account). I respect the game but I once described it as so manufactured its an entirely stainless steel kitchen from floor to ceiling from furniture to tool. It all functions but the tactile awareness bleeds together due to the lack of quality roleplay. That said I still really respect the game and think it’s good, just I’m a bit numb at the moment :stuck_out_tongue: .

Don’t forget how buggy patches could get! This patch is buggy as heck now. They could’ve spent more time on maintenance this past Tuesday.

:cat: :cat2: :cat:

Oh yeah, definitely feel this.

The boss / raids in FFXIV have insane spectacle, with music that is crafted for those fights specifically.

Cant tell you how many Satashas I’ve seen that I can’t handle it for the moment, but they’re all really freaking pretty lol.

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In general, FFXIV is better at story and spectacle and WoW is better at gameplay.

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I’d love to be a Blue Mage in WoW.

Feeling like a dummy as I don’t see the way to quote respond but uh:

  1. Combat markers are better, there are more of them and they are clearly defined. The information you can glean from the party list and the target UI is akin to almost everything plater does, you know what you can interrupt, what has aggro, whats casting, who has debuffs, etc. Before plater I felt uninformed and information naked, with plater I feel like its an uglier version of what FFXIV does nearly by default (and with an addon in FFXIV, substantially uglier). That isn’t meant to be an insult to plater, I bet it took a lot of work and does the best with what it can. FFXIV has cactbot, but even without it you can get a lot of boss mechanics visually, in WoW you’re trying to read a dinky 5 second tooltip IF THAT lol.

  2. Maybe, but Naoki Yoshida has expressed a very strong opinion on taking away player’s stuff. He never wants to do it, and has literally said as much. So maybe, but I doubt it.

  3. Yes, I would love to gear my alt through my main lol. In FFXIV I play PLD, gear my WAR. I play PLD and get tomes and gear my SMN. I can take effort from one job and move it to another, and I don’t have to redo effort. Warbands helps but it isnt as smooth as FFXIV’s.

  4. I did say I might understand why it works that way, but I think I’m spoiled on teleporting and just prefer it at this point lol.

  5. Its to say the gear prog feels like you need to watch a video just to understand how to prog your gear. There are many different systems and they operate differently at different locations. Also FFXIV usually has RNG protection built into their systems, so I agree RNG is RNG but that was another point of mine. RNG is RNG, which is why you should protect against it (if you care about players having awful luck).

  6. Certainly for the smoothest entry, but there are many cool things actively removed- that can’t be done. It just feels bad to see that, and makes FOMO feel even scarier. Like in FFXIV if you miss out, probably wasnt going to be removed in the first place. Worst case it’ll go to the cash shop, but you still cant miss out. Here it’s like “that might never, ever come back” to watch it already happen feels like a sad opportunity lost that you didnt know about, and to see it coming up feels like a metaphorical gun to your time lol.

  7. Yes :stuck_out_tongue:

  8. Thank you, I thought your questions were interesting and thoughtful and it appeared that you were attempting to derive meaning and clarity.

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You know, without saying one or the other is a better game, I honestly feel like that is a totally fair assessment.

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Ah, world markers and target icons! Yeah, FFXIV does it better. Hell, the indexes of the world markers dont even match the target icons. (For addons/macros, the markers don’t line up, like 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8… it’s not the same colors for the other marker system.)

I don’t use Plater, it’s way, way, way overloaded. I think the WoW nameplates could be better, like Smart Threat and Coloring on Target Marker (Blue Square makes the nameplate’s health bar blue). It’s a big feature request, and UI is extremely hard to get right for the masses. Splitting time between a better Edit Mode and default UI features… they’ve been doing good work, just a lot of work.

I sincerely hope FFXIV continues as a new game in the future. Like a 14.5? There literally is no way to avoid bloating a game gaining several expansions.

I’d reckon a “timeline” jump, like your soul is reborn in 14.5 so you can retain your goodies in 14, and then have a clean slate in 14.5.

Warbands are the current way. I think the occasional “max piece” would be great. But I personally feel it’s best to gear up the separate character by playing the separate character. (This only goes for gear though.) It would feel strange to play a Warrior to earn Heroic gear for my Druid.

Totally fair!

Ah yeah, that makes more sense. When you play the game, it’s like you have so many routes for gearing, you can get easily confused? (If that’s the case, I totally get it.)

Luckily, WoW devs have changed the tone on this. The only FOMO stuff is in the cash shop (which still sucks). The Trading Post for tenders too, but you can freeze items you want but cant afford yet.

WoW devs mostly ask for participation now (and you’ll get everything). Special events, like the 20th anniversary might be FOMO, but it’s a rather special case.

Always happy for a conversation. It’s never about which game is better, it’s about celebrating games we enjoy. Basically, we’re just band and theater kids in the MMO space. FFXIV players are just potential friends with a bit more flare.

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Hard disagree. FFXIV’s job system being more streamlined opens the game up to more creative liberties in how they design their classes. Each class has some sort of underlying mechanic involved in its gameplay, whether it’s black mage’s umbral hearts/polyglots/elemental gauge or the ninja’s ninki and kunai gauges. Each one makes the class feel distinct and, in turn, results in a deeper RPG experience.

i play both wow and ff14 pretty equally. its about the jobs /classes flavour for me

I only play ff14 as GNB, SGE, MNK, SAM, VPR, MCH
while i haave all 13 classes in wow

havent try high end content but going to this expansions

xiv vet played since phase3 of arr.
their combat is trash now lol.
that’s my main complaint and its weird that
the highly prefer wow to xiv despite only being 4yrs old here, tho classic is why i stay the most.

since yoship wants to have the game up for another 2 decades he needs to make serious changes bc combat needs to come first and he’s ruining it. for some reason lately mmos hate healers. yes im an angry ast main fix ur game and please fix the mog system its garbage. i can seriously complain about xiv all day lol im just an xiv version of a wow vet i miss hw.

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Nothing to see her folks just a normal everyday chatgpt comparison of FF14 and WOW at 3am est… totally normal forum behavior.

It’s actually quite normal to compare games that exist within the same genre lol

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