So I’m trying FF14

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
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5amish ramblings here, got to talking with guildies and we ended up hyping each other up to try it out inbetween Patches for WoW.

First off, WHAT IN THE [Expletive] IS WITH THE DOWNLOAD LAUNCHER. That took for. Ever.

ahem

There’s lot of nice customization in certain ways but kinda lacking in others, I really like that you can adjust your character’s height and pin hairstyles so they’re easier to compare if you’re like me and have trouble deciding.

Also, LAST NAMES, yussssssssss.

Also with the exception of Hrothgar you’re basically playing Human, human with pointy ears, humans with kitty ears, human with bunny ears, human with some scales, etc.

While pretty and sexy and cool, it does have a much more grounded feeling than the races that WoW offers, from Orcs and trolls and zombies and Werewoofs to smol foxes and alien wiggle goats.

Also wtf SE gender locked races? That’s always gone over so well for you /s, thankfully that’s getting fixed in the coming expansion.

The bog-standard high end graphics don’t do anything for me, makes it feel sameish with a bunch of other games and it’s gonna fall behind quicker than stylized art styles like WoW’s if it hasn’t already. That said I ADORE the art in the game, the loading screen and concept art, doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Graphics aside the actual designs in the game is awesome, all the armors are stylish, the cities and buildings are beautiful. Out in the adventure areas they feel like set pieces, the key pieces are all wonderful and pretty but they feel small and empty, haven’t gotten mounts/flying yet but since all zones are instanced I feel like that would be a bragging rights reward more than a gamechanger or legitimate QoL option.

Also your ring and neck slot items have actual visuals.

I wish there was more variety in the quests, in WoW the zone quests run the gamut and there’s a buildup, whereas in FF14 you have hey run this item to this person over there and then super dire main campaign shenanigans straight from the get go.

Also you have Fates, which are like WQs, they spawn fast and often ( good), but you can miss out on them since they’re not instanced, once it hits 100% complete it goes away, you can’t just wait for an enemy or node to respawn.

I do like that you can jump off the not!flight path Chocobos at any point of the trip, I’ve always wanted to be able to parachute off a FP in WoW for as long as I can remember hehe.

Not a fan of the combat, and this ties to other things as well, it feels very slow and stiff. The slowness isn’t quite as bad, just a different feeling, but WoW’s is much more frantic and fluid, which I prefer.

Also no out of combat Utility abilities, everyone has attacks and buffs and debuffs but aside from the sprint everyone gets there’s nothing for a class to do outside of combat, whereas in WoW Rogue’s had stealth and pickpocket, Warriors and Vengeance DHs could get around with their Leaps, etc.

Random but I love that there is a hotkey to instantly look behind you, nice to check if there something following you or if there is a cliff before backpedaling.

Not sure if I like the 1 character can be every class and can swap between them setup. Certainly don’t hate it, just an odd, I guess Immersion, is the word I’m using, issue for me.

I do not care for the UI in the slightest, it’s completely soulless and technical, there’s this barrier feeling with trying to interact with things with it.

You have a bunch of bag space and you got a lightbright system for showing you what all is filled, neat, but a part me likes finding or making containers, also a special inventory for holding gear, cause again, you can swap classes so it’s even worse than trying to play all specs of a Druid XD. Why there’s not a toggle to let you switch between the inventories when you have one pulled up I have no idea.

Another thing that ties into the stillness and stiffness, it’s a very quiet game, outside of cutscenes NPCs don’t talk aloud ever and your character only has sounds for certain grunts and emotes, no talking or /silly from what I’ve found.

Not a complaint to me but I loled when I saw all the options in the cash shop and remembered all the posts on these forums of people saying they’re quitting cause of whatever new thing was in the WoW shop so they were leaving for FF14.

There’s also PvP and Transmog apparently but I haven’t unlocked either of those yet so don’t know how they compare to WoW’s.

No opinion on housing.

So far I’m having fun, I can’t wait till I start getting pets or minions or whatever they’re called. There’s some things I really like and wish WoW would implement, but there’s plenty in WoW that I like much more and miss. So until I head back this is a nice chill vacation.

Also I made a goth strawberry mint ice cream bunny.

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The only thing ffxiv has going for it is the story telling, the job system and the professions.

Otherwise I found it pretty meh

The PvP is especially atrocious

They don’t have any high end 5 man content outside of those 5 man duties and I couldn’t commit to raids, so I gave it up and came back to wow and mythic plus.

I did find dragoon, samurai and the white mage enjoyable to play. Also fishing, go ocean fishing, trust me, it’s awesome

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Oooo I didn’t know there was fishing, Thankies!

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Graphics… well it’s a 10 year old game. So if it still feels similar to current games, then it’s aged pretty well I’d say.

Combat is slow at low levels, speeds up a lot with gear, slots, and higher levels giving you a fuller rotation.

Quests… as a first timer there is little to no reason to do anything other than the main story, and you’re still going to hit 80 before you’re into the current expansion. The quests are pretty fun if you do it that way, and the blue quests to unlock features etc.

Character customisation is decent, much more than WoW offers. Not as much as some other games, probably could offer a little more but I find when they get too involved it becomes a pregame before the game.

Cash shop is cosmetic with the usual level boost. Here or there, it’s not game breaking, it’s just Karen’s tend to scream loudest on forums.

The ui you can fully modify, which I done almost right away. I didn’t like the default either, but it is probably less complicated than any WoW custom ui I have setup in the past.

I’m pleased you’re having fun, but I’m sure once you find a good fc and get some guidance a lot of what you are a bit unsure about will slip away.

First time I tried it, I hated it and quit for several years. I picked it back up three months ago and have no desire to stop this time. Probably because I understand it better this time.

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I actually like the UI more than WoW, but I don’t use addons in WoW so that might be part of it. I liked that I could move around, resize, etc basically everything in the FF UI by default, and I definitely like the party frames and hp bars more than in WoW. In the end though, it just boils down to taste and what you prefer.

For the combat though, yeh… at starter levels it’s glacial. The combat in the game is based around using your normal abilities and then using your off GCD abilities inbetween to fill in the gaps, and at early levels you just don’t have enough of a toolkit to make it interesting. At max level though your constantly busy with weaving all your abilities together.

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The ocean fishing que is in Limsa Lominsa at the southern dock part. I think they said they are un gender locking the races for the new expansion.

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FF14 has its audience, anime story-based enthusiastic players.

PvP = nope
Challenging PvE = nopw

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Yeh, Bun Boys in Endwalker release, with Lion Girls coming later. I’m absolutely switching to a Bun Boy. :slight_smile:

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nods fair. I guess I just gravitate more to stylized games and block out/clump up all others.

Oh I know it’s all cosmetic, it’s also a lot bigger so the reactions on these forums was just an amusing realization to me.

Ooo I’ll have to look into that.

Thankies. I am having fun, I certainly don’t hate the game.

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This is one big issue for me… everything blends in, nothing really “pops” and the MMO looks very similar to a few other ones. The complaints of “you can play as human or human with ears” is also somewhat valid. Game looks fairly decent, though.

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Yeah, pretty much all of what I said comes down to tastes, nothing I’ve encountered is objectively bad (except the downloader). It good to hear you can customize the UI, my grump with it is that it’s purely technical with no artistry to it. In WoW the abilities are in an actual book, you have the griffons flanking your ability bar, bags are actual bags, etc.

The FF14 UI is purely practical (except when it’s not, why do I have to keep going into a menu and selecting the item when I click on something to interact with?), it’s just not pretty.

Good to hear

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can attest to this

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i only keep my FFXIV sub because of my house. After a full 27 hour camp (don’t judge me) and having to brace my hand for a week I am not letting that thing demo.

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Housing Savage. The real endgame. :stuck_out_tongue: :slight_smile:

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14 rocks for a lot of reasons. It’s way better for casual players than WoW, too.

I’ve played it off and on for years and they just keep improving it in every way.

Apart from house purchasing …

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FF is a game that, good and bad, demands a lot of investment into before you get the full experience. The combat only feels slow because you don’t have your entire toolkit and unlike WoW, you are missing a lot of key things like off global cooldown abilities that, once you have everything, will make the spec play much faster and far more complex than WoW combat ever is.

The floor difficulty in FF is way higher than WoW is also. Even in low level dungeons, FF has no problem killing you and/or letting bosses have actual mechanics. You aren’t just going to win fights by ignoring what bosses do even up to LFR levels.

Tryhards here also will suffer greatly without their precious weak auras and DBM. Each spec is much more complex than WoW by default yet they won’t have their precious addons turning their gameplay into basically a monkey pushing the button the addon is telling them to do.

I also, personally, like that FF has(had) the guts to limit races to a gender. Kind of a shame they are caving. Were I in charge of WoW, we’d see certain specs restricted from certain races. For example, Forsaken would not have holy spells and LF Dranei would not have any shadow spells/spec. Lore cohesion would trump gameplay mechanics.

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The pop you seek comes in later expansions, though making an effort to avoid constant surrealism isn’t a bad thing.

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I’m honestly not sure which expansion my roommate is running around in; probably just the overly-bright environment and the washed-out colors throw me off after playing WoW for so long.

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Idk how anyone could endure doing the main story, I gave it a fair chance, got to level 35 and I gave up, I was bored the entire time. I had the “it gets better” in mind the entire time but I just couldn’t do it anymore

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Granted it’s not the most mature of stories, but even then compared to WoW, at least it’s got its own sense of originality. And it does tell a story, not always the best and often a tad cliche but it isn’t bad.

Currently I’m in an extremely slow part of it, and to be fair it is draining my will to live a bit. But from what I’ve read, the expansion I’m in had extremely mixed reviews, the next is apparently great. I’m not rushing to get through, and I’m seeing things I miss about WoW and things I think they done better.

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