I think it’s kind of a shame that the entire FF universe is being overshadowed by FFXIV. I guess it is because if most look back on the last 10 years or so with Final Fantasy FFXII (1-3), FFXV, and KH3 have been really expensive dumpster fires with nothing but false promises of innovation in the series.
I’ve heard rumors about a FFIX remake… if they ruin that amazing combat or try to release it in episodes over the next 20 yrs like FFVIIR I am going to be really upset. But will try to keep it cool because I do not have high expectations anymore for any games.
1 Like
For what it’s worth I’m not a fan of the story in Stormblood either. I think it splits its focus too much to tell a cohesive story and the Stormblood postgame involves a lot of characters being willfully stupid in order to drive the plot forward. Shadowbringers I think is the best individual story in the game but also the most removed from the main plot so it doesn’t fit in as nicely as the other expansions do.
I thought Endwalker was good but I think it mostly came from being the culmination of a story 10 years in the making. I thought it was a very satisfying ending but that’s only possible with the investment that came from the previous 100 hours of story. Viewed as a story on its own I thought it was good but not great. Taken individually Shadowbringers was my favorite expansion story.
I certainly don’t begrudge you for dropping the game when you did since I think that requiring players to go through the entirety of the MSQ is a restriction of their game model. I won’t necessarily say it’s a weakness since if you enjoy the story then it wouldn’t be a weakness per se, but it definitely is a barrier to entry for new players. I’ve always been one of those people who argues that if your story needs 50 episodes until it gets good then it’s not actually good.
2 Likes
Your post made me wonder about Endwalker. The lack of any REAL enthusiasm, before, during and after. It’s all so… meh. Even certified shills did just lipservice. “HOW CAN THIS GAME GET BETTER AND BETTER!” Gimme a break.
Just think about a new WoW expansion. Somebody said that nothing is more exciting than logging for the first time into a new WoW expansion… and it’s true. The new zones. The new mobs. The new music. Everything.
I think my problem with FFXIV is completely dropping the game after finishing an expansion (2 times including the base game) and trying to come back feels really bad. But it feels so exhausting to push through all of the story content.
I am 100% for story and I have seen a lot of depth in the way FFXIV tells stories (especially with past side quest characters come back out of nowhere and being more important than you thought initially … that feels really good)
I just don’t think the dialect, the slow burn, the hours of reading a box of quest text clicks with me anymore - it used to when I had more time.
Just need a little more gameplay sprinkled (or dumped in) between those cutscenes. I would have a way better time I think.
Definitely trying not to hate on the FFXIV lovers. But these threads are typically made to troll the WoW community so I came in kinda hot. LOL
2 Likes
Believe it or not they show up in the FF14 boards as well. On Reddit especially you get a lot of free upvotes for a “WoW bad FF14 good” post. It frustrates me to no end.
WoW has had a lot of missteps in the past year especially, but I think both communities boil down the comparisons between the two games too simply. I don’t know if I’m just in a unique position due to being someone who not only actively plays, but also actively enjoys both games or what. It all just feels like the same pointless bickering from the junior high cafeteria when the Xbox and Playstation kids were at each other’s throats. I don’t really care if one MMO dominates the other, I just wanna play fun games.
3 Likes
So true. I think there is plenty of people in the world to enjoy plenty of different kinds of MMOs.
I do tend to get personal with FFXIV a bit and my feelings about it because I do hold that entire series dear to my heart. And I think SE can do so much better.
1 Like
Agree 100%. I have played, or at least tried, many MMOs, including several mobile trash, but none is as beginner unfriendly as FF14.
STARTING FROM THE PAYMENT (or signup, anyway).
1 Like
Oh my…
The horror of using Mog Station or anything online with SE… Having flash backs of Playonline and FFXI please help.
1 Like
In my experience… repeatedly run dungeons are done wall to wall in FF14 like they have an aggressive timer attached anyway. At how fast people blast through stuff you would think their hair is on fire or something to warrant this crazy never stop urgency FF14 has in it’s dungeons.
I don’t feel like ff14 is any more or less “go go go” than WoW when it comes to dungeons.
The only timed content in the game is M+. That’s it.
For M+ (the only thing with a timer) making up such a very small portion of WoW content it’s surprising that so many people complain about it as if it’s everywhere. Especially given the nature of the timers. Even if you don’t complete them in time you are still given the rewards.
Does it take anyone over 40mins to clear a +2 DoS playing normally? I don’t think so but even if it does they still get rewards for completion.
On the flip side any group in FF14 who takes too long to clear a dungeon is just straight up kicked out. Though it’s probably about as rare as a 2hr +2 DoS run… when it happens in FF14 is just absolutely sucks for no apparent reason. Sitting there at the final boss on a dungeon where you’ve wiped multiple times on everything else leading up to it and then just poof progress gone, go back to start, try again.
as if those mean anything. Most people don’t even bother looking at who they are assigning it to. It’s the biggest farce to paint that system as somehow positive for the game or the community.
The FF14 community is toxic af if you aren’t speaking in unison and walking in lock step. It feels so awful that opinions like “Reaper is broken in PvP” or " Pandaemonium isn’t a great raid" get immediately attacked as if you’ve just committed some kind of heresy.
1 Like
I think that something like the FFXIV Novice hall would be a good idea.
Before you can set foot in a dungeon you are given a tutorial of what your class (Tnk / Hlr / Dps) should be aware of in a group instance.
If you complete all the trainings, You get a decent armor set and you also get rewarded a ring with a 30% xp boost till you reach a certain level to help get you into mainstream content.
I think that would be a pretty nice addition for new players.
All of these things have been said before. Oh and expect your post to be shifted to the Off Topic forums by the mods fairly soon.
Just a small subjective input: Mentors. I played FF for a couple of weeks and had a Mentor who did absolutely nothing to help me. Was never available when I was and when they were they never answered any questions or assisted me in any way.
However, I am part of the WoW New Player mentor version and new players are constantly being helped in chat. I know the meem is that we are nasty to new players but every time (and I mean every time) a new player asks a question in Newcomer chat, someone will give them the information they need.
Which is 10x better than what I experienced in FF.
1 Like
I think people have confusion on where the beginner friendly is. FFXIV is beginner friendly in the way that you’re railroaded on the MSQ and most of it is just talking with the occassional kill 3 monsters do 1 dungeon/trial.
The confusion stuff is after you get to the end. There are so many features, not just side content but literal skills/buttons/options that you legit do not have and the game does not tell you about that you have to find the correction random quest to do.
To get the barber you have to know about the specific plus sign quest in limsa and do it. To get the glamour you have to know to do the other side quest in the middle of nowhere wit hthe orange juice. The orchestra tab is not there unless you leveled up a bard to 30.
To do the Shb legendary quest you have to get the bozja quest. To even get to Bozja to have to have done several quest chains in stormblood and do the the alliance raids, this is not told to you. I straight up had to go out of my way to see if SHB had relic weapons then go out of my way to see how to unlock it.
To grind the shb eureka glamours you have to grind out all the previous expacs eurekas,not just the quests, you have to do all of it with probably less people than when it was current just to go to the next one then do that again to go to the next one to grind the one you want.
Same thing with a lot of dungeons, you have to know which side quests to do to unlock them just to get them in your bar just so you can use them to level your alt jobs easier.
They didn’t tell me how to unlock Expert dungeons which is unlocking all the side quest dungeons to get that roulette. It does not tell you to set your languages in party finder to all to get faster queues.
Which is the other problem, side quests give bad exp so leveling an alt job is hours to days of grinding dungeons/potd with the forced 1 hour cutscenes of Castrum every day.
I would say overall FFXIV is beginner friendly if you just want to do the story and maybe the same dungeons/trials everyday. But a lot of features and more fun things are straight up not told to any new players and you just have to know it is there or have someone tell you its there.
1 Like
Ive never had a personal mentor, but I was invited into the “Novice Network” chat channel that I think exists to help newer players.
It was mostly unhelpful, most of the time it was just mentors using it for their own personal chat line. Some of my questions were answered and some got lost in the flow of the chat. I soon placed it on a separate tab so I didn’t have to see that spam.
1 Like
To give credit where it’s due, every single side quest in FF14 which unlocks something significant like a new gameplay system or the like has a different quest icon. Including every single quest you mentioned.
Generally speaking, players should do all of the quests they see that have the blue background and the + sign. I think it’s silly to have major gameplay features gated by quests, which means that occasionally gameplay features are gated by story progress since the quests are in located in areas that aren’t immediately available, but Square does make them obvious.
I agree with this. I found the game even less intuitive than WoW, which at least has wowhead. I could never find a decent reference site that answered basic questions which I didnt even realise I had to ask to find out things I didnt know about. It took me about a week to work out that I had to change gear to craft something (which is just an unnecessary action imo). Basic stuff, stuff you should be able to find out in some way.
WoW has its issues in this regard, but it cant be glossed over that FF14 has them as well. To quote me old mum, something is easy to do if you know how to do it.
1 Like
They all have the Plus icon. Which also includes a bunch of other quests that have similar Icons that don’t give you anything. And even then what it gives you flactuates from a aether thing to fly, to a dungeon, to a actual feature that should of automatically been given to you the second you started playing.
1 Like
For sure they lock a lot of things behind those quests that probably shouldn’t be. But like I said, players should do every single blue quest they see. None of them are really something they should skip.
And I’m not aware of any quests with the blue quest icon that don’t unlock anything? At least I don’t think I’ve seen one.
Agreed but Some of those Blue + are quests that just open up harder levels of the same dungeons that I already know.
This. Those who (rightly) complain about the Ion systems in Shadowlands but gloss over the absolute nightmare system that FF14 is if you really play it beyond the main quest… absurd.
As I said elsewhere, would be a good case study for Antropology.