Hooking a WoW veteran

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Originally Posted by Arkazon

In a great many games, you simply have a rotation. Even as a Dragoon, I have my 1-2-3 main combo on repeat, plus a 4-5-6 combo for piercing debuff, and then my jumps on cooldown. But one of my jumps leaps me away from the enemy -- I save that for when some nasty nastiness is about to drop on me. That's not part of my rotation, but it's a tool to use at the right time.

As a level 20 Arcanist, my friend simply puts up 2-3 DoTs, then spams Ruin. As a level 20 Rogue, I have a two-hit combo plus a DoT. It's hard to see at an early stage how things will get more interesting and compelling later on. I don't want to squeeze the game into a box it doesn't belong in ... but if things *do* become compelling later, I must be able to show that to my friend (and myself!), and judge whether the slog up to there is worth it.

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Ah, you have yet to get Blood of the Dragon. That adds positionals and resource management. Your rotation gets a bit more complicated in HW. As for Rogues, there big thing when they become NiN is Mudras and Ninjitsu, three fast cast skills that have to be done in the right order to create the desired effect. Sounds easy but you have to do them very quickly and correctly for them not to eat into your GCD. Management of Ninjitsu effects important aspects of your rotation like your haste buff and your ability to apply a vulnerability debuff to the enemy.

To be honest, the only way I think you can show your friend the end goal is to be able to show him a character dealing with high level content. I can't think of another way. You might be able to do it using Palace of the Dead but PotD is limited in some ways. Alternatively you can look at some of the youtube videos of some of the more high level fights like the EX primals.

The game does need a max level trial for new players to try out so they can see what they want to play. The problem still is is that the classes don't feel independent of each other. You want a ranged caster, you have two choices and no talents to customise your playing experience.

FFXIV needs more customise-able classes so you can play the way you want imo. The ability pruning is a step in the right direction, but they need to think of making each and every class to just be FUN.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arkazon

In a great many games, you simply have a rotation. Even as a Dragoon, I have my 1-2-3 main combo on repeat, plus a 4-5-6 combo for piercing debuff, and then my jumps on cooldown. But one of my jumps leaps me away from the enemy -- I save that for when some nasty nastiness is about to drop on me. That's not part of my rotation, but it's a tool to use at the right time.

As a level 20 Arcanist, my friend simply puts up 2-3 DoTs, then spams Ruin. As a level 20 Rogue, I have a two-hit combo plus a DoT. It's hard to see at an early stage how things will get more interesting and compelling later on. I don't want to squeeze the game into a box it doesn't belong in ... but if things *do* become compelling later, I must be able to show that to my friend (and myself!), and judge whether the slog up to there is worth it.

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I came from WoW and will say getting used to the global cool down was the hardest part for me. It can still throw me off a couple of years later but for the most part it is now just part of the game to me. I think the early levels of combat in most MPORG's are repetitious and can be boring so tend to look past that and to what comes later. Comparing max level between the two games I much prefer FF as you still have to think and pay attention to your skills. I would say it was around level 30 that my characters skills were filled out enough to start being challenging. Playing a Summoner there isn't a set rotation per se as the most of the spells are DOT with different cool down cycles. The enhanced skills are also on a set of unique timers so you end up spending a lot of time monitoring what is about to time out or come off cool down to maximize your DPS all while avoiding AoE or other incoming damage. With all of the simplification in WoW I felt even at the higher levels I was just spamming the same thing over and over. I won't say never but I think it is highly improbable that I will return to WoW due to the skills stripping they have done the last few releases.

Only you can answer if it will be worth it or not. I came here and stayed because of the strong story line. They also have a very good crafting system that is still relevant to the game unlike the gutted one in WoW. I have found the dungeons and raids to be somewhat more challenging than WoW and much better integrated with the story. Fates, Leavequests and the others can speed up the leveling but you still need to run the main story to advance. It might be better to wait for the next release which is supposed to have a character job boost available and see what it does. While others disagree I think it is a reasonable way for a person to catch up to friends and should help draw in new people.

I saw you mentioned someone saying that "scholar is boring as sin"... I'm a wow vet (came after a while of playing WoD), and I have always been the healer sort. I main all healers, and for raiding, my team has wanted me as scholar. Scholar is far from boring if you play it correctly. I can not begin to explain the amount of excitement I get when I spread a crit Aldo/eye for an eye on everyone in my party, and we take zero damage. My team likes to tease me because I always scream "I AM A GOD!"

One may wonder, what about leveling and alts. In WoW leveling feels faster; the massive XP reward from Looking for Party, which is usually enough to level you after each clear, and that it is NOT locked behind a daily cap like FF14's Duty Finder is, is a major factor. Quests are very rewarding in WoW as opposed to anything that isn't the main story in FF14. Through out leveling in WoW from cataclysm (or was it Lich King?) onward, has your abilities, perks and talents spread out through the 80, 85, 90, 100, and now 110 levels for each class and their specs. Keep in mind WoW has made massive prunes like three times now, as every expansion added 3 to 7 or more new things, and sometimes cutting things out. . . . . . And sometime putting those previously cut out things back in. FF14 hasn't experienced that just yet, and no I'm not counting 1.0 and the massive changes it undergone before it got exploded by a dragon. So we're stuck with multiple versions of the same spell, combos, and fodder to you mash buttons while eyeballing your hotbar more than the enemy. It might with Stormsblood, but I have a very low opinion about SE's ability to handle changes after seeing what they did with Heavensward and them being really, REALLY safe (look no further than AST, DRK, and MCH).

In WoW you can have 12 characters per server, and they keep adding a new slot everytime they add a new class, and there's 12 classes. Your character can only be one class, access 2 of 3 specs (whose only limit to interchangability is your bag of gold), 2 of either gathering or crafting professions, know first aid, fishing, and cooking. As the expansions piled on, they sped up leveling so that it would still be fun the next time you level another character. For me it was more fun leveling than dealing with the brown, green, or purple wasteland that is Burning Crusade or the catastrophe that was the Cataclysm. You don't need to be max level of the original game to glamour your outfit on any character on WoW. There are still limits like you cannot transmogify into gear that is a higher level than yours. So you can play dress up really early. You can mail things to yourself/other characters on your account. And naturally having more than one character is a boon to you in many ways. Crafting and Gathering professions can give you abilities, tools, upgrades and other things that'll help you in combat and/or life. Like engineers consistently have some super useful toys and just plain toys to have, like a gliders, bombs, a bolt gun that interrupts anything in its AoE, rocket gloves, a barrier, mind control helmet, goggles, a vendor to spawn, work stations, and many more . Or Enchanters that can give weapons and some gear extra effects people will love. Dungeons, while via the LFP, is your fastest bet at leveling, is completely optional. You are not forced to go through a massive story in order to unlock FEATURES in the game with the exception of some quests that gets you into new zones/expansions, where you couldn't otherwise. Also the world isn't mostly instanced based like FF14 is. Think how FF15 did its in game world. All this is not saying things are automatically better than FF14 cause of this. Some of the zones suck, especially a few from Cataclysm. Raising everything you can on more than one character is extremely grindy, time consuming and for some extremely expensive. And also the story is wonky. Like really REALLY wonky, since you never know which writer/team is in charge next time, then next thing you know there's missing elements that you can only find out in the books, which I will never, EVER, read. I'm not a sucker for story, and I usually don't care. Granted there are some fun subplots around. Raid drop system is: I don't know what Legion changed but I do know how the personal loot system works. If you've already completed a boss, then you can only you cannot get loot until the reset. However in regular raiding, at least as far as I've heard in the hardest difficulty, Mystic, you cannot help another group who is not up to your point of progression; skip and you're stuck up there. You'll fail most likely due to failing to do something right, like taking one for the team in the Iron Juggernaut, getting in the puddles with Malkorok, seperating and killing all 8 sha while they are apart with Garrosh (freaking 8 papers tanks is the worst), positives and negatives, evading lava walls, sticking to the right twin, rotating the giant left or right at the right time, healing the dragon, healing the dragon yes there's more than one raid that needs you to do this, not sucking at jousting, paying attention to which side is the bad side, blocking an injection, dealing with being constantly interrupted by raid wide screams that hurt a lot, sticking to the plan, staying calm and not a whiny twit anytime someone opens the boxes in an order you don't like, suddenly mid-fight having stupid ideas about MIN/MAX that result in things going wrong, a wipe, and you getting the boot after or during the inevitable, functioning without a mod that tells you literally everything the boss is going to do in real-time right down to displaying the boss's cooldowns, and many more! Or at least that's how most of the raids I've been in failed. Most of the time when enrage hit, it's either cause the DPS sucked and/or too many were dead.

Now FF14. . .
The reasons having alts would benefit you are sparse. You can be all jobs. You have massive inventory space. Anything that isn't the main story quest isn't as reward or worth doing, unless it unlocks a feature, such as levequests, the gold saucer, glamour, materia melding, converting gear, and so on. You must do the story quest to unlock quests that unlock features. This means almost most of the dungeons if not half of the dungeons are mandatory. You can only send mail to those on your friends list, and those friends must be online to be sent a request, which means you cannot send mail to your own alts within your account. There are ways to send yourself items but still. The raids have nothing to do with the story, so you're good if raiding or the shallow "walk in, play red light, green light 1000 times with some ONE while beating that someone up, who is 100% scripted, while dealing with the constant deficit of DPS that never improves thanks to what Gordias Savage perpetuated because it was that easy and horribly overtuned" isn't something you're into. The main story in 2.0 does drag its feet. Like doing mundane chores in the river? Like doing go here to talk to a dude a lot? Quests with instances can only be done solo. Gathering levequests can only be done solo. It does have FATES being reoccurring public events that can net you some hefty XP especially if you are not a healer or tank. It does feel like FF14's leveling is sluggish thanks to that manditory story, the daily XP bonus from completing the roulette, whose XP in no time will not be enough to boost you a level in one clear like WoW's does, the other quests aren't as rewarding, and the HW FATEs are made to be an extra slog if you are alone. There's this new Palace of the Dead place but good luck trying to farm that for XP. Suddenly everyone gets the same brilliant idea, and now you could be stuck with a newbie who's confused "new to this place" with "new to this game/job", most play it excessively safe making you question why do we need a healer if there is no need for healing 99.9% of the time, making this a fast and/or a very VERY slow way to level. In short the reasons why you'd have an alt in this game is having one on multiple servers, you like leveling, want to explore the other parts of the story you couldn't have seen by starting in another city, for whatever reason to evade the penalty of the savage raid loot system if you are in more than one raid group, and other super special reasons. In normal weekly loot, if you get something, you don't get anymore until reset. If you do savage raid loot, then if none of you completed it then you get 2 chests to loot from. If you have 1~4 who's already completed it, then you'll screw the raid out of 1 chest. If 5~7 of you done it already, then there will be no chest. If you ENTER and fight a floor ahead, then even if you fail the previous floors will count as complete thus screwing your raid out of a chest or both. This makes top gear sparse and thus further perpetuating an issue with deficient DPS (excessive red light; green light, disjointing abilities, and controls are also part of the problem) and a rampant healer DPS problem that got perpetuated thanks to Gordias Savage.

. . . . . . Also the aforementioned raids I've mentioned heavily are 8 man, and yes they do have a normal and hard mode. 24 man ALLIANCE raids are a different usually less shallow beast to tackle, but much like the 8 mans, each wing is divided and spread through out the patches. And no, the 24 mans are only "normal" mode.