FFXIV has some serious competition with WoW: Legion

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Originally Posted by Taika

I did actually read the quest text in the open world (in dungeons I simply didn't have the time since everyone was rushing forward), but since leveling was so fast I was locked out from the quests in a certain zone before I got anywhere with the story.

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There's an option on the minimap that allows you to track quests you've outleveled. You're never really locked out of quests, but the game does focus on whatever is relevant to your current level.

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I was also locked out from many dungeons because I outleveled then (and then they just weren't in my dungeon finder anymore).

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Yeah, this is a big issue, and FFXIV has a huge advantage over WoW in this one because of level sync being built into Duty Finder.

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I did make it my mission to complete all the quests in one zone (so I skipped dungeons entirely) in (I think) the first Cataclysm zone (I don't remember what it was called, it was under water) just to experience what it's like, and then I did quests in Warlords of Draenor zones until I gave up the game. With my partner we also tried to find the Lich king story since we were actually interested in it (my partner liked Warcraft 3 a lot) and people we know spoke highly of the expansion, but we simply didn't manage to do that despite trying to find relevant quests in the different expansion zones and even googling to find advice for a good story quest path. It ended up being so stressful we just ended up running dungeons again (some of them did seem to have something to do with the story).

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This is probably the true downside of quested leveling, since once content becomes outdated it becomes difficult to keep track of quests and the story. What makes it worse is that the fast leveling means you're getting flooded with quests. Sort of wish I had known about this because if you were on my server I could have given you guys a hand. I spend more time soloing old content rather than doing broken isles stuff, if only because I like being able to actually use my flying mount.

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Are there really these kinds of mechanics in the leveling dungeons? Because I did as many as I could from my way to 1 to 94 and didn't notice any.

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They're there, but because of how stats have changed over the years, you can actually power through a lot of things. If you've ever seen someone randomly feared/stunned/petrified, or someone randomly knocked back, or a mob recovering their HP, or (in the case of one boss in Gundrak) change their shape mid-fight, all those are interruptible abilities. Even most trash packs are actually designed with one mob being the priority because they do something to make your life difficult. Again, it's just that stat changes and the power curve of player characters has changed so much that you can power through a lot of the mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Hirmu

The WoW leveling experience for me was horrible. The first 20 levels are fine as they bring you from your home village to the first big city, showing a bit of a sidestory on the way to give the impression that something’s going on in the world.

After that it’s literally just wading through trash. There’s no compelling reason to move outside the city to do anything. The game isn’t telling you “Hey, there’s all this cool content you should check out and we’d like especially YOU to go and see it!” In my mind I know that these zones probably have quests in them but the game hasn’t earned my trust that the quests are worth doing and in fact what I do know is that I have to go out of my way to find them and when I do find them, I know that I might outlevel the story before seeing it through and another thing I know already is that once I do outlevel the zone, nothing I did back there has any meaning at all in any way.

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If you're trying to focus on one individual story, then yeah it's a cluttered landscape of quests. But the thing is that everything is connected in some way, and that's something I wish SE's writers and quest designers would learn from. As I've repeatedly said, WoW happens to have more memorable side characters than FFXIV by a mile and then some. I tend to recall people I've helped along my journey much more easily than the randoms we get introduced to here (when a character has to remind you that you've met them, that's a big red flag to me).

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And because there is no Big Story where my character is essential, the story is there like an episode in a bad TV series where nothing really connects with anything.

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Prior to Warlords of Draenor, your character is basically a random guy that does things. That's really all the backstory you have. If you need to be told you're important to the story in order for you to have fun, then you're clearly not going to enjoy the 1-90 game. In terms of the SRPG Warcraft games, you're basically the random footman or elven archer unit, not the named hero unit on the map.

Here, you're the chosen one through and through. It's both good and bad from a story perspective (specially because a mute protagonist is hard to work with).

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We went out of our way to try to find the story in WoW. Seriously, it was incredibly hard to even find the zones and quests and to identify if this particular quest has anything at all to do with the Lich King or is it just something completely unrelated, like fixing some damn gnome’s flying machine. Still have no clue but we outleveled the area anyway.

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Some of the quests are mundane, but do tie to important arcs or lead you to important arcs. Repairing that flying machine would have eventually led you to a gorge that would then lead you to a questline about the undead scourge invading the basin you were at, and what that means to the titan-assigned guardian (bonus being that you'd get to ride on the shoulder of a giant robot).

So far, I'm preferring WoW, but that's because that game is more to my focus. It puts a bit more emphasis on endgame/skill-oriented content and less on things like Wondrous Tales/new glamours and emotes/admittedly funny but still relatively content-devoid side quests like Hildebrand/Scholasticate.

I was hoping for a pretty reasonable discussion about each games' strengths and weaknesses, but so far all it's been is a "I think Legion sucks" dogpile. Bah. Well, people are entitled to their opinion, but I think XIV would benefit greatly if it actually took a good honest look at why WoW is still top of the MMO genre. Also, the complaints about time gating in Legion are actually making me laugh. What do you think "daily" experts are, and "weekly" challenge logs/raid lockouts/tome caps? They're gating methods; don't be obtuse. Both games have them, and tbh they're not any worse in one game or the other. If you only selectively do certain content in both FFXIV AND WoW, you're going to run out of things to do pretty fast before the "timers" reset on the things you actually like to do. It's a fact. Whenever people gripe about "being bored" in XIV, people always tell them to go do side stuff they may not want to do to alleviate the boredom, but when people run out of things to do in WoW the game automatically sucks and XIV is better? You could easily farm old raids for mounts, achievements, grind old rep for minions and mounts, work on farming out that perfect set of glamour gear, level your professions, work on completing every quest in every zone so you get almost the entirety of the game's lore.

(To people who said the rep gating sucks though, I completely agree. WTF was Blizzard thinking with this? It actually locks out two dungeons from your gameplay if you don't bother with what is otherwise a needlessly drawn-out, boring chore. It's not like people who enjoyed the Suramar rep storyline couldn't still do it even if two dungeons weren't locked behind it. It's the same thing as locking people from HW content if they didn't complete the 2.x MSQ, though...there's "story" behind those dungeons, so gate-gate-gate.)

tl;dr people are parroting the same complaints that players have about XIV sometimes about the current WoW expac, and don't see the hypocrisy in it. I actually think "WoW sucks because the graphics are ugly" is a more valid (albeit a bit uninformed) complaint than "WoW gates too many things compared to FFXIV". I wish the OP hadn't been so aggressive in their opening statement, because to be frank I'd love to see some serious discussion about the pros and cons of both games, but their tone automatically put players on the defensive.

The point of having a open vast world is to be able to have different things in there that you can fit in. Imagine if SOC was small, where would you put all the beast tribe quest?

If you want to explore the world at a slow pace then do it, but if you want to teleport and get to your spot quicker then you may do so. Neither of them is bad.

Hell when you go to work or school, do you catch a bus because it's quicker or do you walk so you can take in the environment. NO you take the bus because you don't care about the environment you just want to get to where you need to go.


Quick or Slow, neither of them are good or bad it's all down to preference.

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Originally Posted by Hirmu

After that it’s literally just wading through trash. There’s no compelling reason to move outside the city to do anything. The game isn’t telling you “Hey, there’s all this cool content you should check out and we’d like especially YOU to go and see it!”

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There is literally a tool that glows on your screen telling you this. The Adventure Guide was added Cataclysm.

That said, I agree with you that FFXIV is generally better at focusing the story for you.

WoW does do one thing well; pvp. I've been waiting 90mins at this point for 8vs8.... I just want one item from the shop. T_T

I wish SE implemented an alternative method to get pvp tokens, like trade dungeon tokens in or something. ._.

OK... First, I'm gonna present my credentials:

I played WoW since march 2006, Vanilla patch 1.11, if I'm not mistaken. And left it at patch 5.2, the Throne of Thunder raid in Pandaria. Aside from PvP, you can say I made pretty much EVERYTHING there. I raided 40-men Onyxia in a progression guild. I was a guild master for a time, both in a progression and RP guild. I was raid leader in 25 and 10-men groups. I raided (and lead a group) in the not-well-known category of "10-men strict", where we raided without using drops from 25-men raids (or later raids). I have the "Herald of the Titans" feat of strength. I raided in every. single. raid released from Kharazan to Throne of Thunder, clearing all normal modes and some heroic ones. I was among the first groups to adopt the EP/GP loot system as a superior alternative to DKP. I developed an addon for WoW, called "Soundtrack", which played battle and victory songs with cross-fading (was discontinued because of a similar addon that appeared later, with the SAME NAME and more features). I did localization work for SEVERAL addons to my native language. I have ALL the Warcraft books released until 2012. I cosplayed as Kael'Thas at events. I have all issues that were released of the Official Magazine. Every post-wrath expansion I have is a collector's edition. I have a custom-made figurine made after my character. The only things I did NOT do were:

- Raid in a hardcore group (like, raiding 5x/week 3~4h/day).
- Get involved in PvP.

No, I didn't post this all to brag. I just wanted to establish that what I'm about to say is not a rant from a Final Fantasy fanboy, or someone who "didn't play enough WoW and therefore can't argue about it". That all being said, I'll say this with complete honesty at heart:

I have NO INTENTION of ever going back to WoW (did buy myself a WoD expansion last year and leveled a char to 100, may do the same with legion in the near future, mainly to check out the leveling stories), and I can say with no regrets that FINAL FANTASY XIV IS A SUPERIOR GAME TO WOW IN ALMOST EVERY ASPECT

The battle system in FFXIV is much more engaging, and the 2.5s GCD is only bothersome if you like button-mashing than actual tactical thinking. Having to wait 2.5s to perform your next action makes you PLAN and THINK your movements, in a way that WoW combat simply does not. That's the difference between an MMO and an action game, and while I admit that WoW is just catering to another, more mainstream audience, FFXIV's combat is much more tactical and much more strategic than WoW's, and that alone makes it far more superior in terms of deeper gameplay.

Still on that subject, Blizzard has since wrath engaged in a motto called "bring the player, not the class". That was a development vision which ultimately aimed to make players not be favored or unfavored in raid compositions, and create an environment where everyone could play as whatever class they wanted without having to fear ostracism. HOWEVER, this had the side-effect of making EVERY CLASS ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS, and created a rollercoaster of buffs and nerfs that everybody rides forever while Blizzard strives in a (fruitless, so far) effort of making each class with the same level of effectiveness. I say every class is meaningless because that ultimately means that you only have 4 real "classes" in WoW, as in "stuff players can bring to the table" - Tank, Healer, Ranged DPS and Melee DPS. The class variations are just the same with different rotations and equipment looks. Your choice of class inside a same role means NADA in the scheme of things, and that creates a very, VERY standardized raiding experience. All fights are designed around 4 roles, not 12 classes. It is VERY washed down. FFXIV, on the other hand, makes your class choice MEAN something. Every class brings a different thing to the table, making each party composition provide a different experience. Which are your tanks, which are your healers, having a MNK or BRD or MCH in your party MEANS something. You can feel special from what you SPECIALLY bring to the raid, instead of just being one more cog in the machine just like the other cogs.

Which brings me to the 3rd point: WoW is a MMORPG made for a standard audience - And the standard audience doesn't like MMOs, or RPGs for that matter. Most people I talked about - Hell, most people I RAIDED WITH - couldn't give a horse's ass about the lore and story of the game. For all they were concern, if they got rid of the open world and adopted a League-of-Legends-like 2D lobby to form groups and spawn players directly inside instances, they would even enjoy the game more. Wrath was a CLEAR effort to bring non-MMO players who used to hate MMOs to WoW, and every expansion after that was a further step in that direction. That being said, FFXIV is ENTIRELY lore and story-driven. Every quest has a dialogue, a small cutscene, a story that moves forward. EVEN THE SMALL SIDEQUESTS. The attention to detail is remarkable. Even the random NPCs on small encampments have a small story delivered to you through dialogue ballons over their heads. It's a LIVING, BREATHING world filled with small and big stories. And speaking of stories...

There is a FUNDAMENTAL difference between WoW and FFXIV lore: in FFXIV, YOU are the main character. People talk to YOU. The story is about YOU, YOUR companions and mentors, and what YOU do in the world. The Warrior of Light IS THE MAIN PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY. By the time you reach lvl 50, you are REVERED by the general populace, you are KNOWN for your feats. State leaders hold you in high regard, people wave at you in the street. The extent of your popularity and influence is made very clear after the 2.55 main scenario quests, where every Crystal Brave Soldier in Eorzea is either too scared or too loyal to arrest you. You are (a big) PART of the lore. While on WoW, you're mostly along for the ride. The real important characters are the NPC ones, and you're just mentioned briefly here and there as one of many adventurers that roamed the land. It is Anveena and Kalecgos who banish Kil'Jaeden from the Sunwell. It is Tirion Fordring who kills Arthas the Lich King. It is Thrall and the Dragon Aspects who kill Deathwing. You are just a spectator, a sidekick to the REAL heroes of Azeroth. Every quest of the main lore you participate in you're ultimately HELPING characters from the pantheon of Warcraft characters save the world. Your character is a FOOTNOTE in the history of Azeroth, the NPCs always did and always will matter much more than you.

And don't even get me started on the visuals of each game... or the myriad of different content available in each one =P

Now, I'll be 100% honest and say there is ONE aspect in that WoW is superior to FFXIV - BOSS DESIGN.
I credit that to the fact that WoW has a seasoned team of encounter designers who are in that business for way longer than the SQEX team - Vanilla and BC bosses were also very lackluster if compared to their more recent equivalents. But I guess that's a matter of time, we'll have pretty complex and engaging fights in no time, if things keep going like they are. The Warring Triad bosses and Alexander Midas / Creator are already a pretty nice indicative of what to expect for the future :)

The fact that Yoshida doesn't want to put in interesting stats and character growth says a lot lol.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

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I find your analysis of class composition flawed. XIV's design structure is really rigid and has found the developers painting themselves into a corner more often than I can count. Raids will always have:

-2 tanks, a "main" tank with superior mitigative abilities, and an "off-tank" with adequate mitigative capabilities but consequential DPS when not tanking
-2 healers, one of which will be a burst/reactive healer and the other of which will be a shield/mitigative healer and will also be judged by their DPS contributions when not healing
-2 melee DPS, whichever ones get boned the least by mechanics and have the best damage output
-a magical ranged DPS, see my melee DPS comment above
-a physical ranged DPS, brought for their resource regenerative capabilties and because they don't compete with other DPS drops (imagine if NIN and BRD/MCH shared all gear, not just accessories lol)


I find that WoW's class system, with things like Druids and Death Knights bringing battle rez, any Shaman bringing Bloodlust (whether heals or DPS), Druids bringing Innervate, Holy Priests bringing an AOE Innervate, mages bringing MP-restoring food, Warlocks bringing their "get out mechanics free" movement portal and a re-raise via Soulstones, as well as a myriad of other utilities I'm forgetting to list here, means that each class actually brings far more to a raid than just damage. Compared to XIV, where we have Dragon Kick (which is basically Virus, which is basically Storm's Path, which is basically that one DRK move...yes, these moves all stack, but the fact remains that the ability is RIDICULOUSLY homogenized across several jobs) vs Battle Litany (a move no other class has) vs Trick Attack (which is fairly homogenized with MCH's Hypercharge/BRD's Foe's at least for casters); healers all have a raise, they all have a way to instantly cast that raise, and AST was basically designed around emulating WHM and SCH as much as possible because the devs couldn't figure out any other way to make them fit in with the current healing meta and raid design. All tanks have a "get out of death free" card, all physical DPS get to cross-class Invigorate, and all casters will get to cross-class THM for Swiftcast. It's so weird that you think that classes in XIV are really unique and varied, when in reality there's a crapton of overlap in pretty much everyone's toolkit, because the devs are afraid of shaking up the balance tree.

I'm not trying to poop on your love of XIV, because it's great that you love the game so much, but I really can't abide when you say that classes in WoW bring nothing unique to the table compared to XIV, which has some of the most homogeneous, bland character utility I have ever seen in an MMO.

I also disagree with you on the global cooldown in this game in relation to "planning and strategic gameplay". Your comment might have merit, except for the fact that this is a rotation-based game and for the most part you are not changing what order you push your glowing buttons in, ever. When you acquire enough muscle memory to push those glowing buttons in your sleep, as well as during early levels when you don't HAVE a whole lot of buttons to push, that is a heck of a long time standing around doing "nothing". There's never a period in an EX primal or raid where I think, "I sure am glad my moves aren't coming up sooner because I'm unable to figure out what button I should be pushing next and I need to consider that". Heck, even in healing, for the most part you're going to be pre-casting and following a healing "rotation"...I'm sure it's the same with tanking, although I've only ever raided as a healer and a DPS. I used to be able to mutter my T9 WHM healing rotation to myself when I was bored in college class. This is kind of a flaw with having a fully pre-scripted raid design, but that's a whole other donkey that I won't waste diatribes of text on here.

Story is subjective, but I actually like that the NPCs in WoW are given some oomph. How many people here complain about Minfillia and Alphinaud's general uselessness? The amount of times we've had to rescue critical, supposedly powerful NPCs is borderline laughable at this point. Not to mention our character, the quintessential "Warrior of Light", is always sent into danger with a band of "other experienced adventures" (aka lampshading that they're other WARRIORS OF LIGHT), giving off the impression that any OTHER band of "experienced adventurers" could have possibly handled the issue just fine (in the point of non-primals, at least - WoL does have that Echo ex machina to make sure we stay relevant against those guys).

Realistically, I'd say that XIV's story PRESENTATION is a lot better than WoW's, but I think that XIV's cartoon-level "black vs white, good guys vs bad guys" simplistic narrative isn't really as compelling and thought-provoking as people make it out to be.

I don't know why you're acting like quests in WoW don't have dialogue windows that you can read. You may not have FELT like reading them, but they are there. In fact, there's a contentious quest line that you can do right now in Highmountain that involves this long ignomious story of two goblin swindlers. The quest line seems to end where you, the player character, get thoroughly duped, except that when you hit max level the quest chain actually CONTINUES, allowing you to seek out these guys again in a different city and possibly get your comeuppance. Really hate it when people act like WoW has no story, just because they can't be arsed to read the quest windows. EVERY zone has a ton of small stories like this...I did the Death Knight campaign on my DK alt, and part of that storyline actually involved finishing up some loose ends from a LEVEL 25-30 ZONE. This quest isn't given to you until level 103.

Just kind of weird that you supposedly have all the Warcraft books and stuff and yet pop-up dialogue bubbles in the open world are really what gives the FFXIV story the edge. O__o But hey, opinions and stuff.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I did actually read the quest text in the open world (in dungeons I simply didn't have the time since everyone was rushing forward), but since leveling was so fast I was locked out from the quests in a certain zone before I got anywhere with the story.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

There's an option on the minimap that allows you to track quests you've outleveled. You're never really locked out of quests, but the game does focus on whatever is relevant to your current level.

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Quest gating shouldn't exist unless it is tied to some rite of passage or feature unlock. The goal of quests should be to experience side stories as you happen upon them. These quests should auto sync you to the appropriate level. GW2 does this and I think ESO will in the Tamriel One update.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I did make it my mission to complete all the quests in one zone (so I skipped dungeons entirely) in (I think) the first Cataclysm zone (I don't remember what it was called, it was under water) just to experience what it's like, and then I did quests in Warlords of Draenor zones until I gave up the game. With my partner we also tried to find the Lich king story since we were actually interested in it (my partner liked Warcraft 3 a lot) and people we know spoke highly of the expansion, but we simply didn't manage to do that despite trying to find relevant quests in the different expansion zones and even googling to find advice for a good story quest path. It ended up being so stressful we just ended up running dungeons again (some of them did seem to have something to do with the story).

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Originally Posted by Duelle

This is probably the true downside of quested leveling, since once content becomes outdated it becomes difficult to keep track of quests and the story. What makes it worse is that the fast leveling means you're getting flooded with quests. Sort of wish I had known about this because if you were on my server I could have given you guys a hand. I spend more time soloing old content rather than doing broken isles stuff, if only because I like being able to actually use my flying mount.

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My issue with quested leveling is there is just too many quests. When there are boatloads of quests it is not much different from old school monster chain parties. Only here instead of standing in a camp and obliterating a million enemies. You play fed-ex boy/girl and run back and forth hitting a new chain quests where you run back and forth, again and again. The quest leveling is actually more tedious to me than combat grinding. At least in FFXI, I had some control over how fast or how much xp I could receive by performing optimally,choosing wise camps, and being a suave puller.

If a themepark has to shun open world battle camps and make the meta mostly quest leveling. Then they should rethink how they go about it. What is more interesting? Doing 1000 fed-ex or filler quests? Or doing 200 contextual and interesting quest? Provided they have the same amount of experience rewards. How can it feel novel if at every hub, you know 5-30 quests are waiting on you and most are questionable on why something so simple couldn't be done themselves.I would love to be able to level with fewer quest along with the main story if they could be tuned to take the same amount of time and offer the same or more amount of experience as we have now. This would go a long way in making the journey memorable.

Yoshi is considering a max level potion. I say that is an extreme measure. Why not try giving more xp for main story and sidequest, with the focus on interesting weaving stories. I think Swtor does a lot of things wrong. But I would take their style of class of sidequest any day over a majority of mmorpg questing. Fully voiced questing may be asking too much. But at least try to get the fundamental behind it.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Here, you're the chosen one through and through. It's both good and bad from a story perspective (specially because a mute protagonist is hard to work with).

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I don't mind my character being mute. It lends for you to interpret how you would say something in context. My problem with being mute, is we don't have any flavor or choices in dialogue in most situations.

Questing now:
sgjgjjsgjsjdgs
sjsjiuiwiwuiiw
dhdhwiiwggss
jsjjggjkgjjj
jjsbjbbjbxjbs
iqwiwieihh
jsjjkajksgjgjsgj
Please help me find my son who wandered into the forest.
bxnbnnxnnv
owukwioio
jsjjskgjkgajksgj
snnncnkndjjkds
syuduysuiyuu

I want emphasis on the bolded but with branching dialogue and choices, which could alter outcomes. And less of the kskashl;hljkdbdbckbkb.

On the subject of "bigass open zones to explore and wander around!", I don't want most of the game to look like an empty space with a few mobs spread aroung and a random house put here and there without any kind of uniformity and boring travel times between stuff I already saw hundreds of times. I much prefer having small maps where everything in there is 100% in the hands of the artists and where everything was made on purpose.

Open worlds with vast samy-looking zones are boring. Controled zones are much interesting. I realized this the moment I started playing Ragnarok Online back in the good ol' days.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Open worlds with vast samy-looking zones are boring. Controled zones are much interesting. I realized this the moment I started playing Ragnarok Online back in the good ol' days.

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They weren't in Lineage II, or FFXI...or Aion...or Tera >.> There was stuff to hunt, camp and farm...bringing a friend along made it even more fun. It is the games fault if they make huge zones for nothing, then yes..they are boring. But these other MMO I have played have utilized all the space quite nicely..and made it feel very fantasy like, big with tons to do and never feeling like "oh god I gotta run THERE AGAIN WHYYYYY"

I agree though, if they make them big for the sake of a "big zone" then yes, that would be really...boring.

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Originally Posted by Iromi

The fact that Yoshida doesn't want to put in interesting stats and character growth says a lot lol.

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Because the current stat system is fine as is? WoW's stat system is a bloated, ugly mess of things that intuitively sound similar to each other but operate on menial things at best.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Because the current stat system is fine as is? WoW's stat system is a bloated, ugly mess of things that intuitively sound similar to each other but operate on menial things at best.

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If by "fine" you mean "irrelevant".

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Originally Posted by SessionZero

If by "fine" you mean "irrelevant".

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In what way? Aside from the admittingly useless elemental resistance set, pretty much all stats do their job for their respective classes.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Because the current stat system is fine as is? WoW's stat system is a bloated, ugly mess of things that intuitively sound similar to each other but operate on menial things at best.

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Care to translate your buzzword string into meaningful criticism? There are four secondary stats in World of Warcraft, and from what I've seen and read it looks like different classes prioritize different stats. No stat is neglected, unlike in this game with it's ridiculous accuracy requirements (leading to it being a "dead" stat once you get enough of it to meet the cap). The closest "dead" stat WoW has is versatility, and even then there are quite a few classes like tanks that actually prioritize it.

Serious question, since I haven't checked XIV theorycrafting a while: do any jobs actually use skill speed/spell speed as a meaningful stat besides BLM? It SEEMS like MNK and NIN would use it, but the stat is so poorly balanced that it seems like crit/det might still be king.

In any mmo you can have a super complex stat system with all sorts of crazy stats but then you are still given an illusion of choice. People will do the math and find out the optimum builds and best in slot gear. Which is why devs seemed to move away from super complex stat systems because it just lends itself to players making bad choices and they have no idea why.

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Originally Posted by Windi

In what way? Aside from the admittingly useless elemental resistance set, pretty much all stats do their job for their respective classes.

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Parry is functionally useless for tanks, except to proc certain skills, yet they throw it on just about every piece of gear, forcing tanks to use a hodgepodge of tome, crafted, and raid gear just to avoid it as a stat.

And why even let us allocate stat points if there's only one specific "build" for them in the first place? In FFXIV's case, dumping them in your primary stat (VIT for tanks, STR for DRG and MNK, etc).

Some stats matter, but to say that FFXIV's is fine while WoW's is bloated is just... no.

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Originally Posted by Iromi

They weren't in Lineage II, or FFXI...or Aion...or Tera >.>

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They were though. You had small patches of areas more or less organized to look like something, but traveling between these areas was filled with emptiness. The way WoW and other "moderns MMO" do this stuff is simple: you have an area with some mobs and quests to do, all of which are more or less grouped around one particular "theme" (would it be a cemetary, an inn, a big tree, statues, whatever). Once you're finished, one NPC gives you a quest to "bring a letter to the dude in that camp overthere", and you travel to it, which will be the next area where you'll repeat what you just did. But the journey from one of these area to another is completly useless and often really feel like you're just crossing an invisible line between said zones. It was just there to be able to say "hey, look, it's an open world!", but it serves absolutly no purpose besides wasting player's time.

FFXIV is a bit guilty of that because of the size of Heavensward's maps, but it was clearly not as obvious in ARR.

Directly cuting areas out from each other and putting loading times may break the immersion of some players by unveiling this whole "open world" illusion, but the benefit is to have much more freedom in the zone design, as well as giving a logical/lore reason for getting out of a forest to be in the desert. To do that in the games you mentionned, you'd have some kind of boring mountain inbetween the two zones with a single passage from one "map" to the other, and you'd clearly see why that moutain is here: to act as an invisible loading time while you cross that boring passage between the areas.

More often than not, "open worlds" feel very synthetic and man-made, nothing very "organic". And this breaks my immersion way more than loading times.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

In any mmo you can have a super complex stat system with all sorts of crazy stats but then you are still given an illusion of choice. People will do the math and find out the optimum builds and best in slot gear. Which is why devs seemed to move away from super complex stat systems because it just lends itself to players making bad choices and they have no idea why.

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^^^^ This.

@SessionZero: A fair point. What I was trying to get at with my post was that we don't need more stats, and I cited WoW as an example of a game with a stat system that is too bloated for its own good. Rather, we should push to make what we have better. Fixing parry, for instance, would be a better step then trying to replace it with a brand new stat that's meant to be more "interesting."

Speaking of stats, I really like how Mastery works in WoW - where it does something slightly different for every class/spec.

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Originally Posted by Windi

What I was trying to get at with my post was that we don't need more stats...

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I agree. Dump elemental resistances, and either dump or revamp otherwise useless skills like parry or skill/spell speed so that they have some relevance.

On the topic of WoW, I wouldn't say that it's bloated, necessarily. Every class has its optimum stat priority and with the exception of one or two that are incredibly situational (like, as someone previously suggested, Versatility) they all serve to advance the class. If anything, I would say that FFXIV and WoW are in similar situations, w/r/t stats, excepting FFXIV's whole "allocation being pointless since they all get dumped into one stat anyway" thing.

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Originally Posted by Windi

Because the current stat system is fine as is? WoW's stat system is a bloated, ugly mess of things that intuitively sound similar to each other but operate on menial things at best.

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Then good thing you didn't play back in Vanilla or TBC times. It was lot of fun stacking defense to be crit immune, plus having many other stat to mind in order to be effective (expertise, block rating and block value to name a few).

But seriously, WoW system is as streamlined as it could ever be and it's fairly simple - maybe even too simple. Infact it is similar to FFXIV but only a few stats in this game are always going to be used while others (Namely Parry and Spell Speed) will be often ignored. Accuracy is useful but only if you raid and once you're capped it's a stat that bears no usefulness.

In Wow however all stats are useful in some ways (with some exceptions that is), even if it's not their optimal gear.

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Originally Posted by Windi

^^^^ This.

@SessionZero: A fair point. What I was trying to get at with my post was that we don't need more stats, and I cited WoW as an example of a game with a stat system that is too bloated for its own good. Rather, we should push to make what we have better. Fixing parry, for instance, would be a better step then trying to replace it with a brand new stat that's meant to be more "interesting."

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You still haven't really stated HOW WoW stats are "bloated". There are 4 of them, 5 if you count armor rating as a secondary stat. FFXIV has accuracy, crit, determination, spell/skill speed, piety, parry. XIV stats are actually MORE bloated than WoW stats when you factor it in like that.

I don't disagree that we don't need more stats, but I think a lot of people would prefer if maybe accuracy was dumped and something like mastery was added. Mastery provided bonuses unique to whatever class/spec you're playing on, and even if it wasn't your favored stat, it was still functionally useful (unlike parry, and unlike accuracy past a certain point). Versatility is basically det, except that versatility translates more directly to damage, and actually effects defensive rating, as well. Crit is pretty much the same in both games, no need to go further there. Spell/skill speed is WoW's haste, except that haste actually has a pretty serious effect on certain classes due to proc-based gameplay and dual-wield.

Aside from mastery, most of the stats in WoW are the same as they are in FFXIV, it's just that WoW's make a more serious impact on gameplay. You don't just pile on crit and "make do" with the other stats. I main a Restoration Shaman, and their mastery is actually "the lower your target's HP is, the more you heal them for, based on your mastery stat". It's insanely good for progression content, and bad pug groups. Meanwhile, Restoration Druids, a HoT-based healer, actually stack haste, because it effects the frequency of their HoT ticks. Balance Druid, a magic caster, actually prioritizes haste over their MAIN stat, intellect. Protection paladins, a primarily mitigative tank, actually get the most mileage out of versatility because of its consistent defensive boost.

THIS is what most people are looking for when they want a better selection of secondary stats. It's not that XIV's suck, it's that they're poorly balanced and under-utilized.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

snip

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Fair point about the FFXIV stats. My main source for WoW stats are this:
http://cdn.blizzardwatch.com/wp-cont...tat-sheet2.jpg
... Like, the fact that the game has a scroll bar for stats like these comes across to me as out of whack.

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Originally Posted by SessionZero

On the topic of WoW, I wouldn't say that it's bloated, necessarily.

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In WoW, stat bloat is typically directed at the high amount of a given stat you're expected to have. That's why they tried to reset all that in a previous expansion, but I guess they just gave up on it lol. Right now, I'm almost at 30K Stamina in Legion, which is quite a ridiculously large number to have when you think about it lol.

I think most of the stat comments here are directed at having meaningful "unique" stats added to gear or whatever. Stuff that alters your characters performance in some way (i.e. set bonuses in WoW or action modifications on gear in XI). "Increases damage or healing done by <skill/spell> by %", "Reduces cast time for healing spells by %", etc. There's always going to be a BiS sort of thing, no matter the game you play, but that's just what I think people refer to when they talk about wanting "fun" stats here.

Even in XI, which was once as perfect of an example of horizontal gear progression as you could realistically expect, had a BiS structure in place that the players found. The difference there being that gear can be swapped out mid-combat, so even the most situational of bonus stats on gear could potentially find use.

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Originally Posted by Windi

... Like, the fact that the game has a scroll bar for stats like these comes across to me as out of whack.

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The game recently underwent a pretty hefty pruning of those stats. Things like leech and avoidance are still cropping up on some gear, but for the most part you have 4 secondary stats that affect your output in any significant way. Attack speed is actually still on weapons, but the game will actually calculate the weapon's power vs it's attack speed for you, leaving you a "damage per second" value on each weapon you have. So if you get a quest reward that has x lower attack value but y increase in attack speed the game will show it as "z damage per second increase/decrease" making it a no-brainer which choice is better.

Here's what it looks like now.

Unless WoW somehow steals all of ffxiv console players I doubt it. WoW is in its own category.

I think 4.0 will be better since it's add on features won't be limited to ps3 and minimum pc requirements are getting raised

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

The game recently underwent a pretty hefty pruning of those stats. Things like leech and avoidance are still cropping up on some gear, but for the most part you have 4 secondary stats that affect your output in any significant way. Attack speed is actually still on weapons, but the game will actually calculate the weapon's power vs it's attack speed for you, leaving you a "damage per second" value on each weapon you have. So if you get a quest reward that has x lower attack value but y increase in attack speed the game will show it as "z damage per second increase/decrease" making it a no-brainer which choice is better.

Here's what it looks like now.

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Ah, that looks much better.

All these people keep talking about old WoW, Legion doesn't have any bloated stats. Why not compare FFXIV to Legion instead of past WoW expansions? Or you want to compare Heavensward to The Burning Crusade?

Sounds the same lame excuse of, "FFXIV has a better story". Well, not anymore. Legion has kicked it up a notch and the story telling is amazing. FFXIV has to pull its' socks up and see what Blizzard has brought into WoW instead of thinking WoW is still on TBC.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I find your analysis of class composition flawed. XIV's design structure is really rigid and has found the developers painting themselves into a corner more often than I can count. Raids will always have:

-2 tanks, a "main" tank with superior mitigative abilities, and an "off-tank" with adequate mitigative capabilities but consequential DPS when not tanking
-2 healers, one of which will be a burst/reactive healer and the other of which will be a shield/mitigative healer and will also be judged by their DPS contributions when not healing
-2 melee DPS, whichever ones get boned the least by mechanics and have the best damage output
-a magical ranged DPS, see my melee DPS comment above
-a physical ranged DPS, brought for their resource regenerative capabilties and because they don't compete with other DPS drops (imagine if NIN and BRD/MCH shared all gear, not just accessories lol)

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I can't upvote this enough.

FFXIV's approach to class and role design is fairly limited and funnels classes into mini-niches. It's not a good thing in the long run, specially taking into account that AST had to be created as a copy-WHM/copy-SCH job instead of being designed around its own approach to healing.

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I find that WoW's class system, with things like Druids and Death Knights bringing battle rez, any Shaman bringing Bloodlust (whether heals or DPS), Druids bringing Innervate, Holy Priests bringing an AOE Innervate, mages bringing MP-restoring food, Warlocks bringing their "get out mechanics free" movement portal and a re-raise via Soulstones, as well as a myriad of other utilities I'm forgetting to list here, means that each class actually brings far more to a raid than just damage.

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The thing to really stress here is that a raid's success rarely hinges on the utility classes bring. I think the only time utility was notably abused was in Blackrock Descent with raids stacking druids for battle rezzes. Sure, you can bring up stuff like Bloodlust/Heroism, but the devs eventually got to distributing it to other classes/specs so that Shaman don't have a monopoly on a single and very powerful raid cooldown (mages can do the Time Warp and hunters have Ancient Hysteria via one of their pets).

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Compared to XIV, where we have Dragon Kick (which is basically Virus, which is basically Storm's Path, which is basically that one DRK move...yes, these moves all stack, but the fact remains that the ability is RIDICULOUSLY homogenized across several jobs) vs Battle Litany (a move no other class has) vs Trick Attack (which is fairly homogenized with MCH's Hypercharge/BRD's Foe's at least for casters); healers all have a raise, they all have a way to instantly cast that raise, and AST was basically designed around emulating WHM and SCH as much as possible because the devs couldn't figure out any other way to make them fit in with the current healing meta and raid design. All tanks have a "get out of death free" card, all physical DPS get to cross-class Invigorate, and all casters will get to cross-class THM for Swiftcast. It's so weird that you think that classes in XIV are really unique and varied, when in reality there's a crapton of overlap in pretty much everyone's toolkit, because the devs are afraid of shaking up the balance tree.

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Some of this can be blamed on thematics. I got shot down during 1.2x for daring to suggest Hallowed Ground/Invincible be removed or nerfed because PLD having an invincibility forces EVERY tank to have an invincibility to compete. That's a huge problem design-wise. I have a similar issue with Swiftcast because it's become a necessity for all casters (for the WoW comparison, only Arcane Mages have access to Swiftcast/Presence of Mind; every other caster just has to eat their cast times and like it but also have more instant-cast spells and things like procs/mechanics that reduce/remove cast times).

I've played WoW since Vanilla, and I did the first 3 dungeons in Legion and almost fell asleep. The story is comically bad and feels like a scripted Call of Duty sequence.

I was always a fairly decent PVP player but I can't run around a pillar in arena for 8 years in a row it gets boring, and killing bots in BGs is no fun. Only rated BGs show potential.

Speaking of which, I botted the title conquerer and of the horde myself in WoW.

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Originally Posted by KeluBehemoth

In every other major MMORPG ever released, crafting and gathering have never been considered core content in the game and have always been secondary. Arguing crafting and gathering is like my mother telling my child self "If you're bored why don't you go clean your room". Its something to do yes, but I don't find it fun. I play games to do enjoyable things.

And yes, on occasion I do craft and gather. Challenge logs? Not very enjoyable. I sort of just let them get taken care of while I play the game. No real reward.

Anyways this thread is completely off track.

TL;DR The world does not feel alive or vast in the slightest. SE pls fix.

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I don't craft at all, but the depth and options of FF crafting are vast. There are whole single player games based on crafting like the Atelier series on PlayStation. There is NOTHING wrong if a person spends 90% of his WoW experience crafting.

Actually that's one thing FFXIV nailed, because being a crafter as a playstyle is a viable option to enjoy the game. FF needs more unique stuff like that.

I haven't played WoW for too long, but after my time in WoW, i can already tell that XIV is leagues above it.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

All these people keep talking about old WoW, Legion doesn't have any bloated stats. Why not compare FFXIV to Legion instead of past WoW expansions? Or you want to compare Heavensward to The Burning Crusade?

Sounds the same lame excuse of, "FFXIV has a better story". Well, no tanymore. Legion has kicked it up a notch and the story telling is amazing. FFXIV has to pull its' socks up and see what Blizzard has brought into WoW instead of thinking WoW is still on TBC.

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Legion is pretty good. However really till we see what the next FF14 expansion holds since realistically those are the two expansions which will be in real competition. The other factor is wether Blizzard can sustain the quality of its launch expansion. FF14 has been very consistent in the release of content while Blizzard has been fraught with content droughts and disappointing releases (6.1). Blizzard did very good with Legion but its still in question wether they can sustain that, particularly as they start to work on their next expansion.

Regardless both games will always have their own pros and cons. Legion isn't universally better than HW. However, as is the nature of large groups of people, the pros and cons that people value will differ depending what you value in a game. In some cases they will be in direct conflict.

I also don't think WoW can claim to have a better story yet. While its been very enjoyable and far tighter than in the past, it has still been fraught with errors, retcons and inconsistencies and their messiah treatment of Illidan is so corny its painful.

I think FFXIV has a major issue now that Legion is a much better expansion pack that WoD. But FFXIV needs to vastly improve, but it needs to do it in it's own manor without looking at Legion as template to copy.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I got shot down during 1.2x for daring to suggest Hallowed Ground/Invincible be removed or nerfed because PLD having an invincibility forces EVERY tank to have an invincibility to compete.

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Actually, no, it doesn't. The problem is not with the existence of Hallowed Ground, but in the raid design to make HG mandatory. For example, in A1S, you have to use HG on one of the Plasma because you other skills would all be on CD. While DRK and WAR could keep Holmgang and LD safe for when things go really sour.

Every job should have one ultimate skill, but there's no need to be the same. After all, WHM is the only job with an instant full heal.
As a sidenote, in FFXI, PLD was the only tank to have an Invincible buff, yet it was frequently the less prefered tank. And Invincible was frequently used to gain massive enmity (After a party wide Benediction) instead of just preventing damage.

As for Swiftcast, it's the same as Provoke. You don't have much option on what to do with these skills:

• Not include them, thus reducing the type of mechanics you can design since nothing can rely on them.
• Give these as a native skill to each role, wich will be seen as homogenization
• Give these as cros-class skills...which is irrelevant, since you have no choice but to take them

But I still feel a little dissapointed with tanks stances, especially Grit, since they could have made them more unique.

I think the problem is that they want to create many many jobs. You can't really tank or heal with many different ways, so why not keep those roles with only a few jobs ? And give them different builds to steel cater to different type of players (No one complains that two builds of the same job have the same skills at the core...)

WoW is dead. Who plays that thing? You surprise me by telling me that it's still running.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

WoW is dead. Who plays that thing? You surprise me by telling me that it's still running.

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Legion alone has sold twice the amount of FFXIV's lifetime sales, I'd hardly call that dead. :p

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Originally Posted by Belhi

their messiah treatment of Illidan is so corny its painful.

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$18 says it was Metzen's decision before he retired, I sure hope he doesn't play along and become some sort of angel. I thought bringing back Nanamo was a joke, but it pales in comparison to Illidan's redemption.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

Legion alone has sold twice the amount of FFXIV's lifetime sales, I'd hardly call that dead. :p

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Actually, it only sold half. Even if six million accounts is obviously inflation, that still means people bought the game. Legion's sales were 3.3 million. Anywho, I think she was being sarcasm. :p

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I think the problem is that they want to create many many jobs. You can't really tank or heal with many different ways, so why not keep those roles with only a few jobs ? And give them different builds to steel cater to different type of players (No one complains that two builds of the same job have the same skills at the core...)

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I think it has more to do with their obsession with maintain absolute balance on everything. Granted, you do not want one job coming out ahead, lest the playerbase deem it "best" and only want that. But on the flipside, if you homogenize them all to the extent FFXIV has, they lose any individuality. Yoshi has stated he wants to dehomogenize jobs in the expansion, hence the whole simplification of our rotations. I do hope that means making each job unique in some manner. Unfortunately, content needs to be far more challenging as a whole to actually take advantage of that. If Paladin were made the mitigation king and Warrior the DPS tank. You need content that makes Paladins stand out; those hard hitting mobs/bosses that make players say "Damn, I wish we brought a Paladin." Frankly, it's okay if one job is "better" than another in certain fights. So long as they job itself isn't. Right now, dungeons are so easy, I tanked virtually all of Saint Mocianne's Arboretum as a Dragoon. Yes, it's an old dungeons. But still.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Actually, it only sold half. Even if six million accounts is obviously inflation, that still means people bought the game. Legion's sales were 3.3 million. Anywho, I think she was being sarcasm. :p

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Well shit, I must be going crazy then. I think I have it confused with Warlords of Draenor... :s Either way, still a very large amount for sales in the first 24 hours and certainly not dead, wouldn't be surprised if the sales were 5m+ now that word's gotten around that it's a decent expansion. I am surprised they managed to sell so much on day one considering Warlords and all though, but I guess people were willing to give it a 2nd chance.