Trying to get in ffxiv, not new to mmorpgs

I've played ffxiv alone most of the time I've been around. I never really done one of the raids or fully gotten into the game (don't really know how to). However, I know of them and have watched one of my friends play in them (he no longer plays). I'm not new to mmorpgs. I've played WoW for several years, but have fallen off the last couple of years.
I've been looking to get more into ffxiv, but have no idea where to start. I've not played through endwalker yet. Questing is really tedious for me when there's no end reward, you know? so if anyone has any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Because FF14 is a terrible MMORPG.

If you understand MMORPGs, and go in expecting an MMORPG then you're going to be disappointed.

It is a single player game with average multiplayer elements.

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy fans had a bit of a cry when they realised that the original FF14 was a good MMORPG (as it borrowed heavily from FFXI) and, sadly, Square didn't want to drown under the salty tears of the whiners.

If you don't like the experience now (with the questing), you're never going to like it. There are plenty of actual, proper MMORPGs out there to try.

It really depends on your interests and goals. What do you want out of the game? Only by knowing that, can we really help you. Common examples are...

• Story/lore person.
• Raiding/difficult content.
• Social/to interact and make friends.
• Roleplaying.
• Collecting things (achievements, mounts, minions, or whatever else).
• Pvp.

Everyone plays MMORPGs for different reasons, or a combination. If we tried to explain everything about the game, we would be here a long time writing posts. So knowing what you actually want out of the game will help us narrow down our suggestions for you.

The main thing with the quests is that the fireball quest is the most important one. It has an endgoal, which is unlocking all the areas and its associated content, although it sometimes gives other things such as experience, mounts and minions.

The blue quests unlock content or game features, but are technically optional.

To participate in raids, you would just queue for them using Duty Finder. Although it depends which type of raids.

• Binding Coils were meant to be the hard raids for A Realm Reborn, so they are not supplied by a roulette.
• Anything labeled (Extreme), Minstrel's Ballad, (Unreal), (Savage) or (Ultimate) is meant to be difficult content, and isn't supplied by a roulette, so the queues could take days or never succeed. Extreme and Minstrel's Ballad are supplied by Mentor Roulette, but only a relatively small portion of players have access to that, so the queue could still take hours or days.
• Alliance Raids (24-person raids) are casual content and you can queue for any of them and it will be fine.
• Starting in Heavensward, the 8-person raids have an easy story version and a (Savage) version. So if it does not say (Savage), just queue for it and you will eventually get into it and it'll be easy.
• People don't do old "hard" raids in their challenging form very much. They just destroy them easily in their higher-level gear, or focus on the latest ones at max level. But there are small communities who do old raids with settings that make them difficult again, for fun/the experience of doing it.
• "Hard" raids are typically recruited for either in Party Finder, in discord PUG servers, or by forming statics through discord, reddit or websites such as https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVRECRUITMENT/ or https://www.xivrecruit.com/

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Originally Posted by greywclf

I've played ffxiv alone most of the time I've been around. I never really done one of the raids or fully gotten into the game (don't really know how to). However, I know of them and have watched one of my friends play in them (he no longer plays). I'm not new to mmorpgs. I've played WoW for several years, but have fallen off the last couple of years.
I've been looking to get more into ffxiv, but have no idea where to start. I've not played through endwalker yet. Questing is really tedious for me when there's no end reward, you know? so if anyone has any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.

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If you enjoy high level raiding, you should try out Savage and Ultimates. Start by playing through Extremes.

If you want to ERP or go to virtual nightclubs or play this game like it's Second Life, this game is good for that too.

However anything else, you should turn back and leave.

You really have to like your character and keep track of the story. If you can't do that it'll never be fun. There are some good gameplay elements but not until deep into the game so if you don't get invested in the setting it'll never click.

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Originally Posted by greywclf

I've been looking to get more into ffxiv, but have no idea where to start.

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Can you say more about why you are looking to get more into FF14? Because there are sooo many different ways to get into FF14:

• Raiding
• Crafting
• Gathering
• RP
• Home Decoration
• Glamour
• Story
• Relic Weapons
• Rare Monster Hunts
• Triple Triad Card Game
• Chocobo Racing
• Verminion RTS
• PvP
• Collecting Mounts/Minions/Orchestrions/Etc
• Eureka/Bozja "old-school MMO" zones
• Just plain socializing
• And surely numerous other things I'm forgetting

So depending on what aspects of the game appeal to you, your journey may end up looking very different!

For the most part FFXIV is now an online single player game by design with extra player slots added to some MSQ content with a few upper tier multiplayer bits added in the form of EX/Savage/Ultimate/alliance raids. The majority of the content being tuned downward over the years in claims of needing the game to be more "accessible". The game design IMO doesn't even promote the sense of an online community in most content as people generally just see other players in Duty Finder content as NPC's, hence the somewhat common meltdowns by people when the "NPCs" don't obey their orders.

If questing isn't for you then you might not like 14. A large majority of content is locked behind MSQ. If you purchase a story skip then you'll probably need to go back and unlock all the other content which is usually done by doing a short quest chain.

Eureka, Bozja, PvP, PotD, HoH, etc...

Not that I don't enjoy questing. I just need a reason to do it and then do the stuff afterwards. Like in WoW you do the storyline and then have content afterwards. IE raiding, mythic plus dungeons, uhm professions. which is why I got into this because it's a lot more indepth I guess.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by greywclf

Not that I don't enjoy questing. I just need a reason to do it and then do the stuff afterwards. Like in WoW you do the storyline and then have content afterwards. IE raiding, mythic plus dungeons, uhm professions. which is why I got into this because it's a lot more indepth I guess.

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Outside of a number of 4 player side dungeons in ARR everything is essentially gated behind either the MSQ or a side quest story line with the endgame content being to clear or repeat clear upscaled versions of the original battles. However there isn't an upscaled version of the standard 4 player duties or the 24 player alliance duties. It's mostly regulated to just the 8 player ones. The only exceptions that come to mind would be Eureka's BA which has no basic version essentially starting in it's hard mode as it's difficulty is tuned higher than Eureka itself and the harder version of Bozja's DR. Though I suppose you could throw the harder versions of the critereon dungeons and upper premade party only floors of deep dungeons as exceptions to a degree as well.