Why do you keep playing FFXIV ?

[Obysuca]

Because there's always something to do! Also because this has been my first MMORPG experience ever so I'm pretty much like the obnoxious kid at Disney World for the first time that wants to do EVERYTHING.

>_> XIV's your first mmo experience? I'm sorry lol

I mean, theres far worse mmos out there, but theres also far far better ones. Sure, theres a lot of WoW clones out there, but XIV's a watered down WoW clone aimed at people with low attention span (able to cap by doing 1 expert a day) / people who don't want to have to think (no special stats, no procs, no elemental weakness, no resistances, no multiple gearing choices, only a single path in dungeons, your gearing choice picked out for you etc) or people who have never played a mmo so they don't know that there's better and XIV has a lot of bad game designs :/ Only reason its stayed up for so long is because it's got FF in the title, which won't carry it forever.

[OfTheWhitewind]

snip

Well, considering I'm a casual player with a low attention span, not interested in learning a million different game mechanics and have never touched an MMO before now I would say FF14 is just fine and probably the only one I'll ever touch. :P And to be honest the other MMOs out there really do not interest me in the slightest.

Sure I "don't know there's better" ones out there but eh. I don't really wanna know, being the filthy casual that I am. Ignorance is bliss.

[Colorful]

>_> XIV's your first mmo experience? I'm sorry lol

I mean, theres far worse mmos out there, but theres also far far better ones. Sure, theres a lot of WoW clones out there, but XIV's a watered down WoW clone aimed at people with low attention span (able to cap by doing 1 expert a day) / people who don't want to have to think (no special stats, no procs, no elemental weakness, no resistances, no multiple gearing choices, only a single path in dungeons, your gearing choice picked out for you etc) or people who have never played a mmo so they don't know that there's better and XIV has a lot of bad game designs :/ Only reason its stayed up for so long is because it's got FF in the title, which won't carry it forever.

I've played dozens of MMOs (maybe more than 100 at this point) and FFXIV is 2nd to only WoW pre-WoD (a lot disagree, but I loved Mists), and probably less popular opinion, Runescape back before they added the P2W crap. I think you're greatly exaggerating the things other games have over it. It is missing a lot of things sure, but as of now it's the only MMO worth my time and money. I haven't played FFXI so I can't compare it to that myself, but it sounds downright awful. Some classes have one job which is to stun a monster at a certain point? Gear taking months and months to obtain? I don't find things like that very fun.

I think the only major flaw comes from the raid and dungeon environments being very lacking, and I suppose that could be blamed on the lack of money they're making, or the lack of money SE is willing to invest back into the game from the profits. For example, all of WoD and Alexander are well, aesthetically similar (each boss room) and overall look downright "boring". I guess it comes down to opinion in the end, but if you compare Alexander to the likes of Throne of Thunder, you can easy tell which one had far for time and money put into it. Not just in boss count, but visually. The trash was somewhat interesting, or rather the paths to the boss, the bosses felt more interesting and looked a lot more interesting, a few examples are Durumu the Forgotten, Horridon, Dark Animus, Megaera and Lei Shen. The boss rooms usually weren't just rectangular or squares (or maybe they were but they just spiced them up significantly rather than the bland samey looking ones in FFXIV). But that's an unrelated issue.

I think all the issues boil down the lack of money, and with a fairly small sub number compared to the mammoth that is WoW (aprx. 600k) they don't have much of it in comparison. They also tend to spread their development efforts too thin, across multiple things without focusing on perfecting one thing. This is a fairly large issue to me, and results in most things never being used by players because they're not developed well enough.

[Obysuca]

I haven't played FFXI so I can't compare it to that myself, but it sounds downright awful. Some classes have one job which is to stun a monster at a certain point? Gear taking months and months to obtain? I don't find things like that very fun.
.

Sure, it might sound awful, but its a whole different experience when you actually play it. The gear actually felt like an achievement and practically every piece you obtained had a story behind it. Leveling took a while and people actually had conversations and made bonds that lasted for 5-13+ years. There was no DF so the jerks were less common because everyone knew everyone on their server, so if you were a jerk, no one did crap with you, which is a plus to XIV's "me me me, screw everyone else" attitude. Sure, there were a few bad apples here and there, but the community was much better than XIV's "community", which is almost nonexistent because of DF. Knowing people (which you would because people actually talked in XI), got you through the game much easier than the rare few who never talked and had to wait hours for a pt, because they didn't know anyone or attempt to make their own pt.

All I see on XIV are people who expect to get carried / people who ragequit from 1 wipe / people who demand you know the fight before doing the fight within an hour of release / demand you watch a 20 min video instead of them taking 30 seconds to type the mechanics out. On XI, in 11 years of playing it, I've never once had someone ragequit after 1 wipe or demand people watch a video. If you didn't know the fight and were new, that was fine, someone took 30 seconds or so to explain it and guess what, people listened. Unlike XIV where people "play how they want to play" and cause a ton of unneeded wipes.

There was a whole variety of content (not counting it being out for X amount of time, just in general, there was so much you could do rather than 2 dungeons for 3 months ish then throw those out). Old content was still relevant, so if you joined late, you could still get to experience said old content and get gear that was still relevant too. There were so many side-grade gear so you could mix and max for certain encounters and the gear wasn't trashed 3 months after it coming out. Relic (and mythic) were actually rare and good and not just "oh here's something to get, but now its worthless and only glamour", like XIV does).

People also didn't up and unsub a month after an update until the next one, because there was plenty to do to where you wouldn't get bored (the point of a mmo, to never run out of things to do). 75% of the game wasn't obsolete like XIV's is and there was actual open world content so (up until aby or so), you'd actually see people quite often out and about doing things. Also, expansions felt like expansions, not just a patch you paid $50 for like HW. Each expansion in XI added some new sort of content, rather than rehashing and rehashing like XIV does. Practically every update built upon the content they added in XI, rather than throwing it out the next update like XIV. The content released in each update in XI(which used to be spread out further than XIV's for a good while), was enough to keep people busy right up until the next update and beyond. You didn't see people going "I can't wait for 3.1 to come, there's nothing to do" or "I leveled a new character to prevent boredom". SE didn't try catering to the super casual and then try to throw everyone else in for an update, resulting in a lackluster update with no content like XIV does. In XI, they knew who their playerbase was.

It felt more like an actual world, rather than a game. The music is the best I've heard in pretty much any mmo (lots agree, but its an opinion), best storyline for a mmo too (it trashes XIV's hard). The quests and missions were meaningful and actually had plots instead of "go kill 3 sheep, done". After 11 years of playing XI, I still remember practically all of the missions, most of the job quests and a lot of the side quests. XIV? Who here remembers exactly what happened 2.0 - 2.4? It was pretty much "Go run this errand. Oh no, a primal, go kill it."

Also, inventory expansions were added in game from a quest >_> Rather than XIV's excuse of "crashing the server if we gave you more, so go buy some with real money!" The events were more involved and were more than "talk to npc, do a fate, done, never touch it again". You could do the event multiple times in XI for different rewards (sometimes better rewards when wearing the first reward you got) and there was always more than just 1 thing going on. Like the last event, there was the dancing / emote game, some mini games, goldfish scooping and more.

The lockouts were only 2-3 days, rather than a week, so you could actually go in and attempt to get things again and the gear was worth it and lasted a while, so you didn't have to worry about it becoming obsolete right when you got it (XIV, finish full eso, it's now worthless, here's more tomes). There were plenty of special stats / procs like, refresh+ pdt- mdt- regen+, in X weather: Y effect and so on. Elemental weakness', weapon resistances. You could also gear up multiple jobs at once, rather than being forced to stick with a single main job and everything else getting subpar gear. The jobs actually felt different from each other, rather than in XIV, theres very small, if any, difference between jobs, besides having to be on flank or rear, most jobs play exactly the same in XIV (same reason we can't have a real pet job, SE said it'd be "too hard for new players")

Like I said, XI felt more like a world, rather than a game (or a lobby game, looking at XIV)
Sure, there was some bad stuff, nothing is perfect, but the majority of the people who bash XI and say how "bad" it was, usually have either never played it or never got passed lvl 10-15 because they didn't want to have to participate in one of the M's in mmo, multiplayer.

[Vickii]

Old content was still relevant, so if you joined late, you could still get to experience said old content.

This is true of FF14. I joined a month ago and have done every single quest, instance and raid suitable to my level. And never had to wait more than an hour for any of them, and that's an extreme wait time.

[Obysuca]

This is true of FF14. I joined a month ago and have done every single quest, instance and raid suitable to my level. And never had to wait more than an hour for any of them, and that's an extreme wait time.

Thing is, its obsolete, its only for glamour now. I was meaning more that, old content was still relevant in XI to the point where the gear was still useful, so you could do it and get something that'd actually help your progression, rather than "oh, I'll look nice in this"

[Vickii]

Thing is, its obsolete, its only for glamour now. I was meaning more that, old content was still relevant in XI to the point where the gear was still useful, so you could do it and get something that'd actually help your progression, rather than "oh, I'll look nice in this"

Oh really? But why would you really want it? Surely people want the newer things with the better stats and it just ends up being 'glamour' anyway?

Although having said that, there were a couple of legendaries in wow that had on-use effects which saw them being used into the next expansion so I guess it could be something like that.

[Obysuca]

Oh really? But why would you really want it? Surely people want the newer things with the better stats and it just ends up being 'glamour' anyway?

In XI? Because the gear was still useful. It wasn't a massive ilvl climb like XIV is where the gear you have now is utter crap in 3 months. In XIV, anything thats older than 3 months has practically no use anymore. If you're catching up, its just an one and done thing. In XI, you could hit cap and do sky, sea, limbus, einherjar, salvage, nyzul, bcnms and more, even if you joined in 2009 and sky came out in what, 2003? The gear was still relevant and useful and people were still doing it.


That kind of thinking right there that you said, is why mmos are becoming so stale lately. Devs are focusing on pumping out new shiny gear rather than actually giving us content, when the gear (and the lack of content) are thrown out in 3 months. Like I said, 75% of XIV is obsolete. Unless you're catching up, no one is going to touch the lvl 50 dungeons unless they get it in roulette and there's what, 15? 20? of those just sitting there, useless. Coil? Since it's not mandatory, most people won't even bother touching. Old ex primals? Very few people even do those anymore and it's just for a pony. And be honest, how many people actually still do CT?

With how fast SE is outdating gear/dungeons/raids, if you thought "we can't add more inventory because the servers will crash" was bad, wait until theres 50-100 empty, useless dungeons just sitting there and gear no one uses., taking up data. Believe it or not, but mmos can hit their limit of what they can continue to add. It's not infinite and by following this route, XIV will hit that limit far quicker than it should, then we'll be getting things like "We've hit the max amount of zones/dungeons we can add, so everything from now on will take place in all the older zones/dungeons, or just recolored versions of the older zones/dungeons." etc. Why do you think every dungeon and raid is so linear? They're all single paths to a circle/square boss room. Every. Single. Time. Besides a few boss mechanics and the graphics of the dungeon, they're all the same. Nothing that really sets them apart. No branching paths, no multiple boss choices.

SE pumps out shiny glamour each update, rather than content, because the playerbase doesn't really care about the game as much as they care about dressing up, buying plushies, collecting minions. When an update comes out and theres more things for glamour than actual content, you know theres a problem (unless you're playing a social game, that's not a mmo, that's specifically aimed at dressing up your character and standing around).
Look at 3.1. Going off of every update cycle since 2.0, the 2 new expert dungeons will drop gear thats lower than what we have now, making those worthless. Void ark will most likely drop something lower than eso (seeing as how CT dropped lower gear than what was currently out).

Just going to say it and I know theres plenty who agree. But I play a mmo to actually play a mmo and do content. Not to dress up in cute outfits, collect minions or get achievements that have no effect on the game whatsoever. If I wanted to just dress up and get vanity things, theres games specifically meant for that. It should not be the main focus of a mmo. It can be part of it, but not the main part. That's why we've been stuck with the same rehashed content cycle for 2 years now and it doesn't look to be getting better.

Go look at the forum topics that SE has posted in. They're all "I want to pay X amount for Y on the cash shop!" "Can we have fat cat plushies?" "Change darkside, it hurts my eyes D:". But anything that has suggestions to improve the game or that it points out its flaws and ways they can fix it, get locked and deleted, even if theres no arguing. SE doesn't want new people to realize theres a lack of content and lots of bad designs and only wants them to think everyone is all happy and cheerful, with no flaw in the game whatsoever.

Seeing as your join date is last month, you probably wouldn't know that HW, the thing most people paid $50 - $120 for, has about the same, if not less, content than a regular 3 month update has. A lot of people were expecting more, considering expansions usually add stuff and build off whats already added. But nope, not XIV.
Yoshi said he wanted to build the foundation for the game, then get to the real content. It's been 2 years and we still don't have real content. It's literally been rehash after rehash after rehash. 2-3 dungeons (about to only be 2 now), 2 of which were rehashed versions of low lvl dungeons. MSQ that got completed in an hour. 1 primal. 1 raid (4 bosses with some trash in a straight line). Every. Single. Update. Sure, there was golden saucer, but look how well that went. It was packed the first week, then died off shortly after. It's practically a ghost town now.

If XIV was as good as SE wants people to think, then why are people quitting so frequently? Look at 2.0. Tons of people, the game looked alive. 2.1 comes and the majority of FCs go from 50+ active members to about 30. 2.2 comes and theres about 20 or so. 2.3 comes and most FCs, even the big giant 100+ ones are down to about 10-20 people actively online. 2.4 comes and most FC are down to about 5-10. 2.55 and its about the same. HW comes and it jumps up to about 10-15, then a month later, back down to 1-5. If XIV was as great as people think, then that number wouldn't have dropped so much, so fast.
Know why SE added atma from fates in old zones? Not just as something to grind, but they timed it with the ps4 release, so when new people joined, they'd see people out and about doing things, to trick them into thinking there was a lot of content to do.
Take XI for example. People, rarely if ever, dropped out so fast, especially after an expansion. If an update came out, people kept doing things, they didn't unsub until the next one, because each update gave you things to do, well passed the next update. Even if that update didn't add new content, there was still plenty to keep you busy that wasn't "2 dungeons forever"