As a new player that really likes this game ...

[Jybril]

Most people don't want trash in an MMO raid, at least not anymore, with how trash currently is, just extra things to hit between the boss. One of my raiding guilds would not give you a chance at loot if you "AFKed" during trash, you had to help. There were so many people that would just go do something else and let the rest of us do the work.

Some trash mobs aren't too bad...Dun Scath was pretty funny but they are kinda zergy but still.
24 man's feels like a raid. Those things are actually the best piece of battle content to me.
A lot of people working together trying to get stuff done. It's so fun and I can't wait for it in 4.1.
What we have now, like Omega is just...a 4 point trial. Omega is much more fun and better
than Alex, but to call it a raid? Doesn't feel like it.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

I liked the story, and making it mandatory is ok. But not with soooo many pointles quests, mostly in the ARR story. I just started skipping dialogues all the way until I hit HW questline, which is my favourite. Just so so many fetch quests that I ended up "disconected" from the story.

Its an "issue" cuz I feel no sense of progress. In WoW, you enter one day with the raid group and kill 1, 2, 3 bosses, to return the next day and see the bosses and trash dead, as the are all in the same instance. FFXIV's raids feel like the rest of the trials, just harder.

I've played WoW since vanilla and I like trash mobs in raids, makes them not feel empty or just consequent boss battles, like here. Also in WoW trash pulls have their own mechanics, they are not just meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru.

If you like WoW so much, why are you not still playing it?

[RichardButte]

The real end game, glamour, crafting and gathering.

Crafting and gathering basically ARE my endgame, but glamour could actually be 100X the endgame it is now if we had a glamour log.

I'm not even kidding when I say that I spent more time in Legion hunting for transmog than I did playing new content. Filling out a glamour log is ADDICTIVE...

Whatever. Next thing you will try to convince me is that this is not an mmo but a single player intended experience ... cuz "muh story".

Nah, then people would just complain that we're trying to turn XIV into SWTOR (which is basically a single player MMO).

Everyone wants to progress their character's power to some degree and gear is the primary method of doing so, particularly once the level cap is reached. It's really as simple as that.

I don't care about progressing my character's power one bit because I don't have a static (and am on the fence about trying to get one). I'm not about to throw millions of gil at gear that won't ever see real use.

It'd be like spending thousands of dollars on tools when you have nothing to repair...except that they're also going come out with much better tools later that make your current tools basically worthless.

I mean, to each their own, and I'm not about to tell you NOT to do that (because those crafters need money), but I personally would've unsubbed by now if not for the fact that I bought a house. There's really nothing else to do but wait for more MSQ for me (and make money, but now that I have the house, not even sure why I'm making it...).

If you like WoW so much, why are you not still playing it?

Several people in my social LS are playing both at the same time.

Contrary to popular belief, they don't force you to unsub from one when you sub to the other.

[Nhisso]

Lol you didnt play vanilla WoW. That is VERY obvious.
Chat bubbles as an option is fine. I thought we had that already. Regardless, it isnt some basic thing all MMOs have. Please.

Just because the MSQ has a label doesnt make it that different than every other mmo out there that forces you to do quests. The only.difference than most other games is that the other games let you mindlessly grind like a pleb to level but you still have to do certain things in most games to unlock stuff. Oh but FFXIV's is part of a story so it's bad lol. I dont even know why people like you play MMOs.

All you want to do is burn through content and get to level cap so you can go do the same few raids over and over to get gear so you can sit in a lobby or major hub and hope noobs ask you where you got your cool looking gear.

WoW has had almost a decade more than this game to add content and raids.

[Nhisso]

Oh i forgot. Once you speed run everything 1000 times people whine about content. No dev needs to keep up with people who do nothing but game.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Several people in my social LS are playing both at the same time.

Contrary to popular belief, they don't force you to unsub from one when you sub to the other.

Meh, I don't play garbage MMOs like WoW, or any games made by Blizzard. Blizzard never has the quality that Square-Enix does, and FFXI > WoW at the time. Plus now, WoW is a turd, and FFXIV took the best from it and made it work better, faster, stronger, and longer. Plus I have seen what WoW has done to people. Back when Vanilla was all the rage when I was in college, there were people who skipped class, meals, and even BATHING just to play it. One guy would rarely shower because he played WoW 80% of the time, classes were 10%, eating was 5%, and sleeping was 5%. He would make a Sasquatch want to go into Bath & Body Works to get body wash to clean itself.

[TankHunter678]

The Final Fantasy series is in general heavily about the story, which makes gating content and areas behind the MSQ make sense and fits this game. And honestly for me it's certainly more interesting/engaging then the WoW version where you either do "story" content (when the meat of the story is reserved for raids, the rest is a series of disconnected regional side quests depending on the expac), or just run dungeons to level cap and then just grind for raiding.

[Zaene]

Most MMOs "gate" content behind things. How is anyone going to get a sense of progression without having to DO THINGS to be able to DO OTHER THINGS? Now, I can appreciate that especially in a game like WoW and even here, there is a lot of content to get through before you get to end-game. That's just par for the course though.

FFXI had Chains of Promathia. There were amazing zones deeply gated behind 3 difficult encounters called "Promyvions". The feeling from beating those encounters and gaining access to new zones was amazing.

Now, times have certainly changed since then and the general difficulty of content has lowered substantially, however, I believe that content should still be gated behind story. Sure you might want to play the game only as an armorer, but you have to admit it would be a little odd.

[TankHunter678]

Most MMOs "gate" content behind things. How is anyone going to get a sense of progression without having to DO THINGS to be able to DO OTHER THINGS? Now, I can appreciate that especially in a game like WoW and even here, there is a lot of content to get through before you get to end-game. That's just par for the course though.

FFXI had Chains of Promathia. There were amazing zones deeply gated behind 3 difficult encounters called "Promyvions". The feeling from beating those encounters and gaining access to new zones is amazing.

From what I heard WoW had an entire flowchart from vanilla all the way up to wrath of things you had to do to unlock other things that eventually culminated in unlocking the final raid tier and defeating the last boss of the expansion. Then after that it was get to max level and have a high enough ilvl to unlock and run the raid tiers.

[Snow_Princess]

Most MMOs "gate" content behind things. How is anyone going to get a sense of progression without having to DO THINGS to be able to DO OTHER THINGS? Now, I can appreciate that especially in a game like WoW and even here, there is a lot of content to get through before you get to end-game. That's just par for the course though.

FFXI had Chains of Promathia. There were amazing zones deeply gated behind 3 difficult encounters called "Promyvions". The feeling from beating those encounters and gaining access to new zones is amazing.

Ya but FFXI had it in parallel, you did not have to beat the base or RoZ to go there. It would be no different then letting you go SB here without doing 2.0 or HW if you are level 60.

Some kind of gating is ok, not 23832329823912832 million level 50 quests that are mostly run to some place, run to some other place, run to some other place, go back to where you started, then run to a 5th place for no reason.

You also bring up a good point, FFXI in getting access felt like an achievement, gating behind Run to A run to B run to C just seems like pointless busy work, no challenge.