How does FFXIV fare against other modern MMORPGs?

[Vahlnir]

FFXIV seems more complex to me, while also not having something like "Wowhead" (as near as I can tell.) I might have a question in FFXIV, about a quest or some treasure bottle or something. I then may just eventually give up, when the treasure bottle map has an X on a spot I can't find, while searching on the web only yields other posts/information about the treasure bottle map that I DON'T have. So I just eventually give up. Meanwhile, Wow has Wowhead. You have a problem in Wow and you can find the quest/item on Wowhead with lots of good posts explaining what you do.

There are various 3rd party sites along with youtube where people can get the information they need for items, quests and boss fights. Probably about as many sites as WoW has in total, but Wowhead's way more organized than all the others, including anything FF XIV has. But the information is indeed out there to research if people feel the need to. FF XIV could use something Wowhead-like though imo.

[Rymm]

FFXIV seems more complex to me, while also not having something like "Wowhead" (as near as I can tell.)

Most of your answers can be found at either https://xivdb.com/ (run by the same company as wowhead,) https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Main_Page, or https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki. Oh also, since you mentioned you are a fisher, meet your new best friend- http://ff14angler.com/

[Maeka]

RE:Kuzulo:

I play WoW to this day, and... eh, some things are better there, but other things are better here.

One thing I hate on WoW, is no job switching. I really wish I could change jobs, to be honest. The sheer amount of crap they expect each character to do with little alt catchups is just bleh. Reputations, the gearing up phase that can take 2-3 weeks, etc etc.

Leveling up, you just blaze through the levels, ignoring entire swaths of content on your way up, and I find myself trying to find the most weird ways to level because I eventually get bored of the quests, etc.

Meanwhile here in FFXIV, you can just do Roulettes (which I enjoy doing in XIV)... in WoW? The dungeons don't give a huge amount of XP, and they take forever, and sometimes the wait times can be abysmal. 1h+ waits in some level brackets as DPS jobs.

However, in WoW... I do like the World Quest system (it acts a lot like FATEs), where you can just go out and get pieces of gear, though I feel that the item level curve is a little too slow where they keep giving me stuff that's the same level or lower than what I already had.... that, and weapon acquisition is terrible. Just love seeing the wrong weapons come up again and again.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I wasn't going to jump into this conversation, but I can't help but feel that you have a very narrow definition of "toxicity" in games. That's all based on opinion though and just because you don't feel it something is a "real example" of toxic behavior, doesn't mean that everyone agrees with you.

Alternatively - just because someone feels that something is a "real example" of toxicity doesn't mean it actually is or people agree with them .

Now - that aside, you're correct my definition is most likely much more narrow than your average hello kitty island adventure/club penguin player for sure. I'm a successful professional adult in the financial services industry. I regularly deal with some pretty cutthroat people and if I was made of butter I'd have died a long time ago.

For examples of toxicity in WoW that fits your criteria... Early Legion when the chests you got in M+ dungeons were based on how quickly you completed them, I used to run into a lot of people who would drop group the second it became apparent that we weren't going to 3-chest the run, thus screwing 4 other people out of at least getting 1-2 chests and ruining the key for whoever's dungeon it was. Five-man content was pretty awful in general; it's where I tended to see the most toxicity outside of LFR which you seem to think "doesn't count." But that is because most people only PuG LFR or 5mans. In that case, of course you aren't going to see toxicity in actual raid tiers- who is going stay with a guild or run with a raid group on a regular basis if they are toxic?

Battlegrounds were another hotspot for toxicity. The first thing that went wrong in the BG and the real fighting would start- between the players on the same team. Arguing, finger pointing, name calling, swearing, refusing to help or even move...

Regarding your examples - I agree wholeheartedly on the dropping party and abandoning key issue. That is bad. I would consider that behavior toxic.

BGs are no different than PVP in FF14 which was "SOOOOOO" toxic they had to shut chat off lol.

I pugged raid tiers all the time, including up to over half a current tier worth of mythic bosses. Very little toxicity in any of those. Holding people accountable isn't toxic by my standards though so YMMV.

It's basicaly FF14 auto-attacks that hit between your abilities, except instead of auto-attacks, you have to actually hit the attack button, then immediately hit an ability to cancel your attack's animation. In a way, it's similar to oGCDs. You do it for every ability. It's something like a 30% dps loss if you don't.

Sounds more like BNS then I think I understand. Thanks for the insight.

You have attacks... and you can use them, but you have to try to use another ability to cancel out of the animation just so you can squeeze more attacks in... *sigh* Really, now. Glad I don't play that game, that would drive me crazy just by how fundamentally stupid it is. Do they actually support that, I mean, is that SUPPOSED to be a feature? Or is it just simply gaming the system and dodging limitations?

Look at oGCDs, they cancel animations all the time. In fact some of them actually cancel in a cool fashion, for instance on PLD: casting Goring Blade into Requiescat looks cool. On DRG Full Thrust into Jump also looks cool.

In BNS - animation cancelling actually looked cool sometimes and made sense from a gameplay perspective.

[ChaseNetwork]

FFXIV has been my best experience so far.

My first was Runescape. I wasn't even a teenager when I played that. I still have a silly money making guide on supercheats where I considered crafting leather goods and NPC'ing them to be uniquely lucrative. My favorite thing about Runescape was the crafting. I've always had the urge to craft.

My second was Fiesta Online, a little later into my teens. The combat felt okayish, but the crafting system always felt dissapointing to me. All the crafts used mob specific drops, but the problem is, the level of the material increased with the level of the mob, and the lower the level the mob was compared to the player, the lower the odds the mob would drop any materials. This went so far as to be a 0% drop rate if you were even 5 levels higher. This made actually leveling the crafting skills basically impossible without frequently creating alts to farm mats with. However, the shop and personal housing system was pretty fun. Around this same time, I also played Ragnarok Online on private pirate servers. Crafting was dissapointing, and the community was straight garbage. Basically, only a small minority of people you saw were actual players, the rest were RMT bots. I did enjoy the class advancement system, though.

After Fiesta Online switched hands for management, it became a pretty ugly cash grab. I couldn't stand it anymore. I spent like half a decade looking for another MMO. I gave WoW a shot, but it just didn't have a feel I appreciated, and I never even reached the point where you could start crafting professions. I never liked the model design, and I didn't like that I couldn't be the class I wanted, on the race I wanted, in the faction I wanted. I remember trying a couple other random MMOs, but something about the korean and chinese mmo's I tried around then quickly lost their charm, as they all basically felt cookie cutter products, modeled in the exact same ways, and basically were linear, self- played games. Crafting is usually a non factor too.

Then, I came back to the states from my assignment in South Korea, and I saw the big news. "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, coming soon! Preorder for early access!" It was dated to release in like only 2 weeks! I learned during that time that XI had existed outside my notice this whole time. XIV once had an original version that was shut down due to major dissapointment and was being reworked extensively. I preordered without hesitation.

I fell in love during early access.

Ultimately, for my personal tastes, and what I look for in a game. Final Fantasy XIV has no equal. This is a point I want to make. Each person looks for something different and unique to them in their games. One person may consider FFXIV trash. Others, like me, will consider it the golden standard. Remember that when discussing this with people.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Ultimately, for my personal tastes, and what I look for in a game. Final Fantasy XIV has no equal. This is a point I want to make. Each person looks for something different and unique to them in their games. One person may consider FFXIV trash. Others, like me, will consider it the golden standard. Remember that when discussing this with people.

But WHY is it the golden standard for you? Share some insight. What makes the game special to you. Why do you like a certain feature, etc.

[Kuzulo]

Yes, coming from Wow the Xp is definitely better... I'm a 52 fisher suddenly (passing up my main 49 lancer Job.) This is mostly from... fishing, rather than levequests (been doing leves on the lancer, for the seals!!!)
Fishing is actually kind of fun, especially if you go to the next area where you'll get good XP off some of them.

I'm also behind on the MSQ, having found out about them kind of late. So I can't get to the heavensword areas yet. Luckily, the Archaeon fisher pieces were on the Market board as well.

It said I have to do "before the dawn", but I'm at "into the beast's maw", go into some dungeon (server just went down before I could see which one, forget now OH The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak )
Yikes, I only have a few million to do.

----------------------

Wow does have its good points, like catch up mechanics. Currently, in Wow Battle for Azeroth, you can do stuff to get 340 epics out in the open world (part of the warfronts thing, which is non PVP actually.) Then, if like Legion, they'll have some hub area where you do stuff and get points for "relinquished gear", which will probably be even higher Ilevel epics.

FFXIV gets me doing dungeons though, so that is kind of fun. I'm more antisocial in Wow. The dungeon queues can be rather long, in FFXIV, though.

Jeez, what is with the server right now? It mentions maintenance but that is not until 11 PM? I'm going to miss the game time window of 9 am to 2:59 PM to catch this fish again, during clear skies, for this level 50 fisher quest.

[hynaku]

One thing they could do to make it fare against newer mmo's is boost the graphics to it and fix clipping issues to it.