The "Wow Refugee's" impact on the FFXIV Community?

[Zeromon]

The only thing I've noticed is the crazy amount of new players coming into Zalera. Primetime is actually reflected in all cities now instead of just Limsa. A higher population in game is hardly a bad thing. With regards to toxicity I haven't noticed any big issues. I've been leveling an alt and I can't say things have gotten worse or better. I welcome more people into a game that I enjoy greatly.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Nah blood, the great community btw was always garb, you'd just have to not be able to notice usual passive aggression.

Anywho, could it be the Wowfugee boogeyman or is the mask slipping? I'm voting on the latter because no online community is cool and good.

[kamikrazy]

I hate how they come here and complain that it isn't more like the trash game they are coming from. I quit WoW during MoP because there finally were too many things that I didn't like, and I fell in love with this game and its enormously different design philosophy. It was similar but made different in deliberate ways that solved many of WoW's egregious fundamental problems, and thus I stuck with this game and haven't looked back. I detest how the WoW community is finally bleeding out and coming here and demanding that this game cater to their crappy game design that drove me away from WoW in the first place.

Protip, the problems with WoW aren't just one feature or idea...its the baseline philosophy that they design the game around. This game is BETTER because it has a completely different philosophy that naturally produces a better game, just as WoW organically produces a terrible game because of its design philosophy. Don't come here and whine that "because this game doesn't have WoW's design philosophy its bad!" Its because this game DOESN'T have that design philosophy that its GOOD. If it had the same design philosophy, it'd be just as terrible as the burning trash heap you just ran away from.

[Vahlnir]

Protip, the problems with WoW aren't just one feature or idea...its the baseline philosophy that they design the game around. This game is BETTER because it has a completely different philosophy that naturally produces a better game, just as WoW organically produces a terrible game because of its design philosophy. Don't come here and whine that "because this game doesn't have WoW's design philosophy its bad!" Its because this game DOESN'T have that design philosophy that its GOOD. If it had the same design philosophy, it'd be just as terrible as the burning trash heap you just ran away from.

I'm currently subbed to WoW, but in recent years I have been known to vanish for months at a time. Probably due to unsub again before this next month is over. The game's design is in the wrong hands, period. But I enjoy what time I spend there for the most part. I just wish I had more incentive to stay subbed longer than a month or 2. With FF XIV I could be tempted to take a break here and there but I also don't want to lose my house. This game isn't perfect by any means but I do think it is in decent hands. Mostly. Would prefer more creative hands sometimes but they know how to win me back every now and then. PS devs, thank you for the Manderville Mambo. The mess that was Eureka has been forgiven.

[shiroxkatsuya]

Well the community is not perfect by any means, some recent experiences have reminded me just how great the community can be. I recently started an alt and because i never really remember to take the sprout icon off, many people assume i may be new. The amount of tells ive been getting from ppl welcoming me to the game, asking me how my time has been and offering to help has really reminded me why ive put so many hours into this game and have generally enjoyed all of it.

[kamikrazy]

I'm currently subbed to WoW, but in recent years I have been known to vanish for months at a time. Probably due to unsub again before this next month is over. The game's design is in the wrong hands, period. But I enjoy what time I spend there for the most part. I just wish I had more incentive to stay subbed longer than a month or 2. With FF XIV I could be tempted to take a break here and there but I also don't want to lose my house. This game isn't perfect by any means but I do think it is in decent hands. Mostly. Would prefer more creative hands sometimes but they know how to win me back every now and then. PS devs, thank you for the Manderville Mambo. The mess that was Eureka has been forgiven.

What I was specifically referring too was that FFXIV has sort of a permanent framework in which all content is still relevant in a standard way that isn't just junk data forced onto your HDD (or SSD in some cases) for the reason of "just because." In WoW, old content is utterly forgotten and basically a waste of data, whereas in this game all of the content is added into a permanent part of the game's overall content. Because of this, FFXIV gets BIGGER with every expansion, whereas WoW's expansions actually make the game smaller. The best thing I can point out would be endgame dungeons content.

In FF14, you have something like 100 dungeons to play at level cap in order to help you gear up. In WoW, you get 8-10 and that's it. After 2 years, those 8-10 become unused and now you are forced to play another 8-10 for 2 years, and that's all you're permitted to do period. How could anyone compare having nearly 100 dungeons to having literally 1/10th of that? Its a joke and terrible design.

Look at FF14 Roulettes vs. WoW's Timewalking. In FF14 all of the old content in the game is available for play at max level, and even better the system is designed to create a permanent ecosystem in which low and max level players engage together and are united in a common purpose that delivers relevant rewards for both parties involved, and insures that characters not at level cap are able to get parties for dungeons. It is a fantastic idea that was around for a DECADE before FF14, as this exact system was featured in City of Heroes, and it was just a terrific idea so it was also used in FF14.

WoW's Timewalking system is garbage in comparison. It doesn't unite low and high level players, it only covers (once again) 8-10 dungeons at a time, it delivers bad, supbar, if not useless rewards, and it doesn't add to the game, it just adds something to do that doesn't contribute to gearing and doesn't add to an ecosystem like FF14's roulettes. If you were a competitive player, Timewalking is an actual waste of time because it doesn't help you at all...and the worst part is that it is arbitrarily switched on and off for NO REASON AT ALL. Its literally the exact same system, but implemented in an egregiously poor manner. Activision could fix many problems by simply making this system operate in the same way it does in FF14, who's system connects early-game, mid-game, and end game players. But Activision doesn't...probably because they use it to stretch out subs and they don't want to stop selling their precious level boosts.

There's countless areas where you can compare both games having directly the same systems in which FF14 has the exact same thing but its better in every single way and actually ADDS to the game. Farming in MoP was abandoned, in FF14 it was made a permanent and very productive part of the in-game economy. In WoW everyone hated followers and they were abandoned with each expansion and all your invested time in them is a loss now, in FF14 retainers are your bank, your auction house, they farm goods for you, they level up, you gear them, you can even place them around your estates to serve technical functions.

In WoW, Activision added garrisons with the idea that, "They won't allow you to express yourself like real player housing would, but we made up for it by making them actually useful. Something that's meant to express yourself can't be useful too, because then it would become outdated." In FF14, SE added player housing in which you can equally express yourself AND it serves technical functions that make it useful...not just for the current content but for ALL CONTENT MOVING FORWARDS. They proved Activision wrong and made a system that became a permanent part of the game's ecosystem and continues to be used and expanded upon to this day.

The examples are countless. Anyone who believes WoW has an equal or better design to this game is either an addict or delusional. This game is running laps around WoW.

[Rivers23]

1. The number of Wowfugees is greatly, greatly exaggerated
2. I personally have nothing against 'toxic' players, they are needed to balance out the snowflakes. The game has become a hugbox for touchy and whiny people.

[Noodle_Trinidad]

-snip-

1) Relevancy of content is horrid for FFXIV and honestly makes me wonder what kind of game you're playing since the very fact that we have iLvl as a gearing system pretty much guarantees that most content will be dead when something new pop ups that gives a higher number spread. One could argue "Glamour" but for the most part that does little to keep most content alive for long if at all.

2) It's funny you bring up "100s of Dungeons" at level cap when Stormblood in of itself had 10 Dungeons to work with at cap from 4.0 to now. We had 3 at launch and had 7 added up from 4.1 to 4.5 with one or two being rotated out of the EDR as time went on. Those were your dungeons for the 2 years of Stormblood, especially so given how Tomestones are spread in the roulettes and dungeons themselves, still once again I guess at least Skalla and its Skallic armor did keep it kicking around longer than most of the other Stormblood Dungeons and probably will due to the great design of the armor.
List of all Stormblood 70 Dungeons: Ala Mhigo, Kugane Castle, Temple of the Fist, The Drowned City of Skalla, Hells' Lud, Fractal Hard, Swallow's Compass, Saint Moc Arbor Hard, The Burn and Ghimylt.
That's sad when you compare ARR's 17 4-man Cap Dungeons and HW's 13 4-man Cap Dungeons, means we have kept going down with each consequent expansion with no change to the 3 tunnels and 3 circle bosses setup that each dungeon presents.

3) You do realize Roulettes at the moment suffer from engagement outside of EDR, Trials and 60/70R correct? It's why the Devs keep pushing as many rewards as they can to try and bring people and why MSR became a big point of contention as the older players did not want to suffer the long cutscenes for a barely justified reward. If it were not for the Extra Relevant Tomes being in some of these the content would be dead outside of maybe the latest Dungeons released. Most rewards from dungeon content or even other Roulette content is outdated if not current making the interest of veterans pretty low.

As it stands thinking XIV is better than WoW is foolish as both are games that are set in keeping the status quo in a genre that is stagnating across the board. WoW is finally dying out and getting closer and closer to XIV like numbers and XIV is in a sub-1mil count thats staying stable for the time being. They both give excuses as to why they can't do anything other than more of the same and both seem to have a good disconnect from their community when it comes to understanding feedback, or in WoW's case "You think you do but you don't".

1. The number of Wowfugees is greatly, greatly exaggerated

The closest we have to "Empirical" data thanks to SE not sharing numbers, though not to blame given the current trend with most MMOs and other Games as a Service hiding their numbers, do not actually support this claim making me wonder where this "WoWfugee Exodus" came from. One can spout Anecdotal Evidence all they want but the Active Character count has been stable since 4.1 with predictable Drops and Rises with each consequent patch and content lull.

[kamikrazy]

snippy snip

Lol you didn't respond specifically to any of my numerous examples, instead with the "but its only useful for muh glamour" spoken like someone who completely missed the point of my post. Maybe you should reread instead of just getting huffy and reading just enough to spit your opinions about completely unrelated topics as a "reply" to my post. None of what you're saying has any relation to what I was pointing out.

Nearly all of the content in this game is reused in some way after its time in the limelight, and continues to have some kind of purpose, even if that purpose is merely to add variety to the dungeon pool, which has resulted in a game that gets larger with each patch instead of smaller. I don't care what you think of the genre or about sub numbers or blah blah blah that you pulled out of a hat to back up your point (which has nothing to do with what I was pointing out). The simple fact is that this game solves many of the fundamental design problems of WoW by having an overall structure and plan as to what happens to content when its no longer the main content.

Is it perfect? Nope, not at all, but nowhere did I say that. I simply said that its a problem that at least has SOMEKIND of solution in this game, unlike WoW where it might as well just be removed, because its taking up HDD space that it doesn't deserve, because it is completely and utterly unused in that game in any capacity that is meaningful...because the game has no overall structure or plan or use for content that isn't the most recent patch, and even worse, it constantly abandons content because they don't think ahead at all. The lack of an overarching structure in WoW is why GOOD FEATURES that were established in its previous expansions are abandoned. The game can't improve because everytime an improvement is made, it is abandoned 2 years later. it can't expand because each time it grows, it shrinks back down 2 years later. The game is stagnate because they don't utilize any of what they have, they just leave it to rot while it inflates your HDD space.

But oh wait, it isn't just used to add variety to the dungeon pool. It's also used to connect players of all levels to play together, shorten dungeon queues overall for all players, and make sure that max level players don't have to grind 10 dungeons for 2 freaking years...before those 10 are taken away and now they get a new set of 10 for the next 2 years. No variety for you! They have the tech to allow you to have variety, but they deliberately decide to make your day as boring and monotonous as possible! They have a literal button to press to make their game less of a monotonous grind but choose not to press it for no reason at all, except for once every month or so for a few days just to rub it in your face how the majority of the game is completely wasted.

That's why FF14 has around 100 dungeons available in its pool instead of 10. If you are incapable of understanding why one is better than the other, I don't know what to tell you. Your nonsensical opinion is beyond my comprehension.

[van_arn]

1. The number of Wowfugees is greatly, greatly exaggerated
2. I personally have nothing against 'toxic' players, they are needed to balance out the snowflakes. The game has become a hugbox for touchy and whiny people.

Accurate. #2 has gotten worse over time. They're multiplying, and must needs be cleansed.