Final Fantasy 14's grinds feel horrible to midcore players

[SenorPatty]

"Other mmos like Lost Ark do this and that..."

Yeah, um for those of us in the back, could you name these other mmos like Lost Ark? I'd be interested in playing an mmo like Lost Ark, that isn't Lost Ark. Thanks.

[Shougun]

"Other mmos like Lost Ark do this and that..."

Yeah, um for those of us in the back, could you name these other mmos like Lost Ark? I'd be interested in playing an mmo like Lost Ark, that isn't Lost Ark. Thanks.

Lol by reading that my brain was like .. "HE SAID OTHER MMOS LIKE LOST ARK DO THIS AND THAT"

I was curious so I googled it and one of the first results on google was such an uncompelling list that I wanted to share it:
https://gamerant.com/best-games-like-lost-ark/

Spoiler WoW, FFXIV, GW2, and ESO are on there. Lol. .


Sort of not really an MMO but to answer your question more seriously but clearly only vaguely so, I feel Diablo 3 and Path of Exile have similar vibes as I felt Lost Ark was heavily inspired by those type of games anyways. (This of course then adds Hades, Torchlight, V Rising, etc).

[KizuyaKatogami]

At least IN FFXIV only latest alliance raid and savage are reward locked weekly,in Lost ark all dungeon rewards weekly locked and if you want progress you need to do that 2xtimes daily thing,not remember name at all characters everyday,guardians what gives you lower rewards 2x and those world bosses and rifts 1x for all chars,comparing to FF in Lost ark nothing more to do,only everyday same repeat and repeat and pray to honing succes or all goes for nothing,even in Black desert grind more fun than in Lost ark.

Unreal trials are weekly locked. Tome stones are weekly locked. Hunt lists are weekly and daily locked. normal raids are weekly locked for awhile.

[SenorPatty]

Lol by reading that my brain was like .. "HE SAID OTHER MMOS LIKE LOST ARK DO THIS AND THAT"

I was curious so I googled it and one of the first results on google was such an uncompelling list that I wanted to share it:
https://gamerant.com/best-games-like-lost-ark/

Spoiler WoW, FFXIV, GW2, and ESO are on there. Lol. .


Sort of not really an MMO but to answer your question more seriously but clearly only vaguely so, I feel Diablo 3 and Path of Exile have similar vibes as I felt Lost Ark was heavily inspired by those type of games anyways. (This of course then adds Hades, Torchlight, V Rising, etc).

Yeah...I'm gonna have to apologize, Shougun. I know ya meant well but I was kinda hoping to have the OP personally spring up this question just to point out the necessity to start his posts constantly with "other mmos like Lost Ark" is disingenuous. Most mmos like Lost Ark, specifically the f2p variant are just not overall well made but this is not new information to most of us here in the forums. You don't need to constantly bring up a currently successful mmo just to prove to us that the one thing its doing is worth implementing. Hell, you can do the same thing with current unsuccessful mmos and still make a good point. Perfect example is WoW. Currently wildly unsuccessful but its glamour log is *chef kiss*. "Other mmos like Lost Ark do X" is just a line spewed to reinforce the idea that what a game does is probably rampant across other games so FFXIV should follow suit. Probably true. Probably not. Either way, the statement mostly runs on the (small) possibility that you haven't played other mmos of the Lost Ark variety to verify that the feature exists successfully(big keyword here because there are similar game systems that just don't execute well).

It's almost like if Skiros act like if he doesn't bring up Lost Ark every time he wants a nifty QoL or an invigorating gameplay change to FFXIV, his post will crumble and people will immediately dismiss it. And if it's not that, then yeah, it just looks like he just wants to shout from the mountaintops how awesome Lost Ark is. Heck, it could be both things, idk. But one thing I do know for sure is that while most people here do like suggestions that improve the game, they absolutely hate it if comes pre-packaged in bullshit or thinly-veiled deceit.

[SturmChurro]

It's not even necessarily the grind (although, this game has had some really horrific ones), it's about rewards and pacing. I don't really feel rewarded for participating in many of this games grinds.

[Shurrikhan]

The thing about Grinding in MMOs is, it is never about fun, unless you have a masochistic vein.

There's a difference, though, between "grind" in the sense of consuming non-finite or less-finite content and "grind" in the sense of something the player considers dull, though.

A game --especially any that relies on non- or less-finite content to create space for player hours, such as per any MMO-- has (in this relevant portion) failed to the degree that the prior form of "grind" (essentially, content longevity) seems like the latter form of "grind" (boredom).

[kaynide]

Guildwars does a few good things. There are ongoing things to work towards, monthly and even specific things like weekly pvp or weekly puzzles etc. I liked that doing a lot of one thing got you a pretty nice thing, but doing a lot of different things still got you a variety of different things. Always something to work towards, with pretty clear ways to go about it. Whatever you did worked towards a certain goal, but you also got reasonable xp to level up as well.

Heck, one was just “sit in every kind of chair that exists in the world”.

[Skiros]

Guildwars does a few good things. There are ongoing things to work towards, monthly and even specific things like weekly pvp or weekly puzzles etc. I liked that doing a lot of one thing got you a pretty nice thing, but doing a lot of different things still got you a variety of different things. Always something to work towards, with pretty clear ways to go about it. Whatever you did worked towards a certain goal, but you also got reasonable xp to level up as well.

Heck, one was just “sit in every kind of chair that exists in the world”.

Those kinds of achievements are cool. Something that makes you engage with the world. Wish there was more of that in FF14

[Avidria]

Most of the really time-consuming grinds are actually aimed at the 'midcore' playerbase. They don't take a lot of skill to achieve, but you can patiently chip away at them over a longer period of time and feel good when you finally achieve them because of the relative scarcity of it.

What players always forget is that if something is easily obtained and isn't skill gated, then everyone is going to have it and nobody is going to value it.

The problem is the "long period of time" is actual literal years if you DON'T sit and grind away at it every day

I'm casual as they come and it's taken me years to get even a third of the way toward the hand of mercy title (5000 killing blows in pvp) because I'm not sitting doing pvp every day, and even doing hunt trains every single day for the first several weeks of this expansion AND last expansion (that's multiple instances worth multiple times a day plus my more casual hunting through the rest of every expansion) has barely made a dent in my progress toward the centurio tiger

Like. OP is right. There's a whole lot of very quick and easy, and very very long term time commitment, and not a ton in between right now.

And this is coming from someone who spent hundreds of hours over close to a decade farming achievements in WoW just to get the achievements. I have a ton of beef with WoW, but at the very least that system gave me a lot to do and felt way more satisfying and rewarding for the time required than any achievement in this game

It's not even necessarily the grind (although, this game has had some really horrific ones), it's about rewards and pacing. I don't really feel rewarded for participating in many of this games grinds.

Yeah this here is my problem with it, and why I usually just plain don't bother with most of the longer grinds at all. They just take way too much time for not enough, or a too far off, reward.

[Colt47]

Honestly the grinds they do have in-game are okay for what they are. The danger area is when grinding and usual filler end-game content ends up becoming so much of an obsession that it overrides the decision to do newer content being released by the developer.

The relic weapon quests probably need some quality of life changes, like allowing for players to get the materials for said relic weapons through newer content, as some folks have played the game so long the real challenge is finding the will to go through the same tired old content for weeks on end just to get a reward. There is a reason someone gets a mount reward for grinding every single combat job to 80.