Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[VelKallor]

Hard to tell if you are trolling here or not. Trusts exist. Trusts will soon exist for every MSQ dungeon to level cap. I imagine trials will follow soon after.

By solo I mean ALONE. No trusts. Just you. Cant be done....well not yet. Maybe later with new tiers of gear it will be soloable..but we are talking 2 expacs from now.

And that is an issue that Jojoya talked about with having specialized areas to teach you how to play your job when you boost it or just in general when you are playing a job.

Agreed. I honestly dont know what the solution is...

[VelKallor]

The ARR experience is abysmal as a whole. It's easily the worst starting experience I've had in any MMO and I'm amazed they manage any player retention.

ARR was the redo after the disaster that was 1.0. I am not surprised, tbh. it has evolved a lot since then.

[Raoabolic]

By solo I mean ALONE. No trusts. Just you. Cant be done....well not yet. Maybe later with new tiers of gear it will be soloable..but we are talking 2 expacs from

Certain classes definitely can. Personally, I solo Mt. Glug on my war just to knock out my Wonderous Tales, lol.

[Sesera]

My point is that if the MSQ doesn't teach you how to play your class, why does it matter if someone is allowed to skip it if they want to.

People skipping msq are also skipping dungeons that would have taught them the mechanic they failed wasting other people time.

[Absurdity]

Um no....I hate to be the one to tell you this but anything after 70 cant be soloed. Mechanics require at least two.

Try to solo Malikahs Well? Good LUCK with that.

Depends on whether we're talking about synced or unsynced. Because unsynced you absolutely can, I just wasted 18 minutes for that.

[ZedxKayn]

By solo I mean ALONE. No trusts. Just you. Cant be done....well not yet. Maybe later with new tiers of gear it will be soloable..but we are talking 2 expacs from now.


Agreed. I honestly dont know what the solution is...

Paglth'an has literally been soloed not long after it dropped

People skipping msq are also skipping dungeons that would have taught them the mechanic they failed wasting other people time.

And honestly that's why I will echo that ESO's approach to the story and multiplayer content would be good for the game.

Stories are exclusively solo, dungeons are not involved in the main stories and instead each have a side quest that story enjoyers can do while running the dungeon if they want to. People who want to run dungeons for the gear oe multiplayer aspect aren't forced to do the main story or the side quest. Everybody wins.

[Absurdity]

Paglth'an has literally been soloed not long after it dropped

Considering warrior can solo just about any EW dungeon I'm not exactly surprised. Nascent Flash in ShB was arguably just as powerful as Bloodwhetting, it just required ever so slightly more thought to maximize your self-healing. The hardest part is not being able to queue into max level dungeons solo.

[Jojoya]

I'm going to assume you mean from the perspective of an MMORPG player so I'll answer as such.

My post already said what my issues are with FFXIV, but I'll go in detail here:

1. Lack luster mid to hardcore content design
2. FFXIV being a Trinity MMORPG (which it is since tank/healers are required) and treating said roles abysmally
3. Job design

#1 and #3 aren't RPG specific. Those are concerns with any MMO and many other game genres. You even go on to only mention MMO in the rest of the post without any additional mention to RPG.

The concept of the Holy Trinity would be an RPG element though your problem seems to be more with how the roles end up utilized, which is more part of #3 plus encounter design than being related to role play.

When it comes to things that test tanks and healers, they do exist. Does the tank learn the correct times to mitigate and which mitigation to use? Can the healer keep players alive when someone screws up starting a domino effect of unnecessary damage? It can be easy to say those things should be obvious when you're both skilled and experienced at the role but those who aren't will be tested.

Honestly I don't feel like any MMO has had the classes/jobs within a role feel significantly different short of the few games that toss huge skill trees at players and tell them to pick what they want with a limited on how much can be chosen through a point system. And quite frankly, that's the fault of players. They demand DPS?HPS balance so all jobs end up viable and create meta comps to come up with what they think will be best performance. If players truly want unique jobs, then they need to stop creating metas and stop demanding balance. That will leave developers free to stretch their imagination creating truly unique abilities.

And yeah, I can tell you that I found playing all the way through MSQ as CNJ/WHM has been enjoyable. I've done it on multiple characters (I usually alternate between healer/tank when I create a new character for replaying MSQ). It gets fun when I end up matched to a group of sprouts who are still learning the game and i have to really focus on the healing to keep them alive.

But that's me and what I enjoy. I'm not going to claim that someone is wrong for not enjoying it. Everyone has their own personal preferences.

I get that players interested in high end content are disappointed with the healer experience when they are playing with a good group of players. Not everyone is playing for a high end experience, though. It's less the job that needs to be changed and more the encounter design. If tanks are given good self-healing and enough mitigation tools that they require little healer, then more party wide damage is needed to give healers something to do other than green DPS. Arguing healers should be given more DPS tools doesn't do anything to make actual healing more engaging. If you're just going to give healers more DPS tools, might as well remove the healing role completely.

Paglth'an has literally been soloed not long after it dropped

Did you do it?

Did anyone you personally know do it?

Trying to use an outlier as justification for changing things will lead to problems when the vast majority of the player base is not capable of duplicating the feat.

[LittleChickenNugget]

I know I'm obnoxious on these forums but Vel really takes the cake.

I don't like the MSQ. I've skipped it since the days of ARR. I don't have questions about who is who, why who is doing this, where we are, etc. Why? Because frankly, I don't care. I don't play XIV for the story. I come in to run dungeons, raids, trials, and roleplay. I come in to do player-involved content. Not participate in a visual novel. For those who love the story, I'm happy for y'all. But really, you're riding on a miniature pony so I don't get where you think the high horse comes from.

[ASkellington]

#1 and #3 aren't RPG specific. Those are concerns with any MMO and many other game genres. You even go on to only mention MMO in the rest of the post without any additional mention to RPG.

Should I? I don't really care about the RPG part of an MMO outside of story and raid/dungeon content.

My original post you even responded to said as much. (the first one for clarification) I was explaining why just because FFXIV is story based does not mean people cannot critize its MMO parts. Which I then go on to explain in my second post. I think we're looking at different things because if you want to know my thoughts on the RPG aspect of FFXIV which I personally link with story and nothing else... combat. Combat sucks.

Edit: What exactly do you define as RPG elements? I forgot to ask. Its different for everyone.

When it comes to things that test tanks and healers, they do exist. Does the tank learn the correct times to mitigate and which mitigation to use? Can the healer keep players alive when someone screws up starting a domino effect of unnecessary damage? It can be easy to say those things should be obvious when you're both skilled and experienced at the role but those who aren't will be tested.

Mmm... there's more to that in an MMO. Mitigations have different lengths and long cool downs and higher defensive numbers. Just timing mitigation doesn't really test tanks when they get better at their job (higher end game play) which you've mentioned. Same with healing. FFXIV doesn't do this. They can get by without doing it if they come up with another system but there isn't one. For example, we have raids that have 2 tanks. They all have mitigations they can use for tankbusters. One form of a combat change to make things more interesting is having tank swaps so the second tank can use their mitigations because the first tank's are still on CD. Things like that is what I feel FFXIV is lacking.

Honestly I don't feel like any MMO has had the classes/jobs within a role feel significantly different short of the few games that toss huge skill trees at players and tell them to pick what they want with a limited on how much can be chosen through a point system. And quite frankly, that's the fault of players. They demand DPS?HPS balance so all jobs end up viable and create meta comps to come up with what they think will be best performance. If players truly want unique jobs, then they need to stop creating metas and stop demanding balance. That will leave developers free to stretch their imagination creating truly unique abilities.

And... no to here too. Regen healers in other MMOs are punished for using their burst healing because it takes too much mana. Think using Cure 3 vs Medica 2/Regen. Again FFXIV doesn't do this. AST/WHM does play the same sub 50. They have 1:1 skills that are pretty much the same thing outside of potency and/or mana differences (Benefic 1/2 vs Cure 1/2 for example). AST could be regen based like the above and have a completely different healing style and DOES at higher levels of play with delayed healing (Macrocosmos and Earthly Star). SE should be further expanding upon that at the lower levels.

And yeah, I can tell you that I found playing all the way through MSQ as CNJ/WHM has been enjoyable. I've done it on multiple characters (I usually alternate between healer/tank when I create a new character for replaying MSQ). It gets fun when I end up matched to a group of sprouts who are still learning the game and i have to really focus on the healing to keep them alive.

I believe you missed this part of my post which is fair, its wordy:

playing through the MSQ solo content from 1-90 ARR to EW as a healer is enjoyable

And yeah that's going to be a sticking point of mine. Having 2 damaging abilities (excluding ones that also heal for 80+ levels) is dumb design. I don't care if we're healers. Other MMOs allow us to have 2-5 more dps buttons. We can have that here.

I get that players interested in high end content are disappointed with the healer experience when they are playing with a good group of players. Not everyone is playing for a high end experience, though. It's less the job that needs to be changed and more the encounter design. If tanks are given good self-healing and enough mitigation tools that they require little healer, then more party wide damage is needed to give healers something to do other than green DPS. Arguing healers should be given more DPS tools doesn't do anything to make actual healing more engaging. If you're just going to give healers more DPS tools, might as well remove the healing role completely.

Not everyone may be playing for high end experience and that is fine. But the high end content that DOES exist should be harder than what it is. And that is a failing on SE's part whether they like it or not. There isn't anything for good healers because they refuse to up more damage and prune unnecessary heals from our kits because "healers should heal". Yeah we should heal, so make us heal. They keep saying they'll up the damage but they never give it. If content design is not going to change then class design should.

And this has been addressed several times. Just more damage isn't going to help. There DOES need to be more damage for healers to heal, but we also have too many healing tools. Some of our abilities can be removed and replaced with DPS.

Good healers are always going to have down time. How long said down time is is dependent on how good they are, the content they're healing and their party. There is no reason our down time can't be filled with more than a DoT and a Malefic/Glare/Broil/Dosis. We can have 2 more dps buttons. We can have more buffs to support the party.

*sigh* But its not just a healer issue. Healer is just the one I can talk at length why SE has failed from the ground up. MCH has issues. DRK still has issues. Many other jobs also have issues and problems with design SE has made.

MSQ content being easy is fine, but when your hard content isn't much harder from a veteran's view, (to quote Meteion) "what is even the point?"

I'm holding out Criterion dungeons give what I'm looking for. I'm still upset that it has taken them this long to make such content and I am going to be critical of it even if my expectations aren't that high. FFXIV is an MMO to me first anything else second. I came here for an MMO; I'll grade it as an MMO.

Is that fair to FFXIV? Probably not. Its my opinion nonetheless.

As I've said, there are plenty of things I still enjoy about FFXIV. Story for an MMO is pretty good. I like the world. I don't care its not as open as some would prefer.

Call backs to other FF titles while... grating in some parts is pretty cool in others. PvP has never been my cup of tea but I don't mind it here before and after the rework.

But I am a healer main. And healing in this game is not fun for me. At any level of play. That is the metric I am going to grade any MMO on the most heavily.

Sad thing is... there's no where for me to go... yet... hopefully.