FFXIV vs GW2

[kaynide]

Short and Simple (I hope) of GW2 (since I assume you know enough about FFXIV):

"Infrastructure" / UI

• The UI is very polished; drag and drop. No "are you sure you're sure that you're sure?" We are talking 1 click to get to your storage, whereas retainers need what.. 3-4?
• Inventory management: Things are organized; things are labeled (aka "junk"). There are 1 click "sell all my junk" at vendors; there is "automatically put all my crafting items in their allocated storage area". You can deposit these gathered materials anywhere.
• Mail and market anywhere: You can send/receive mail; you can shop on the market board (and the Real Money shop) anywhere...anytime. You can use in-game currency in the Real-Money shop.
• Dye system (already talked about), but it is legit awesome.

Gameplay:

• Has an actual physics engine, allowing for legit jumping puzzles, Mario-Kart esque races, etc. The mini games are fun and welcome. Try the "Hungry Games".
• Mounts are awesome. There are different types used for different things.
• The actual gameplay parts could use more polish; that is to say, some boss fights are easy, some are very punishing, some are just loooooooooooooooong and boring. Nothing really memorable as aweful..but some situations you are better just making a specific build for that fight and cheesing it. There is nothing really truly comparable to FFXIV’s better combat encounters…but the system is similar.
• Their "Fate" system is arguably better- there are typically 2 or 3 ways to progress any one fate. For example, bandits attacking farm. You can contribute by A) fighting bandits, B) putting out fires or C) rescuing livestock. Additionally, almost every zone has a chain of fates that lead to something big, like a world boss. This is in practice similar to things like the Fox boss in Yanxia, but in practice the finale is MUCH more like a trial boss in XIV.

Story:

• This will be hit or miss; it's fine, but nothing Oscar-worthy. There is a glaring issue of missing story parts that are gradually being added back. Imagine if when FFXIV 3.0 launched, 2.x was no longer available to play. Just a text blob summarizing it and BOOM, new cast of characters. Everything else is good, but there is a gap in the story between the original game and 1st expansion. Again, it is gradually being added back in.

Characters:

• 1 Character has 1 class, but each class has different specs you can work out.
• The classes are less playing a role (Tank/Healer) and more like picking a character from Smash Bros. You can spec to a tank, but no specific job is a designated tank.

Endgame:

• There's a a lot you can enjoy here...but it's mostly "FashionWars" in the same way FFXIV is a lot of glamour at endgame.

Hope that helps!

[Clover_Blake]

GW2 was okay. "best dye system"? although its a hellhole I prefer Vindictus for dyes, can do main body, trim 1 and trim 2.

Ugh, Vietnam memories triggered ;;;

Mabinogi:Heroes (Vindictus)'s dye system was a real pain for me. I don't know if this has changed, but back when I played, the only way to dye your gear "for free" (I think it cost ingame curency) was letting the game dye it randomly, without any choice.

If you wanted to have any sort of control of what colour you wanted for each part of the armour, you had to buy individual dye capsules for real money, which worked as some sort of gacha and you were certainly not guaranteed to get the colour you wanted (more often than not, you wouldn't get the colour you wanted).

If I remember well, each armour piece had 3 dyeable parts, just like GW2. But in GW2 you got dyes added to your palette and can use them forever, as many times as you want. How isn't that better than the frustrating cash grab that's Mabinogi:Heroes/Vindictus?

[Lelila38]

A lot of good things have been said about GW2, so I won't bother repeating those.
Instead, I'll give you some things I criticize about it:

- the skills are bound to the weapon you use, each weapon has a unique skillset and while you do have slots to add skills from your class, you're forced to use a certain weapon to use the skills you want.

- exploring only lasts you so long. Once you finished a zone, you're done with it and basically have no reason to go back into it, unless you're gathering materials for crafting.

- it gets repetitive. In order to finish a zone you need to fill the quest hearts. There are however only so many activities that count towards heart progression and you're forced to repeat them until it's full.

- replayability is poor. At least for me, once I got a character through a zone I don't have the desire to do it all again on an alt.

- the msq is gated by level and the exp you get from it isn't enough to push you to unlock the next part. This leads to the msq feeling rather fractured. Several times I wanted to just keep going with the story, but couldn't cause the game forced me to grind out levels.

Generally it's a solid game, the battle feels nice, fast paced and action oriented. There is definitely a lot to do and enjoy. The msq isn't bad, though I couldn't really get attached to the characters too much. The zones are beautiful too. Do give it a try, if it interests you.

[Wissp]

One thing about GW2 people have not mentioned yet is although GW2 does not have native controller support, you CAN use a controller with the game thanks to 3rd party controller mapping software.

Because GW2 uses so few buttons for the game, it is relatively easy to use a mapping program such as reWASD, (which is the one I use for the button layers), to map most of the GW2 commands to your controller functions. It works and works well once you get used to the quirkiness of it. If you configure it right, you can even control the mouse cursor with the controller. If you don't want to do the work of mapping yourself, there are many pre built GW2 button maps you can download.

It's not as slick and smooth as FF14's built in support, but it certainly IS doable if you like using a controller instead of K/M.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

FFXIV is my first legit MMO I played. Been on it since 2014. I tried XI years ago but fell off because was solo, didn't know what to do, no friends to play. Figure I try another MMO on top of XIV

[Eraden]

The glam system is made up of two parts. The actual gear and your mount skins (yes, you can reskin your mounts) and the dyes themselves. All gear and mount skins are PERMANENTLY in your inventory once you have acquired them and/or purchased them from the GEM store. They take up no space. They simply fill up a slot in the gear and mount skin databases that are attached to your character. This means once you have come across a piece of gear or a mount skin during your activities, it's automatically added and you can even throw away the actual gear you acquired without losing "knowledge" of that particular item. Additionally, all gear and mount skins come with a minimum of two separate dye channels. That means you can use different dyes on different parts of your gear and mount skins. As for the dyes themselves, they work much like gear and mount skins. Once you have acquired a dye, it becomes a permanent addition to your dye database. It takes up no bag space thereafter. My last look at the dyes available in GW2 gave me the impression that there are at least a thousand separate dyes. Perhaps even more. So many dyes in fact that it can become difficult to distinguish between two dyes that lie beside each other in the dye list. The reason for all this complexity in the GW2's glam system is because ANet realized very early on that fashion is very much an end game activity and they throw their full support behind it.

GW2 has an incredibly versatile storage system. It comes with many parts. The first part is the actual inventory of the character. Your character stores items in bags which can be upgraded to larger and larger bags (more slots). The number of bags you can carry on your character starts small (4 bag slots) but can be increased. I believe the maximum number of bags that can be carried is 9 but that might still be expandable (anyone who is more familiar with GW2 please chime in and let us know what the maximum number of bags is). In addition to personal storage, characters also have bank storage. This starts out relatively small (a few tabs) but can be expanded to something like 17 tabs, each of which can hold 30 different items. In addition to this, there is a separate section for storage of mats for crafting. This section for storage of mats contains a slot for every single possible mat in the game. Each slot starts out with a capacity of 250 of the mat in question but can be expanded in increments of 250 to a maximum of 2500....PER SLOT. Everything stored in the bank and that includes materials storage, is available for access by ALL of your characters on your account. When it comes time to craft, you do so at specific crafting stations located in each major city. You do NOT have to withdraw mats from the bank in order to craft, however. Materials are automatically deducted from your bank storage as you craft at a station. Once again, ANet wanted to make sure that crafting, which is another endgame activity, is well supported.

[Jin-]

Great game, but it never keeps me interested for long. But oh boy when it does its the best mmorpg ever till its not. Rinse and repeat this for years .

My biggest gripe is the role locked gear glam system. Yes we have that too in FFXIV but we also have so much variety. Good luck in GW2 trying to wear lighter gear than full plate playing as soldier role. Yes there is gem shop outfits but they suck and can't be modified. Like Lyse or Omega outfit

@kaynide

They are now re releasing the missing story part, permanent access for free to everyone

[Atelier-Bagur]

One of the things I love about GW2 are the open world in game events, during like holiday seasons and such where you see so many people running around interacting with all sorts of open world mini-games and events and it legit feels like a carnival.

Gold Saucer wishes it had that level of interaction and it's sadly due to engine limitations and design that prevents it from being absolutely great.

[Skivvy]

Great game, but it never keeps me interested for long. But oh boy when it does its the best mmorpg ever till its not. Rinse and repeat this for years .

My history with the game would probably point towards me feeling like this as well. lol. I'll play for maybe a few months, then pop back to something for a bit, and repeat.

Although in the game's defense, I've always been a solo player and I feel like having people around can really help keep you interested in a game. I also don't do fractals, strike missions, or any of the big raid things which would also keep me tied to the game longer. And at times I'm a bit lost as to what to do, so there's that as well.

BUT I'M BACK FOR NOW!. Working on finishing up my masteries that I've ignored for too long, looking into finally starting to craft some ascended armor, trying to see if I can keep my Ele alive for more than 30 seconds in the new zones, all sorts of things to keep myself busy for a bit. ;p

[kaynide]

Great game, but it never keeps me interested for long. But oh boy when it does its the best mmorpg ever till its not. Rinse and repeat this for years .

My biggest gripe is the role locked gear glam system. Yes we have that too in FFXIV but we also have so much variety. Good luck in GW2 trying to wear lighter gear than full plate playing as soldier role. Yes there is gem shop outfits but they suck and can't be modified. Like Lyse or Omega outfit

@kaynide

They are now re releasing the missing story part, permanent access for free to everyone

I realize; I mentioned it twice. No disrespect meant here

This will be hit or miss; it's fine, but nothing Oscar-worthy. There is a glaring issue of missing story parts that are gradually being added back. Imagine if when FFXIV 3.0 launched, 2.x was no longer available to play. Just a text blob summarizing it and BOOM, new cast of characters. Everything else is good, but there is a gap in the story between the original game and 1st expansion. Again, it is gradually being added back in.