Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Atelier-Bagur]

Holy cow. I'd say completely the opposite. Consider that with the fact I'm a casual player uninterested in Savage content. In FFXIV, I can take an entire tier off, come back, and just buy crafted gear that makes me able to join in on practically anything I want to do. In WoW? You need to either form or be invited into a group, and as a DPS, if you're even slightly behind on iLvl, forget it. Not to mention PvP. Go into casual PvP in WoW after having taken even a little time off and you're getting one shot into tomorrow. FFXIV has it down to an art with how good they have the catch-up mechanics for anyone outside of the highest-level raiders (which are the slimmest of minorities in the playerbase).

Are people forgetting that savage raids are totally clearable with the foot on the door equipment aka "crafted gear" even getting a couple of tomestone gear pieces are you able to do them. Its how progression works. You dont just start with the best of the best, you slowly build your way to make the tiers less stressful in terms of stats. Again, people giving disingenous takes on raid progression in FFXIV. This is honestly the first time Ive heard such a counter-argument of WoW hardcore raiding. I suppose I never dabbled in it, so I cant vouche for any validity of these statements but from hearing lots of ex-WoW raiders back in Shadowlands, BFA, and Legion online recounting their experiences its a heck a lot more effort and commitment put into such that such raids (despite how awesome and good designed they are) not many of the game's guilds clear them. This was apparent with Shadowland's last raid Sepulcher of the First Ones.

Now Dragonflight seems to be finally doing a lot of things right from what I heard, so Im very interested how well that expansion handles its own endgame content to be less BS than previous expansions.

The only thing I can agree on is that unless you dont belong to an FC or have a group of friends, its definitely a tad harder to do PF with other strangers to do the content.

[R041]

See, comments like this are what lose you all credibility. People can debate things like the quality of the EW story, the state of various classes or roles, and so on, but nobody in their right honest mind tries to claim there isn't much to do in FFXIV. If nothing else, the one thing practically anyone can agree on is that there is a huge amount of available side content in FFXIV, from FATEs to Sightseeing to Relics to Gold Saucer (which itself contains about a half-dozen solid activities) to (and the list goes on). Trying to act as if there's little to do in the game just makes you out to be a pointless troll.

Lose credibility with someone that can't even read what I'm saying? I didn't say those things don't exist. I said they all suck because the basic combat mechanics and rewards are horrible, so nobody actually does any of it. And god forbid if they do, it's horribly boring like Hunt trains. FATEs and Sightseeing? LOL

The themepark is there. It's just withered, unless you count MSQ (Which is just single-player) and Trials/Raids.

[OdinelStarrei]

This right here is the true criticism, isn't it? It's not that "we stopped being an MMO in Stormblood" but rather "Shadowbringers gameplay is unfun and shitty compared to how it was in the past." Which isn't really something I'm going to argue against, since I don't disagree that the homogenization of combat makes a large amount of content unfun for a majority of the time.

I think a good litmus for these types of complaints is thinking about it in this regard - is the game itself unfun or is it the jobs that make it unfun?
I've thought about this a lot when playing Black Mage this tier going from playing a healer (something I notice you have as your main job) and it has really driven that home to me that the game is still fun when jobs are designed well. Black Mage is really fun to play, even in fights that are pretty punishing towards casters in regards to requiring a lot of movement (P7S was a bit miserable to prog as BLM but in reclears it's been pretty fun trying new strategies and figuring out the most optimal leylines timings and when I can do nonstandard lines) but BLM is just one job in a game that has 19 of them, and unfortunately BLM is the only job that 'sparks joy' for me anymore and that's seriously worrying for the future when it's gotten to this point, especially with the developers tendencies to wreck jobs more often than make them better.

What an interesting viewpoint! I've actually had a similar philosophy back in the day, "A job should be fun on a dummy as a base, and you'll never be bored in any content, difficulty becomes irrelevant to the minimum threshold of fun". I haven't had fun on a dummy for any job this entire expansion. And it's not like I don't know how they work or anything, every expansion I level everything to max and at least try to play them competently to a EX level if possible, and I have a great understanding of XIV combat foundations and history, but it all just kinda blended together into the same mush with the occasional exception in a few segments of a rotation, like on MNK or BLM. A common thread was like I could potentially have a high amount of actions per minute, but I wouldn't actually think about what I was doing, if that tracks at all. It's like, everything shares the same base skeleton and minimal thought process, and whatever is left to compromise job specific specialization in terms of player agency has been heavily sheared off the main body. It's even worse when I try to heal things, that's like, not even dedicate my full attention to the encounter territory unless it's in entirely unfamiliar or DEFCON 2 environs.

It didn't used to be like this pre-Shadowbringers, and is probably where my mind cannot reconcile. The jobs themselves are pretty much what I lauded XIV for to everyone else from like, a gameplay perspective. No matter what content you went in within reason, you'd get an engaging combat suite, but that really isn't the case anymore. Like, I loved Fates because I just loved the combat and was eager to participate in it, but now, thinking about grinding even a few fates for a relic fills me with abject disgust. It's weird too, because it's not like we're bereft of quality, in an objective sense. Story? I got my issues with it, but it's alright. Content? It certainly exists in spades. Music? Awesome, mostly. Art Direction and visuals? Aged, but still substantial considering the scale and technical limitations the team works under. Things like Ahm Areang and Amaurot are impressive to me even now. But the gameplay, the human to game input and the thought that goes in the brain to make actions happen on a screen, is entirely bland across the entire level range, which is mind boggling to me, because that's a recent occurrence, relatively speaking.

I never thought of XIV gameplay as an empty mall with still functioning shops, but that does make a lot of sense. Everything is there for things to work, and it does work, but there's no soul to literally any of it. It's bereft of imagination or passion. There's not a single job in this game where I can see love from a designer made manifest with the exception of Black Mage, just a list of requirements and checkboxes on a white sheet of paper. And if it was always like that, I wouldn't really care. But it was there, and it's gone now, and what replaced it doesn't feel quite right to me. I think that is why there's so much pushback, to this day. We should've always been like this, and we wouldn't have known any better.

I think when the perception is "This was taken from me" rather than "Things are changing in ways that I don't agree with and don't understand", the atmosphere can become quite negative, and quite depressing very quickly. But that's the reality, and SE just doesn't wanna placate low skill floors and a high skill ceilings simultaneously in combat design. I think that's the boat a few people find themselves in. Pitiable, really.

[Raven2014]

Holy cow. I'd say completely the opposite. Consider that with the fact I'm a casual player uninterested in Savage content. In FFXIV, I can take an entire tier off, come back, and just buy crafted gear that makes me able to join in on practically anything I want to do. In WoW? You need to either form or be invited into a group, and as a DPS, if you're even slightly behind on iLvl, forget it. Not to mention PvP. Go into casual PvP in WoW after having taken even a little time off and you're getting one shot into tomorrow. FFXIV has it down to an art with how good they have the catch-up mechanics for anyone outside of the highest-level raiders (which are the slimmest of minorities in the playerbase).

I agree. Unless WoW had changed significantly in the last few years, the gear progression in it are fare more stricter than FF14. Not saying it is a bad thing. There is no shortcut to skip a tier in WoW, you want to get into the current tier you have to scaffolding the proper sequence. And starting late in the PvP season = being a cannon folder until you grind out a decent set. There is no gear progression in FF14, the fights can already be killed week 1 with min ilvl. Any extra gear after that simply to make thing more comfy and increase the margin. In WoW you must clear the current raid to get the gear for the next, because it's a hardwall.


Not saying it's bad or good thing btw. Whenever I came back to WoW, I had guilds that knew me well enough that would have no problem taking me as far as ability is concern. But even then that's only "after" I have catch up. In all of my years playing WoW I never once thought or complain that it should have an easier catch up machanism. When I was there, I like the responsibility you have to take to call yourself a raider. I still don't think it's bad thing even now, it's just not something I want to commit to again.

[R041]

...

You've done a better job expressing my thoughts than I've been able to these past 20 pages. Thank you.

[Rolder50]

Holy cow. I'd say completely the opposite. Consider that with the fact I'm a casual player uninterested in Savage content. In FFXIV, I can take an entire tier off, come back, and just buy crafted gear that makes me able to join in on practically anything I want to do. In WoW? You need to either form or be invited into a group, and as a DPS, if you're even slightly behind on iLvl, forget it. Not to mention PvP. Go into casual PvP in WoW after having taken even a little time off and you're getting one shot into tomorrow. FFXIV has it down to an art with how good they have the catch-up mechanics for anyone outside of the highest-level raiders (which are the slimmest of minorities in the playerbase).

I believe their point here was more that, within a few weeks of the tier being out, prog groups either dry up or have stricter item level requirements that prevent people in fresh crafted from joining.

[Rolder50]

I agree. Unless WoW had changed significantly in the last few years, the gear progression in it are fare more stricter than FF14. Not saying it is a bad thing. There is no shortcut to skip a tier in WoW, you want to get into the current tier you have to scaffolding the proper sequence. And starting late in the PvP season = being a cannon folder until you grind out a decent set. There is no gear progression in FF14, the fights can already be killed week 1 with min ilvl. Any extra gear after that simply to make thing more comfy and increase the margin. In WoW you must clear the current raid to get the gear for the next, because it's a hardwall.

That has most definitely changed. Nowadays, every new tier they put out, they increase the item level of drops from Dungeons, plus increase the item level of rewards from open world stuff like world quests and whatnot. So no matter when you start in the tier, it's pretty easy to get to a baseline that will let you get into at least normal. It's been like that for at least a couple of expansions now.

Edit: Now that I think about it, if you start in a later tier in FF14 and don't have the money to dump on full crafted, how long does it take to get to a raid ready item level?

Edit 2: They also made the PvP gearing more forgiving, in that the base level of PvP gear is super fast and easy to get, with the upgrade only affecting the gear in PvE content. It's all the same in PvP. So you'll still get trounced for your first few battlegrounds, but you'll get up pretty quick.

[Iscah]

Edit: Now that I think about it, if you start in a later tier in FF14 and don't have the money to dump on full crafted, how long does it take to get to a raid ready item level?

It might not be too bad if you start with buying a crafted weapon and scraping yourself into the first tier of eight-man raids, and work your way up with those tokens and tome sets to get into the second raid tier. After that it would get grindier and time-gated, but might not be too bad with a combination of raid and tome gear plus some crafted pieces to fill the gaps. Maybe two weeks of loot if you buy the chest and leg gear? Four pieces of jewellery from raids on the first week; any two of head/hands/feet from the second week; buy the remaining item and ring with tomes. Add an extra week or two if you need to buy the chest/legs with loot.

You can also potentially be earning tomes before you arrive at endgame by running roulettes or hunt marks with a max-level job.

If you're not aiming to go into raiding, it's even less of a big deal to get up to the standard for current dungeon content.

[Atelier-Bagur]

It might not be too bad if you start with buying a crafted weapon and scraping yourself into the first tier of eight-man raids, and work your way up with those tokens and tome sets to get into the second raid tier. After that it would get grindier and time-gated, but might not be too bad with a combination of raid and tome gear plus some crafted pieces to fill the gaps. Maybe two weeks of loot if you buy the chest and leg gear? Four pieces of jewellery from raids on the first week; any two of head/hands/feet from the second week; buy the remaining item and ring with tomes. Add an extra week or two if you need to buy the chest/legs with loot.

You can also potentially be earning tomes before you arrive at endgame by running roulettes or hunt marks with a max-level job.

If you're not aiming to go into raiding, it's even less of a big deal to get up to the standard for current dungeon content.

and with how easy it is to acquire tomes for purchasing one or two pieces in this game. Like I said, its far more manageable to start savage raiding. And about the PF issue, I also do realize myself that those whom have a hard time joining groups I mean....you can also create those groups yourself.

[Rolder50]

and with how easy it is to acquire tomes for purchasing one or two pieces in this game. Like I said, its far more manageable to start savage raiding. And about the PF issue, I also do realize myself that those whom have a hard time joining groups I mean....you can also create those groups yourself.

Meanwhile I'm gearing an alt right now in WoW and to do so I'm doing a combination of questing, with a side of mindless grinding in the primal storms they got going on. Probably a good 4-5 hours to get a reasonable level of gear, and not time gated at all like tomestones over in FF14