So, I was playing some other MMOs that I haven't in awhile...

[Denji]

And I can see why FF14 is rising up. It doesn't waste my time.

Like take flying. I can unlock flying on zones before I even finish them (and they made it easier in older expansions) and being able to just teleport nearly anywhere you want without a timer is amazing. It gives me the freedom to go where I want whenever I want which in turn encourages me to do stuff that I normally wouldn't have since getting to those things isn't a huge time waster.

Crafting and Fielding is also not so bad to level in this after the ARR levels. Though I'll never be an Omnicrafter/fieldworker as that takes the dedication I lack. I salute them.

But it's just so crazy that so many MMOs out there don't seem to understand that players don't like time wasters nor seem to want to respect their players time. They just scratch their head at their dropping sub numbers and the worst MMOs are the ones that double down on the grind and time wasters as that's how they've always done things. They all also have horrid free trials that will never get new players into their games at this point as new players can cap the trials in like an hour.

As I get older and have less and less time due to Real life obligations and going to the gym I really do appreciate that I can log in to FF14 and accomplish something without spending a ton of time in game. That is very beneficial to me, especially on my work days as I work 12 hour shifts so have maybe an hour of me time after my obligations and the gym.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering... I had to put this character on pause and made a new one on a friends server (this character will never leave Balmung), so had to go back and unlock all the raids and stuff again... At least it's a lot faster nowadays since I did all the ARR and most of the HW stuff as f2p.

i like ff because i can walk away and come back and everything is mostly the same.

back when i played wow it was always "great" logging in and finding out they reworked everything again and all of my previously useful things like gems or that weird thing they did where you could get like... things that changed the appearance of your abilities? (like shaman's ghost wolf or whatever) just out of the blue? like. ugh. i am not interested in learning a brand new system every single major patch nor am i interested in grinding for all that nonsense.

i like that i can run a rou as a class in need and get the thing that'll give me the bare minimum materia i need to do end-game content without having to poopsock. log in, do a few rous, run a few high-end duties and still get to bed before midnight. it's rad.

everyone keeps ripping on the square devs but they really did say "there is one system for upgrading your equipment and there will only ever be one system" and i'm 500% here for it and cheering.

[Larirawiel]

You're missing the point. Flying cuts down on time wasted for travel in WoW. Unless you're a mage, you have no teleports outside of your single Hearthstone location. Even if you are a mage, the number of locations you can teleport to are far less than the number of zones in the game.

True. But Pathfinder unlocks flying in older, optional content. So you do old optional content to make other old optional content easier/quicker. And i still think, that if you do not like it then don't do it. It would be different if the content was mandatory.


Cheers

[Caddo]

True. But Pathfinder unlocks flying in older, optional content. So you do old optional content to make other old optional content easier/quicker. And i still think, that if you do not like it then don't do it. It would be different if the content was mandatory.

Pathfinder was (not sure how it works in Dragonfight) NOT "older, optional content" considering how hard they tried to keep World Quests relative and at the same time also was account bound so you most definetly wanted it for alts when you were leveling them up. Could you do it without Pathfinder? Sure, but.. why would you want to purposely waste your time traveling from A to B when you could do it in like 100% less time flying?

Helped you get to summon stones quicker for M+ and also raids. Helped you gather faster and keep up with the bots (curse you Druid bots!) and was honestly just punishing if you didn't have it and everyone else did. Gotta love not being able to get a node because oh look, someone else tapped it up the mountain and you don't have flying, awh man, sucks, anyways go find a new node. :P

[Jojoya]

I wonder if WoW still makes you wait a stupid amount of time into an expansions life to fly..

From what I've read, they're trying something different in the current expansion.

You don't get to use your normal mounts to fly in the new zones but you get a dragon buddy that will fly you around and has a sort of skill tree. As you work to level it, it becomes better at flying. I have no idea how slow it is, or how long it's able to fly before the fatigue system sets in and you end up grounded until it recharges. It's supposed to be based off one of the GW2 mount systems (which I know zero about).

I'm sure someone who has actually played the expansion could give a better explanation of the system than that if you really want to know more. Then again, if you're like me with no intention of revisiting WoW then there's really not much reason to know more than it's another system intended to waste time and slow player progress, and will probably be meaningless in the expansion after the current one assuming it doesn't get removed completely.

Pathfinder was (not sure how it works in Dragonfight) NOT "older, optional content"

At the time of release it wasn't. But now it is. There's no reason other than curiosity to visit the old zones in the current game because they have no relevance to end game. And with the exception of Cataclysm, we never had access to flying while leveling at the start of an expansion (well, I guess druids had a head start in Burning Crusade because they got their first flight form at 67 or 68 but that was it).

[Caddo]

At the time of release it wasn't. But now it is. There's no reason other than curiosity to visit the old zones in the current game because they have no relevance to end game. And with the exception of Cataclysm, we never had access to flying while leveling at the start of an expansion (well, I guess druids had a head start in Burning Crusade because they got their first flight form at 67 or 68 but that was it).

Aye, that is why I said "was" and mentioned I wasn't sure how Dragonflight was handling it since last time I played Pathfinder wasn't optional, it was basically required the moment it dropped/became available for all sorts of QoL from gathering to World Quests to alt leveling, and the works :P WoW kinda went weird in the last two expansions and I like to kinda pretend it doesn't exist anymore lmao.

And technically we did have flying at the start of every expansion, you are correct in the sense of the leveling process, until Warlords of Draenor when they introduced the awful Pathfinder requirement. I still enjoyed having it day 1 or 2 of an expansion

[AnnRam]

FF14 has always been the best MMO on the market sadly its taken some people 10 years to realize it

Because it's a solo player campaign with some small lobbies where you aren't even forced to interact with people. You only need the online functionality to clear dungeons/raids ( most of them completely optional)

You have menu / macro to do everything for you.
The content it's so easy / braindead that you can watch Netflix on your second monitor/ TV while keeping an entire raid up in normal.

And that's why its the best MMO right now, even our grandmother's who never played a game before can finish all the expansions , get to level 90 and be happy about it.

[Rolder50]

From what I've read, they're trying something different in the current expansion.

You don't get to use your normal mounts to fly in the new zones but you get a dragon buddy that will fly you around and has a sort of skill tree. As you work to level it, it becomes better at flying. I have no idea how slow it is, or how long it's able to fly before the fatigue system sets in and you end up grounded until it recharges. It's supposed to be based off one of the GW2 mount systems (which I know zero about).

The dragonriding system is something to unlock about 45 minutes into the main questline. The fatigue system with zero skill points is pretty annoying, but it's real easy to get said skill points and you can be maxed out in about 30 minutes to an hour of flying around collecting them. And once you're maxed out, if you know what you are doing you can be flying max speed almost indefinitely without stopping to recover fatigue. And lastly, the dragons are WAY faster then regular flying mounts. Regular flying caps out at 310% speed, dragons cap out at 810% speed.

The only downside is you can't use them in older zones.

[caffe_macchiato]

As I get older and have less and less time due to Real life obligations and going to the gym I really do appreciate that I can log in to FF14 and accomplish something without spending a ton of time in game. That is very beneficial to me, especially on my work days as I work 12 hour shifts so have maybe an hour of me time after my obligations and the gym.

There is a large contingent of young people who have video games as their primary hobby, particularly social games with their friends. Back in the old days, MMOs used to fill that niche. WoW does too in the modern era. So does Fortnite, Apex, Valorant, Minecraft, etc. Much, much more successful games than ours.

Nowadays, as we all can agree, FFXIV's best strength is the story. It's a single-player game. You beat it and then you shelve it and move on with your life. A lot of people deeply love that feature, as do you.

But remember: your story isn't the only one. And for every one person like you who plays single-player games on occasion, there's a thousand others who enjoy video games as a hobby with their friends. In my opinion, I wished that MMOs had another chance of being in that space. But too many people love the idea of an MMO being single-player, as you will see in the responses below. Until then, it seems that the social and heavy gamer has to stick with WoW and other games.

so many MMOs out there don't seem to understand that players don't like time wasters

As other forum-posters will strongly agree with, WoW is far more successful than FFXIV. Plenty of people like continuing grinds because they don't see them as a time waster any more than your 5,000th run of Crystal Tower that somehow still constitutes "respecting your time".

They just scratch their head at their dropping sub numbers

There is only one other MMO that requires a subscription, and it's World of Warcraft. It's also 19 years old. The use of "they" is inappropriate in this context. Also, they have more subscribers than we do.

the worst MMOs are the ones that double down on the grind and time wasters

No, the worst ones are the ones that sell you progress for real-life money, as many other forum-goers will likely agree with. "P2W" has a heavy stigma and has killed many nascent MMOs, from BDO to Blade & Soul and (most recently) Lost Ark. Bugginess can also kill an MMO, such as New World and FFXIV 1.0. But, as many will agree, WoW is not dead.

[VelKallor]

Gotta love not being able to get a node because oh look, someone else tapped it up the mountain and you don't have flying, awh man, sucks, anyways go find a new node. :P

FF 14 solved that years ago, all nodes are personal.

the idea was mentioned in WOW ....what was the answer..as always ?

"It cant be done"™

There is only one other MMO that requires a subscription, and it's World of Warcraft

No.

FF 11 is sub based, so is Elder Scrolls Online.

[Imora]

I wonder if WoW still makes you wait a stupid amount of time into an expansions life to fly..

You get special mounts at lvl 63ish that work similar to gw2 flying mounts that are about twice as fast as epic flying, yet people still bitch.

I'm playing both, because raiding in FF sucks nuts and I run out of non raid, non pvp content quick.