Difficulty of normal content.

[caffe_macchiato]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

[Supersnow845]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

As much as you wish to believe it hostility in this game is not entirely from WOW refugees nor is expecting a level of competence to complete a normal raid at level 100 toxic elitism

[Khutulun]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

Imo, playing FF14 sequentially should be the expectation for new players. Don't feel like it's a matter of toxicity towards new players, ARR is where FF14's tutorials are. Even during low points of difficulty, the quantity and complexity of mechanics has increased with expansion count. FF14's storytelling follows the same structure as well, with the world/characters/lore building from start to finish. A new player jumping into the deep end of a MMO story and game spanning over a decade... is senseless at minimum?

Regardless, I feel like your post is misplaced in this thread. From what I can tell, the debate on difficulty is purely between long time players with multiple day 1 expansion experiences under their belt. It's not a matter of new players flopping on mechanics they don't understand.

[Magikazam]

A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too??

You are so out of touch with the reason people quit WoW to play FFXIV. The only reason WoW lost it crown is cause the dev just got so out of touch with the playerbase for SEVERAL years. The toxic/elitism WoW community you hear people that only played FFXIV claimed to be an issue is like, a very small player base that people alway clowned on cause they're the type of people to make a Party finder and ask you to know every mechanic of a whole raid and have said raid gears and BIS while they never touched the raid normal difficulty themselves.

Like I played both WoW and FFXIV since ARR and I've seen more people complain in normal dungeon in FFXIV than WoW, by a far margin.

[caffe_macchiato]

As much as you wish to believe it hostility in this game is not entirely from WOW refugees nor is expecting a level of competence to complete a normal raid at level 100 toxic elitism

Agreed! It's not JUST from WoW, because we have our own home-grown elitists who love the gated nature of our game. They've been playing for 10 years and can't fathom new players in their game in 2024.

Imo, playing FF14 sequentially should be the expectation for new players. Don't feel like it's a matter of toxicity towards new players, ARR is where FF14's tutorials are. Even during low points of difficulty, the quantity and complexity of mechanics has increased with expansion count. FF14's storytelling follows the same structure as well, with the world/characters/lore building from start to finish. A new player jumping into the deep end of a MMO story and game spanning over a decade... is senseless at minimum?

Agreed as well. The MMO genre is stagnant and FFXIV isn't a good steward of the genre. When we require players to trudge through 400 hours of MSQ and demand they master the game before reaching current content, the player base will be bottlenecked. A new MMO will finally be allowed to become popular, or WoW will improve itself. FFXIV needs competition and your attitude is necessary for that to happen.

You are so out of touch with the reason people quit WoW to play FFXIV. The only reason WoW lost it crown is cause the dev just got so out of touch with the playerbase for SEVERAL years.

Great point! Our new raids aren't that difficult nor are they impossible for new players. But the player base (you all) want them to be. You desperately want something that the devs aren't quite giving you. You are far more hostile to new players than Square Enix is, and the same has been happening with your previous MMO for years. You are deviating from what the devs want, and you are causing expectations to differ.

This thread would've been far better if people just argued that the raids aren't that difficult and just have telegraphs that look different. Instead, you just couldn't resist pulling the old "get gud" card, even when it doesn't apply here. This is the new face of FFXIV. Sad!

[HemlockEvergreen]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

What are you smoking, bro.

WoW lost players to FFXIV because:

1 - The game was going to shit. The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores. You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid, I can stop for a month or two without completely falling behind, and there's even Ultimates, which are not tied to a gearing system at all and exist purely for fun and cosmetics. And for gearing, even if I'm the most unlucky person ever and I never win a roll, I know I'm getting BiS in 16 weeks. There's no FOMO or being dependent on RNG. It's a better raiding experience overall.

2 - People left WoW because there was a huge sexual harrassment scandal on Blizzard, including great hits like "raiding the office and groping the interns", "stealing employees breast milk from the fridge", and "driving a woman to suicide on a business trip". For a lot of people who were already frustrated with WoW's mechanics, this was the last drop.

No one left WoW for XIV because they wanted a "less elitist" MMO. They left WoW for XIV because they wanted fun raiding without a bunch of grindy bullshit, hopefully made by a company where sexual assault is not part of the corporate culture.

[caffe_macchiato]

The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores.

That sounds familiar!

You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid

And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

[Kissune]

That sounds familiar!



And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

With all due respect what the hell are you talking about

[Volgia]

That sounds familiar!



And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

Damn, you got me on the edge of my seat. What else can you predict?

[HemlockEvergreen]

And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

Nah dude, no comparison. You have no idea of what you're talking about. WoW story was so bad that it made you feel bad for caring about it. The way XIV approaches it at least doesn't completely retcon everything every expansion. Shadowlands was so bad that they managed to retroactively ruin Warcraft III.

And the grind is different as well. You don't understand how good it is over here. Universal tokens for all the gear? Bad luck protection books? Catch-up gear that's easy to get if you miss a tier? WoW had none of that. Not to mention the abomination that was the weekly vault.

Let me explain how it worked: You had a vault that you could open once a week, that contained up to 9 pieces of loot. To unlock all of those 9 pieces of loot, you had to complete certain goals on raiding, PVP, and mythic plus dungeon runs. So you had homework to do every week. These were not things that you could do quickly in one day either, they were time consuming.

The vault pieces were random pieces that your class could wear. There was no guarantee that they'd be good for your spec. There was no guarantee that they would be something you don't have already. You could very well get the same pair of boots that are shit for your spec three weeks in a row and there was no fallback system for that. And your BiS depended on the vault. You could not acquire certain optimal pieces without them being from the vault, because some of them were higher item level than what you could get from other sources. So you had no way to plan to get BiS, you depended solely on luck.

All that I mentioned too is max level, endgame content. It's not comparable to the leveling process, which is what you mentioned. But even in that we can mention that if you wanna play another job in XIV, you don't have to level another character from scratch. You can just level and gear the job. If you want to play another class in WoW, you need a different character, in which not only you gonna need to level up through story quests again, but if you wanted to mantain both of your classes geared, you needed to do the loot vault weekly grind twice. The amount of time wasting is not comparable at all.