Been playing this game for ~3 months now. My thoughts so far

[Exidrial]

Skip the first few posts. Didn't know you can bypass the 1k limit

Hi,

I just thought I'd share my thoughts about the game so far with you.If you want to comment please do so in a appropriate manner.Keep in mind that we all are individuals and everybody has a different point of view and idea of fun.

I will talk about the story up to the end of Heavensward in this thread.So if you haven't finished Heavensward yet please skip the first section.I've marked it for you with tons of !

I will rant a lot in this thread but I'll share positive thoughts with you as well.

I currently only really play one class, the Dark Knight.
Im ~i203 atm and only really run dungeons/trials/raids in this game.I am not interested in crafting and I don't care about pets or mounts right now.
The stuff mentioned above generally is what I spend my time with once I've geared up sufficiently in games.

I started out as PLD and switched to DRK as soon as I was able to access the unlock quest.I was ~lvl 54 on my PLD when I started Heavensward.
The levling process from 1-50 was good, you never really had to grind.Do a few main story quests and after that 1-2 dungeons and you're level up.Nice.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At around level 50 I started noticing a pretty big problem.The story.
I know a lot of people like the story but please keep on reading before commenting.
The story...wow...The story has tons of cutscenes and tons of text.Tons of reading, tons of running around tons of not killing a single mob.
I don't know about you guys but I'm playing this game because of the gameplay, not because I want to read a visual novel.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind lots of story.Quite the opposite but the problem with FFXIVs story is....it's boring.It is boring and unneccesary.It's the same from 1-50.This primal appeared go kill it! Oh another primal appeared, go kill it! There is nothing that keeps me going in this story.We don't really have an enemy just random baddies that keep popping up.The Ascians and Garlear aren't real antagonists, the Ascians are just a plot tool and the Garlear are just a nuisance.Combine that with a lot of unnecesary fetch quests and you've got a boring story.
The characters aren't interesting too.Do you remember the part where you escaped from ul'dah?I didn't care about the others not making it.I didn't even miss them.Hell I was glad minfillia was finally gone.All this talk about friendship and bs when all they ever made me do was do fetch quests and kill gods for them.It feels like SE wants you to hate those characters.

Lets jump forward to Heavensward.To the end of Heavensward to be exact.

Ysayles (or however you spell her name) death was another of those "yeah whatever" moments for me because SE just wasted tons of potential.SE had lots of time to make this character form some kind of emotional bond with the player.They had more than enough time to make this character mean something to the player but they failed.They didn't even try.
Haurchefants death probably was the only one that shocked me.Wanna know why?Haurchefant was funny, he was likeable but most importantly he had PERSONALITY.

That Azure Dragoon guy had some personality and a step in the right direction but again, SE just didn't seem to want the player to form a connection with this character.

Story rant ends here
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's talk about the gameplay.
The dungeons trials and raids are fun.I enjoy them.
I just wish they were harder.I haven't really gotten into the expert dungeons yet but even the level 60 dungeons are easy as crap.
I can just run through the lost city of Amdapor HM aggroing everything along the way and let the BLM/SMN kill everything.The bosses are interesting and some of them have pretty cool ideas but they are way too easy.I can mostly stand around brain afk and just press the same 3 buttons the whole fight.

The difficulty of the Dungeon probably is the cause for another problem I have with the game.
A lot of people suck.
I do not expect everybody to have mastered their job but I expect level 60 players to not suck at their job.There are so extremely many Healers that just stand around overhealing the tank with the heal they pop every few seconds.I sometimes have the feeling they think the world's going to end when the tank drops below 100% health for more than 2 seconds.They won't even DPS while they're doing nothing.
Again that's not everybody but it's still a big amount of people.

Then there's the occasional DPS that doesn't want to use his AoEs or for some reason seems to have extremely low dps.


How can it be that people like that are able to reach level 60 and acquire i200+ gear?
I can tell you why: The game hands you everything on a plate.
Sure there's grinding involved but the grinding isn't hard.It's easy.The game is made so that 1 good player can carry 1 incompetent one.

Another thing that I don't really like but that isn't too big of a deal:
Crystal Tower and Anima weapon...don't let me fate grind.Fates are boring, nobody does them and SE should just remove them from the game.

What I hate the most about the game currently are the artificial progression blockers.
Weekly cap on allegane tomestones of lore...really?
If you wan't people to not run around in this gear after 2 weeks you should make the content required to get this gear hard, not artificially slow us down with weekly caps.
After reaching the weekly cap there is nothing left for me to do in this game.As I already said I'm a progression oriented player.I play mostly to progress and gear up.

GRINDING is BAD
HIGH DIFFICULTY is GOOD

From what I can tell SE just give in to the whining of the people that don't want to use their brain and don't want to work for anything.That probably is the reason why content keeps getting nerfed.Even a braindead mouse could beat the content up to Expert/Extreme Primals/End game raids

Enough ranting, let's talk about what I like about this game:

Dungeons are fun to a certain extent, the same goes for primals.
Raids are fun and uh I like the art style.

There is tons of content in the game even though I'm not interested in most of it.

I guess that's it.The only reason I play this game is for the progression and the raiding/dungeon running/boss killing so there's not much for me to comment on.
Plus people have a hard time remembering things they like, people are more likely to rant about things they do not like.

[Exidrial]

I started out as PLD and switched to DRK as soon as I was able to access the unlock quest.I was ~lvl 54 on my PLD when I started Heavensward.
The levling process from 1-50 was good, you never really had to grind.Do a few main story quests and after that 1-2 dungeons and you're level up.Nice.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At around level 50 I started noticing a pretty big problem.The story.
I know a lot of people like the story but please keep on reading before commenting.
The story...wow...The story has tons of cutscenes and tons of text.Tons of reading, tons of running around tons of not killing a single mob.
I don't know about you guys but I'm playing this game because of the gameplay, not because I want to read a visual novel.

[Exidrial]

on't get me wrong, I don't mind lots of story.Quite the opposite but the problem with FFXIVs story is....it's boring.It is boring and unneccesary.It's the same from 1-50.This primal appeared go kill it! Oh another primal appeared, go kill it! There is nothing that keeps me going in this story.We don't really have an enemy just random baddies that keep popping up.The Ascians and Garlear aren't real antagonists, the Ascians are just a plot tool and the Garlear are just a nuisance.Combine that with a lot of unnecesary fetch quests and you've got a boring story.
The characters aren't interesting too.Do you remember the part where you escaped from ul'dah?I didn't care about the others not making it.I didn't even miss them.Hell I was glad minfillia was finally gone.All this talk about friendship and bs when all they ever made me do was do fetch quests and kill gods for them.It feels like SE wants you to hate those characters.

[Bixillarla]

If you edit your post you can get by the 1000 limit and put all in 1 post.

[Exidrial]

Lets jump forward to Heavensward.To the end of Heavensward to be exact.

Ysayles (or however you spell her name) death was another of those "yeah whatever" moments for me because SE just wasted tons of potential.SE had lots of time to make this character form some kind of emotional bond with the player.They had more than enough time to make this character mean something to the player but they failed.They didn't even try.
Haurchefants death probably was the only one that shocked me.Wanna know why?Haurchefant was funny, he was likeable but most importantly he had PERSONALITY.

That Azure Dragoon guy had some personality and a step in the right direction but again, SE just didn't seem to want the player to form a connection with this character.

Story rant ends here
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Cnidarian]

Quick tip, you can edit your first post to break the character limit and keep everything in one post.

[Exidrial]

Oh god thanks that 1k limit is so unnecesary

[WellFooled]

Quick tip: If you edit your original post you can go past the 1000 character limit so you don't need to create a series of posts.

It's silly, but its how this forum operates.

[Laerune]

Which part was boring the A realm reborn storyline or Heavensward?

I have to agree that ARR untill you reach 2.5 was boring and I also have to agree that the characters aside from Alphinaud, Estinien and Ysayle (who have received some character development) are very dull. I do have to disagree that the Heavensward storyline was boring. Yes the Heavensward story is not Witcher 3 level, but it is still a good storyline and way beter then the A realm reborn one. I realy hope with 4.0, they will focus more on the the scions, because right now I find them very dull (yes, they have witty lines), but for me the Heavensward characters that I realy liked (aside from Alphinaud) are Estinien, Ysayle, Matoya and Krille. Two of them are gone and one is stuck in a cave.

Seeing how far they came storywise from A realm reborn to Heavensward has given me hope that 4.0 story will be just as good or even better then Heavensward story.

[Exidrial]

Heavensward really is a huge improvement compared to ARR.
The problem with Heavensward for me personally was that it basically threw almost everything I did pre heavensward away.New "country", new characters, new enemy.Suddenly the Dragons are the enemy.
Heavensward had some good parts but I guess it felt boring to me because not much memorable happened.

The game lacks an antagonist. A proper one. An antagonist that you really start to hate. This whole Dragonsong war thing is something I do not care about.It was irrelevant during ARR and suddenly it's the focus of the story?
The story feels random, it's just "kill whatever baddie appears next".

Even killing the primals who are considered gods becomes routine.After killing 2-3 it's nothing special anymore.