FFXIV thoughts

[Kaurie]

Someone in another thread asked for my thoughts on FFXV and I thought it said FFXIV, so I wrote this up. Now I don't want it to wither away in limbo, so I'm pasting it here as a quasi review & feedback for the devs.

Aspects I will consider:

• Graphics
• Combat
• Story
• Leveling
• Open World
• Dungeons
• Raids
• Crafting | Gathering
• Interface
• Extras

With that out of the way, here we go.
Graphics
The design of the game is incredibly beautiful. Lighting and certain textures look amazing. By contrast, certain textures are noticeably pixelated. The quality of environment textures appears to be sorely lacking. Things like grass, rocks, water and buildings all look amazing from a distance, but up close look very poor. Luckily, this same issue doesn’t seem to apply as much to our characters. My assumption is this is done to help the game run on lower-end systems. As someone with a high-end system, I do wish that the textures were improved, and small details (i.e. more blades of grass) were improved.
I would say overall, the graphical design is amazing, and the graphical quality is lacking.

Combat
Combat is one of the things that has kept me hooked in FFXIV and originally drew me to the game. I prefer a system with tab targeting, and the tab targeting in FFXIV works better than any other game I have played (including WoW, which has a notably awkward system). The rotations are complex and engaging. However, with Heavensward, the rotations added a little bit too much. I would have preferred a talent system, that would allow the player to choose either a) awkward but high output build, or b) smooth but lower output build. For example, a BLM’s enochian could be a talent choice, with an alternative that unlocks Fire IV’s all the time, but has a much lower damage potential.
Combat is fun and engaging, but lacks customization to appease various playstyles.

Story
The story in FFXIV is the best of any MMO. While, I personally find the lore to be uninteresting, the execution of the story is unparalleled. The biggest issue with the story’s execution is the lengthy phase from 1-50, where the story is fairly standard and cliché. It doesn’t really pick up until post 50. I also found the story had a rocky sense of quality throughout Heavensward, with 3.0 being amazing and with a sharp drop in overall quality until patch 3.4. That said, even the best shows on television have poorer episodes and the best books have poorer chapters. FFXIV’s story would excel a lot more if there was less filler content with unnecessary fetch/teleport quests.

Leveling
The first job to 60 levels quite seamlessly. It can be done mostly via the main story quest and is reasonably enjoyable and quick. However, after that, jobs get progressively worse to level. I am at a point that I have no quests to level. Dungeons have long queues and are incredibly boring. Palace of the dead gave an alternative, which was fun for a short while, it still feels quite boring. I’d be much happier if I was able to replay the MSQ on alternate jobs, so that I could both remind myself of the earlier story, and level in a more enjoyable fashion.

Open World
The open world in FFXIV is severely underused, which is depressing, because the zones are mostly beautifully crafted. I rarely have any reason to be somewhere other than The Mist and Idyllshire. A better daily quest system could go a long way to encouraging people to enter the open world.

Dungeons
Dungeon design started out reasonably good, but fell pretty drastically, especially in Heavensward. Most dungeons follow a very predictable trash-trash-boss (repeat 3x) set up down a very narrow hallway. While the system works, it’s become very stale. There are also fewer and fewer reasons as to why the dungeon is a hallway. It would be better if some dungeons were designed in alternative methods.
For example, there are two new dungeons in wow which go against the linear path mentality. Wrath of Azshara is an open island. You can charge through and fight many mobs, or sneak around and avoid them. You can go left or you can go right around. You can fight the 2nd boss 3rd, and the 3rd boss 2nd etc. Halls of Valor is a building where you go left, and then back track right to open the door in the middle. Both of these designs match the setting.
Difficulty of dungeons in FFXIV has been getting noticeably easier over time. It’s at a point that Scholar faeries can solo heal the entire dungeon, and has been like this for the last 3 patches. It’s easy to a point of ridiculousness, and removes all sense of fun from the experience.
TLDR Stale dungeon design and easy difficulty levels result in a poor experience

Raids
Raids in FFXIV involve queuing into an arena. The only thing that provides context for the arena is the cutscene you watch at the beginning of the patch. I watch these cutscenes on normal, and now that I am hitting A12S with my group, I can barely even remember why A12S looks the way it does. It would be a much more enjoyable and ‘epic’ experience, if you moved through the whole raid. I am bias, as I’ve always disliked games that are arena lobbies, and this feels just like that.
Mechanics are generally interesting and quite challenging. I feel the development team hit the mark on Creator Savage. There is a lot of re-use of mechanics, but they’re done in new ways which adds a bit of spice of life to something you’ve seen before. I give solid praise for the dev’s innovation in this regard.
The story and lore of Alexander has been reasonably uninteresting. The only time my interest was sparked was when I read a theory that the background music was actually sung by Mide, Quickthinks and Mide’s BF (forgot his name already?). This connected me a lot more with what was going on. However, on face value and from the cutscenes alone, I was fairly bored.
TLDR: Difficulty and mechanics are great, the story and presentation are not great

Crafting and gathering
I have a notably unpopular opinion in the FFXIV community in regards to this. I dislike the system, strongly. I personally enjoy gathering in MMO’s when I am out in the world, already doing other things. I don’t want to stop, change gear and gather for the sake of gathering. I want to be between quests and stop and get that mine. In FFXIV, with changing your gear and lengthy cooldowns on your skills when not done at sanctuaries, prevents this. Further, I simply want to press the button and gather and be on my way. I don’t need a small mini-game for it, as it is not my central reason for playing. Ultimately, I dislike that crafting and gathering require both the use of new skills and gear changes.
My preference would be a system that is simple and does not require gear, but allows for customization of the stats of the gear you are creating. Add in a bit of X ingredient to increase Y stat with Z success rate. That would be my preference. I also would prefer to obtain more gathering mats via battle jobs, rather than gathering, retainers and treasure maps.

Interface
Ultimately, the interface is decent. It’s great that it allows customizable placement, and it’s fairly lean and easy to use / understand. That said, the dark grey windows and neon light colors feels very out of place with the fantasy element of the game. It used to bother me a lot more, but I’ve become used to it. I would greatly prefer if they had built-in addon support, so that I could adjust these small issues to my liking.
I find the UI works well in combat, for both DPSing and Healing. After playing other MMO’s, it’s a noticeable improvement. That is the small arrow below the enemy that shows where it is facing, with the blank showing it’s back. The diamond above showing your target. The concise party menu works well for healing.
There is also a frustrating user experience with certain UI elements. For example, when you go to upgrade a piece of gear, it requires you exit out of talking to the NPC and remove the gear and then retalk to the NPC and trade in, and then drag in the items to upgrade, despite it only allowing you to carry 1 of said item and it requiring only that item and not allowing you to open the window unless you have the item in your inventory.
Overall, the UI is decent to use, but has a lot of small issues that could be easily addressed with addon support.

Extras
There are a few other noteworthy positives and negatives.
Pro’s

• all classes on 1 character
• support for the trinity system
• easy to use duty finder
• housing system

Con’s

• absurdly priced cash shop
• lack of horizontal progression
• boring tomestone gearing system
• invisible walls & lack of swimming

[Yasuhiro]

Best story compared to other MMO's.
Worst story tied with XIII compared to other FF games.
"You beat Ultima weapon WoL but now go hand out uniforms, but we'll keep singing your praise to make the player feel better about doing such a WoW tier quest, have a cookie"
Worst pacing ever.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Another review...

[Kaurie]

Another review...

Again, I only wrote this in a response to another thread that asked for your thoughts in FFXV. I misread it and spent a fair amount of time writing this up. After that I realized my mistake. After all that work I didn't want to delete it.

Either way there is some definite feedback for the devs in there, so I feel it's warranted.