Good Criticisms about FFXIV Leveling for Newcomers

[bass9020]

It doesn't matter on what you agree on, it is criticism for the Dev team to take back to think on. You are already a fan, the Dev team wants to net more players.

Oh I forgot only youtubers and other media outlets who know barley anything about the game are the only ones the devs should listen too! Most of the time those people want changes that would change the game completely. I totally forgot there opinion is more important than the fans!

[dragonseth07]

Oh I forgot only youtubers and other media outlets who no barley anything about the game are the only ones the devs should listen too! Most of the time those people want changes that would change the game completely. I totally forgot there opinion is more important than the fans!

The opinion of outsiders is extremely important to an MMO. They already have your sub. They need more, as long as they don't lose too many existing subs.

[bass9020]

The opinion of outsiders is extremely important to an MMO. They already have your sub. They need more, as long as they don't lose too many existing subs.

Yawn** talk to me when you people have some other answer other than "they need more!" thats all I hear now. Games been active since 2013(2010 technically) and we are still getting content every 3 months to 3.5 months. The cash shop was added and we will soon have those precious little lazy I mean jump potions that will earn SE some more! Its us the ones that stick through it thick and thin that are sustaining this game, without us there wouldn't be much.

Its getting old now with the clueless gamers and youtubers that talk about the game and the blind followers that follow them that ruin games. Either you like it or you don't, don't say things that most of the time aren't true just because you spent a whole 2 minutes playing the game. Give me a break.

[Ririta]

I agree with him on the dialogue. Being Final Fantasy doesn't means that you have to spend so much text lines to ask you to kill 4 rats.

[Tooluka]

I think Lineage 2 at start didn't have any tutorials, active help or even marks above quest givers and them minimap. You just figured that stuff as you go and the game was very popular. I'm not even talking about harder MMO games, L2 was typical online rpg, live ffxiv.

[Baci]

So you don't want to help newbies at all? Newbies are just suppose to know? How many people have you helped in this game?

The guy in the video clsims to be a good and experienced player. If he is than he should be able so read a tooltip and find a use for the skill.

On another note. "WoW leveling. Cinematic and explosive"
Can I get paid by blizzard too to claim such garbage

[Gumbercules]

The guy in the video clsims to be a good and experienced player. If he is than he should be able so read a tooltip and find a use for the skill.

On another note. "WoW leveling. Cinematic and explosive"
Can I get paid by blizzard too to claim such garbage

lol haven't seen the vid but he actually said that!? LOL hell ive been everything from really pissed off with wow to being in love with it..the closest it got to cinematic leveling was....well never XD WotLK was pretty explosive I guess :P

Well guess he could mean how legion opens up those voiced portraits while you are doing things? But legion really drops the ball in overall storytelling as you level, admittedly out of necessity cuz its all "accessed" from the get go. IDK maybe ive just grown used to ff 14s "delivery" for story (and I actually like the dialogue) but wow since WotLK story wise has gone the way of tween fiction for the most part.

Should note that i do feel FF 14s current weakest state is in its "introductory" phase. I do not even think it is the gcd itself either just needs to skip alot of the passive "traits" off to the later levels so most classes get their "tool set" fleshed out by lvl 20-30. And for the love of the twelve! give GLA their shield oath really early XD In this comparison, wow is about as brain dead as a game can get when you start, but it gets you to lvl 10 really fast and you have a "functional" tool set by then, if not by your first instance. So while I personally do not like wows endgame combat as much as I like ff 14s end game combat, I have to admit that while leveling wow is considerably more engaging. (control wise not content wise, honestly first play through for 2.0 I didn't even notice my short tool set cuz story! story everywhere!)

[ErryK]

The first impression I got from this new player is he doesn't read tutorials, doesn't take the time to actually learn his class and just presses all the pretty buttons. Why?

Well... at 0:19 the "Clearing Instanced Raids" help window shows up, and he closes it immediately... and again at 5:38, he ignores the help window prompt entirely and just clicks random stuff.


Now I'm going to go through his points:

1. Initial cutscene and text: He says it should not be there... he also states that there is too much text, well FF is really heavy on lore.
2. Initial leveling: He says WoW drops you right into a climactic situation, except it really doesn't. (I realize he mentions Cataclysm but who compares a base game to an expansion?) WoW and XIV do the same thing, where essentially you need to hit a certain level to move on and also tells you to attack a few mobs, etc. He ends this by saying WoW is freer and much easier to get into, so he himself is biased. Perhaps GW2 would be a better option to base it off of.
3. First dungeon: Dude said it took him 8 hours to get into his first dungeon. It would have taken less than that if he READ HIS TUTORIALS.
4. Graphics: He blatantly stated "Maybe it's the PC Master Race in me", but yes, the graphics got a massive overhaul to make it useable on PS3. But it's not like PS1-era graphics... he's acting as though it's so ugly to look at. Yes, his only valid criticism in this case is textures, I'll give him that. Then he just burps...
5. Instancing: He compared XIV instancing to WoW instancing, where WoW instances an entire continent while XIV instances half a city. Dude... have you seen the graphical fidelity of XIV to WoW? Imagine an entire continent of those graphics with at least 100 or so people in the region... it'd be 1.0 all over again.
6. Controls: He says the Gamepad controls could be done much better. But he never gave any examples to back up that criticism. It feels a lot more of a "I just wanted to play Gamepad because I wanted to criticize the game for it being on a PS3/PS4 as well." Because he also goes on to say that the game doesn't feel like a "Big open MMO.", it just feels like he's ripping into the game just because it's also taking into account console technical specifications.
7. Wholeness: He says that XIV's battle effects are just "ethereal" and not physically there. This is just being ignorant because he's focusing on the "visual effect" being the actual hit and not the physical motion that the player takes... I mean I know a LOT of people who feel REALLY good when they cast a Fire II, which is a level 18 skill... he also states that the art style isn't all there... I guess that's subjective to everyone, I'm not gonna outright state he can't feel that way.

In conclusion, this video feels, mostly, like a rip into how it is so visually and mechanically unappealing due to its constraints to PS3/4. He also stated that leveling took a long time, but I can assure you it wouldn't if he'd had paid attention to the live help windows, which he totally ignored. He also did not pay attention to what his skills did besides the flying text, which doesn't help outside of debuffs placed. Overall, his first impression was more of a "I'm playing a single player game that will 100% hold my hand", and also felt a bit on the "high standards" side...

While overall he had criticisms, I would not say they were good, they were fair but not good. The only good ones are the graphics and the instancing in regards to cities, but not entire continents. Textures definitely need to be upped and there needs to be a lot less instancing in regards to cities, but going into dungeons... every MMO I've played so far has an option to enter a dungeon without needing to be physically there.

As far as him being absolutely new to XIV, I disagree. He stated he had already played the intro to XIV a few times, as well as wanting to play the expansion as well as 60, so he clearly knows a bit of the game already.

[Khemorex]

i dont read such reviews , they are usually very biased and pure hate ^^

[Kaethra]

This guy brings up some good points. And too many of you are fixated on his 'bad rotation'. Its not a bad rotation unless it gets you killed or wipes the group. He's doing Sastasha. The group could spam one button throughout and finish it only 5-10 minutes slower than a group of vets. And besides, its a newbie to the game, wait for judgments when they hit 60. Here's some of the points I agree on, with my own issues with them.

MSQ - He didn't call it that, but he referenced it quite a bit. There is far far too much dialogue thrown at you in this. Much of it could be condensed down. In addition due to the zoning of the game, they could handle MUCH of the travel needed within the cinematics. Too often are we sent from one city to another, to talk to someone for a few sentences and then we have to travel across the world again. Why not just make that part of the cinematic and not break the immersion, or waste the gil/time for that matter?

Ability Count - A lot of MMOs do this. But why do we start with one ability at level 1? Am I the only one who thinks pressing 1 1 1 1 1 1 over and over is boring? I'm going to say this. The abilities need to be shifted. Take everything 1-15 at least and make it available at level 1. Then shift everything 16-50 down. There's absolutely no reason the 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 rotation should exist. It makes the game way too slow for the new player.

Questing - The best MMORPG I've seen in the questing department was ESO. Dialogue was short but informative. And the actions themselves didn't feel like fetching and kill 10 boars. You actually felt like you were solving a problem. Even if you needed to kill a number of things or collect something. They kept it short. Rarely going above 5 of either. FFXIV is good about this too. Its issue is the lengthy dialogue that is unvoiced and there's just too many lines of it. We don't need the life story of every quest NPC in the game. If you want to tell a story make it an optional dialogue thing the player can ask if they so wish. Much of this could be applied to MSQ too. Oh and voice all that stuff. There's a reason ESO and SWTOR are some of the more popular games. They're entirely voiced.

And the biggest issue I have with FFXIV... the video author didn't touch on this because he played solo. This game is severely multiplayer unfriendly. MSQ outside Praetorium and such can NOT be completed in a group. The game actually throws up an error when you try to do a duty. I'm playing a MMO and the damn thing is telling me to go solo for a quest. That is literally the most asinine thing I've ever seen.

If I bring a friend to this game. They're going to want to play alongside me. How are they supposed to do that with 2 hours of cutscenes and dozens of solo duties right off the bat?

Now there are things I disagreed with the video author about. Things like character textures and lighting. I thought this game handled that well. I dunno if his settings were maxed out or not. Mine are and the game looks beautiful. Sounds are great as well (minus MCH weapons).

He mentioned the game being a dungeon diver. If only. There's a number of dungeons for sure. But having played through 2.4-3.5 MSQ in the last month, 90% of this game is outside dungeons and solo. This is not a group friendly game. Especially at endgame (only 2 expert dungeons). But in his defense he only got to level 18 so his experience is limited.