As a new player that really likes this game ...

[Charoy]

There are some things that are missing in the game. REALLY basic things.

Like adding people from other servers, or talking to them. I can join pf from other servers but cant /w them? What the hell!

Why when someone "talks" the text is only visible in the god damn chat window? WoW did this shit better 10 years ago!

Why is the MSQ mandatory? I like story in games, but not 50 filler MANDATORY quests with "run from here to there, talk to this guy, deliver this shit".

Why are boss fights called raids? That is not a raid! Its just another trial like the primals. I know there are proper 24 man raids, but why wasnt there one with the first patch of SB? Which leaves me to ...

NO. CONTENT. Like, not literally 0, but almost. Two primals and 4 boss fights called "raid". Where is the rest of the content? And no, pvp doesnt count, nor does leveling alts. I'm talking proper content.

[Greedalox]

There are some things that are missing in the game. REALLY basic things.

Like adding people from other servers, or talking to them. I can join pf from other servers but cant /w them? What the hell!

Why when someone "talks" the text is only visible in the god damn chat window? WoW did this shit better 10 years ago!

Why is the MSQ mandatory? I like story in games, but not 50 filler MANDATORY quests with "run from here to there, talk to this guy, deliver this shit".

Why are boss fights called raids? That is not a raid! Its just another trial like the primals. I know there are proper 24 man raids, but why wasnt there one with the first patch of SB? Which leaves me to ...

NO. CONTENT. Like, not literally 0, but almost. Two primals and 4 boss fights called "raid". Where is the rest of the content? And no, pvp doesnt count, nor does leveling alts. I'm talking proper content.

Yes it's silly you can't chat with people on different servers. Yoshi P I think said they're working on a way around that.

With the text outside of the chat box? I don't understand. Like chat bubbles? Why?

FF is a story driven game long story long. It's mandatory because you can create more intimate and involved writing for the story when the writers know what your character has experienced and been through. Yeah the fetch quests can be annoying, but I'm all for mandatory MSQ.

Is the "raid" issue actually an issue for you? Why?

A lot of people (Myself included) got tired of running through hours of trash and hallways back in the WoW days (or before for some probably) just to get to the meat of the "raid". Fighting trash packs that were sometimes harder than the boss itself wasn't exactly riveting. The only thing I could see being a gain here would be a consistent use of CC.

[Charoy]

Yes, that makes it easier to see who is talking instead of searching thru all the sea of names.

I liked the story, and making it mandatory is ok. But not with soooo many pointles quests, mostly in the ARR story. I just started skipping dialogues all the way until I hit HW questline, which is my favourite. Just so so many fetch quests that I ended up "disconected" from the story.

Its an "issue" cuz I feel no sense of progress. In WoW, you enter one day with the raid group and kill 1, 2, 3 bosses, to return the next day and see the bosses and trash dead, as the are all in the same instance. FFXIV's raids feel like the rest of the trials, just harder.

I've played WoW since vanilla and I like trash mobs in raids, makes them not feel empty or just consequent boss battles, like here. Also in WoW trash pulls have their own mechanics, they are not just meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru.

[Rymm]

I've played WoW since vanilla and I like trash mobs in raids, makes them not feel empty or just consequent boss battles, like here. Also in WoW trash pulls have their own mechanics, they are not just meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru.

Not trying to pick a fight, but when did you quit WoW? In Cata and beyond the vast, vast majority of trash pulls were just 'meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru' with maybe one or two trash pulls per raid that required you to have at least two brain cells to rub together.

[Gemina]

I've played WoW since vanilla and I like trash mobs in raids, makes them not feel empty or just consequent boss battles, like here. Also in WoW trash pulls have their own mechanics, they are not just meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru.

Hmm, you say you like trash pulls during raids, but don't like trash pull mechanics that exist in this game, or that it is essentially the same mechanic throughout. If trash pulls were common to raids in this game, they really wouldn't be any different and serve as "meat shields to AoE through" as you have pointed out. So not exactly sure how get your nod of approval here.

That being said, some dungeons do have specific mechanics for trash pulls, but they are mostly in ARR. The Sunken Temple of Qarn needs to have the Qarn Facers killed over certain tiles in order to progress. Dzamael Darkhold requires you to pull the trash into blue lights throughout the dungeon so you don't get AoEd to death by the roaming boss. The Lost City of Amdapor has mobs with tether mechanics that can't be ignored. I can also mention the hell hole that is Aurum Vale, which is just a beast of a dungeon.

HW got away from this a bit, but gave us more mechanic heavy boss fights, and I can't speak for SB dungeons. But even the mechanics I mentioned above, it wasn't uncommon to have players in DF that struggled with them, so that could be why they went away from that.

[RichardButte]

I liked the story, and making it mandatory is ok. But not with soooo many pointles quests, mostly in the ARR story. I just started skipping dialogues all the way until I hit HW questline, which is my favourite. Just so so many fetch quests that I ended up "disconected" from the story.

The ARR endgame slog is a goddamn nightmare, yes.

The problem is that you're slogging through over 100 quests that had previously been released over the period of a year plus as just bits of extra endgame questing.

But doing them ALL IN A ROW like the game makes you do is basically the sales pitch for selling jump potions, and it's exceedingly effective.

I have a friend grinding through it right now and although he loves story in games (including XIV), I can tell it's starting to grate on him. The real problem is that, throughout these quests, there's a notable lack of "story" in the main STORY questline and is instead mostly just running back and forth across zones for another few windows of dialogue that tell very little.

But there's a reason FFXIV lacks the "hardcore pve community wow has"... and that reason is

...its raid encounters are far too easy and don't offer the consistent challenge that WoW's do, which has nothing to do with "being like WoW", otherwise all of the games out there harder than WoW (like EVE Online) would be "more like WoW" and that absolutely isn't true.

FFXIV is a WoW clone in that it's a themepark MMO and designed with the same level cap and gear gating that WoW features. The way both games handle the level cap and gearscores are identical.

The key difference is that the WoW team does a much better job in designing raid encounters while the XIV team does a better job in the number of side pursuits you'll find in the game, overall handling of story, and does a much, MUCH better job of fostering a more helpful in-game community.

Really, if XIV's devs could step their raid game up (and they may well do this with SSavage), then XIV will be a generally better version of WoW all around.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

...its raid encounters are far too easy and don't offer the consistent challenge that WoW's do, which has nothing to do with "being like WoW", otherwise all of the games out there harder than WoW (like EVE Online) would be "more like WoW" and that absolutely isn't true.

FFXIV is a WoW clone in that it's a themepark MMO and designed with the same level cap and gear gating that WoW features. The way both games handle the level cap and gearscores are identical.

The key difference is that the WoW team does a much better job in designing raid encounters while the XIV team does a better job in the number of side pursuits you'll find in the game, overall handling of story, and does a much, MUCH better job of fostering a more helpful in-game community.

Really, if XIV's devs could step their raid game up (and they may well do this with SSavage), then XIV will be a generally better version of WoW all around.

FFXIV does not place the same importance on raiding as wow does and that's precisely why some folk (like me) enjoy the game so much. I hope SE never "steps up their raid game" and turns FFXIV into WoW with a different story.

We don't need another "raid or die" mmo. There's penty of those to choose from and there's a reason people like me aren't playing them.

[RichardButte]

FFXIV does not place the same importance on raiding as wow does and that's precisely why some folk (like me) enjoy the game so much. I hope SE never "steps up their raid game" and turns FFXIV into WoW with a different story.

We don't need another "raid or die" mmo. There's penty of those to choose from and there's a reason people like me aren't playing them.

What does "raid or die" even mean?

If you're referring to no other form of endgame progression besides raiding, I have bad news for you: raiding is the only real endgame XIV has.

WoW actually has it beat in that regard because WoW's PvP system is far more in depth than XIV's. Though XIV still has it beat in total number of side pursuits (and if they DO add a glamour log, it'll have WoW even MORE beat).

To the OP......just go play WoW.

"Take the money that you were giving to this game I like and go give it to some other company instead."

No one who's actually a fan of XIV would ever say something like this...

[Naraku_Diabolos]

I liked the story, and making it mandatory is ok. But not with soooo many pointles quests, mostly in the ARR story. I just started skipping dialogues all the way until I hit HW questline, which is my favourite. Just so so many fetch quests that I ended up "disconected" from the story.

Its an "issue" cuz I feel no sense of progress. In WoW, you enter one day with the raid group and kill 1, 2, 3 bosses, to return the next day and see the bosses and trash dead, as the are all in the same instance. FFXIV's raids feel like the rest of the trials, just harder.

I've played WoW since vanilla and I like trash mobs in raids, makes them not feel empty or just consequent boss battles, like here. Also in WoW trash pulls have their own mechanics, they are not just meat shields for the raid party to aoe thru.

If you like WoW so much, why are you not still playing it?

[Rymm]

1. It's already a very requested feature and is, as far as I know, already 'in the works.'

2. This might be an option in the configuration menu, I honestly don't know. I never liked chat bubbles, even when I played WoW, so I never bothered looking for them here.

3. FF14 is extremely story driven. It's a large part of why I like it so much. The MSQ is also a great way to lvl up, I skipped almost all of the side quests on my first job because the MSQ gave me all the xp I needed to hit the cap. I don't see a reason to not have it, as we would just be doing quests to lvl anyway.

4. Does it really matter what SE labels their fights? You can't expect one game to adopt the naming conventions of another. In SE dungeons are 4man and raids are 8+.

5. As to the 'No Content' complaint, the expansion is still new. We haven't even hit our first major patch yet. SE is very careful about releasing content at a steady pace, it's why the first raids weren't even live until a couple of weeks after SB's launch. More content is coming and, I might add, will be made available at a much steadier and more consistent pace than WoW ever managed make their content patches.