Everything is dead?

[roses_of_may]

Hi,

I've been playing for a while now and I am not able to like this game. The best thing about this game is other players but other than that it's a sluggish boring struggle.

None of the classes are unique or has any individual impact in any meaningful way. The MSQ is uninteresting and after the first 20 hours I'm just trying to get it done as fast as possible skipping as much cut-scenes and text as possible hoping and waiting for something interesting to happen -- a new dungeon unlock is always fun for a few hours.

The gameplay/combat is an awkward rubber-band slugfest. Every mob out in the wild is meaningless fodder. There's no strategy or finesse to core combat whatsoever. Other than move out of the way from red area which for most mobs is a waste of time and it's faster to just tank the hit.

Every skill/spell and mob is way too visually intricate, big and flashy. Nothing is distinguishable in fights. Everything is just a big messy splash of meaningless colors. Including all the player characters skills spells and animations. Everyone is just flipping about dancing around taking up visual real-estate and pixels for no meaningful purpose. It's way, way, WAY too visual and detailed. Fine do a flip when you use a long cooldown that has a big impact but jesus when every single little thing you do and spam is like the second coming of christ you start losing your religion real quick.

There's no kiting in this game. If you kite a mob 10 yards out of it's "in range for spell" zone it just turns back and gets to full hp. There's no meaningful CC or strategy to deal with mobs at all. Like interrupting a heal, delaying patrols, CC'ing adds etc. The healers root/bind spell -- what should be a powerful spell is utterly laughable and meaningless.

Nothing in the combat system calls out for clutch plays or reactions or decisions. It's just a numbers game. By the way is every single mob melee? No ranged mobs whatsoever?

None of your own spells feel meaningful or impactful like the healers sleep spell -- again what an incredibly useless spell when it shouldn't be.

part 1/2

[roses_of_may]

part 2/3

Every place you go to is dead. The only other people you see are in Duty Finder or people mostly AFK:ing in cities.

There's no general chat to communicate with others. And finding groups to do the MSQ requires 8 man raids is next to impossible. The Duty Finder Queue is of no help for these things as you will sit 400+ minutes without finding a group. Every now and again a DPS or two will queue with you ( you can see it on the UI ) but they leave after ~30 min of getting tired of it.

The only way I was able to progress here was spending about 200 minutes in a city/location where people AFK/gather/loiter and posting in chat ( every 5 minutes ) that I was looking for a group for these MSG raids. After about 200 minutes some high lvl would stop by, feel sorry for me and ask what was going on and basically invite me to a group and clear the dungeon for me dragging my sorry pathetic ass with them.

That has happened 3 times so far, for every 8 man raid I had to do for the MSQ so far.

And that's what's probably best in this game. The other people. The other people that you barely interact with or see, by the way, but when you do they are helpful and supportive and very nice.

Some of the boss fights have been quite interesting and fun like the Leviathan fight and this Ice Dragon guy but only because the boss mechanics were good - not because of the core combat mechanics.

I'm progressing through the MSQ but after two days of mindlessly going and teleporting and clicking on the things to the place it wants me to go just in hopes of unlocking a new dungeon... I just feel absolutely distraught. Is this the game?

The best parts of this game I can see are the RP aspects. Customizability and emotes etc. The fact that you can take on any job is great if only the jobs were unique or the combat interesting which they are not.

Also I see players playing flutes and stuff which looks cool and having small RP-like sessions/events every now and again. All of that is very cool.

Granted the combat system isn't that much different from early FF ATB systems but at least there was some strategy to them while these newer systems ( they were single player after all ) ( including the one in this game ) just just a meaningless splash of colors. The don't stand in red area mechanic is good but it's not enough to carry the combat system anywhere beyond the ditch it is in. Plus the GCD is way too long and you get hit even if you walked out of the red area 1 second ago because the server tick timer is so goddamn slow so everything feels extra sluggish and rubber-bandish.

[roses_of_may]

part 3/3

Open world interactions with other players is completely out of the question. Positive or negative. That doesn't ever happen in this game not even a little bit. In other words, there's no such thing as an open world in this game. Not least because of all the loading screens but that isn't really such a big deal.

Never see a player in trouble fighting two mobs at once or trying to kill a difficult quest mob. The only odd person you see is zooming by you with some kind of gigantic whale or armored tank going from A to B I'm presuming some alt doing the MSQ? I have no idea.

Never do I need to team up with anybody to finish any quest for any reason ( other than in order to enter the raids that are required for progressing MSQ ). Like oh maybe this quest has you kill this hard mob out in this area and might require maybe 2 players to do or 1 player to do it very carefully using your abilities and kiting and preparing carefully. None of those kinds of things are anywhere close to being in the realm of possibilities in this game.

The only players you meet are those you meet in the dungeons through Duty Finder. And they've all been incredibly supportive and nice interactions. Giving tips, petting you while they wait for your cut-scene to stop etc. All good stuff. And then it ends and they're gone forever and you're back to grinding the MSQ snore chore galore.

Is this game just not for me? Because to me it looks like this just not the game for me. But there's like 100k people playing this game? And all those nice people I've met i the dungeons? What do they see that I don't??

[Lambdafish]

Sounds like you are still in ARR. I will echo what everyone says to the point that it is a meme. ARR is not representative of the game as it is now. The story picks up in HW (or more specifically 2.55 just before HW) and peaks massively at the current shadowbringers. Naturally the ARR zones will be dead, everyone is in the shadowbringer zones.

I would recommend one of four courses of action:
1. Tough it out, it gets better
2. Quit and come back in 5.3, there are apparently significant reworks to the new player experience coming in that patch
3. Get a story skip potion to get closer to current content
4. Quit, not every game has to be for everyone.

[roses_of_may]

I mean I have 59 hours /playtime in the game right now im at lvl 57. And over half of that is speedrunning through the MSQ as fast as possible after I got bored with it teleporting from meaningless place A to meaningless place B and clicking meaningless glittery dust C over and over again. I keep hearing things get better but I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm gonna take your advice and quit and maybe check back in 5.3 July 2020. Thanks~

[HyoMinPark]

The cumbersome nature of ARR has been addressed, and the developers are looking into pruning the base game’s story to remove a lot of the needless filler that has been a complaint for years. The future expansions reduce a lot of the needless filler, and their stories are far more griping in terms of writing—the current expansion’s story has been repeatedly praised, for example. To the point that the writer cried when people told her how much they loved her work.

The open-world is barren because there’s generally very little need to be out and about in it. The most active times are usually expansion launches and patch days, because you’ll see players running around and questing. But, otherwise, there’s no much reason to venture into the open world unless you enjoy sightseeing (which is a lot of fun for some, myself included) or if you’re FATE farming.

A lot of things like kiting and CC used to be big back in ARR (read: 2.0 era), but the developers have slowly removed the need for both. Sometimes, a mechanic will come up that will need to be stunned or silenced, but these become fewer and farer between.

I don’t know which “8-man raids” you’re talking about that are requirements for MSQ progression, though? The first 8-mans you’ll encounter that are required for the story are the MSQ dungeons at the end of 2.0. Then you’ll get into the hard mode primals (which are 8-man trials). But no “8-man raids” are required for the MSQ. Perhaps this is just you and I using a terminology difference though—could you be talking about trials? Looking at your Lodestone profile, it only shows you as a level 7 gladiator—you definitely wouldn’t have encountered any trials this early in the game. So which “8-man raids” are you referencing?

Dungeon queues also aren’t that slow. At most, I’d wager you’d be waiting 30 minutes on the MSQ ones, and that’s as a DPS. Tanks and healers tend to be more or less instant—but this could also be dependent on what time you’re queuing for the content. Your profile says you’re on Moogle, which is an EU server. If you aren’t queuing during EU primetime but rather during their early morning hours, queues will take longer. This is the case for all the servers, on the NA and JP data centers as well.

This game has moved away from group play (outside of instances like dungeons or trials where you would use Duty Finder), and focuses heavily on solo play because there are players that prefer to play solo as opposed to being forced to group with others for basic progression. If that’s not your cup of tea, you will be continuously disappointed in this game. EDIT: That said, basic questing can still be done with groups of friends. I went through the entirety of Shadowbringers with my best friend—the only time we dropped our party was for the solo instances. But, otherwise, we did everything else together. I did all the other expansions the same way.

That said, this game isn’t for everyone. If you dislike it so, you can always quit. There’s no sense in trying to force yourself to enjoy it. What the rest of us see and why the rest of us continue to stay subbed will vary depending on who you ask. But, for me, it’s things like the story-telling, the fact that I have met friends in this game and that we do stuff together (even if it’s just goofing off with one another at our housing or running content together), roleplay keeps me in the game, housing (I spent this weekend decorating my personal FC room, and had a lot of fun designing it), raiding with my static and tackling high-end content...there’s a lot of different things that keep me subbed. It will vary between everyone.

If you can’t find a reason to continue paying your sub—even just one reason—then it’s likely that this game isn’t for you. And that’s okay. Not every game caters to everyone.

I mean I have 59 hours /playtime in the game right now im at lvl 57. And over half of that is speedrunning through the MSQ as fast as possible after I got bored with it teleporting from meaningless place A to meaningless place B and clicking meaningless glittery dust C over and over again. I keep hearing things get better but I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm gonna take your advice and quit and maybe check back in 5.3 July 2020. Thanks~

FFXIV is a very story-heavy game, and the story is probably the primary feature of it. By skipping it, I do have to say that you are just adding to your boredom. Especially since, if you’re actually level 57 and not the level 7 gladiator your forum profile shows, you’ve skipped most of HW, which was praised in terms of its story-telling.

Quitting now and comping back in 5.3 won’t really help you, as the reworks that the developers are doing pertain mostly to ARR’s story, which you have already surpassed.

I do recommend perhaps joining and FC and making some friends to play with. It makes the leveling more tolerable if you aren’t into the solo aspect of it.

[roses_of_may]

FFXIV is a very story-heavy game, and the story is probably the primary feature of it. By skipping it, I do have to say that you are just adding to your boredom. Especially since, if you’re actually level 57 and not the level 7 gladiator your forum profile shows, you’ve skipped most of HW, which was praised in terms of its story-telling.

Quitting now and comping back in 5.3 won’t really help you, as the reworks that the developers are doing pertain mostly to ARR’s story, which you have already surpassed.

I do recommend perhaps joining and FC and making some friends to play with. It makes the leveling more tolerable if you aren’t into the solo aspect of it.

Well, that sucks. Didn't even notice. Guess this just isn't my game. Thanks for your help.

[Blokeymon]

Especially since, if you’re actually level 57 and not the level 7 gladiator your forum profile shows, you’ve skipped most of HW, which was praised in terms of its story-telling.

You can still be in ARR at level 57 if you buy the complete edition.

My FC pal had to get me to go to SB locations to get him SAM gear as he was still doing HW content, he'd just levelled up a lot.

[HyoMinPark]

You can still be in ARR at level 57 if you buy the complete edition.

My FC pal had to get me to go to SB locations to get him SAM gear as he was still doing HW content, he'd just levelled up a lot.

I was basing my assumption off of the OP saying they’ve literally bum-rushed the story. It’s a logical assumption to assume that they were likely in HW if they were skipping through everything and were level 57.

You are right that normal Dungeon Queues are fast. Almost instant if you play as healer like me. But for the 8 man raids I waited 600+ minutes total for the first one ( in 3 different sittings ) with no luck until a high level carried me like I said previously. The two others I waited about 160 minutes and 200 minutes respectively before a high level felt sorry for me and carried me again both times. Different times, different players carrying.

The raids were: Rhitalyn, Castrum and Prateorium. Basically killing the 3 main baddies and ultima weapon and then that posessed wizard guy pretty much. And I'm pretty sure they were required to progress through the MSQ.

For this, you’d have to be queuing at odd times. I’m on an NA server, and the longest I had to wait for any of these when doing them on my alt was 40-ish minutes when queuing at normal hours. No where near 600. Cape Westwind (Rhitalyn) is present in Trial Roulette, so the Roulette will funnel players queuing for it into your queue. Castrum and Praetorium are part of both Mentor Roulette and MSQ Roulette—people run the latter purely for the insane amount of experience it gives, and I haven’t had to wait longer than 30 minutes for my MSQ Roulette to pop on Aether when I queue during normal hours (i.e., not super late at night or super early in the morning).

These also aren’t classified as “raids” in FFXIV’s terminology: Cape Westwind is a Trial, and Castrum and Praetorium are considered dungeons. The first “raid” you’ll see in ARR is Coil—but it’s not required for MSQ. No content labeled as a raid in this game is mandatory for MSQ progression—24-man raids, 8-man normal mode raids, or 8-man Savage/Ultimate raids.

RP stuff and goofing off sounds fun but that's not close to being possible. Every Duty Finder group is a wham bam thank you mam kind of run there's no skill involved or anything that might pique an interest in anyone and there's no relationships to be formed and the world is dead everywhere.

The people I RP with or goof off with are my friends. Not random individuals from Duty Finder. This is why I suggested you join an Free Company—where you will have the opportunity to make these sorts of connections. That said, I have made friends on other platforms, such as this very forum. My best friend and I actually met on here, and we do just about everything together.

Seems to me there's no meaningful interactions you can have with any other player whatsoever except for the odd high level feeling sorry for your low level ass begging on the streets.

If you don’t attempt to forge these connections and start these interactions with people, then of course they don’t happen. These things don’t just fall into your lap. Like I said, join an FC to attempt to forge these friendships.

You could test your theory by queuing up for Rhitalyn yourself and see. Server and Day of the Week probably plays a role but timezones and languages had nothing to do with it I'm pretty sure.

Your server is listed as a JP server (now that you’ve changed your active character). If you live in an NA or an EU timezone, timezone absolutely plays a factor on how active the JP queues will be—just as it would if you were JP playing on an NA or EU server. Same with languages. You’d best have JP ticked if you’re on a JP server, because most players on the JP servers queue under JP only.

As I said above, I do MSQ Roulette (so, queuing basically for Castrum and Praetorium) a couple times each week for the Roulette EXP. Longest wait I’ve had is 40 minutes.

Sorry, what I mean to say is that I am absolutely 100% certain that timezones and language had nothing to do with it. Because all language boxes were ticked and I've queued both during on and off peak-hours. And the raids were during the weekend no less. that being said server/data centers may be relevant but that's out of my hands.

Not really. You can pay to transfer to a server within your timezone—it’s $18 USD, unless you’re going from a Congested world to a Preferred world, in which it’s free.

[Iscah]

Sorry, what I mean to say is that I am absolutely 100% certain that timezones and language had nothing to do with it. Because all language boxes were ticked and I've queued both during on and off peak-hours. And the raids were during the weekend no less. that being said server/data centers may be relevant but that's out of my hands.

Are you certain you've set languages in the duty finder settings? It's separate to the setting for your profile.

Being on a Japanese server as well, I can say it makes a huge difference - especially when queuing for eight-man content and endgame dungeons as both are reliant on the party being filled from separate roulette queues to the main leveling dungeons. (I've also read that the leveling roulette ignores language settings, but others do not.)


For finding an FC, have a look on the individual forum for your world - they don't get used much but people do post FC advertisements, and there are a few recent ones.

You will generally find people are quiet in dungeons though. FCs are for socialising, dungeons are for quietly doing your part and getting through it.

I was basing my assumption off of the OP saying they’ve literally bum-rushed the story. It’s a logical assumption to assume that they were likely in HW if they were skipping through everything and were level 57.

With all the EXP boosts available and especially if you're running dungeons on top of working through the story, you'll end up overleveled when you get to 'old level cap' sections.