Anyone else having problem with big changes (job system/main story)

[BasicBlake]

How did you start playing 4 years ago but the changes you have issues with are from like 1.0?

That game system was terrible back then and the changes that were made were for the best overall.

Also you have issues with shortening the main story in the early levels, which is exactly the slump that prevents most new players from sticking with the game in general. I have had 5+ friends not continue with the game because they cannot stand the ARR-HW quest slog.

Most of us also have jobs where we earn currency, and take small breaks. From the sounds of it you got lost in a time loop of 1.0 being 4 years ago and expected an mmo to not progress at all while you were earning currency at your real life human job.

[Jaelithe]

Chiming in with the reduction of back-and-forth mess in ARR. HOW many times did we get made to run back and forth between Mor'Dona and Waking Sands for absolutely no reason, other than Minfilia/Alphinaud/etc calling us on the Linkpearl to tell us to come talk to them in person about stuff they totally could have just said over the linkpearl?

Protect was removed because the bosses had all been designed with the assumption that every party would always have it active, and like was already mentioned, this meant that any party without a WHM was taking lots of extra damage, because only WHM Protect worked vs magic damage. It was fun to slam that on everyone at the beginning, but it made WHM a mandatory class, and made SCH and AST the 'bad healer classes' which you really don't want to exist in an MMO.

I didn't play ARC/BRD during the 2.0 days, I was pretty solidly a WHM main, so I'm not certain what changes you're talking about there, but I'll join most of the other folks in saying that the subclass abilities were a huge pain. I hated having to level BLM to thirtysomething so I could get Quick Cast for my instant-rez. And like others have already said, NOT having instant-rez for the end content was unheard of for a healer, gating anything that powerful/mandatory behind 'optional' mechanics, makes it not optional at all.

[MichiPichi]

I never played WOW or ESO but my friends who joined to FFXIV try it for free left before reaching 30 level. I don't know the difference between WOW / ESO / FFXIV but something with FFXIV wrong apparently
I am guessing slow progressing story and unappealing early jobs with limited skill set with 1 button spam.
But I can't make true comparison because I don't know anything about WOW or ESO. I will try their game when I have spare time and money.

I played both and brought several friends here (well tried to) from various other mmos. They said the combat, the forced MSQs, and the simplicity of it all. So far I'm not really enjoying it neither, I'm just waiting on the AA fresh start server and I'll head back over there.

[Fhaerron]

Not really.


Whenever an expansion drops (or updates to jobs) I go to the target dummy and spend 5 mins.
I also look on the Balance if there are better rotations or stuff I didn't figured out myself. That is also tops 5 mins, very friendly people over there btw.


I just adapt to the changes, if changes are too big and I don't like it any more I uninstall the game and move on to another game.




I do have a full time job too and a lot of real life responsibilities.

[Shougun]

I'm usually pretty excited to be honest, new gears and paints to play with. It has potential to go wrong but usually I don't feel that way. My favorite job improves, imo, each expansion in a way I enjoy so I'm often quite happy with that (Paladin, minor gripe with repeat casting as I don't really want Warrior axe spam but maybe something they can fiddle with next expansion- Confiteor is amazement though.. feels good to use/looks very pretty). When a strong intention of improvement and care, without a sever lack of financial support, I feel changes forward is most welcome. Easier said than done of course.. but yeah I'm generally okay with changes.

Not that it has to change old content, I love seeing new systems too. I hope either in this or their next mmo they bring airships and chocobos to a more center stage. Like I would love to see some sort personal airship content as you might imagine having in a single player FF rpg (but with more customization because it's an MMORPG).

I hope Blue Mage gets new paint and gears >.>;; lol.

I never played WOW or ESO but my friends who joined to FFXIV try it for free left before reaching 30 level. I don't know the difference between WOW / ESO / FFXIV but something with FFXIV wrong apparently
I am guessing slow progressing story and unappealing early jobs with limited skill set with 1 button spam.
But I can't make true comparison because I don't know anything about WOW or ESO. I will try their game when I have spare time and money.

Only played Vanilla all the way through (stopped at TBC), and then I've played most of the race intros after cata for fun. IMO, at least if you liked WoW's intro, FFXIV beginning is not as engaging / fast. In WoW vanilla I FONDLY remember starting in a small hamlet and building up into the big city, that act of simple exploration as the world became so much bigger after the first few hours... It makes me a bit sad nothing like that is in FFXIV. I would easily say I've enjoyed every intro of WoW's race more than or at minimum equal to FFXIV's, but that's probably a mix of really liking the world peeled back experience and maybe because the newer race intros are a bit accelerated in that beyond getting into combat quickly they're also remixed and specially designed quests and areas to have some vague sense of newness (like wrangling raptors or whatever). Also there is this element of being able to sweep yourself off your feet and out the door as you wander around, in short order, since the MSQ is pretty loose, yet in FFXIV it's quite guided and text dense. The later you join the longer that corridor might feel too, like a 100 hour corridor lol.

Though to WoW's negative, and FFXIV benefit, while they do have an MSQ you're not as cool of a hero as you are in FFXIV and the MSQ isn't as fleshed out. Super epic hero too, not a sort of cool hero lol. Yet it takes a hot second to get to that place for FFXIV, as at least imo there is some fleshing out that was entirely unnecessary, some of which they're trying to remove now, so FFXIV has a slow burn which is good when you play alongside the game or wanted slow burn from the start but IMO seems like a growing negative for anyone not ready to invest hundred + hours to catch up. Since I started in 1.0 my exact knowledge of FFXIV intro is a bit faded but I remember hardly leaving town for a long while lol (I have to compulsively talk to everyone and explore the maps of areas I'm in xD), thankfully my computer could render the 2 million polly pots just fine and so it was a visual treat. Though I want to add as I do occasionally check WoW's updates, but have never resubscribed, and they do update their graphics and some areas look quite pixel-less and 'new' something FFXIV sometimes suffers. I also did the ARR intro, when it was new, mostly through beta, so that memory is a bit faded too (I know it was combat harder way back when and they've made it a lot easier now), but again it was not as fond of a beginning experience of most of my WoW starts. Absolutely far from the worst intro I've played in some MMOs, but I do have personal concerns that the beginning of the game could be improved and improved beyond just cutting some quests.

There are many good things I could make a sales pitch for FFXIV on in direct competition to any other MMO out right now (including WoW), yet I don't think I'd ever list the beginning experience in that. I personally like the idea of alternative starts (1-3 hour handcrafted intros to the game) so players can use new game plus to go back to the original story if they want (rather than it being destroyed forever). I mentioned this before WoW announced it (lol me first!) but nearing akin to what they said recently where you can pick an expansion to start playing from and then once you finish that expansion you can play the most recent one. This allows you to get some connection to things before the latest experience, but doesn't require you to go through literally hundred plus hours of story to get what sold you (as I would wager most hear about an on MMO by friends in late content and or new expansion hype trains, and only some of those are willing to invest significantly before they reached the desire they had entered the game sphere for, letting you pick the season/book of the TV show/book world space you want to start, with informational and mechanical support to make that transition smooth, while not just giving players a skip/boost potion and calling it good as I feel while a hook is very important I'm not sure you really need a 50-100 hour 'hook' lol.

Like I loved the environments in ARR but in terms of gameplay and story I feel everything starts to get cooking and in flow at the end of ARR (as a whole, not just the MSQ), especially as expansions reshuffle around old spells and sometimes make older content accidentally even less 'cooking'. Which isn't to say I think their slightly shortening of ARR is a waste, as I know there are people out there that when told you'll have ~150-200 hours to get to 'current' game most of it spent reading that their eyes begin to glisten lol- just that I think even their ~15-20% cut of story is going to miss a whole style/section of players that would otherwise enjoy their game. As 20% less of 60-100 hours is still substantial- longer than many complete single player experiences, and on top of that the style of designed content has improved as they learned how to make it which goes to say the oldest content would be an example of their least polished both in flow and mechanics. Or in other words if we kept the same story but let them rebuild it anew (without a rush, a rush they did have for ARR 2.0), with all their experience now, that I'm sure they would have designed everything slightly differently (perhaps whole sections differently). So that which has their least experience, their most rush, is also one of the longest pieces of contents you have to go through.. hmm.. I enjoyed quite a few moments in ARR but there were also a few moments that I pushed through because I was invested and not because I had to see what was next. Something I think they greatly improve upon in their subsequent content (expansions, and like I said to be fair they were rebuilding from 1.0 at lightning speed.. so in that lens it's all pretty damn impressive).

If not obvious I play FFXIV for a reason with its wonderful music, environments, including fantastic dungeons with usually unique and interesting gimmicks, a story that actually exists and is quite good (particularly I think ShB was an example of them running on all cylinders, pacing and characters had me interested the entire time), job system (I don't want to ever play an MMO without it lol), nostolgia of content I love (well minus one limited job, dreams dashed on the rocks there), a team that I do think actually listens even though they have to read us through second language/translations (I've many examples to where I think either someone can read English or bits of what is said is translated, either way pretty impressive and painful process they submit themselves too), an underdog story that is a bit emotional (didn't abandon 1.0, even let people play for free for a while), in general a nice combination of casual and hardcore content so both communities have something to look forward to (I'm sure each community would like to cannibalize the other communities budget but yeah lol), some of the most interesting versions of crafting and gathering I've seen in a themepark / AAA mmo (maybe some indie mmo focused on crafting might be great, but in comparison to other major mmos I feel FFXIV hits some pinnacle notes in gameplay of DoH/DoL), very reliable content releases such that you feel like your sub isn't being waffled into the air for fun.. It's pretty great. Of course I make criticism (I hope it's constructive), but that's because I think they care and are capable of it, not because I think it needs saving from the brink of a void (it doesn't).

Anyway, as usual I've some love of overtyping or something and ultimately all I was trying to share with you is some of my perspective from someone who has played both (WoW/FFXIV) but doesn't have a deep hatred of WoW either (I've many enjoyable memories). As you'll find here some people think WoW is the worst so sometimes that can skew the conversations, though I think most of that is just pride in the investment of choice (FFXIV) and a sincere dislike of one or two core features (MSQ doesn't focus on you/graphic style/intentional or accidental ignorance/job system perhaps) while honestly they'd like most other parts of that game since FFXIV has many and shares many components to that and other theme park mmos.

[Wyakin]

RIP flaming arrow. Removing that was stupid

[NoctusT]

" Am I belonging to an old fraction of players used to offline-games where I had the choice when to apply a patch and when not." <- That's your problem right there buddy.
This is an M M O.

(but also RIP in peace Raging Strikes on BLM)