FF14 devs just keep doing your thing because my god

[Ralph2449]

FFXIV has story, graphics, class identity and feel.

WoW has high end PvE content (Mythic+ and Raiding)

neither will be superior over the other entirely.

Of course that would depend on the player, a casual player who mostly focuses on casual content would see FF14 as superior, including myself who often does most of the content an mmorpg has to offer and also enjoys doing high end content casually, meanwhile if you are a WoW player who only cares about high end content and you are the type that goes "Show me your arena/m+/raid achievements or your opinion is irrelevant" because their entire self worth is based on video game achievements of course these people will see WoW as superior since it mostly focuses on that and even includes time limited/exclusive content to keep these people feeling special and above the "inferior casuals".

Hell people who are new to WoW ask for mage tower appearances to come back and a huge portion of the community starts raging because that would rob them of that feeling of being "special" and tell people to just never unsub from WoW and that "they should have been playing X bad expac" even if they are literally NEW PLAYERS, probs why they dont stay for long. (They try speak of challenge not admitting your can roflstomp all those time limited content rewards by gear from next patch)

WoW is basing itself on very manipulative and unhealthy design, I dont believe it is on purpose, I believe the devs share a mentality with certain high end players which leads to this, and many people who lack self esteem can very easily get addicted and be unable to leave because the moment they leave they have nothing to feel good about themselves because WoW wasnt a video game for them, it was their source of self worth, that is why you see people hate WoW yet keep playing.

On the other hand FF14 is a video game first and foremost that is made to be fun and to be casually enjoyed, not have your ego depend on it which I find so much more refreshing.

[ItMe]

Honestly I'm so glad I don't have to deal with add-ons anymore. [Snip for space]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

[Rae88]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

For example Blizzard essentially designs raids these days assuming the playerbase is running Deadly Boss Mods, which tells players what's coming next. Players often run with something like 40 addons and when one breaks it's annoying to diagnose

[Ralph2449]

What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

Some addons like bigwigs are needed since they assist with showing timings of boss abilities but that is as far as I go, I ve been on guilds though that demand a number of addons, one that shows a tab with instructions the RL writes on, one that could show specific numbers on certain mobs, one that the "elite loot council" vote on who gets loot so they can take away your loot if it can be traded and you arent a priority player, some even ask for one that does ridiculous screams and sounds if an ability is casted which I always avoided since it caused more problems than actually helped. And for many guilds those are mandatory, so you either have them or you are gone.

And the fact that blizzard is too lazy to implement UI and other forms of customization so you are gonna need an addon to move around your bars, an addon for a better minimap, an addon for bags, an addon for menus, an addon on for certain event indicators and more and more and more.

It definitely gets tiring the amount of addons you need these days

[Shougun]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

The unfortunate thing is the addon most people are afraid of is "mostly" here in FFXIV, tied to a concept that many (in the higher end community at least) are aware of. So we've ran away from much of the QoL of addons but only in the shadows have we ran from the actual addons people are afraid of (parser and DBM).

It is true though that WoW did some silly things too.. like they'd for no good reason break your setup and that could take an hour out of your day, make you regret using addons then lol. Sometimes the author broke their own addon. It was like running a highly modded android, maybe vs FFXIV being an iphone that just works.

There were some truly amazing QoL addons, addons that let you make and share quests with others (some restrictions of course), or crazy goofy ones like you could play snake or peggle in the game (a game in your game XD), that I still miss but I do want to give SE credit in that they've added many over time (their search feature for example has come a very long way and reminds me of some mods I had to install just to have similar features that are basic in FFXIV now). I still wish they did a remix job to their map system though, I would very quickly install an addon for FFXIV's map if it was not to be an issue with ToS. (And I don't mean for radar or something, I just don't.. like it lol, the transparent / image in a box gives me a sort of 'beta, still a WIP' vibe [like it's literally an image viewer built into the game, loading png files, rather than being a 'map' I open for adventures).

To the lack of Blizzard's credit there are some basic features that they seemed to not care to add since you can just do it with addons (although I do wish FFXIV would be inspired by the in game calendar and the clickable quest links). So pro and cons, I think just calling it android vs iphone is enough to get a clear picture of the situation. Stuff just works here, and often a lot of built in features you don't have to go out of your way to enable or turn on, but if you wanted to go crazy you'd have more room to do so with WoW (and sometimes it would all break and you'd have to 'play addons' rather than play the actual game).

[Edax]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

Back when I played Wow, there was no way to gauge threat. It was part of the job of a DPS to manage their damage output or a healer to manage their healer output so as to not steal aggro from the tank, but there was no actual indicator for how much threat you had so you had to get a 3rd party add-on to give you some threat gauges. It was such a basic thing to be missing from the base game.

[ItMe]

[a beautiful answer]

[a beautiful answer]

[a beautiful answer]

[a beautiful answer]

Thank you for the prompt and thorough answers (and the funny comic ).
I had no idea. That sounds like a playground from hell haha. And if everyone is running different add-ons it does a lot to explain who no 2 WoW screenshots I've seen look even remotely similar.

[LisSquid]

I did everything with bdm and a dps meter exclusively. Not really something you need in ff14 since everything is tightly and vividly telegraphed. WoW devs think it's good design to rely on DBM being updated so they can go willy nilly on their boss animations.

While a dbm add-on would be nice, I don't think ff14 needs it as for the reasons stated above: animations and effects tie in correctly. Really well done.

[MintnHoney]

FFXIV has... class identity

As far as I can tell: class identity is like Where's Waldo, but published by Yoshi-P.

[Yamr3]

Go look at the recent Mythic + updates because they actually ruined it. Turns out it was competing too much with raid drops and well Blizzard cannot have that so they gutted the rewards in their latest expansion. Also you seem to be confusing the two developers.

Blizzard uses raids as a gear delivery system which is why everything else in the game is pretty garbage when it comes to gear acquisition. The raids are hit or miss with zerg bosses that barely anyone remembers from one patch cycle to the next and everyone having some strange nostalgia years later about how fun it actually was because the bar has been lowered so far.

This MMO is just not designed for high end pve raid content because the UI is trash and not allowing addons makes it harder to coordinate on raid leaders.

I play WoW currently and maintain myself at a competitive level, names RaiColette-Moonguard and check the 2 sites for end gamers if you know what I mean. Dunno if we're allowed to say it on the forums, as it's not allowed to be talked about in game in FFXIV.

Anyways, I called Mythic+ being ruined with the changes back when it hit the PTR in Spring-ish I think March or May. I've been voicing my complaint with the changes to Mythic+ since they started jacking it up because of their "Raid or Die" mindset that Raiding has to be the end be all for anything PvE in the game when there's 4 end games available (Raiding, Mythic+, PvP, & World Content).

So, yes, I do know the state of current WoW. Yes, Mythic+ sucks really bad right now but it still has me logging in and doing end game PvE while FFXIV doesn't. To each their own but FFXIV end game needs to step up its raiding to feel like raiding and make something like Mythic+ that stays relevant throughout the entire expansion to the next expansion as well. If they do this, then and only then, in my opinion of course, will FFXIV be the better MMO than WoW. Considering the player base is mostly casual, I doubt I'll get this thrill and longing to want to do something hard everyday like Mythic+ did for Legion and BfA in WoW until SL jacked it up with the dungeons, new crappy affixes, and tuning, that to be fair, the tuning has gotten better but months too late.

I like FFXIV for the story, prettiness, class identity compared to WoW, and the feel of the game. I like how playing a SAM I can, relatively speaking, feel like I'm doing Samurai things. Likewise to RDM as well. I find FFXIV's end game extremely lacking compared to what I've experienced playing WoW since the start of pre-Legion. If FFXIV fixes raiding and adds something like Mythic+ for me to endlessly chase for a thrill and challenge, I will say and die on that hill that FFXIV is the better MMO.

Til then, I stand by what I originally said. The games cater to two completely different players and nothing wrong with that; because my sub to FFXIV is mostly still active and being carried because of the story.