I bought the game and played 90 hours in 9 days - here's my experience

[branliminal]

I bought the starter in 2019 after Heavensward, spent 2 or 3 hours getting the game to work, made two characters (one of my favorite parts of any game with customization), and quit before level 10 - that's where the extra few hours is from.

Introduction

Hello everyone! Hope my title doesn't look too much like a light novel title (lol) - just wanted to share my experience, which, by the playtime, you can probably tell was positive overall. Now, I'm of the opinion that experiences vary wildly person-to-person, often due to the surrounding circumstances - so here's a bit of nonpersonal info about me:
Early 20's
Male
Work a salaried job for a large corporation - hours not terrible
Favorite childhood FF game was Tactics A2
Was big on MMO's when I was ~10 to 14. Haven't really gotten into them in a big way since.
Played maybe 2 or 3 hours of games a week before this.


I know it's against the rules to post personal info, but I hope that's vague enough to show my situation and what I enjoy, giving context for how I went about the game. Why did I get FF14? Was watching youtube videos, saw a famous WoW streamer get into FF14, thought it'd be fun to play a FF game again. I did not go into it hoping to throw my life away for an irl week and a half - that was a happy accident.

Let's begin.

The Purchasing Process

Everyone complains about this. I will too. I downloaded the launcher from Steam, then went to the FF14 website to buy a sub. It told me account didn't exist, so I made a new one. Then it told me the new one wasn't compatible with Steam accounts, but that I could link it. I tried to link it and failed - after a while, I realized that it actually meant that I could link it to the mogstation account - which is the one I had had from 2019. After I did that, I went to log into mogstation, and fumbled around with the newly made account for a while before I realized I had to go to my old account - then after I bought the sub, I went to launch the game and was unable to log in because I didn't have a one-time password!

I then reset my password thinking Square Enix would send me an email with a one-time password. It did not. After looking it up online, I learned that it was actually FF14's 2FA system - great. A little bit of time back on mogstation, and I was up and running. Once I actually bought everything and set up 2FA, actually getting into the game was easy as pie.

This was set up on the afternoon of Friday, the 9th, for reference, and I forced myself to stop going hard Sunday the 18th because it was affecting my pace at work.

1/4

[branliminal]

First Impressions

This shouldn't come as a surprise, but my first impression was that the graphics look dated and the cutscene animations are robotic. I still think the latter - but either the graphics got better as the game went on, or I got used to it, because it wasn't noticeable to me later. Something about the size of the characters compared to the environment also threw me off. Of course, this is coming off of playing and watching modern Triple A titles, so it's not something I expected to be on par anyways.

Character customization was something I did expect to be a little more in-depth, as that's normally what people look for in fantasy fulfillment games - but it was good enough for me. Picked Viera, because it's the only race I recognize from FFTA2, and frankly, I like watching them run around. Don't @ me. Switched to Au Ra after finishing the ARR MSQ though.

Also, I spent maybe an hour or two at around 2 am sniping a slot in Gilgamesh, because I read on reddit that the players are tryhards there.

Gameplay

Finally, the part I actually got engrossed in. I started as an arcanist, with the intention of playing a scholar - who doesn't like being big brained? - and soon realized that felt like a terrible mistake. With one attacking ability and one DoT, I worried more about breaking the 1 key than I worried about the damage the quest monsters were dealing. Having to stand still while casting was also a really big change for me - I was very used to jumping around from previous games. But - and here's the big but - I had watched a couple of guides, and they all said that DPS classes had long queue times, and that healers get a lot to do at higher levels, and were considered DPS with heals. I decided to stick it out.

So, for the first twenty or so levels, I did the MSQ, killing mobs one Ruin at a time. This pace felt especially painful because running gets a CD, and I didn't have a mount, and I don't like paying to teleport. When I had to go to a different nation, I walked to town, went to the airship landing, and airshipped over. When I had to go to a different part of the same nation, I pressed autorun and ran, or I used the chocobo. I would say this was the longest-feeling part of my play - felt like the first twenty hours were spent running back and forth like a dodo bird. Also, the blue carbuncle was literally an enemy agent - every time I had to fight a mob in the open world, it would aggro everything with gust and I'd have to run away or get slammed. I eventually desummoned it and went back to pure Ruin + DoT.

[branliminal]

Once I got to the dungeons around level 15, things started to pick up - getting out of the orange circle, having a reason to press the heal button - that felt like a welcome change to my gameplay. Level 15-20 or so was held back only by the fact that I was still normal running back and forth across the map. By the time I went to sleep at 8 or 9 am, I hadn't gotten there yet.

When I woke up the next day, I ordered food and got back to work - the hours start to blur together, but I think I got the mount the second day. The MSQ is engaging enough to not want to click as fast as I can to get through, and the dungeons aren't aggressively easy or too difficult with the kits you have at any point (because it limits your level, and also maybe items? Though most people seemed to be doing way more damage than I was in the dungeons, even though I only healed when people would die within a hit or two and instacasted resurrections).

The real secret to my dozens of hours is this - I completely lost track of time. The breakdown of my gameplay was probably close to 12-15 hours a day on the weekends, and more like 6-8 on weekdays. I was still getting around four to six hours of sleep before work, so only had so much time to play (I'm usually working 10, 11 hours a day? Including lunch).

I wish I could give a more in-depth guide on how this compared to games like WoW, but I just haven't played them - it was honestly shocking how much I played.

Back to the plot, I spent most of my time either watching class guides or playing the game - after the first couple days, getting better felt like it was worth a time investment. I soon realized recommended rotations weren't for people below level 60, and I frankly tuned completely out of the opener sections. I really watched the guides to look for a new class to play. I hyped myself up about Astrologer.

Gameplay didn't really slow down for me pre-50 - flipping between the quests and dungeons felt like an oiled machine. It wasn't really possible for it to slow down, though, because I was still using two abilities outside of dungeons - now, though, the orange carbuncle was actually being useful and I could hop around between casts of Ruin II. I got myself into a trance playing the hammer game in the Golden Saucer for a few hours at one point - think it was on Wednesday. Not gonna talk further about that.

[branliminal]

In terms of the finale of the ARR MSQ, it was great. I loved the praetorium and...the other one, especially the robot blowy-up bit. Had a great time. Was getting really excited for Heavensward. Unfortunately, Heavensward wasn't excited for me, because the epilogue was a giant brick wall. If it felt like the first twenty hours were spent running around like a peasant, it felt like the last 60 hours were spent doing the epilogue quests - I was not happy. I was so not happy, in fact, that I bought a instalevel-to-70 class (DRK) to use so I could run through the epilogue quests faster. I got on the class, watched the class quest storyline on youtube, ran maybe 5 or 10 low level dungeons and the titan and ifrit easymode, then started using it to clear new content. Wiped a couple times on Leviathan, thanks to an instakill mechanic I still don't understand where he dives and we have to time using a machine, or something. Wiped a few times on the eyeball guy in World of Darkness, though I was playing a healer in that one, because apparently they kept facing him towards all of the casters? The alliance fell apart, and I requeued - second group ran through it like it was a joke. DRK wasn't incredibly fun in lower level dungeons, so I did the first gunbreaker quest and did it on that instead. I liked gunbreaker a lot more.

Even with all of my effort, though, I didn't actually complete the epilogue until this past Sunday - and haven't really played during the week other than to get and start levelling Astrologer(ian?). Have been saving Heavensward for this coming weekend - I hope my next big reply to this thread isn't about a Heavensward speedrun.

Overall

Fun things:
Golden Saucer Hammer Game
Dungeons
Trials

Unfun things:
Website (harder than the bosses)
Pre-Mount fetch quests
Epilogue (I liked Crystal Tower though)

Best experiences:
Getting carried in Praetorium by 8000 iq speedrunner tanks
Getting a chocobo
Finally getting to Ishgard
Most players were nice
Getting carried in Odin speedruns because a level 80 guy needed gloves
Getting an edgy white robe from crystal tower

Worst experiences:
Having a tank yell at me for not healing fast enough when we were in an early dungeon and I had 1 healing ability that I was spamming
Wiping repeatedly to an eyeball
Having the tank and a DPS both stand in the purple water in the electric dungeon
Paying 500 gil to go from limsa lominsa to ishgard

Classes I tried:
Scholar
Astrologer
Dark Knight
Gunbreaker
Gladiator
Red Mage

Classes by how much I liked them:
Gunbreaker
Astrologer
Scholar
Dark Knight
Gladiator
Red Mage

Favorite Dungeons:
Praetorium
Luigi's Mansion

Least Favorite Dungeons:
The Ice Castle
The Electric Water (was significantly better when I ran it on the tank classes)


Sorry for the spam post! Overall, please just make the game easier to buy (and maybe make teleporting cheaper)!

[AngelCheese77]

I never thought the CS were robotic in any way, and I'm saying this as a person who grew up with 80s and 90s nightmare fuel of CSs.

[VirusOnline]

Nice. Enjoyable read.

Hmmm. After 6 years, I'd give it a 8/10.

[SannaR]

The prices for teleports are based on distances.at the moment the highest price is 999. There are ways you can make the price cheaper. Might want to put a tldr near the start as not everyone will want to read such a long post. Also you can get around a post's character limit by editing it later while posting something else such as "more words incoming."

[Xathyr]

I never thought the CS were robotic in any way, and I'm saying this as a person who grew up with 80s and 90s nightmare fuel of CSs.

Well... they actually are if you compare them with the ones the game had in 1.0.

https://youtu.be/1h8TKeXk5eA

[Genz]

I never thought the CS were robotic in any way, and I'm saying this as a person who grew up with 80s and 90s nightmare fuel of CSs.

Most cut-scenes lack animation easing and blending (character that turn... wait... start running)

Also some poor choice of animation (for example when a character sheath/draw his weapon, they shouldn't use the quickened animation that's supposed to be for gameplay). And the lifeless camera doesn't help either.

[Jojoya]

Overall, please just make the game easier to buy (and maybe make teleporting cheaper)!

You can buy Aetheryte tickets using Allied Seals (ARR hunt and Blue Mage content currency) and Centurio Seals (HW/SB hunt content currency). Then you don't have to pay for your teleports at all (unless you choose to or run out of tickets).