Can Someone Help Me Understand The Endgame

[Harlot]

I am someone who likes to do trials, raids and dungeons but looks like as long as i don't put enough mind and time for it i won'T be able to do them cause extremes trials are too time consuming and hard for me. And i don't wanna do anything else but raiding, trials and dungeons.

[HanWenqing]

FF14 is not really a mmorpg it's more a game to relax, I mean the difficulty is absolutely ridiculous when you compare to other mmorpg

FF14 is getting closer and closer to a simple rpg, at least I consider it that way, I play other mmorpg for the challenge but FF14 is just a relaxing game for me

[GrigoriMarbas]

I haven't played WoW or a lot of MMORPG of this genre myself so I can't claim to understand 100% what you're looking for, but I'll try.

I feel like the issue of the lack of a middle ground is less marked than it seems in theory, due to the combat working more like a dance. While the fights themselves are hard, once you've learned how a mechanic works you can solve it pretty consistently yourself, so despite it still being punishing if done wrong it doesn't feel as "hard". I would wager a lot of people who clear harder content would not call themselves "hardcore". Many learn the fight and only repeat it weekly for the weekly capped loot and call it a day, many run the same fight over and over to maximize their damage output.

I also have little time due to work and only manage to really play during the weekend, but as long as you're prepared and do your homework with guides you can absolutely clear harder content without wasting all your free time on it. The way ffxiv is structured with weekly limits encourages you to not grind all your gear in one day but spread it across weeks.

About the when to do them, any time is good to start. If you want to "feel" ready, I would personally suggest looking at a lv90 gearing guide (consolegameswiki has a good one) to get a feel of what's good and easily available gear, and try Endwalker's version of Stone, Sky, Sea to make sure you have a good hang of your rotation.
Keep in mind the next patch is very close so current gear will become mostly obsolete, but currently I would recommend spending some of your blue tomes augmenting classical gear to get your ilvl to 590. That's good enough for a lot of content.

After that you can simply watch a guide for the fight of your choice (unless you prefer doing it blind), and make a [Practice] Party Finder to learn with other people. We're both on Twintania so we might end up in the same PF, who knows lol

[Renalt]

Endgame is marriage.

[Ransu]

FFXIV end game gearing is pretty relaxed compared to WoW's.

Essentially during an expansion launch or during a new tier update it basically goes;

Expert roulette/tome farm for the early tier gear pieces
EX Trials for accessories/weapon
Savage to upgrade to your cap while mixing the tome gear upgrades for BiS.

There's also crafting if you're a omni crafter or stupid rich and can get the pentamelded crafted gear with 5 materia slots or whatever it is. Those are really good entry gear.

I am someone who likes to do trials, raids and dungeons but looks like as long as i don't put enough mind and time for it i won'T be able to do them cause extremes trials are too time consuming and hard for me. And i don't wanna do anything else but raiding, trials and dungeons.

The savage raids are more difficult than the extreme fights. Find yourself a static group, don't pug that stuff. It takes time to practice and learn the fights, but you'll get it if you give it the time to learn.

[GrizzlyTank]

FFXIV end game gearing is pretty relaxed compared to WoW's.

Thanks to the gearing process being deterministic.

Ironically some of the times in WoW where PVE sees the most engagement is when the gear acquisition is deterministic... through PVP...

Meanwhile if you only raid you will have to kill a boss 13-21-27 (2,3,4 possible items in drop) times for a coin-toss for the one item you want.

[Ransu]

Thanks to the gearing process being deterministic.

Ironically some of the times in WoW where PVE sees the most engagement is when the gear acquisition is deterministic... through PVP...

Meanwhile if you only raid you will have to kill a boss 13-21-27 (2,3,4 possible items in drop) times for a coin-toss for the one item you want.

Get a static then? You wont have to fight for rolls every week against pugs. Also, the books are a thing, you don't HAVE to win the roll. You can get gear from the books.

[GrizzlyTank]

Get a static then? You wont have to fight for rolls every week against pugs. Also, the books are a thing, you don't HAVE to win the roll. You can get gear from the books.

I was exclusively talking about WoW's loot system there :|

FFXIV on the other hand you run the risk of getting less loot if there are members have already killed the boss that week, so it kind of forces static parties.
And even if you don't get loot a week you will still get a token that will give a deterministic reward, so the weekly run isn't wasted.

Unlike with wow for most of it's patches.

[Lustre]

I am sorry but as someone who played WoW over 6 years and who started playign FFXIV i can easily say that extremes trial are not equal to normal raid or even heroic raids. Some of them are almost as difficult as mythic. And that really bothered me.

The last time I seriously raided in wow, was all in WOTLK and 5% in Legion with Emerald Nightmare, so it's been quite a while for me and I couldve forgotten how difficulties tally up, but extreme=heroic is always how I imagined/felt it. All of the mechanics are scripted more or less and every fight can be brute forced through by memorizing it. Give it a couple weeks and you can do it blindfolded, you'll notice you'll perform the same attacks at the same points in the fight etc.

[Deveryn]

There's also materia farming (run spiritbond potions or the FC buff) from top level content, so you can pentameld at no cost when the next crafted set comes out.