I did see it but I'm gonna let them be, I'm very benevolent.ColdTooth wrote:
do not show this thread to karmine they will rip you a new one
your only defense is by ignoring them and giving them a headpat and maybe a baguette for good luck
realNuuskamuikkunen wrote:
Hrothgar.
My ffxiv character is older than an osu! account, meaning that I didn't knew what a furry is.Nuuskamuikkunen wrote:
Hrothgar.
KARMINE!!! MWAH <3Karmine wrote:
I did see it but I'm gonna let them be, I'm very benevolent.ColdTooth wrote:
do not show this thread to karmine they will rip you a new one
your only defense is by ignoring them and giving them a headpat and maybe a baguette for good luck
the beginning of the main quest is kinda boring at the beginning, but once you reach level around level 40, the story start getting really good, and even better with the extensionsdung eater wrote:
main quest suck and the delay of actually getting damaged and enemy animations is jarring
I hate that this is the case, I think xiv is great but the barrier to entry is so goddamn high lol. the base arr questline is mostly boring but otherwise fine, but the 2.x patches quite honestly sucked the soul out of my dick. it's wild that square enix hasn't done much of anything to address the sheer slog of arr, they must be aware of this sentiment online that the game "only gets good in heavensward" by now.Corne2Plum3 wrote:
the beginning of the main quest is kinda boring at the beginning, but once you reach level around level 40, the story start getting really good, and even better with the extensionsdung eater wrote:
main quest suck and the delay of actually getting damaged and enemy animations is jarring
Yeah honestly as much as I praise this game and enjoy playing it, aswell as hyped up for Dawntrail, I'm under the same sentiment that ARR should be thoroughly looked at again. They've already helped alleviate most of the problems like making the useless or non-important MSQ gone, and have removed two trials from ARR, one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds, and the other being extremely irrating, to the point where they had to nerf it back before HW launched (and it was still annoying to where people did leave it, mentors including). I'm glad they're taking some big stances on the problem, but there's still a few things left to clean it up.xch00F wrote:
I hate that this is the case, I think xiv is great but the barrier to entry is so goddamn high lol. the base arr questline is mostly boring but otherwise fine, but the 2.x patches quite honestly sucked the soul out of my dick. it's wild that square enix hasn't done much of anything to address the sheer slog of arr, they must be aware of this sentiment online that the game "only gets good in heavensward" by now.Corne2Plum3 wrote:
the beginning of the main quest is kinda boring at the beginning, but once you reach level around level 40, the story start getting really good, and even better with the extensionsdung eater wrote:
main quest suck and the delay of actually getting damaged and enemy animations is jarring
imo if you aren't being carried by some kind of nostalgia for that era of mmo quest design or by how excruciatingly Final Fantasy the story is in arr, you're in for a rough time.
i genuinely enjoyed reading this-- though i definitely need to re-read because of its length, i wasn't prepared and ultimately kept skimming through instead of taking my time, but i'll get it eventually >:OColdTooth wrote:
(full context)Yeah honestly as much as I praise this game and enjoy playing it, aswell as hyped up for Dawntrail, I'm under the same sentiment that ARR should be thoroughly looked at again. They've already helped alleviate most of the problems like making the useless or non-important MSQ gone, and have removed two trials from ARR, one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds, and the other being extremely irrating, to the point where they had to nerf it back before HW launched (and it was still annoying to where people did leave it, mentors including). I'm glad they're taking some big stances on the problem, but there's still a few things left to clean it up.xch00F wrote:
I hate that this is the case, I think xiv is great but the barrier to entry is so goddamn high lol. the base arr questline is mostly boring but otherwise fine, but the 2.x patches quite honestly sucked the soul out of my dick. it's wild that square enix hasn't done much of anything to address the sheer slog of arr, they must be aware of this sentiment online that the game "only gets good in heavensward" by now.
imo if you aren't being carried by some kind of nostalgia for that era of mmo quest design or by how excruciatingly Final Fantasy the story is in arr, you're in for a rough time.
I think incorporating/reworking a few things to be more modernized is a good idea, they got so many good interactions from ShB and EW that they could throw in for ARR. For me, the biggest problem story-wise for ARR is everything before 2.1, it doesn't get "good good" until around 2.5, and even then it's not incredible like Heavensward is. Heavensward really took it to the next level, and even in my eyes it's not a perfectly good expansion. Some things in the first expansion were still flawed, the raid was good but it felt mixed from the first half being similar to the 2.0 raids and raids from WoW, to the latter half just the usual platform floating in the air with a big scary boss to beat up. Not saying either or is better than the other, but this is just an example.
Another thing I'd love to see done is the alliance raids for ARR either reworked to make it actually something instead of a complete snoozefest that only has like one or two "important to look out for" mechanics. Seriously, the amount of times I've gotten those as a lvl 90 when I queue for the Alliance Raid roulette is insanely high, far too high for my enjoyment. While they did sorta make it less rewarding thanks to people finding ways to make it so they only get that for their roulette, it's still insanely easy to get those raids for a week straight. Though lately I've been getting the lvl 80 and 70 alliance raids in my roulette so maybe I'm getting lucky. Either way, I'd love to see the lvl 50 alliance raids get some polishing.
It's no secret that people buy the ARR story skip and watch an hour long documentary on ARR or have their friend explain it to them. I would've likely have done the same thing, though I'm sort of glad I got to experience it on my own and with a friend who knew the game quite well. But I'm also glad that it does hook in players once they hit Heavensward, because hoo boy that took a story from a "typical mmo standard" to "insanely high movie performance". Stormblood almost felt the same way, though I did take a break in the middle of Stormblood because it didn't perform as high as a note as Heavensward, but the post-Stormblood quests leading into Shadowbringers REALLY hit that high note and just kept on going. And Endwalker is... well, the same high note that continued onwards.
Final Fantasy 14 back in the old days was truly something else. Melee and physical ranged users had a completely different resource to manage, some of the jobs were completely different from how they play now and into Dawntrail, and other nonsensical things that brought the game's difficulty slightly higher. I'm glad that most of this is left behind, even if a couple of them really makes this game feel more unique.
Right now it feels like they're streamlining some things to be on-par with other things similar in its region. Some jobs going into Dawntrail will either feel overpowered, or disappointing. Black Mage for example is getting the bad end of the stick, while they got some cool stuff, it's either too centered around it, or not as powerful. Unless it's the media tour being the media tour, which most likely is the case, I think Black Mage is definitely going to be annoying to play in the early patches of the expansion, as they are aware of the player feedback in both English and Japanese forums. Paradox for example, in Endwalker, was castable in both ice and fire phase. In ice it was an instant cast, but in fire it was a hard cast, both doing the same potency. It refreshed both Umbral Ice and Astral Fire, so it was good to cast it in both phases. But in Dawntrail, seen through the media tour, it became an instant cast only castable in the fire phase, and you can only cast it in the fire phase, which in my opinion did not really feel right. The visual for Paradox even implies that it's an ice and fire spell, but now it's just usable in one phase, in a phase that is already getting even more overwhelming thanks to the much needed Manafont buff, and the new ability at level 100.
I could go on and on about it all but hopefully things will be better from here on out. They promised a boatload of stuff in Dawntrail, like a new gathering foray, something like Bozja/Eureka, and lifestyle content similar to the island sanctuary we got in Endwalker. I can't really complain that they're trying to cater as many people as possible, because the game is really good, it's probably one of the better mmos out there, next to WoW (although WoW has its own problems that would require me to type up a post for like at minimum 72 hours and by the time I hit the post button the thread will be already locked, or noone would care enough). But I can't help but think that they could dedicate a patch cycle to simply go back to ARR and tweak some more things to have a better new player experience.
However, there's just one problem that has been in the back of my mind ever since a video on youtube popped up. The MMO market right now is dominated by WoW, FFXIV, and Runescape. We are likely to never get another good MMO that is unique for a very long time, at least longer than a decade or two. What really stuck out to me the most is that all of the players that have found their comfortable MMO or game, have done so years ago. It's kind of hard to convince another player from another MMO to come to your MMO, even if that MMO is dying, or not in a good state, especially if it's under greedy developers. Believe it or not, those people that found their MMO, if they are into that genre of games, will only quit that MMO if it gets really bad, like with me and Shadowlands in WoW (god that expansion was somehow worse than WoD), or if it shuts down, like in the case of many oldschool MMOs. And when they do switch over to another MMO, they will play that, repeating until it gets bad or shuts down, rinse and repeat. It's a cycle that will forever go on in every genre of games.
This thoroughly explains why it's so hard to get into WoW with it's almost 10 expansion launches since 2004, and in a few expansions, will likely explain why it'll be hard to get into FFXIV. Though I have some faith the team behind FFXIV know what they're doing, if Yoshi P. is still the director then there is almost nothing that could go wrong. And even if it does somehow go south, there's always going to be player feedback, of which they'll likely take it into account and learn from their mistakes, hell it's been proven a few times if I recall.
As I said, it will take a substantial amount of time before another MMO claims the current crowns of the MMO sphere. It would have to compete with smaller titles, before even attempting to dethrone Runescape, WoW, and FFXIV, which as of right now, not a single MMO can even claim a spot underneath it. Runescape is just really old but also is grindy as hell, which is why people enjoy it because it gives them a sense of progression. WoW is also old, but has a massive history of alot of really cool stuff that helped it grow, and properly cemented itself into what an MMO should be like. FFXIV just has a great story, and almost as good of a combat as WoW, though it's noticably a slower-paced game which is never a bad thing in any game, if done right, and it is done right in FFXIV. A new MMO would have to be so unique, so out-of-the-ordinary, something different from "go to this location and slay 8 random things because it'll help our cause", or "go deliver this letter to someone the other side of town or country because something is coming up". At that point it'll redefine the MMO genre, and more people will flock to it, so long as it doesn't have predatory microtransactions that help the player instead of be a cosmetic, or have extremely terrible gameplay.
Maybe Valve should attempt that, haha.. ahahahah... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh gods am I going crazy? Did I forget to take my medication this morning? They can't even fix their multiplayer titles let alone figure out how to do anything unique, what makes me think Valve should attempt something ambitious like they would a decade or two ago. Seriously what made Valve think that combining 8 different titles including their own games that are currently rotting to death, one more than the other, and then slapping on their suggestion of an anti-cheat in their newest multiplayer title was a good idea? There's a reason why Artifact failed dramatically in a short amount of time, so their newer multiplayer title is bound to get as much attention as Artifact.
Right... that was off-topic, my bad. Back to the main point of FFXIV, while I've critisized a lot about the game, FFXIV is still really awesome. It all just hits different compared to WoW, it has more charm, slower yet consistent gameplay, and probably the best story/music that I've had the pleasure of listening. And it's only going to get better from here on out, the battle theme for Dawntrail is amazing, so I have no doubts that everything else will be incredible. The only music I didn't really enjoy were a few of the battle themes in Endwalker like the dungeon boss ones, but when the dungeon is pretty good, it didn't really impact it that heavily.
Generally I try to avoid any form of critisizing anything, because at the end of the day, video games are just a form of entertainment. We use it to escape reality, where things are much worse than what we envisioned it, or things just aren't in our favor no matter what outcome we try to roll with. That's why I try not to dwell on missing out on a game as others make it out to be, because why should I care about missing out on something when I not only already got other games to attend to, but... I just want to have fun in a game, not be forced to do something on a routine manner like with battle passes, or new launches of games that don't seem appealing. I can't be in the boat alone when I say that throwing a battle pass in any game just makes the game 8x more grindy than it already is. It's one of the bigger reasons why I left Overwatch when I saw what direction it was going for. It's why games like Fortnite, CoD, and other titles with battle passes just... don't appeal to me. It's not that "fear of missing out", it's that it requires me to spend time in that game when I don't want to spend time in that game. And don't get me started on predatory microtransactions seen in Overwatch.
Be glad that Square Enix hasn't tried that in FFXIV. Because hoooly, that is how you make at minimum 90% of your playerbase instantly quit or consider quitting. While the game does have microtransactions, it really is just if you want to have something that piqued your interest, so it's not like a big deal or anything. The only game that does the battle pass in a good way is Deep Rock Galactic (which funnily enough just dropped a large new season like yesterday). It straight-up removes any fear of missing out, by letting you choose which season to play, and it's all 100% free, as part of the season update every now and then. This isn't just a random thought process, if you play co-op games and don't own Deep Rock Galactic, I highly suggest you pick it up.
Though before I get off-topic for a second time, let me just finish saying that FFXIV is no perfect game. No game is perfect, the game you call "perfect" is never truly perfect. It's just your flavor. So while many people say FFXIV is the perfect MMO, they just mean that it's their favorite MMO, or game entirely. FFXIV's biggest drawback is the same reason as WoW, new players have a rougher time getting in. It's always like this for every old MMO, the older the MMO, the more stuff there is to do, and the more stuff there is to do, the more overwhelming the new player will be. It's why a couple of expansions ago in WoW, I was heavily hoping they would do something about the new player experience, or atleast the experience for having alt characters. While they did just that, it still didn't answer other new player problems, like when they get to the new expansion, they either feel burnt out, or completely confused due to the story (honestly if you were playing WoW for the story, you should just instantly quit). And one day, the same scenerio might happen to FFXIV, the more expansions, the more story, and the longer it will be for new players to get to where they want to be.
It does, however, contradict an earlier point I made. Even if the developers know what they're doing, it'll still be an overwhelming amount content poured into the new players. If you haven't played WoW before 2014, and you just started to pick it up today, you would shudder in fear as there is far too much content for you to progress through. You'd explode at the sight of being forced into the previous expansion just to level in, just to get into the new expansion. Which sucks because Shadowlands is extremely terrible, unless it's Battle for Azeroth, which is just as equally terrible. Hopefully they put in Dragonflight to be the expansion new players get thrown into, as I thought the levelling experience in Dragonflight was actually tame and pretty good. The same thought process applies to FFXIV aswell, but I don't necessarily think it's the same problem/solution.
My advice when getting into FFXIV right now? Probably wait until after Dawntrail's first week or so since not only are the servers going to be congested, but everyone wants to play Dawntrail and experience the new content. Maybe even a month total. But when that all settles, it's completely okay to "rush" through the MSQ in ARR, if you got friends that got you into the game, ask them about ARR, and they'll almost certainly explain alot of ARR to you. If you don't got friends and you are going in solo, completely blind, I recommend finding a video about lore in ARR and seeing if that interests you since the lore in Heavensward and going forward revolves around the lore in ARR. Do not solely just the MMO just off of ARR, you should judge it after beating Heavensward, maybe post-Heavensward.
The most important advice I can give is to have fun. If you're not having fun, then there is no reason to push yourself to play or continue that activity. There's a reason we have thousands of games to play, you choose which one strikes your fancy, and you roll with it, unless you lose the interest, in which you just bounce around. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.
I did not expect to be writing multiple paragraphs on something like this today. I guess this is what happens when I get passionate about video games as a whole, they provide entertainment, and should be only providing entertainment instead of existential dread, greed, or other nonsense that nobody wants. Without these forms of entertainment, our culture would not expand to where it is today, whether it be good or bad. I'm not thankful or happy that our current culture has taken a massive toll, like with awful memes, AI-generated posts, or just pure brainrot that spills into even more brainrot, but it is what it is, especially in today's era.
Someday, we're going to enter a brand new era of video games, where we stopped whatever awful business practices are happening behind the scene, or ditching the ideas of the things that make people have a fear of missing out. Today, this year, and perhaps this decade, we will not be entering that era. But that is totally fine, we have our comfortable game that we've found, and as stated before, we can bounce around to other games that fit. Yet someday, when we do enter this era of entertainment, I suspect brand new ideas before our eyes, things that are impossible today, might be possible in the near or far future. Depending on how you look at it, the outcome is always that the past will forever be behind us. We have come so far to exceed our ancestor's excellance, yet so far from what we can consider perfection.
Oh gosh, why am I still typing? Are my thoughts truly infinite? Not that I want people to read my posts that are most likely the cause of schizophrenia. You guys got better things to do than to look at what has been on my mind, or what my current thought train is like when I get passionate about a game I like, or games in general. Truly my time spent here has been put to good use. Truly the concept of time is an anomaly to me as I continue posting essays that would make a college student wish they could possess the endurance of my fingers smacking into each keypad. Truly will noone pay any attention to the person trying to slam a billion paragraphs of nothing into an assignment. Truly the mind is plagued by ADHD...
Guess I'll be signing off now. I'll be playing Deep Rock Galactic for the rest of my day, maybe some FFXIV if I feel like flashbanging myself since I always have player effects on which is definitely not causing me to go blind by the day. After all, it is the fun I enjoy.
See you all in a few days when I have recovered from typing a tremendous amount of text that nobody really cares.
never forget what they took from usColdTooth wrote:
one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds
i started running alliance raid roulette again after the reward changes were made. the amount of shitters i've encountered throughout all my roulettes trying to ilvl cheese just to get crystal tower every fucking time was egregious (with almost all of them re-equipping their gear INSIDE the duty, even though you can do it before entering). not just them, but all the disingenuous people playing it off as "ohhhh but there's new people!! ohhh but think of the sprouts doing this the first time!!!!!!! uwu xD" were equally obnoxious too. like, there was one time when i got LotA in my roulette, and the message that says "one adventurer is new to this duty" did not appear. people STILL tried to argue in alliance chat that there were new people to the duty and i'm sitting here like 🧍♂️ColdTooth wrote:
Another thing I'd love to see done is the alliance raids for ARR either reworked to make it actually something instead of a complete snoozefest that only has like one or two "important to look out for" mechanics. Seriously, the amount of times I've gotten those as a lvl 90 when I queue for the Alliance Raid roulette is insanely high, far too high for my enjoyment. While they did sorta make it less rewarding thanks to people finding ways to make it so they only get that for their roulette, it's still insanely easy to get those raids for a week straight. Though lately I've been getting the lvl 80 and 70 alliance raids in my roulette so maybe I'm getting lucky. Either way, I'd love to see the lvl 50 alliance raids get some polishing.
i think people need to understand (or have simply forgotten) that some games need good build-up before they start going all out, the notion that a game should become instantly amazing during the first 5 minutes of gameplay is dumb, especially when you apply that to one of the longest games out there. of course, this is not to say that ARR isn't mind numbing, which it is, but we both know it builds up a foundation for pretty much everything that comes after it. there are characters and plot points started in ARR that have a payoff over three expansions later, there are constant references, call-backs, etc. skipping implies losing the emotional impact of all that in later expansions (and i bet dawntrail will come packed with references as well. i mean, just from the trailers alone we can see the mamool ja beast race, which already got some attention during ARR lol)ColdTooth wrote:
It's no secret that people buy the ARR story skip and watch an hour long documentary on ARR or have their friend explain it to them. I would've likely have done the same thing, though I'm sort of glad I got to experience it on my own and with a friend who knew the game quite well. But I'm also glad that it does hook in players once they hit Heavensward, because hoo boy that took a story from a "typical mmo standard" to "insanely high movie performance". Stormblood almost felt the same way, though I did take a break in the middle of Stormblood because it didn't perform as high as a note as Heavensward, but the post-Stormblood quests leading into Shadowbringers REALLY hit that high note and just kept on going. And Endwalker is... well, the same high note that continued onwards.
HYPEColdTooth wrote:
They promised a boatload of stuff in Dawntrail, like a new gathering foray, something like Bozja/Eureka,
what the FuckColdTooth wrote:
maybe some FFXIV if I feel like flashbanging myself since I always have player effects on which is definitely not causing me to go blind by the day. After all, it is the fun I enjoy.
thinking about this almost from a purely artistic perspective I definitely agree with the sentiment that some art benefits greatly from a slow building start, but I would not consider xiv to be a good example of this. honestly, I think it's a uniquely bad example, specifically because it's an mmorpg. coldtooth mentioned the post-stormblood quests leading into shadowbringers as being a high note. I didn't actually start playing xiv until sometime in the middle of shadowbringers so I wasn't a part of the discussions around the time those quests came out, but those were legitimately memorable as fuck and rank very high on my list of all time favorite video game moments lmao. people must have been going absolutely insane experiencing those quests in the moment when they were relevant. shit like this makes me regret not starting earlier.Serraionga wrote:
i think people need to understand (or have simply forgotten) that some games need good build-up before they start going all out, the notion that a game should become instantly amazing during the first 5 minutes of gameplay is dumb, especially when you apply that to one of the longest games out there. of course, this is not to say that ARR isn't mind numbing, which it is, but we both know it builds up a foundation for pretty much everything that comes after it. there are characters and plot points started in ARR that have a payoff over three expansions later, there are constant references, call-backs, etc. skipping implies losing the emotional impact of all that in later expansions (and i bet dawntrail will come packed with references as well. i mean, just from the trailers alone we can see the mamool ja beast race, which already got some attention during ARR lol)ColdTooth wrote:
It's no secret that people buy the ARR story skip and watch an hour long documentary on ARR or have their friend explain it to them. I would've likely have done the same thing, though I'm sort of glad I got to experience it on my own and with a friend who knew the game quite well. But I'm also glad that it does hook in players once they hit Heavensward, because hoo boy that took a story from a "typical mmo standard" to "insanely high movie performance". Stormblood almost felt the same way, though I did take a break in the middle of Stormblood because it didn't perform as high as a note as Heavensward, but the post-Stormblood quests leading into Shadowbringers REALLY hit that high note and just kept on going. And Endwalker is... well, the same high note that continued onwards.
not that i particularly care about people skipping shit or whatever, but it's sad when those same people feel entitled to talk about the game's story "being lacking" or "stuff not making sense" etc. when they skipped a huge chunk of it (especially when they don't remember important scenes or characters that were actually really important when you think about it, like moenbryda and/or papalymo for instance)
i would love that (while having zero understanding of what "FFXIV's MSQ" means)Karmine wrote:
Few more thousands posts like these and there will be as much text in this thread as in FFXIV's MSQ.
Serraionga wrote:
never forget what they took from usColdTooth wrote:
one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds
the memes were great
Oh there was also this:ColdTooth wrote:
one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds
difficulty can be a driving factor for playing long games, but it is NOT the only one. there are more reasons why people would stick with a longer game, and it's surprising that from "what you've read" you did not acknowledge the thing that people usually put ffxiv in a pedestal for, and why they stick with it to the end (the story)Patatitta wrote:
to the post above me, not quoting them for ovious reasons
I disagree with serraionga, I have not played FFXIV however, if a game is going to take that long until "it gets good", it must hook you with the idea that is going to be good, games that do this very well are games where the appeal is the difficulty, so something like rain world, the first hour or two are fucking misserable, however, you see the idea and you understand that it's going to click and feel amazing, and given what I have read, that doesn't seem to be the case for FFXIV, it's just bad and boring
you're forgetting that it's not only players who might be affected negatively by this, but the company as well. why should they risk working on a sequel that might flop (many such cases) when the game is already fine as is, and it is racking in a lot of money? if anything, the expansions already fit that role by giving you a lot of new stuff (glams, skills, raids, etc). so i'm not really seeing how is this a bad thing?Patatitta wrote:
MMO's are just a shitty genre, first of all, you're not allowed to make sequels out of it, because everyone has a lot of love, time and sometimes even money spent on an account, that having a sequel that would basically reset all your progress would be a personal insult. They're bound to get outdated
i know you're talking more generally here and not referring to ffxiv specifically, but i don't think any of this applies to ffxiv, like at allPatatitta wrote:
Most mmos don't really know how to add content in a way that doesn't directly thrash the content made beforehand, the only exceptions are like maybe runescape. If you start any MMO today you will basically just play through the story of all the expansions until reaching the modern one and then playing that one, because while even things like zones may be reused, you're not really going on a 10yo raid and recieving current level loot, so while they may have amazingly long lifespans, you're only really going to experience what was developed in the past few years
i'm willing to concede that this game suffers a bit from "lag", though i'm not sure if lag is the appropiate word for the issue i experience. the ffxiv forum has a whole thread talking about this problem (which tl;dr seems to be a weird, additional latency tacked onto already high ms players and is easily solved by using a third-party program which only has a few lines of code LOL)Patatitta wrote:
Some game design decisions like gameplay are limited by the netcode, most MMO's nowadays use the tab target press a key to do a spell kinda gameplay, because there are no real other combat style that can work well under lag and where like 50+ players can engage on it at once, and it just turns out that combat isn't really the most fun
Much Like Our Lives. We Always Get Over These Impossible Challenges On A Constant Basis, Only To Be Surrounded By Many More. Ah, To Live Is To Struggle,,,,,,,,,,,,Patatitta wrote:
The game is usually meant to run forever, so the story never reaches a conclusion, there will always be a greater big bad, which can just get really annoying very quickly
yes, you wrote this same argument on that other thread from weeks ago, but... i'm just not seeing it. like, what is there besides some games that will probably last you 1/6000 of what ffxiv actually offers. and that is assuming they don't get removed before you can finish themPatatitta wrote:
MMO's are the most expensive genre to play, since the biggest one still have some sort of subscription model and/or microtransactions that you must buy, and that is just not really making the most of your money, for the same money you can buy a FFXIV subscription today you can just buy game pass
what do you mean "not playing anything else"? where are you getting that idea? lolPatatitta wrote:
but what I think the biggest sins of MMO's is the opportunity cost. MMO's take a lot of time in your life, it's easy to rack up thousands of hours in any one of them, and it's just, how many other games could you have played in those thousands hours?, is the MMO that good that you can justify not playing ANYTHING else?
the answer often is no, and the playerbase of these games reccognise it, sometimes there are mid expansions, the community recognises this yet keep playing, and that is because MMO's are also the hardest game genre to quit
just because something happened to your dad doesn't mean it might happen to other people... patatitta come on :VPatatitta wrote:
Whenever you have spent so many hours to get to the endgame and you've even made social connections and then spent even more hours doing stuff at endgame, it basically just becomes a part of your life, playing the game becomes an habit, sometimes you just keep playing out of stockholm syndrome. You don't know what it took for my dad to play WoW, it required multiple shitty ass expansions that my dad kept playing to quit, and even after they quit, they didn't know any other videogame, so they just started playing GW2 since it was the most similar to what they played, and now we're back at it again but with a slightly better game
We've reached the point where games that try to imitate the style of an MMO like the previously mentioned rabbit and steel or CrossCode are WAY better than any mmo
just don't play mmos man
I don't mean difficulty is the only factor than can achieve this, it's that when you're playing a difficult game, you know it sucks now but it will be good later, this an also apply to other style of games, what I mean is that the start of FFXIV here has been described as an slugfest, that the start is just boring and slow and it really doesn't give you any incentive to stick with it, and that is why level boost existSerraionga wrote:
difficulty can be a driving factor for playing long games, but it is NOT the only one. there are more reasons why people would stick with a longer game, and it's surprising that from "what you've read" you did not acknowledge the thing that people usually put ffxiv in a pedestal for, and why they stick with it to the end (the story)Patatitta wrote:
to the post above me, not quoting them for ovious reasons
I disagree with serraionga, I have not played FFXIV however, if a game is going to take that long until "it gets good", it must hook you with the idea that is going to be good, games that do this very well are games where the appeal is the difficulty, so something like rain world, the first hour or two are fucking misserable, however, you see the idea and you understand that it's going to click and feel amazing, and given what I have read, that doesn't seem to be the case for FFXIV, it's just bad and boring
i can't comment on rain world because i haven't played it, looking at that steam preview it does remind me a little bit of celeste though. wishlisted!!
yes, i'm aware that FFXIV at the start sucked and that FFXI was a thing, my point is that when you're working with a base so old, developing new things for it can be difficult and at the end of the day MMO's will always be behind modern games in things like infrastructure, graphics or whateverSerraionga wrote:
you're forgetting that it's not only players who might be affected negatively by this, but the company as well. why should they risk working on a sequel that might flop (many such cases) when the game is already fine as is, and it is racking in a lot of money? if anything, the expansions already fit that role by giving you a lot of new stuff (glams, skills, raids, etc). so i'm not really seeing how is this a bad thing?Patatitta wrote:
MMO's are just a shitty genre, first of all, you're not allowed to make sequels out of it, because everyone has a lot of love, time and sometimes even money spent on an account, that having a sequel that would basically reset all your progress would be a personal insult. They're bound to get outdated
also... you probably don't know what happened when this game came out in 2010, do you? there is a VERY good reason they're not taking any major risks lol
Again, like any MMO there have been mechanics that have been introduced and removed, and there is content that relies on mechanics that have now been deleted, you may still be able to interact with them in one way or another today, but it's not the full experience, you're not going to really experience the full endgame of a past expansion without a classic server of whatever, not everything that was developed in the game lifespan is playable and equally as important todaySerraionga wrote:
i know you're talking more generally here and not referring to ffxiv specifically, but i don't think any of this applies to ffxiv, like at allPatatitta wrote:
Most mmos don't really know how to add content in a way that doesn't directly thrash the content made beforehand, the only exceptions are like maybe runescape. If you start any MMO today you will basically just play through the story of all the expansions until reaching the modern one and then playing that one, because while even things like zones may be reused, you're not really going on a 10yo raid and recieving current level loot, so while they may have amazingly long lifespans, you're only really going to experience what was developed in the past few years
there's plenty of groups/discords out there which do low level/ilvl raids/content that was introduced to the game a really long time ago and still have a blast with it/get certain rewards from it which are still exclusive to that content (baldesion arsenal and delubrum reginae comes to mind). you're not being gatekept/walled/etc from experiencing old content similarly to how it was on release if you're a new player, it doesn't quite work like that here
(some bahamut raids are sliiiightly easier than they were on release due to potency changes/new jobs (classes) that weren't present at the time/other technical shit, but those things are barely noticeable and even then can be solved by just setting it to minimum ilvl, like asmongold did during his ffxiv playthrough)
I don't mean that FFXIV suffers from lag, I mean that the game must be build with lag in mind, which forces a certain type of game design which may not be as engaging, there are combat systems that are way more fun but they just don't work on a MMO, that's my pointSerraionga wrote:
i'm willing to concede that this game suffers a bit from "lag", though i'm not sure if lag is the appropiate word for the issue i experience. the ffxiv forum has a whole thread talking about this problem (which tl;dr seems to be a weird, additional latency tacked onto already high ms players and is easily solved by using a third-party program which only has a few lines of code LOL)Patatitta wrote:
Some game design decisions like gameplay are limited by the netcode, most MMO's nowadays use the tab target press a key to do a spell kinda gameplay, because there are no real other combat style that can work well under lag and where like 50+ players can engage on it at once, and it just turns out that combat isn't really the most fun
in any case, the only way you're going to ever experience this is if you're a fucking weirdo and you're playing on a server different from the continent you're on, like myself. otherwise, no issues regarding lag whatsoever besides the rare ddos attack. i'm not gonna comment that much on the "combat not being the most fun" bit because... you've yet to experience the game, no point in giving my opinion to you about this. samurai rotations are fun though
idk, not a fan of one piece myselfSerraionga wrote:
Much Like Our Lives. We Always Get Over These Impossible Challenges On A Constant Basis, Only To Be Surrounded By Many More. Ah, To Live Is To Struggle,,,,,,,,,,,,Patatitta wrote:
The game is usually meant to run forever, so the story never reaches a conclusion, there will always be a greater big bad, which can just get really annoying very quickly
this isn't a bad thing. you most certainly can write a cohesive story on a game that will last forever, and so far this game has proved it. this is why you should actually play the game instead of wasting your time getting spoon-fed shit online and writing these long-ass walls of text. get that free trial downloading B O Y
(the story is divided in arcs, and the main arc that has been featured in the entire game until now ended in endwalker, currently the latest expansion before dawntrail releases)
(and just so you know, i obviously have my grips about the story too, but i don't see the point in sharing that information when... again, you've yet to experience the game)
Serraionga wrote:
yes, you wrote this same argument on that other thread from weeks ago, but... i'm just not seeing it. like, what is there besides some games that will probably last you 1/6000 of what ffxiv actually offers. and that is assuming they don't get removed before you can finish themPatatitta wrote:
MMO's are the most expensive genre to play, since the biggest one still have some sort of subscription model and/or microtransactions that you must buy, and that is just not really making the most of your money, for the same money you can buy a FFXIV subscription today you can just buy game pass
i don't know many people who actually have game pass. i know some of them who chose not to pay for it and/or just stopped paying for different reasons:
1) they don't play a lot of games frequently
2) the good games that get featured there are games that they already own (the most common)
3) they only play 1 or 2 games from everything they have
4) all of the above
idk, i don't see how is this any better than just settling for an MMO. i suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree :V
Serraionga wrote:
Patatitta wrote:
but what I think the biggest sins of MMO's is the opportunity cost. MMO's take a lot of time in your life, it's easy to rack up thousands of hours in any one of them, and it's just, how many other games could you have played in those thousands hours?, is the MMO that good that you can justify not playing ANYTHING else?
the answer often is no, and the playerbase of these games reccognise it, sometimes there are mid expansions, the community recognises this yet keep playing, and that is because MMO's are also the hardest game genre to quit
[/quote]
what do you mean "not playing anything else"? where are you getting that idea? lol
i can't speak for everyone obviously, but a lot of friends/known people take breaks when they've finished everything they want to do and wait for the next patch to come out, playing literally anything else while they wait. i have been playing elden ring non-stop these days (which explains my lack of posts recently) and i still intend to play it (DLC included) until dawntrail comes out in a couple of weeks. some friends are playing the new kingdom hearts port that came on steam, some others smtv vengeance, etc... and all of them will probably be on ffxiv as soon as dawntrail releases, much like previous expansions. and once they're done with dawntrail's current patch, it's back to other games. rinse and repeat. seems like you're making a lot of assumptions here
MMOs are long as fuck, but even in these games you are bound to run out of stuff to do that interests you or you simply do not want to do in that particular moment at some point, which is why people usually just wait and take breaks like i said. they do not have these weird panic attacks about "Ohhhh I Could Be Playing THIS !!!" or whatever you're implying, because they do it in-between
[/quote]
MMO's are game that take thousands of hours, you can run out of content of course, but what is more engaging, playing 100 hours of daily quests and similar, repetitive content at endgame or just playing through the entirity of metal gear solid + disco elysium + maybe resident evil 4, which all fit in that same timespan
MMO's are long as fuck game, but not every part has been perfectly crafted, there is a lot of repetition and things added specifically to make the game longer, the game is not awful when you're just farming whatever item, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as fun or engaging as just spending that same time just beating an entire different game alltogether, or not even that, you could watch a movie, or read a book
MMO's are games that are made to last very long, the same thing happens when you're choosing to play an MMO, there barely are any mortals that can play two MMO at the same time, you play one or you play another, choosing to play one means that you're missing out in playing the other one, you can quit or take a break from your game to try the other game, but that isn't going reimburse all of your investement on that game.Serraionga wrote:
Patatitta wrote:
Whenever you have spent so many hours to get to the endgame and you've even made social connections and then spent even more hours doing stuff at endgame, it basically just becomes a part of your life, playing the game becomes an habit, sometimes you just keep playing out of stockholm syndrome. You don't know what it took for my dad to play WoW, it required multiple shitty ass expansions that my dad kept playing to quit, and even after they quit, they didn't know any other videogame, so they just started playing GW2 since it was the most similar to what they played, and now we're back at it again but with a slightly better game
We've reached the point where games that try to imitate the style of an MMO like the previously mentioned rabbit and steel or CrossCode are WAY better than any mmo
just don't play mmos man
[/quote]
just because something happened to your dad doesn't mean it might happen to other people... patatitta come on :V
it's not difficult to imagine that some people who play ffxiv might just be Videogam Enjoyers and not Hopeless Addicts
[/quote]
Yeah but again, my dad is just an example of the overall playerbase IMO, the game doesn't straight up die when there is a mid expansion, there is still a lot of people that stick with it, so, again, same question. Is it more worth it to spend a year or two of your life playing something that even the game community consiers to be mid or just using that same time to play some other, probably better videogames?
Serraionga wrote:
what do you mean "not playing anything else"? where are you getting that idea? lolPatatitta wrote:
but what I think the biggest sins of MMO's is the opportunity cost. MMO's take a lot of time in your life, it's easy to rack up thousands of hours in any one of them, and it's just, how many other games could you have played in those thousands hours?, is the MMO that good that you can justify not playing ANYTHING else?
the answer often is no, and the playerbase of these games reccognise it, sometimes there are mid expansions, the community recognises this yet keep playing, and that is because MMO's are also the hardest game genre to quit
i can't speak for everyone obviously, but a lot of friends/known people take breaks when they've finished everything they want to do and wait for the next patch to come out, playing literally anything else while they wait. i have been playing elden ring non-stop these days (which explains my lack of posts recently) and i still intend to play it (DLC included) until dawntrail comes out in a couple of weeks. some friends are playing the new kingdom hearts port that came on steam, some others smtv vengeance, etc... and all of them will probably be on ffxiv as soon as dawntrail releases, much like previous expansions. and once they're done with dawntrail's current patch, it's back to other games. rinse and repeat. seems like you're making a lot of assumptions here
MMOs are long as fuck, but even in these games you are bound to run out of stuff to do that interests you or you simply do not want to do in that particular moment at some point, which is why people usually just wait and take breaks like i said. they do not have these weird panic attacks about "Ohhhh I Could Be Playing THIS !!!" or whatever you're implying, because they do it in-between
Serraionga wrote:
just because something happened to your dad doesn't mean it might happen to other people... patatitta come on :VPatatitta wrote:
Whenever you have spent so many hours to get to the endgame and you've even made social connections and then spent even more hours doing stuff at endgame, it basically just becomes a part of your life, playing the game becomes an habit, sometimes you just keep playing out of stockholm syndrome. You don't know what it took for my dad to play WoW, it required multiple shitty ass expansions that my dad kept playing to quit, and even after they quit, they didn't know any other videogame, so they just started playing GW2 since it was the most similar to what they played, and now we're back at it again but with a slightly better game
We've reached the point where games that try to imitate the style of an MMO like the previously mentioned rabbit and steel or CrossCode are WAY better than any mmo
just don't play mmos man
it's not difficult to imagine that some people who play ffxiv might just be Videogam Enjoyers and not Hopeless Addicts
don't get into mmosAchromalia wrote:
mmo discussers are so flipping cool... i wish i could follow the significance of the game design critiques made and the grievances carried about the [mmo]/[mmorpg] as a genre
:') fair enough, i just like that you can dress up your characters and socialize in some of them and do things together like those raidsPatatitta wrote:
don't get into mmosAchromalia wrote:
mmo discussers are so flipping cool... i wish i could follow the significance of the game design critiques made and the grievances carried about the [mmo]/[mmorpg] as a genre
bunnygirl sounds coolxch00F wrote:
hey patatitta I'm gonna name one of my retainers after you do you wanna be a catgirl, a bunnygirl, or an elf
idk I don't have bunny ears I can test that onxch00F wrote:
do you enjoy ear rubs
I read this, and I cared a lot. Even the last couple paragraphs. I felt inspired and was somewhat moved emotionally from this. I'm glad.ColdTooth wrote:
Yeah honestly as much as I praise this game and enjoy playing it, aswell as hyped up for Dawntrail, I'm under the same sentiment that ARR should be thoroughly looked at again. They've already helped alleviate most of the problems like making the useless or non-important MSQ gone, and have removed two trials from ARR, one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds, and the other being extremely irrating, to the point where they had to nerf it back before HW launched (and it was still annoying to where people did leave it, mentors including). I'm glad they're taking some big stances on the problem, but there's still a few things left to clean it up.xch00F wrote:
I hate that this is the case, I think xiv is great but the barrier to entry is so goddamn high lol. the base arr questline is mostly boring but otherwise fine, but the 2.x patches quite honestly sucked the soul out of my dick. it's wild that square enix hasn't done much of anything to address the sheer slog of arr, they must be aware of this sentiment online that the game "only gets good in heavensward" by now.Corne2Plum3 wrote:
the beginning of the main quest is kinda boring at the beginning, but once you reach level around level 40, the story start getting really good, and even better with the extensionsdung eater wrote:
main quest suck and the delay of actually getting damaged and enemy animations is jarring
imo if you aren't being carried by some kind of nostalgia for that era of mmo quest design or by how excruciatingly Final Fantasy the story is in arr, you're in for a rough time.
I think incorporating/reworking a few things to be more modernized is a good idea, they got so many good interactions from ShB and EW that they could throw in for ARR. For me, the biggest problem story-wise for ARR is everything before 2.1, it doesn't get "good good" until around 2.5, and even then it's not incredible like Heavensward is. Heavensward really took it to the next level, and even in my eyes it's not a perfectly good expansion. Some things in the first expansion were still flawed, the raid was good but it felt mixed from the first half being similar to the 2.0 raids and raids from WoW, to the latter half just the usual platform floating in the air with a big scary boss to beat up. Not saying either or is better than the other, but this is just an example.
Another thing I'd love to see done is the alliance raids for ARR either reworked to make it actually something instead of a complete snoozefest that only has like one or two "important to look out for" mechanics. Seriously, the amount of times I've gotten those as a lvl 90 when I queue for the Alliance Raid roulette is insanely high, far too high for my enjoyment. While they did sorta make it less rewarding thanks to people finding ways to make it so they only get that for their roulette, it's still insanely easy to get those raids for a week straight. Though lately I've been getting the lvl 80 and 70 alliance raids in my roulette so maybe I'm getting lucky. Either way, I'd love to see the lvl 50 alliance raids get some polishing.
It's no secret that people buy the ARR story skip and watch an hour long documentary on ARR or have their friend explain it to them. I would've likely have done the same thing, though I'm sort of glad I got to experience it on my own and with a friend who knew the game quite well. But I'm also glad that it does hook in players once they hit Heavensward, because hoo boy that took a story from a "typical mmo standard" to "insanely high movie performance". Stormblood almost felt the same way, though I did take a break in the middle of Stormblood because it didn't perform as high as a note as Heavensward, but the post-Stormblood quests leading into Shadowbringers REALLY hit that high note and just kept on going. And Endwalker is... well, the same high note that continued onwards.
Final Fantasy 14 back in the old days was truly something else. Melee and physical ranged users had a completely different resource to manage, some of the jobs were completely different from how they play now and into Dawntrail, and other nonsensical things that brought the game's difficulty slightly higher. I'm glad that most of this is left behind, even if a couple of them really makes this game feel more unique.
Right now it feels like they're streamlining some things to be on-par with other things similar in its region. Some jobs going into Dawntrail will either feel overpowered, or disappointing. Black Mage for example is getting the bad end of the stick, while they got some cool stuff, it's either too centered around it, or not as powerful. Unless it's the media tour being the media tour, which most likely is the case, I think Black Mage is definitely going to be annoying to play in the early patches of the expansion, as they are aware of the player feedback in both English and Japanese forums. Paradox for example, in Endwalker, was castable in both ice and fire phase. In ice it was an instant cast, but in fire it was a hard cast, both doing the same potency. It refreshed both Umbral Ice and Astral Fire, so it was good to cast it in both phases. But in Dawntrail, seen through the media tour, it became an instant cast only castable in the fire phase, and you can only cast it in the fire phase, which in my opinion did not really feel right. The visual for Paradox even implies that it's an ice and fire spell, but now it's just usable in one phase, in a phase that is already getting even more overwhelming thanks to the much needed Manafont buff, and the new ability at level 100.
I could go on and on about it all but hopefully things will be better from here on out. They promised a boatload of stuff in Dawntrail, like a new gathering foray, something like Bozja/Eureka, and lifestyle content similar to the island sanctuary we got in Endwalker. I can't really complain that they're trying to cater as many people as possible, because the game is really good, it's probably one of the better mmos out there, next to WoW (although WoW has its own problems that would require me to type up a post for like at minimum 72 hours and by the time I hit the post button the thread will be already locked, or noone would care enough). But I can't help but think that they could dedicate a patch cycle to simply go back to ARR and tweak some more things to have a better new player experience.
However, there's just one problem that has been in the back of my mind ever since a video on youtube popped up. The MMO market right now is dominated by WoW, FFXIV, and Runescape. We are likely to never get another good MMO that is unique for a very long time, at least longer than a decade or two. What really stuck out to me the most is that all of the players that have found their comfortable MMO or game, have done so years ago. It's kind of hard to convince another player from another MMO to come to your MMO, even if that MMO is dying, or not in a good state, especially if it's under greedy developers. Believe it or not, those people that found their MMO, if they are into that genre of games, will only quit that MMO if it gets really bad, like with me and Shadowlands in WoW (god that expansion was somehow worse than WoD), or if it shuts down, like in the case of many oldschool MMOs. And when they do switch over to another MMO, they will play that, repeating until it gets bad or shuts down, rinse and repeat. It's a cycle that will forever go on in every genre of games.
This thoroughly explains why it's so hard to get into WoW with it's almost 10 expansion launches since 2004, and in a few expansions, will likely explain why it'll be hard to get into FFXIV. Though I have some faith the team behind FFXIV know what they're doing, if Yoshi P. is still the director then there is almost nothing that could go wrong. And even if it does somehow go south, there's always going to be player feedback, of which they'll likely take it into account and learn from their mistakes, hell it's been proven a few times if I recall.
As I said, it will take a substantial amount of time before another MMO claims the current crowns of the MMO sphere. It would have to compete with smaller titles, before even attempting to dethrone Runescape, WoW, and FFXIV, which as of right now, not a single MMO can even claim a spot underneath it. Runescape is just really old but also is grindy as hell, which is why people enjoy it because it gives them a sense of progression. WoW is also old, but has a massive history of alot of really cool stuff that helped it grow, and properly cemented itself into what an MMO should be like. FFXIV just has a great story, and almost as good of a combat as WoW, though it's noticably a slower-paced game which is never a bad thing in any game, if done right, and it is done right in FFXIV. A new MMO would have to be so unique, so out-of-the-ordinary, something different from "go to this location and slay 8 random things because it'll help our cause", or "go deliver this letter to someone the other side of town or country because something is coming up". At that point it'll redefine the MMO genre, and more people will flock to it, so long as it doesn't have predatory microtransactions that help the player instead of be a cosmetic, or have extremely terrible gameplay.
Maybe Valve should attempt that, haha.. ahahahah... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh gods am I going crazy? Did I forget to take my medication this morning? They can't even fix their multiplayer titles let alone figure out how to do anything unique, what makes me think Valve should attempt something ambitious like they would a decade or two ago. Seriously what made Valve think that combining 8 different titles including their own games that are currently rotting to death, one more than the other, and then slapping on their suggestion of an anti-cheat in their newest multiplayer title was a good idea? There's a reason why Artifact failed dramatically in a short amount of time, so their newer multiplayer title is bound to get as much attention as Artifact.
Right... that was off-topic, my bad. Back to the main point of FFXIV, while I've critisized a lot about the game, FFXIV is still really awesome. It all just hits different compared to WoW, it has more charm, slower yet consistent gameplay, and probably the best story/music that I've had the pleasure of listening. And it's only going to get better from here on out, the battle theme for Dawntrail is amazing, so I have no doubts that everything else will be incredible. The only music I didn't really enjoy were a few of the battle themes in Endwalker like the dungeon boss ones, but when the dungeon is pretty good, it didn't really impact it that heavily.
Generally I try to avoid any form of critisizing anything, because at the end of the day, video games are just a form of entertainment. We use it to escape reality, where things are much worse than what we envisioned it, or things just aren't in our favor no matter what outcome we try to roll with. That's why I try not to dwell on missing out on a game as others make it out to be, because why should I care about missing out on something when I not only already got other games to attend to, but... I just want to have fun in a game, not be forced to do something on a routine manner like with battle passes, or new launches of games that don't seem appealing. I can't be in the boat alone when I say that throwing a battle pass in any game just makes the game 8x more grindy than it already is. It's one of the bigger reasons why I left Overwatch when I saw what direction it was going for. It's why games like Fortnite, CoD, and other titles with battle passes just... don't appeal to me. It's not that "fear of missing out", it's that it requires me to spend time in that game when I don't want to spend time in that game. And don't get me started on predatory microtransactions seen in Overwatch.
Be glad that Square Enix hasn't tried that in FFXIV. Because hoooly, that is how you make at minimum 90% of your playerbase instantly quit or consider quitting. While the game does have microtransactions, it really is just if you want to have something that piqued your interest, so it's not like a big deal or anything. The only game that does the battle pass in a good way is Deep Rock Galactic (which funnily enough just dropped a large new season like yesterday). It straight-up removes any fear of missing out, by letting you choose which season to play, and it's all 100% free, as part of the season update every now and then. This isn't just a random thought process, if you play co-op games and don't own Deep Rock Galactic, I highly suggest you pick it up.
Though before I get off-topic for a second time, let me just finish saying that FFXIV is no perfect game. No game is perfect, the game you call "perfect" is never truly perfect. It's just your flavor. So while many people say FFXIV is the perfect MMO, they just mean that it's their favorite MMO, or game entirely. FFXIV's biggest drawback is the same reason as WoW, new players have a rougher time getting in. It's always like this for every old MMO, the older the MMO, the more stuff there is to do, and the more stuff there is to do, the more overwhelming the new player will be. It's why a couple of expansions ago in WoW, I was heavily hoping they would do something about the new player experience, or atleast the experience for having alt characters. While they did just that, it still didn't answer other new player problems, like when they get to the new expansion, they either feel burnt out, or completely confused due to the story (honestly if you were playing WoW for the story, you should just instantly quit). And one day, the same scenerio might happen to FFXIV, the more expansions, the more story, and the longer it will be for new players to get to where they want to be.
It does, however, contradict an earlier point I made. Even if the developers know what they're doing, it'll still be an overwhelming amount content poured into the new players. If you haven't played WoW before 2014, and you just started to pick it up today, you would shudder in fear as there is far too much content for you to progress through. You'd explode at the sight of being forced into the previous expansion just to level in, just to get into the new expansion. Which sucks because Shadowlands is extremely terrible, unless it's Battle for Azeroth, which is just as equally terrible. Hopefully they put in Dragonflight to be the expansion new players get thrown into, as I thought the levelling experience in Dragonflight was actually tame and pretty good. The same thought process applies to FFXIV aswell, but I don't necessarily think it's the same problem/solution.
My advice when getting into FFXIV right now? Probably wait until after Dawntrail's first week or so since not only are the servers going to be congested, but everyone wants to play Dawntrail and experience the new content. Maybe even a month total. But when that all settles, it's completely okay to "rush" through the MSQ in ARR, if you got friends that got you into the game, ask them about ARR, and they'll almost certainly explain alot of ARR to you. If you don't got friends and you are going in solo, completely blind, I recommend finding a video about lore in ARR and seeing if that interests you since the lore in Heavensward and going forward revolves around the lore in ARR. Do not solely just the MMO just off of ARR, you should judge it after beating Heavensward, maybe post-Heavensward.
The most important advice I can give is to have fun. If you're not having fun, then there is no reason to push yourself to play or continue that activity. There's a reason we have thousands of games to play, you choose which one strikes your fancy, and you roll with it, unless you lose the interest, in which you just bounce around. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.
I did not expect to be writing multiple paragraphs on something like this today. I guess this is what happens when I get passionate about video games as a whole, they provide entertainment, and should be only providing entertainment instead of existential dread, greed, or other nonsense that nobody wants. Without these forms of entertainment, our culture would not expand to where it is today, whether it be good or bad. I'm not thankful or happy that our current culture has taken a massive toll, like with awful memes, AI-generated posts, or just pure brainrot that spills into even more brainrot, but it is what it is, especially in today's era.
Someday, we're going to enter a brand new era of video games, where we stopped whatever awful business practices are happening behind the scene, or ditching the ideas of the things that make people have a fear of missing out. Today, this year, and perhaps this decade, we will not be entering that era. But that is totally fine, we have our comfortable game that we've found, and as stated before, we can bounce around to other games that fit. Yet someday, when we do enter this era of entertainment, I suspect brand new ideas before our eyes, things that are impossible today, might be possible in the near or far future. Depending on how you look at it, the outcome is always that the past will forever be behind us. We have come so far to exceed our ancestor's excellance, yet so far from what we can consider perfection.
Oh gosh, why am I still typing? Are my thoughts truly infinite? Not that I want people to read my posts that are most likely the cause of schizophrenia. You guys got better things to do than to look at what has been on my mind, or what my current thought train is like when I get passionate about a game I like, or games in general. Truly my time spent here has been put to good use. Truly the concept of time is an anomaly to me as I continue posting essays that would make a college student wish they could possess the endurance of my fingers smacking into each keypad. Truly will noone pay any attention to the person trying to slam a billion paragraphs of nothing into an assignment. Truly the mind is plagued by ADHD...
Guess I'll be signing off now. I'll be playing Deep Rock Galactic for the rest of my day, maybe some FFXIV if I feel like flashbanging myself since I always have player effects on which is definitely not causing me to go blind by the day. After all, it is the fun I enjoy.
See you all in a few days when I have recovered from typing a tremendous amount of text that nobody really cares.
+1 <3cr0w wrote:
I read this, and I cared a lot. Even the last couple paragraphs. I felt inspired and was somewhat moved emotionally from this. I'm glad.ColdTooth wrote:
Yeah honestly as much as I praise this game and enjoy playing it, aswell as hyped up for Dawntrail, I'm under the same sentiment that ARR should be thoroughly looked at again. They've already helped alleviate most of the problems like making the useless or non-important MSQ gone, and have removed two trials from ARR, one of which was a fight that genuinely had a 3 or 4 minute cutscene but took 30 seconds, and the other being extremely irrating, to the point where they had to nerf it back before HW launched (and it was still annoying to where people did leave it, mentors including). I'm glad they're taking some big stances on the problem, but there's still a few things left to clean it up.xch00F wrote:
I hate that this is the case, I think xiv is great but the barrier to entry is so goddamn high lol. the base arr questline is mostly boring but otherwise fine, but the 2.x patches quite honestly sucked the soul out of my dick. it's wild that square enix hasn't done much of anything to address the sheer slog of arr, they must be aware of this sentiment online that the game "only gets good in heavensward" by now.Corne2Plum3 wrote:
the beginning of the main quest is kinda boring at the beginning, but once you reach level around level 40, the story start getting really good, and even better with the extensions
imo if you aren't being carried by some kind of nostalgia for that era of mmo quest design or by how excruciatingly Final Fantasy the story is in arr, you're in for a rough time.[...]I think incorporating/reworking a few things to be more modernized is a good idea, they got so many good interactions from ShB and EW that they could throw in for ARR. For me, the biggest problem story-wise for ARR is everything before 2.1, it doesn't get "good good" until around 2.5, and even then it's not incredible like Heavensward is. Heavensward really took it to the next level, and even in my eyes it's not a perfectly good expansion. Some things in the first expansion were still flawed, the raid was good but it felt mixed from the first half being similar to the 2.0 raids and raids from WoW, to the latter half just the usual platform floating in the air with a big scary boss to beat up. Not saying either or is better than the other, but this is just an example.
Another thing I'd love to see done is the alliance raids for ARR either reworked to make it actually something instead of a complete snoozefest that only has like one or two "important to look out for" mechanics. Seriously, the amount of times I've gotten those as a lvl 90 when I queue for the Alliance Raid roulette is insanely high, far too high for my enjoyment. While they did sorta make it less rewarding thanks to people finding ways to make it so they only get that for their roulette, it's still insanely easy to get those raids for a week straight. Though lately I've been getting the lvl 80 and 70 alliance raids in my roulette so maybe I'm getting lucky. Either way, I'd love to see the lvl 50 alliance raids get some polishing.
It's no secret that people buy the ARR story skip and watch an hour long documentary on ARR or have their friend explain it to them. I would've likely have done the same thing, though I'm sort of glad I got to experience it on my own and with a friend who knew the game quite well. But I'm also glad that it does hook in players once they hit Heavensward, because hoo boy that took a story from a "typical mmo standard" to "insanely high movie performance". Stormblood almost felt the same way, though I did take a break in the middle of Stormblood because it didn't perform as high as a note as Heavensward, but the post-Stormblood quests leading into Shadowbringers REALLY hit that high note and just kept on going. And Endwalker is... well, the same high note that continued onwards.
Final Fantasy 14 back in the old days was truly something else. Melee and physical ranged users had a completely different resource to manage, some of the jobs were completely different from how they play now and into Dawntrail, and other nonsensical things that brought the game's difficulty slightly higher. I'm glad that most of this is left behind, even if a couple of them really makes this game feel more unique.
Right now it feels like they're streamlining some things to be on-par with other things similar in its region. Some jobs going into Dawntrail will either feel overpowered, or disappointing. Black Mage for example is getting the bad end of the stick, while they got some cool stuff, it's either too centered around it, or not as powerful. Unless it's the media tour being the media tour, which most likely is the case, I think Black Mage is definitely going to be annoying to play in the early patches of the expansion, as they are aware of the player feedback in both English and Japanese forums. Paradox for example, in Endwalker, was castable in both ice and fire phase. In ice it was an instant cast, but in fire it was a hard cast, both doing the same potency. It refreshed both Umbral Ice and Astral Fire, so it was good to cast it in both phases. But in Dawntrail, seen through the media tour, it became an instant cast only castable in the fire phase, and you can only cast it in the fire phase, which in my opinion did not really feel right. The visual for Paradox even implies that it's an ice and fire spell, but now it's just usable in one phase, in a phase that is already getting even more overwhelming thanks to the much needed Manafont buff, and the new ability at level 100.
I could go on and on about it all but hopefully things will be better from here on out. They promised a boatload of stuff in Dawntrail, like a new gathering foray, something like Bozja/Eureka, and lifestyle content similar to the island sanctuary we got in Endwalker. I can't really complain that they're trying to cater as many people as possible, because the game is really good, it's probably one of the better mmos out there, next to WoW (although WoW has its own problems that would require me to type up a post for like at minimum 72 hours and by the time I hit the post button the thread will be already locked, or noone would care enough). But I can't help but think that they could dedicate a patch cycle to simply go back to ARR and tweak some more things to have a better new player experience.
However, there's just one problem that has been in the back of my mind ever since a video on youtube popped up. The MMO market right now is dominated by WoW, FFXIV, and Runescape. We are likely to never get another good MMO that is unique for a very long time, at least longer than a decade or two. What really stuck out to me the most is that all of the players that have found their comfortable MMO or game, have done so years ago. It's kind of hard to convince another player from another MMO to come to your MMO, even if that MMO is dying, or not in a good state, especially if it's under greedy developers. Believe it or not, those people that found their MMO, if they are into that genre of games, will only quit that MMO if it gets really bad, like with me and Shadowlands in WoW (god that expansion was somehow worse than WoD), or if it shuts down, like in the case of many oldschool MMOs. And when they do switch over to another MMO, they will play that, repeating until it gets bad or shuts down, rinse and repeat. It's a cycle that will forever go on in every genre of games.
This thoroughly explains why it's so hard to get into WoW with it's almost 10 expansion launches since 2004, and in a few expansions, will likely explain why it'll be hard to get into FFXIV. Though I have some faith the team behind FFXIV know what they're doing, if Yoshi P. is still the director then there is almost nothing that could go wrong. And even if it does somehow go south, there's always going to be player feedback, of which they'll likely take it into account and learn from their mistakes, hell it's been proven a few times if I recall.
As I said, it will take a substantial amount of time before another MMO claims the current crowns of the MMO sphere. It would have to compete with smaller titles, before even attempting to dethrone Runescape, WoW, and FFXIV, which as of right now, not a single MMO can even claim a spot underneath it. Runescape is just really old but also is grindy as hell, which is why people enjoy it because it gives them a sense of progression. WoW is also old, but has a massive history of alot of really cool stuff that helped it grow, and properly cemented itself into what an MMO should be like. FFXIV just has a great story, and almost as good of a combat as WoW, though it's noticably a slower-paced game which is never a bad thing in any game, if done right, and it is done right in FFXIV. A new MMO would have to be so unique, so out-of-the-ordinary, something different from "go to this location and slay 8 random things because it'll help our cause", or "go deliver this letter to someone the other side of town or country because something is coming up". At that point it'll redefine the MMO genre, and more people will flock to it, so long as it doesn't have predatory microtransactions that help the player instead of be a cosmetic, or have extremely terrible gameplay.
Maybe Valve should attempt that, haha.. ahahahah... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh gods am I going crazy? Did I forget to take my medication this morning? They can't even fix their multiplayer titles let alone figure out how to do anything unique, what makes me think Valve should attempt something ambitious like they would a decade or two ago. Seriously what made Valve think that combining 8 different titles including their own games that are currently rotting to death, one more than the other, and then slapping on their suggestion of an anti-cheat in their newest multiplayer title was a good idea? There's a reason why Artifact failed dramatically in a short amount of time, so their newer multiplayer title is bound to get as much attention as Artifact.
Right... that was off-topic, my bad. Back to the main point of FFXIV, while I've critisized a lot about the game, FFXIV is still really awesome. It all just hits different compared to WoW, it has more charm, slower yet consistent gameplay, and probably the best story/music that I've had the pleasure of listening. And it's only going to get better from here on out, the battle theme for Dawntrail is amazing, so I have no doubts that everything else will be incredible. The only music I didn't really enjoy were a few of the battle themes in Endwalker like the dungeon boss ones, but when the dungeon is pretty good, it didn't really impact it that heavily.
Generally I try to avoid any form of critisizing anything, because at the end of the day, video games are just a form of entertainment. We use it to escape reality, where things are much worse than what we envisioned it, or things just aren't in our favor no matter what outcome we try to roll with. That's why I try not to dwell on missing out on a game as others make it out to be, because why should I care about missing out on something when I not only already got other games to attend to, but... I just want to have fun in a game, not be forced to do something on a routine manner like with battle passes, or new launches of games that don't seem appealing. I can't be in the boat alone when I say that throwing a battle pass in any game just makes the game 8x more grindy than it already is. It's one of the bigger reasons why I left Overwatch when I saw what direction it was going for. It's why games like Fortnite, CoD, and other titles with battle passes just... don't appeal to me. It's not that "fear of missing out", it's that it requires me to spend time in that game when I don't want to spend time in that game. And don't get me started on predatory microtransactions seen in Overwatch.
Be glad that Square Enix hasn't tried that in FFXIV. Because hoooly, that is how you make at minimum 90% of your playerbase instantly quit or consider quitting. While the game does have microtransactions, it really is just if you want to have something that piqued your interest, so it's not like a big deal or anything. The only game that does the battle pass in a good way is Deep Rock Galactic (which funnily enough just dropped a large new season like yesterday). It straight-up removes any fear of missing out, by letting you choose which season to play, and it's all 100% free, as part of the season update every now and then. This isn't just a random thought process, if you play co-op games and don't own Deep Rock Galactic, I highly suggest you pick it up.
Though before I get off-topic for a second time, let me just finish saying that FFXIV is no perfect game. No game is perfect, the game you call "perfect" is never truly perfect. It's just your flavor. So while many people say FFXIV is the perfect MMO, they just mean that it's their favorite MMO, or game entirely. FFXIV's biggest drawback is the same reason as WoW, new players have a rougher time getting in. It's always like this for every old MMO, the older the MMO, the more stuff there is to do, and the more stuff there is to do, the more overwhelming the new player will be. It's why a couple of expansions ago in WoW, I was heavily hoping they would do something about the new player experience, or atleast the experience for having alt characters. While they did just that, it still didn't answer other new player problems, like when they get to the new expansion, they either feel burnt out, or completely confused due to the story (honestly if you were playing WoW for the story, you should just instantly quit). And one day, the same scenerio might happen to FFXIV, the more expansions, the more story, and the longer it will be for new players to get to where they want to be.
It does, however, contradict an earlier point I made. Even if the developers know what they're doing, it'll still be an overwhelming amount content poured into the new players. If you haven't played WoW before 2014, and you just started to pick it up today, you would shudder in fear as there is far too much content for you to progress through. You'd explode at the sight of being forced into the previous expansion just to level in, just to get into the new expansion. Which sucks because Shadowlands is extremely terrible, unless it's Battle for Azeroth, which is just as equally terrible. Hopefully they put in Dragonflight to be the expansion new players get thrown into, as I thought the levelling experience in Dragonflight was actually tame and pretty good. The same thought process applies to FFXIV aswell, but I don't necessarily think it's the same problem/solution.
My advice when getting into FFXIV right now? Probably wait until after Dawntrail's first week or so since not only are the servers going to be congested, but everyone wants to play Dawntrail and experience the new content. Maybe even a month total. But when that all settles, it's completely okay to "rush" through the MSQ in ARR, if you got friends that got you into the game, ask them about ARR, and they'll almost certainly explain alot of ARR to you. If you don't got friends and you are going in solo, completely blind, I recommend finding a video about lore in ARR and seeing if that interests you since the lore in Heavensward and going forward revolves around the lore in ARR. Do not solely just the MMO just off of ARR, you should judge it after beating Heavensward, maybe post-Heavensward.
The most important advice I can give is to have fun. If you're not having fun, then there is no reason to push yourself to play or continue that activity. There's a reason we have thousands of games to play, you choose which one strikes your fancy, and you roll with it, unless you lose the interest, in which you just bounce around. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.
I did not expect to be writing multiple paragraphs on something like this today. I guess this is what happens when I get passionate about video games as a whole, they provide entertainment, and should be only providing entertainment instead of existential dread, greed, or other nonsense that nobody wants. Without these forms of entertainment, our culture would not expand to where it is today, whether it be good or bad. I'm not thankful or happy that our current culture has taken a massive toll, like with awful memes, AI-generated posts, or just pure brainrot that spills into even more brainrot, but it is what it is, especially in today's era.
Someday, we're going to enter a brand new era of video games, where we stopped whatever awful business practices are happening behind the scene, or ditching the ideas of the things that make people have a fear of missing out. Today, this year, and perhaps this decade, we will not be entering that era. But that is totally fine, we have our comfortable game that we've found, and as stated before, we can bounce around to other games that fit. Yet someday, when we do enter this era of entertainment, I suspect brand new ideas before our eyes, things that are impossible today, might be possible in the near or far future. Depending on how you look at it, the outcome is always that the past will forever be behind us. We have come so far to exceed our ancestor's excellance, yet so far from what we can consider perfection.
Oh gosh, why am I still typing? Are my thoughts truly infinite? Not that I want people to read my posts that are most likely the cause of schizophrenia. You guys got better things to do than to look at what has been on my mind, or what my current thought train is like when I get passionate about a game I like, or games in general. Truly my time spent here has been put to good use. Truly the concept of time is an anomaly to me as I continue posting essays that would make a college student wish they could possess the endurance of my fingers smacking into each keypad. Truly will noone pay any attention to the person trying to slam a billion paragraphs of nothing into an assignment. Truly the mind is plagued by ADHD...
Guess I'll be signing off now. I'll be playing Deep Rock Galactic for the rest of my day, maybe some FFXIV if I feel like flashbanging myself since I always have player effects on which is definitely not causing me to go blind by the day. After all, it is the fun I enjoy.
See you all in a few days when I have recovered from typing a tremendous amount of text that nobody really cares.
abraker appearanceabraker wrote:
wtf this thread has dissertations
that is scary
airbaker apparents....cr0w wrote:
abraker appearanceabraker wrote:
wtf this thread has dissertations
that is scary
urn backing a parents...Achromalia wrote:
airbaker apparents....cr0w wrote:
abraker appearanceabraker wrote:
wtf this thread has dissertations
that is scary
erm, barking up errands?? ??cr0w wrote:
urn backing a parents...Achromalia wrote:
airbaker apparents....cr0w wrote:
abraker appearanceabraker wrote:
wtf this thread has dissertations
that is scary
