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More than once while playing FFXIV now consistently over the past several weeks to months I found myself missing a lot of things that World of Warcraft had that isn’t exactly present in Final Fantasy 14.
chapters:
0:00 FFXIV players are mostly good
1:23 things that drew me to FFXIV
3:03 why the MSQ felt “off” to me
10:28 1. Mindless grinding
12:40 2. Skill names
15:36 3. Open World
16:39 4. Music and sound design
18:04 5. Hyper responsive combat
18:55 Am I switching back?
source
About the subjects you bring in your msq part, shadowbringers and endwalker might help a lot (for music too actually).
For mindless grinding, there are some too for example the relics, or eureka.
Regarding the other points, it comes down to taste, so I can't say much on this 🙂
If you want mindless grind, just wait for Bozja lol. On the sound point, I played WoW for several years. I can't hum a single tune from the game, and I don't remember any sounds outside to the quest accept and completion ones and Fan of Knives, which annoyed me to no end. I didn't grow up with the game though, as FFXI was my first MMO and I only started WoW after BC.
I feel that you actually need to return to WOW so you can see again what it is like. Most of your takes, even though I agree in some part at your level in game, are comparisons with Vanilla that does not exist anymore. And even if you get in Classic I'm sure you will immediately regret yourself because the game as it was is not fun anymore… that is the sense of Nostalgia triggering into our brains. I've sensed the same thing before and I instantly confronted myself with the reality – It was boring as hell !!!.
Another thing is that most of your takes here will disapear as you level or as you reach max level (remember when that expansion came out). There are a bunch of mindless grinding, the World will be more meaningful to you than anything in WOW, the music and sound design will blow your mind in the later expansions and the combat gets way more fun and mechanically interesting. Regarding story I just say wait and see 😉
And for last, damn… WOW is so bad right now in all of those fields compared to FF! No Story, Grinds are mostly mandatory, the World is completely fractured and meaningless, music is complete garbage and combat is boring as hell. Seriously, if you need just take a brake and come back later… nothing wrong with that. 👍
This is for the MSQ in FF14 and Wow you are the zero to hero in their own way. The lore, story action there you paid to be the hero yes but in WoW's case you dont because you will miss out in content if you stick to one class if they have a legendary item or a class quest like with rogue in MoP and you miss out in lore and crazy events that only happen if you paid for the wow books I still cant get over how soo much cool stuff happens that will never been put into the game. So with the content of a book paywall and stuff that gets retcon FF14 wins in consistent content, lore and story.
The open world in wow is limited in a way all the space but you dont do anything with it but here comes in the grind in areas you now have a uses to be in crazy that the grind makes the open world have some meaning but in shadowlands the world is split into zones but not that big of a problem.
And I did come back to WoW two weeks ago been away for 6yrs and boy nothing much has change. Dungeons are still too big with groups that people find away to skill just about everything ( i like ff14 way simple one line you have to face each group ) I dont miss the toxic people that still play and expect you to know everything, still drop you if you dps is low even if you just ding to 60 and DF lets you into heroic. Only wish my chill guild was around to play with.
Some info you might find useful :
– about mindless grinding, currently, the closest thing I found is actually gathering. Mining, herbalism, or even fishing. Yes, there are skills to use, but they're kinda optional, they make the grind more efficient, but they're not mandatory. Safe for fishing, fishing is actually pretty involved.
Furthermore, starting with Stormblood, class abilites are no longer gated behind class quests, meaning after level 60, you only gain new skills through levelling. This was done precisely to not frustrate players by forcing them to do the class quest asap, before continuing whatever they were currently going.
– regarding skill names…it's kinda funny, but you really stumbled on two of the worse classes, the third one being Samuraï (and arguably the fourth one being Sage which has greek-like skill names). Other classes have skill names that are more western-friendly. So, yeah, kinda bad luck here.
– map design and open-worldness do get better as you get into more recent expensions. It's clear that they had to do what they could when they had to recreate ARR from scratch after the failure of 1.0, and map quality does go up substentially from what I'm seeing, being in the later stage of Stormblood, and it still keeps getting better from what I've red.
– about the music, Wow soundtrack is more atmospheric, and as such, I find that it has more cohesion, whereas FF music is much more varied, sometimes even experimental. On the flipside, you'll find more banger soundtracks in FF, just because, well, first, there are so many of them! And second, because they are more involved, and go further to convey things. It's how you said, the difference between a music that is mainly here to support the other elements, and a music that is one of the main roles.
– as for the the combat feel…Wow combat is more responsive, and there is a floatyness about FF14 which takes some time to get used to, and does make things trickier than they should be (healers will know what I mean, because goddam if you want to successfully use Rescue on an ally, you better anticipate that your teamate will do a mistake, because only reacting will not be enough) That being said, as someone who has played quite some MMOs, well, the floatiness is not unique to FF14, and the good thing is that, well, it's the same thing for the enemies, they do lag a little too, and reaction times are kinda slow, and if they're not slow, then you were supposed to anticipate what happens with another mechanic, like enemies shouting something, or body animation, an arm raised, something like this. Point being, yes, FF14 is much less reactive than Wow, due to technical limitations, but it thankfully is designed around it, and it has its own rythm.
Lastly, about Wow, do what you feel like doing! I myself will never touch Wow again, not because I hate it, I just stopped mid MoP because of lack of interesting casual group content, and found so many other game that are more to my taste. But I'm still following the news, because, you know, nostaliga. ^^
The mindless grinds actually come after the stories are done in FFXIV. They also start consolidating the job quests when you get to shadowbringers. But yeah, having so much to still unlock is overwhelming.
Where are Melon, dragon and Lilith stream gang represent
If you feel like resubing to wow, certainly go for it. You shouldn't be stuck playing one game all the anyways. I also kinda miss mindless grind, like having a podcast or YouTube video playing in the background when I play.
poor guy has no clue what he's in for
your still in that phase where you cant let wow go and are comparing everything to it
I think part of the issue with the different hero's journeys is you can't really have big potentially world ending threats and swoop in and be the hero that saves the day and then like go back to being a nobody. I've never played WoW but I seem to recall a gripe I heard was there actually wasn't enough acknowledgement of your accomplishments, NPCs treat you like a nobody even if what you've done is a pretty big deal. I think if you have a story where your hero is kind of a nobody, it's difficult to keep that up for long because once you have a really big threat it would be weird for no one to acknowledge that or go right back to treating you like trash lol, so you either have to have pretty small scale conflicts and save the big world ending threat for the last thing before you end your story which is a bizarre concept for an MMO which tends to want to keep going and going, or you just abandon the hero is a nobody angle and embrace the acclaim moving forward after some big conflict. In the case of FF because so much of the early game conflict is political and militaristic in nature, just being a super powerful hero isn't actually enough, the end of ARR relies upon a coordinated military assault from the 3 city states, and this is something that can only really happen if the leaders of the city states actually know who you are which by extension means they are aware of your deeds.
I have played ffxiv since 2.0. After the story goes then you have the grind to look forward to. This is perfectly natural, but it does feel rat-race-like. You have relics, glam, mount farming and leveling other jobs.
Thats about it. If your brain ever falls out of favor for any of those things, then RIP your sub.
Hey man, take this comment how you will. And if you think its disrespectful or ignorant, thats cool too. But I know "WoW lifetime players" when I see them. They can't stop comparing FF to WoW, they can't stop talking about WoW, even tho they're playing FF, like they're talking about an Ex-Girlfriend. They try to adjust to a different video game systems and different community, but ultimately they rebound back to what's comfortable.
The whole Migration of WoW players to FF was a trend, and i can't wait for the day for it to be over. I played FF because its Final Fantasy, and not because it "wasn't WoW", and I didn't do it because of a trend. The constant comparisons are just kinda pointless. If you don't like aspects of the game, then don't play the game. This is explicitly evident in the recent Addon drama. Don't like FF's ToS? Don't play the game. Its pretty simple.
Forcing yourself and try to push the idea onto others that FF should be a certain way is kinda ridiculous. Should FF start allowing addons now because a bunch of WoW players miss their addons? No thanks. Don't care honestly if a few hundred or thousand people quit FF because of it. Gatekeeping is good when its for a cause that the majority of a community stands up for and understands the intentions of what is being Gate-Kept.
you want mindless grind try that arr relic weapon grind, each expansion has these weapons but some are tied to eureka
I think one of the big problems you're facing is that WoW teaches people that the grinds have to be end level content, not something that you go and do before you hit that point, while FF has grinds that can be started as early as level 15 (Gold Saucer). There's also things like Beast Tribes that you can grind rep with and get stuff like mounts, pets and crafting materials as well as Allagan Tomestones for endgame equipment. There's more that falls into the "Come home, grind for fifteen minutes and be done" category. WoW doesn't really have anything like that anymore and none of what they do have below max level will still help you at max level.
As for the jobs, you can easily level one without going back to do your job quests every five levels, you may miss out on having some of your abilities until you go back and do them, but doing that allows you to follow the class job stories in a bit more coherent manner. WoW use to make you go back to your class trainer to learn new spells as well before they got rid of it in retail, I'm not sure how much of a Vanilla experience Classic is, but it should still have it for that genuine experience.
As for the names of the spells, meh, you don't really have to learn/know the names, you just have to figure out what each does and put it on your action bar in a way that makes it intuitive as to what you should click next – since I play every class that I have access to, it was something that I figured out pretty quick. I also use a standardized layout across all my characters so I don't get confused when I switch between them. You can also arrange your Ten/Chi/Jin in such a way that you only have to think of it in a 1+2=single target lighting, 3+2+1=haste buff, etc.
I say play whichever one your having fun in.
Glamour Collection. That is all I miss from WoW that needs to be in FF14.
After competing all expansions in ffxiv exept endwalker the song Dragonsong from Heavensward still gives me insane chills
I would highly recommend leveling up Blue Mage if you are planning to grind for relic weapons. They make short work of the grind but also they are uniquely fun to play as.
About criticism, FFXIV can take some. Zepla does it frequently and most of us agree to her complaints. The problem happens when misunderstanding happens such as talking about slow combat in FFXIV when they have not experienced end game content. And not giving the game an honest try and complain about it, IE Lazypeon.
If you like taking L's and the hero's journey then you're probably gonna love stormblood.
👏👏👏
Hey so just so you in a the blessing of light isn't stolen from you. It can't be taken or reused or shared. I won't spoiler but you are not infallible. The warrior of light is a person who, at their core, is a person who wants to help everyone. Especially those who wrong you Or others.