Hi All,
Welcome back to the return of the normal video essays and to make up for a month without them I’ve made sure to make this one extra long. I started playing a bit of Guild Wars 2 and this was an interesting thought experiment that came out of it
I still 100% love Final Fantasy XIV, finally transfered to an Oceanic realm so my ping will be good enough to get into a raiding FC which’ll be equally cool too. So keen to see what the future holds and even more excited to keep making videos.
Thanks for watching all
Timeline:
0:00 Introduction
1:13 WoW exodus
3:00 Rise of FFXIV
4:22 GW the game
7:02 GW2 the good
21:04 GW2 the bad
30:14 Comparisons
40:26 Conclusions
source
Absolutely great Video man, I really like this perspective overall. Games should be able to coexist as you mention, and guild wars 2 and FF having a similar philosophy of come back when you want reflects this perfectly.
The thing about GW2 is that it's so different from all other MMORPGs, that it initially scares players away who are brainwashed into thinking that MMOs should be played a certain way and they don't want to change their approach to how they play MMOs. If GW2 was given the popularity that FF14 was given since WoWs decline it would have been the 'Perfect Storm' for the MMO Gaming Industry, as the appeal of how an MMO can tackle everything from questing to massive multi-player activities and zone-events completely different from all other games in its genre. This in itself would drive changes in the mostly 'Stale' and 'Repetitive' approach which all MMORPGs tend to take these days. People can argue that "Why change something that's not broken?", but to them I'll say "Change is what drives innovation". Everyone who plays MMOs in the current day and age doesn't want a re-skinned WoW with a different character cast, story and developers. We want something new and GW2 is what the MMO industry needs to learn from and expand upon. When people start to truly understand this game I'm 100% sure they'll all be kicking themselves thinking how they never played this Hidden Gem.
GW2 lost so much momentum right at the start. A huge patch content drought followed by an utter refusal on the part of the devs to confirm or deny an upcoming expansion pack. By the time they finally announced the first xpac a LOT of people had been driven away by the drought.
Lack of Dungeons? There are a lot of Fractals that basically replaced the Dungeons.
Otherwise nice Video 🙂
Anet have no idea how to market. Gw2 is the superior game by a mile.
I go back every few years and give GW2 another try but find myself unable to get past level 30. It's somehow the perfect storm of "Eh" to me which is a shame but I don't know what else to say for it. None of the races appeal to me and the classes are only just restricted enough in their weapon choice to bug me. I simply can't get into the salad elves or the snaggletooth hrothgar and without a race I can even tolerate it's a bit of an ask to push through 40 levels just to use the one expansion weaponset I want out of the class.
If they ever do add a new race I'll reinstall that day though. I can tell there's something there even if I have my own dumb hangups with the game.
Nope.
FFXIV is a lot better
You did quite a good job of trying to explain GW2 in a short time, but there are some thing I just want to expand on.
The action bar may only contain 10 skills, plus usually some class abilities on the F keys. But some of these skills, especially in certain professions, trigger your 1-5 skills to change. Additionally you can weapon swap mid fight. So there is a lot more going on than a quick glance on the UI might tell you. Also: The 1-5 skills are weapon AND class dependend, so a thief with a dagger has different skills than an elementalist with a dagger. Some weapons are one handed for main and / or of hand, which means they define the 1-3 and 4-5 skills and you can mix and match that stuff as well.
GW2 is a great game for people who enjoy exploration: Completing a map comes with rewards and on almost every map there a some secrets for you to find, including some really insane jumping puzzles. You truly get rewarded for that, not only by the loot but also by discovering some really pretty scenery. Yes, FF14 has jumping puzzles and pretty scenery as well. And if you enjoy that stuff over there you can just have some more of that stuff.
Due to the scaling mechanic, the world bosses and the daily achievements every map of the open world in GW2 feels alive. You rarely do events and such stuff on your own, but team up with other players without the need of actually teaming up. Helping each other and even reviving other players rewards you with xp, also there is no loot or resources competition. GW2 incentivises positive social interaction between players. As a result GW2 has one of the most welcoming and helpful communities I know in the mmo genre – which is another point which makes GW2 and FF14 compatible as FF14 has also one of the most welcoming and helpful communities.
GW2 tried to get away from many typical MMO things, and the holy trinity is one of these areas which causes a lot of trouble for new players who are used to that trinity to adjust. But instead of having defined roles were the abilities a pretty much set in stone you have a lot of flexibility with your build, and you can change things up anytime you are not in combat, going from a tank-like build to a dps or healer-like build in the middle of a raid with only a few seconds down time is abolutely possible, if you have prepared builds for that. Having that flexibility naturally comes with the cost of not being able to enforce these roles for raid content. But as a player tending towards healer jobs let me tell you: Single target heals with the necessity to fill up your screen with health bars of your raid group and having your gameplay happening on the UI instead in the game world always was awful. And there are still too many encounters where you could just black out the game world and just have the health bars (+buffs and debuff symbols) in so many mmos. I like the aoe and goup healing effects in GW2 more than returning to that UI stuff.
Gw2 raids do have healers and most of the fights have tanks. You should give the raids a try they are fully voice acted with great stories and the player characters even talk to each other. Gw2 also has strike missions that are 10 man bosses that are basically a primal fight from FFXIV. Lastly fractals are 5 man dungeon content in higher levels you bring healers / support. Anet does a terrible job outlining endgame content.
Both are dead pretty fast beyond story updates , barely qualifying as living place more like holiday destination alive for while dead for rest of year.
Dude calling wow exodus meanwhile making billion yearly guess how.btw gw2 and FFXIV stores are super malls compared to wow yet they don't make I bet none combined western mmorpgs make even half that money.
I know a lot about all 3 games.
Great video. GW2 is great in its own regard. It's not wow, it's not ff14, but it's a low key gem not many people know about. ANET's marketing team focuses on retention, not necessarily new players. New players only come on when they are specifically in the market for a new MMO(for various reasons), but it definitely doesn't appeal to your average gamer.
You can get ascended gear through just playing the game. Season maps have all ascended jewelry and backpack and one map also have ascended aquabreather for karma and mapcurrency. Raids, Strike mission and Fractals you also get currency to buy asended gear. In fractals and raids boxes also drops in high tiers and in the end you gonna drown in them too. Stike missions is probably the most easy way for people who dont want to raid or do high tier fractals. You just do them every day and then buy ascended weapons and gear from a vendor with the currency.
There are also ascended gear in PvP and WvW that you also buy for currency you get when playing the game.
In your achivement panel there are ascended weapons to get from each elite spec you choose, and also a free ascended weapon if you do the short story mission just after HoT.
At the very start it was hard to get ascended gear but now even my alt accounts have ascended gear pretty fast.
As for legendaries. Yes you can buy generation 1 legendary weapons on the trading post but you can also craft them your self. Legendary gear you can earn from PvE raids, WvW and PvP. My bet is that there will be a way to get then for strikes later on but that is just a guess. Also the legendary jewelry there is one for just playing through the seasons again. 2 collections for earrings and i made 2 rings in WvW which was easy for me and i already had everything. Might take longer for others.
So no need to use your laurels on that. Go to season maps and check the vendor and you will see what jewelry the npc have and then collect currency and then check another season map for other and so on.
But yeah you dont get the gear through raid gear only that takes you quite a while too to get a full set and you need to grind for that too in FF and WoW and other mmo =P
Another novel from me and also good and fair way to compare the game from you. I hope you find more fun in GW2 whilst waiting for content for FFXIV. And just as you brought up i play GW2 as main game and ESO when ever i feel i want a different point of view. It is healthy to not get stuck on just that one thing.