In all MMO discussion, it is pretty common that the conversation focuses either on doing as much damage as possible and playing perfectly, OR how little you need to do to beat easier content. But sometimes, even the “little you need to do” can be overwhelming for some players. In this video, I talk about, with a comparison to World of Warcraft as a primary example, why I believe it is a lot more acceptable to be bad at Final Fantasy 14 compared to other MMOs.
Discord Community Server, come hang out:
https://discord.gg/FDNFgEYyaT
Music Used:
FFXIV Endwalker – Cradle of Hope
#ffxiv #endwalker
Relevant subjects for further learning:
How strong do you need to be to Savage Raid: https://youtu.be/jhbzZ4F-LxI
What makes a GOOD job BAD in Savage Raids: https://youtu.be/33xY6xxuFjI
All jobs are viable, even in Savage Raids: https://youtu.be/Bx1RTUZy66k
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:26 The Gearing Treadmill
01:39 World of Warcraft Comparison
02:32 Side Content without Gear Upgrades
03:05 Old Content Farmers
03:49 Final Fantasy 14 in Contrast
05:19 FFXIV’s Gear Treadmill
07:18 Catch Up Systems
08:53 Motivation for Gearing in FFXIV
09:33 Why it’s ok to suck at FFXIV
source
No, its not OK. Game too easy for Suck at it. Git gud
I can't suck if I never do challenging content. taps forehead
I'm just mediocre at FFXIV which is good enough for me and my Team
Knowing I will be part of a group of live players was always something that made me nervous to do new content, even MSQ stuff. After about the 4th person saying it was okay that I needed a rez I found out the community was actually pretty nice and understanding for new players. It took a lot of pressure off.
You don't need to be perfect or pretend that learning stuff is somehow toxic. Normalizing bad behavior is counterproductive to your message here. This is a social game, you play with other players. If you cannot pull your weight, you should improve at your own pace but it's not okay to be bad and demand that others tolerate your poor contributions. Have fun playing but you don't get to decide that your mediocre skill is fine and other people are actually the problem by holding you to a reasonable standard of basic skill.
thank you for this video! id recommend the watch of this as well: https://youtu.be/BKP1I7IocYU "Why its rude to suck at Warcraft" by Folding Ideas, where he disscusses the pressure on players and the repercussions of pushing towards what is percieved as optimal gameplay in WoW
I respect how FFXIV demands so little of your time to keep up with it
But also it can be frustrating if you want to play other jobs and simply can't because its better to gear up your main and gear is so heavily restricted. For the first four months, all you have is crafted gear, tomestone/augmented tomestone gear, and the gear from the savage raids themselves, which obviously don't really count if your goal is getting into savage in the first place.
Imo, there needs to be more horizontal gearing options. We eventually get that with alliance raid and augmented crafted gear, but those are also strictly worse than augmented tomestone and savage raid gear. They also have a weekly lockout too, and at the point in the raid tier that you can get them, most party finders are gonna demand you have an ilvl higher than what those will get you. Dungeon gear is also nowhere near good enough and is, for some reason, the hardest gear to get in the game.
The path to get into high end content seems accessible, but I honestly don't think it is. I really don't care how other MMOs are in this regard, I don't play them. Just looking at how FFXIV is, you either need several million gil to buy crafted gear at the start of a raid tier, or you wait like 2 months to get enough tomestone gear and normal raid gear. These are incredibly narrow pathways to actually get into this content. By the time it gets "easier", its late in the tier, or the next tier has already come out and now you're two raid tiers behind. "Just buy crafted gear" is really easy to say when you play regularly and have a regular source of gil. When I first started getting into raiding at the end of Shadowbringers, I didn't have the gil to buy the current crafted set, and it would take forever to get gear from tomestones and the current alliance raid. The first armor set I used was actually entirely from Bozja because it wasn't on a weekly lockout and was high enough ilvl to be perfectly viable. Even better, the Bozja instances sync your ilvl even if you're below that, so the barrier of entry was nothing. We need alternative sources of gear like that at the start of every raid tier, where people can find some content they enjoy, and can just do that and get viable gear from it in a reasonable amount of time.
Being mediocre is fine, being bad isn't. If you have an Endwalker title, yet dare to try wall to wall pulls without a tank stance and glammed lv 10 gear in Totorak, you bet your ass I'm going to call you out for it, no matter how easy the content is.
Excellent video as always!
I totally agree heheheh
Great video Cae! I think FFXIV is a great game to play casually, you get an amazing story and it doesn't make you sacrifice all your free time just to be able to keep up.
You get your money's worth even if just for the MSQ.
So, I kinda agree partially with the point, I play since beta 3, sadly in XIV NA community endgame in PF, calling people out for mistakes is basically a crime and you are "toxic" for it, even if you are literally trying to help, people feels bad or have anxiety and you are "evil".
Good video and points tho, for casual I must say, respect the content and respect the time of your fellow friends in party, if you don't know something, ask, and knows the basics of the game if you are 80+, not everything is uptime and parse if you don't read your skills or know what a tank stance is.
I agree with this I like to play tanks but honestly got drawn away because I can't remember pathing or the metas as I work alot of the time I don't have time to remember all the gimmicks now I just play samurai less people getting annoyed at me especially in aururm vale. I mainly tank only with friends now.
I would agree with most of your points, however, i see more and more parties doing savage content with an insanely high item lvl requirement. people are asking for ilvl 628+ while its not even optimal in some cases for highest damage output
An excellent video. My spouse and I started XIV a year ago (I played WoW for over a decade in my teen years) and Abyssos is our first current raid tier and it's their first time experiencing the "end game gearing" or gear treadmill aspect of any game, let alone an MMO. Interestingly, the part that doesn't make sense to them is the weekly lockout system on the farmable weapon items from the normal raids and from the catch-up alliance raid, Euphrosyne at this point. I personally have lived with the weekly raid lockout system since 2005 and have simply accepted it as writ of law, however all the other content in XIV doesn't abide by these rules and so I really had no reasonable explanation for why MMOs in particular do this to time-gate gear upgrades, besides just making sure people come back to play the game more the next week. I'd love to know what other people think of this age-old system.
On the topic of "doing other content", now that we're caught up on the MSQ and have done pretty much all the normal mode stuff available, we're going back to do relic weapon grinds, for the glams, and also chuckling our way through the whole Hildebrand questlines to unlock the EW relics because they are a decent weapon to get to catch-up to current patch content. It's just nice to not have to feel pressured to gear up/play the game only one way.
Also a funny story about being lazy and how it's rude, we had an ally raid, either Aglaia or Euph and the whole party basically said "yeah sorry guys I'm not playing too hot tonight" and everyone just agreed we were all going to suck very badly, do bad DPS, and need lots of rezzes for missing mechanics but that it was just fine and thats how that raid was going to go. We all had a giggle and I wanted to share that, something that I think is pretty unique about it being okay to suck at XIV.
this is such a good video to counter the videos that have come out condemning certain elitist raid groups
i absolutely adore and cherish you're contributions to this community
also i love your fun facts at the end of every video. it stirs my little trivia loving heart.