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progression at max level
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
How much actuall progression is there when you reach max level?
Class progression?
Story progression?
Gear progression?
Dungeon progression?
Area progression?
Crafting progression?
In general i loose interest in games when there is nop more usefull progression anymore... i want to move forward, yet i am not a completionist..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
It depends a fair bit on how much of a 'completionist' you are and what your gaming personality is.
I personally love the breakdown between crafting/gathering/leveling. You can have an endless amount of fun just doing that alone and not counting dungeons/raids into that mix.
But that being said there are multiple teirs of progression for each class once you get to the end of the game, similar to other MMOs. You can go and run dungeons/raids until your eyes fall out, some of them are fairly hard (But of course give the best loot), additional it is story driven as well, so you will get to have everyone praising you for being a bad ass.
Crafting wise, depending on how focused you are on it can net you stupid amounts of gil. There are crafting progressions (One star, two star, etc) which will require you to massively min/max your gear, level cross crafting classes, etc. You'll likely never be 'done'. But if you stick with it, you can probably buy a small to medium sized house and laugh at poor people.
Really all depends on your energy level. I personally love it.
As others said the amount of progression depends on your mentality going into the game. I will give you my review of the progression in the game and at endgame. This is sorta a long read. But this is my experience as an endgame player and guild leader of an endgame focused guild.
Class Progression: (Minimal Progression to NO progression)
You have your 60 levels and a few job quest that grant abilities. In XIV that is more or less it for class progression. I would say it is extremely limited compaired to other mmos out there on the market. It is a strait linear shot in XIV, everyone is the same at cap level on a job there is no real variances.
Story Progression: (High)
One thing XIV does good is updates which add new main story and sub story lines to the game. These are done at a higher rate then honestly any other mmo I can think of WoW included. Currently from start to finish you probably have nearly 100hrs of story content in XIV including both ARR and Heavens.
The negative is how SE does the story. Through a ton of delivery quest, kill X mob quest, Turn in X item quest. It is outdated and way way way too drawn out. But the story line is solid and there is alot of it, especially for a mmo. Starts out sorta slow in both expansions and really picksup as you get in it.
Gear Progression: (Average by today's standard)
Gear is on par with say WoW's progression model. It is linear tiered. Once you hit a new tier you have no reason to go backwards at all. This has its own share of problems such as lack of relevant content to do once you get to the highest tier, but it is no different then any other themepark mmo.
Dungeon Progression (Average)
The game is based on linear tiers. Which is the definition of dungeon progression. Each dungeon 1-60 tends to add new mechanics. Raids take those mechanics and amplify them (Aka make the mechanic = 1shot for the alliance if you miss it).
Dungeon (Piss easy) => Primal (ok challange) => Easy Raid (Piss easy again) => Hard mode raid (Hard stuff)
Honestly everything in XIV is a joke difficulty wise besides the top tier progression.
Dungeons/easy raids you almost cannot fail
Primals will take 4-6hrs to beat normally if you have a competent gorup
Top tier raid will take 100s of hour to beat. (massive jump in difficulty for top tier raids)
Area Progression
Not real sure what this is. If you mean World. ARR world is minature compaired to most other mmos. The whole of ARR's world is probably the size of 1 continent in FFXI or WOW.
In Heavens the Zones I would say are about average size compaied to most main stream mmos. Much improved over the 2.0 game.
Areas overall flow well into each other.
Crafting (Extremly High Progression endgame, but pointless in the end)
Crafting there is a ton of progression especially at endgame. Leveling the craft up is easy, really easy. Capping it and getting all the rare items to craft higher tier stuff is extremly time consuming and requires alot of work. Again like Gear it is tiered.
Gathering I will put in the same boat. Getting it to cap level is like 25% of the way to capping the gathering/crafting class.
Negatives (And it is a big one in xiv):
It is a old school grind basically and the way FFXIV's economy works the stuff you make is weaker then what you can obtain else where and it is not needed to clear the top tier stuff. Normal tier crafted gear => Dungeon (Entree level) => Crafted HQ => Easy mode raid => Crafted HQ fully melded gear (think fully socketed gear) => Top tier endgame raid.
This causes all gear to become worthless as you progress through the patch. SE likes to add the new crafting recipes once people are already able to clear the top tier raids without them.... so for many ppl it makes them worthless.
The top tier raid can easily be cleared with easy mode raid gear. Crafting is 100% optional, and usally extremly expensive to get the gear. To note easy mode raid gear drops like candy it is alot easier then it would be to earn the gil to buy crafted fully melded gear or to make it yourself. Also note that when I say easy mode... I mean you can pug it and have like a 85% chance of success.
The economy in XIV I would say is extremly weak due to this fundamental design flaw of the economy. XIV's economy is mainly vanity items and maby 3weeks of valid crafted gear every 6 months. But the crafting and gathering classes themselves are probably some of the best in the genre in terms of progression and design. Great classes and garbage economy.
In Conclusion:
If you only care about what is relevant (top tier endgame), that progresses your character (makes you stronger in the game). You have about 10-15hrs a week of relevant gametime once you get to cap. With the new expansion though with all the classes to level to 60 it will take you along time to get to this point now expecially if you want to cap them all.
It is why some people say the content in XIV is absurd there almost too much, while other say the game is severly lacking content. It depends on how you look at it. Game has absurd amounts of fluff content, vanity, and achievement hunting. It depends on what you want. The epic sword of awsomeness or the little hard to obtain minion that follows you around your personal house that you built and furnished yourself.
This is where I would question are you someone that will get bored once you cannot better your character anymore?
If you are you will get bored when you get to the top tier of raids and get it on farm status. Because all you will have left is to farm the weaker gear which you can easily replace from the top tier raid. Once the top raid is on farm you can do all the top tier progression for all your fighting classes in approx 6hrs a week. Add on 8-10hrs if you want to mess with the economy some on crafting and gathering stuff.
For me as an endgame person who plays mmos to better a character and my guild. I can ride the themepark rollercoasters one day a week.. then I am suck riding the flying elephant ride, spinning tea cups, and the merry-go-round for the rest of the week. Sure there is stuff to do but it bored the hell out of me in ARR, I do not see the design changing in HW. It is the same problem WoW and all linear progression mmos have with thier endgame design.
I would say A Realm Reborn, version 2.0, suffered from begining to end with a massive lack of content problem for endgame players. Every patch nearly 55% of my guild (according to my attendance trackers not making this % up) took breaks/logged in a few hours week because they simply got bored of the game after 2-3months into a 6 month patch cycle.
As I said in the begining it depends on what you want to get out of the game. The majority of people in XIV will disagree with what I said above, because I am in a minority mindset of what I want to get out of a mmo. XIV has nearly 7000hrs of playable content if not more. But to me 85-90% of it has been negated.
I couldn't agree more with your statement!
It really depends what you want out of your game. FXIV follow the very linear gear grind raid/dungeon progression we've seen for awhile now. Don't kid your self end game is vertical gear progression. Yes, there is a lot of fluff, but the main end game is based on doing raid and dungeon instances like in every theme park mmo.
Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on what you want and like from your MMO, but if you don't like repeating the same content over and over again for a better iLevel then you my friend are shit out of luck.
Another thing to think about is all the free weekends and welcome backs they do when a patch is released, which often tells me there is high turnover rates in subscriptions. I know every MMO does this, but from what I've seen FFXIV does this more often then others.
I agree that you need to find what you are looking for in an MMO. For me, I have my wife and a few friends that play FFXIV. We love running dungeons as well as raiding (not hardcore raiding) and FFXIV does these things nicely. I dont need to spend time with the same 8 instances for 2 years FFXIV comes out with new instances even if its a hard mode of a new instance with completely new bosses every 3 months. So I get 3 new instances every 3 months I am happy because I will run instances 2 to 3 times a week and normally only 2 or 3 so I do not get bored of FFXIV where in other MMOs like WOW I do get bored of them. When it comes to the raids I didnt get a chance to do more than Turn 1 Coil before I left in 2.0 but having the raid hard but not overly hard was nice. So if my friends and I took 2 or 3 times to learn a turn we get that progression feeling without being hardcore raiders once again.
If you want a big open world Sandbox this is not it at all. Is more of a dungeon grinder MMO however you can avoid making the game just a dungeon grinder by making friends and running with friends. In my Opinion I enjoy that a lot more than what MMOs are today.
I agree that you need to find what you are looking for in an MMO. For me, I have my wife and a few friends that play FFXIV. We love running dungeons as well as raiding (not hardcore raiding) and FFXIV does these things nicely. I dont need to spend time with the same 8 instances for 2 years FFXIV comes out with new instances even if its a hard mode of a new instance with completely new bosses every 3 months. So I get 3 new instances every 3 months I am happy because I will run instances 2 to 3 times a week and normally only 2 or 3 so I do not get bored of FFXIV where in other MMOs like WOW I do get bored of them. When it comes to the raids I didnt get a chance to do more than Turn 1 Coil before I left in 2.0 but having the raid hard but not overly hard was nice. So if my friends and I took 2 or 3 times to learn a turn we get that progression feeling without being hardcore raiders once again.
If you want a big open world Sandbox this is not it at all. Is more of a dungeon grinder MMO however you can avoid making the game just a dungeon grinder by making friends and running with friends. In my Opinion I enjoy that a lot more than what MMOs are today.
DO you have a constant sub? Or let it laps and just resub off and on?
From now on i will have a constant sub. I stopped playing in Nov of 13 because my daughter was only 6 weeks old and I just couldn't play and get enough sleep, when I went back to MMOs in mid 14 I went back to WOW only because I had friends playing there and well again WOW failed for me so in Dec 14 I went back to FFXIV with my wife and been loving it since. I do not plan to jump MMOs anymore I found a home I like where I can play between 10 to 15 hours a week and not get bored. I could if I was playing hardcore again, but I cannot do that. I also just this month paid for a 6 month sub after being subbed for 6 months on the entry level sub.
I can see why if you are not a big dungeon guy why you wouldn't like this game. Darkness Falls is that not an DaoC dungeon?
You can race/raise chocobos! (not nearly as exciting as it sounds but I enjoy the chocobo racing/raising. I just wish they had "Cross-Server" races because I rarely ever race against another player, only NPCs).
You also can play the card game (the one that was in Final Fantasy 8, forget what it is called)
You can also own a house/decorate it?
Just some extra fluff!
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
Doesn't matter, they always add more stuff. Play for a month then wait for the next patch. That's what the cool kids do.