I love the combat, not one for button crunching. If the game is so boring move on instead of coming to the forums to cry about it. You had to of played a Final Fantasy Game in your life before unless you were just born so what did you expect? This is the Final fantasy style. With that said, Final Fantasy XiV ARR was made with fans of the IP in mind. Not to plz everyone.
You should try Tera Online out. I hear that game has fast combat. That might be a better suit.
I love the combat, not one for button crunching. If the game is so boring move on instead of coming to the forums to cry about it. You had to of played a Final Fantasy Game in your life before unless you were just born so what did you expect? This is the Final fantasy style. With that said, Final Fantasy XiV ARR was made with fans of the IP in mind. Not to plz everyone.
You should try Tera Online out. I hear that game has fast combat. That might be a better suit.
[mod edit] I guess I came to vent pissed off that I wasted $30.00. I tried TERA but questing was boring and too repetitive. Didn't enjoy the action style combat. I thought NW did it better.
I love the combat, not one for button crunching. If the game is so boring move on instead of coming to the forums to cry about it. You had to of played a Final Fantasy Game in your life before unless you were just born so what did you expect? This is the Final fantasy style. With that said, Final Fantasy XiV ARR was made with fans of the IP in mind. Not to plz everyone.
You should try Tera Online out. I hear that game has fast combat. That might be a better suit.
Agree completely, when I try a game and don't like it I don't go to its game forum to tell the people that like it that I think it sucks.
Right! I mean c'mon! It's crazy that people complain about the combat speed and claim the game sucks because its not as fast as they would like. For one, its everyones fault that wasted their money on a Final Fantasy title expecting something different when its always been that way with FF. Also, Don't most of these people think that A LOT of people (Myself) enjoy combat speeds a bit more relaxed. I HATE fast tweaky button crunching combat, so maybe i should go on the forums of games with super fast combat and complain that i think they suck because the combat is to fast. Lol
I love the combat, not one for button crunching. If the game is so boring move on instead of coming to the forums to cry about it. You had to of played a Final Fantasy Game in your life before unless you were just born so what did you expect? This is the Final fantasy style. With that said, Final Fantasy XiV ARR was made with fans of the IP in mind. Not to plz everyone.
You should try Tera Online out. I hear that game has fast combat. That might be a better suit.
[mod edit] I guess I came to vent pissed off that I wasted $30.00. I tried TERA but questing was boring and too repetitive. Didn't enjoy the action style combat. I thought NW did it better.
[mod edit] Next time before you waste money on a title you are not familiar with, wait for the game to come out, then Youtube game play footage and do some research on other gameplay features to see if its a suit for you. Can't say i feel your frustration because i don't run on and waste money on anything before i know that its something i want. G'luck to you in the future friend and i hope you take my advice
To judge combat based on how fast or slow it is and not how good it is,is probably the most shallow complaint i could hear.
I personally don't like FFXIV combat,not because of speed although there is a lot more can be done if it was slower yet.
A fight in FFXI could take 1-2 minutes,a fight in FFXIV can take around 15-20 seconds.
When cool downs are too fast,the game becomes spamming ,the worst kind of combat,FFXIV cool downs are too fast as is.
In FFXI some skills might have 15 or 30 second timers,some had 2 minutes,some 5 minutes and the best skill was a 2 hour skill.It means you have to "THINK" you have to manage your skills and play your player to the best of your ability.Slower combat also meant a good chance the mages mana supply would come under duress,so again smart management of resources,work as a team not as an individual spamming.
Things have all changed now,even FFXI is a ton faster now,it ruined the game badly.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The combat speed is largely based on the way high level encounters are set up. It takes in account that you should be thinking about what you are going to do rather than spamming buttons/skills like a coked up chipmunk. But this is more about the restraint placed on skill cooldowns rather than the actual speed of the combat. Some skills shared a GCD for a reason and some do not. The ones that do not are instant and highly situational.
For instance, trying to time a interrupt on Ifrit HM's eruption while spamming skills as soon as the GCD has expired will get your group wiped quick. Also it doesn't help to spam that interrupt because the boss will build a immunity if you're spamming it before he starts readying the skill. Therefor you have to coordinate with the other classes that can interrupt to pay attention to the skills they are using.
But what it ultimately boils down to is that FFXIV's combat pace works for FFXIV's encounters and TSW's combat pace works for it's encounters. And so on and so forth. So if you think that having a GCD for more skills/spells it less intense for an encounter I dare any of you to heal through a Titan HM fight or introduce yourself to AK's demon wall.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
On Titan Hardmode, I barely have enough time to use the skills I have. The GCD was designed with the constant moving anticipated from boss attacks.
I prefer this combat system to Wow, where you're just spamming buttons as soon as they're off cooldown. I also prefer this over GW2 because in 2, there was no strategy other than everyone avoiding their own red circles. Some really cool combinations and class design but it wasn't strong enough for me to stay.
Thre are plenty of people who prefer this combat system over twitchbased (wow) or action based (GW2/Tera). The market is saturated with games that have a FAST COMBAT system. you're more than welcome to play those games to your heart's content.
I like FFXIV as is.
100x this
slower? yes
better? hell yes
Its amazing how all the people who talk about not having consequences, challenege, etc etc in themeparks on other threads are the same ones knocking this combat.
It starts off slow, it finishes almost faster than I'm able to keep up.
Yes, I'm talking about Twintania (hardest boss in game). Timing is utterly critical. Between stacking to spread damage, positioning conflags, killing adds, avoiding dive bombs, and mitigating/healing the whole raid - you are going to wish you had more time.
Oh, and I left off the hardest part of the battle.
That said, the difficulty curve on the game is pretty whacked out. The entire game is mega easy until Titan HM. Then you have to master basically one mechanic. From there you refine all previous mechanics through Turn 4.
Then you get hit in the face with a sledgehammer. Makes me wonder what future content will be like.
It kinda makes me laugh when people claim that combat is slow because you "need to think" or something. That just isn't true for the seasoned MMO player who knows quite instinctively what to do at any given time, in my humble opinion—your mileage may vary depending on your experience with MMOs and your skill/response time as a human.
In my case, here's what I observed.
In FF14 you find yourself often waiting on something. Instant abilities are not really instant, since you can't use them while another animation is ongoing (meaning you usually can't use them halfway through the GCD or even more). Furthermore once you click on an 'instant' ability in FF14, you still have to wait for the animation to happen before that ability's effect is applied.
This results in frustrating situations like:
Enemy starts casting something.
*smashing button of instant stun ability* — why the hell doesn't it fire?!
*smashing more* —"still not happening… come ooooon"
*reason why you wanted to use the ability now moot* — "ooh gosh another interrupt that I just couldn't do"
*healer heals you*
It often doesn't feel like you're in control of your character. I don't like that.
In the same vein, defensive cooldowns and temporary buffs in general must be used preemptively since there's usually no way you have enough time to use them unless you planned for it. There's no such thing as a "panic button", even if there are "panic skills". That lowers the adrenaline for me, since you find yourself either correctly predicting what's next, or helplessly watching you fail, your character always one step behind what you're thinking.
Furthermore there's no customisation whatsoever: you level up 2 other classes to level 25 and 35 respectively (which is nothing but a grind of FATEs), on the same character, to pick a 5 additional skills for your main class, but everyone takes the same sub-skills for a given class since there are only so many choices.
Overall compared to other recent MMOs, the rotations (DD) and tanking/healing is as basic as it gets. There's one way to do it well and that's usually it (which prompts my earlier saying that there's not much to think about once you know your class well). It's a basic 3-step combo (press 1, 2, 3, rinse and repeat) for most classes. Granted, some have more interesting rotations (Black Mage, the primary caster; Monk, a melee class; Dragoon, another melee class; and Bard, a ranged bow-wielder), but it's nothing particularly better than other games.
Beyond this intended gameplay, there's the matter of server live-state latency with the client (see this post for a more comprehensive take on the matter). This results in your buffs sometimes not being registered in time, even if they were on your screen (you're always one step behind the server which runs the live-state, unlike most MMO), even bugs where activating several buffs too quickly will result in them going on cooldown but the effect not applying.
Which brings us to the "memory game". Since your client is always a bit behind what's really happening in the game (server-side, pretty much all of it), in a way which is therefore aggravated by your internet latency to the server (ping), coupled with a positional check that only happens every .3 seconds (which is quite slow and is also aggravated by your ping, meaning you can easily reach .5s if you don't live close enough to the Canadian datacenter), the only way to clear the hardest encounters, which feature many OHKO (One-Hit Knock-Out) mechanics such as AoEs, is to memorise exactly the boss rotation. Bosses in FF14 usually don't do random stuff, they perform the exact same skills all the time, in the same exact order. This is how people in farm mode kill them quite easily, and actually manage to kill them in the first place. It's a memory game, much more than a reaction-based game, and it's obviously aggravated by the slow GCD.
If you think about it though, it does form a quite coherent whole, wherein you memorise stuff, then anticipate your own actions. If you happen to like that, it's arguable that the flow is nicely crafted. However that means little improvisation on your part, very generic encounters once you know them, since it's always more of the exact same.
The grind therefore gets quite tedious, as far as I'm concerned. Each boss, each dungeon, each raid is always exactly the same once you've mastered it. Down to trash mobs, you just know that this mob is going to do 'cone AoE', then hit twice, then 'cone AoE' again, and so on for each single mob and boss in most of the game. I've observed variations, sometimes, in lower level dungeons, but it's far from being an engaging enemy AI to me. Even WoW, which is a reference but certainly not a world of surprises, is much more dynamic and able to throw you off your game, in my personal experience (MoP). This especially shows in late-game encounters, where farming raids in WoW was fun for a much longer time than in FF14, if only because things get less predictable. I've cleared up to Coil T2, tried on T4, and thus can't really comment on T5 (the 4th and last raid boss of the game so far) since I haven't tried it before I left.
Initially when I tried this game in beta, I really enjoyed combat (level was limited to 20). I found it dynamic enough even with the slow GCD, and animations/effects are really beautiful (that's FF for you). But it gets old once you try to dig into a more complex perspective—or rather lack thereof. As time went by into release, reaching max level, I really found it less and less interesting.
Along with their network model, it's a reason why I left the game and don't really plan on going back, unless they drastically improve the responsiveness (don't know how unless they pour millions more into their code/architecture and take many months to achieve it), and revamp the class design to allow for more combat variety with each class, and more customisation.
It looks like I'm trashing the game but most of this is factual, I've tried to say when it was opinion. Admittedly, some players are enjoying combat in this game, but given the sheer fandom that surrounds Final Fantasy, I can't help but wonder how many of these players do actually really like this game's mechanics (should they appear in another game not called FF and without the lore, music and graphics of that franchise). As in, 'bias of confirmation', "It's FF thus it's great" (especially those who stuck with 1.0 even though it was universally admitted that it was just an awfully designed game). I do find puzzling the level of white-knight-ing when one tries to criticise this game; there's something just off about that. Compared to more obscure IPs, I mean.
To conclude, please don't take this as "the truth", because it's not, it's just my take—and please don't attack me for it. I would still recommend buying this game if you like FF and want to spend a month leveling and grinding some endgame stuff ($30 isn't that much for that, arguably). However, I'd cautious you against imagining that you're going to want to stick with it for a long time, because it might just not be true. Granted also, with more patches, and as I said, a good overhaul of some lacking designs and especially their netcode (which won't bother you much until you reach endgame), it could become a very good game. Right now combat and class design are not worth more than 5/10 for me however, compared to other MMOs. Probably less, actually.
It kinda makes me laugh when people claim that combat is slow because you "need to think" or something. That just isn't true for the seasoned MMO player who knows quite instinctively what to do at any given time, in my humble opinion—your mileage may vary depending on your experience with MMOs and your skill/response time as a human.
In my case, here's what I observed.
In FF14 you find yourself often waiting on something. Instant abilities are not really instant, since you can't use them while another animation is ongoing (meaning you usually can't use them halfway through the GCD or even more). Furthermore once you click on an 'instant' ability in FF14, you still have to wait for the animation to happen before that ability's effect is applied.
This results in frustrating situations like:
Enemy starts casting something.
*smashing button of instant stun ability* — why the hell doesn't it fire?!
*smashing more* —"still not happening… come ooooon"
*reason why you wanted to use the ability now moot* — "ooh gosh another interrupt that I just couldn't do"
*healer heals you*
It often doesn't feel like you're in control of your character. I don't like that.
In the same vein, defensive cooldowns and temporary buffs in general must be used preemptively since there's usually no way you have enough time to use them unless you planned for it. There's no such thing as a "panic button", even if there are "panic skills". That lowers the adrenaline for me, since you find yourself either correctly predicting what's next, or helplessly watching you fail, your character always one step behind what you're thinking.
Furthermore there's no customisation whatsoever: you level up 2 other classes to level 25 and 35 respectively (which is nothing but a grind of FATEs), on the same character, to pick a 5 additional skills for your main class, but everyone takes the same sub-skills for a given class since there are only so many choices.
Overall compared to other recent MMOs, the rotations (DD) and tanking/healing is as basic as it gets. There's one way to do it well and that's usually it (which prompts my earlier saying that there's not much to think about once you know your class well). It's a basic 3-step combo (press 1, 2, 3, rinse and repeat) for most classes. Granted, some have more interesting rotations (Black Mage, the primary caster; Monk, a melee class; Dragoon, another melee class; and Bard, a ranged bow-wielder), but it's nothing particularly better than other games.
Beyond this intended gameplay, there's the matter of server live-state latency with the client (see this post for a more comprehensive take on the matter). This results in your buffs sometimes not being registered in time, even if they were on your screen (you're always one step behind the server which runs the live-state, unlike most MMO), even bugs where activating several buffs too quickly will result in them going on cooldown but the effect not applying.
Which brings us to the "memory game". Since your client is always a bit behind what's really happening in the game (server-side, pretty much all of it), in a way which is therefore aggravated by your internet latency to the server (ping), coupled with a positional check that only happens every .3 seconds (which is quite slow and is also aggravated by your ping, meaning you can easily reach .5s if you don't live close enough to the Canadian datacenter), the only way to clear the hardest encounters, which feature many OHKO (One-Hit Knock-Out) mechanics such as AoEs, is to memorise exactly the boss rotation. Bosses in FF14 usually don't do random stuff, they perform the exact same skills all the time, in the same exact order. This is how people in farm mode kill them quite easily, and actually manage to kill them in the first place. It's a memory game, much more than a reaction-based game, and it's obviously aggravated by the slow GCD.
If you think about it though, it does form a quite coherent whole, wherein you memorise stuff, then anticipate your own actions. If you happen to like that, it's arguable that the flow is nicely crafted. However that means little improvisation on your part, very generic encounters once you know them, since it's always more of the exact same.
The grind therefore gets quite tedious, as far as I'm concerned. Each boss, each dungeon, each raid is always exactly the same once you've mastered it. Down to trash mobs, you just know that this mob is going to do 'cone AoE', then hit twice, then 'cone AoE' again, and so on for each single mob and boss in most of the game. I've observed variations, sometimes, in lower level dungeons, but it's far from being an engaging enemy AI to me. Even WoW, which is a reference but certainly not a world of surprises, is much more dynamic and able to throw you off your game, in my personal experience (MoP). This especially shows in late-game encounters, where farming raids in WoW was fun for a much longer time than in FF14, if only because things get less predictable. I've cleared up to Coil T2, tried on T4, and thus can't really comment on T5 (the 4th and last raid boss of the game so far) since I haven't tried it before I left.
Initially when I tried this game in beta, I really enjoyed combat (level was limited to 20). I found it dynamic enough even with the slow GCD, and animations/effects are really beautiful (that's FF for you). But it gets old once you try to dig into a more complex perspective—or rather lack thereof. As time went by into release, reaching max level, I really found it less and less interesting.
Along with their network model, it's a reason why I left the game and don't really plan on going back, unless they drastically improve the responsiveness (don't know how unless they pour millions more into their code/architecture and take many months to achieve it), and revamp the class design to allow for more combat variety with each class, and more customisation.
It looks like I'm trashing the game but most of this is factual, I've tried to say when it was opinion. Admittedly, some players are enjoying combat in this game, but given the sheer fandom that surrounds Final Fantasy, I can't help but wonder how many of these players do actually really like this game's mechanics (should they appear in another game not called FF and without the lore, music and graphics of that franchise). As in, 'bias of confirmation', "It's FF thus it's great" (especially those who stuck with 1.0 even though it was universally admitted that it was just an awfully designed game). I do find puzzling the level of white-knight-ing when one tries to criticise this game; there's something just off about that. Compared to more obscure IPs, I mean.
To conclude, please don't take this as "the truth", because it's not, it's just my take—and please don't attack me for it. I would still recommend buying this game if you like FF and want to spend a month leveling and grinding some endgame stuff ($30 isn't that much for that, arguably). However, I'd cautious you against imagining that you're going to want to stick with it for a long time, because it might just not be true. Granted also, with more patches, and as I said, a good overhaul of some lacking designs and especially their netcode (which won't bother you much until you reach endgame), it could become a very good game. Right now combat and class design are not worth more than 5/10 for me however, compared to other MMOs. Probably less, actually.
Seriously thinking about buying FF14:ARR, but this post is also seriously making me reconsider.
The combat doesn't require skill or speed at endgame it requires learning the boss attacks, memorising them and moving ahead of time to avoid being hit.
That is it. TBH I am surprised there are not scripts and bots for endgame yet. lol
I really enjoyed the story and leveling in the game but heh the endgame sucks and so does the lame lame combat mechanics. The global cooldown is a form of artificial and sucky method to make endgame "harder".
I have come to believe much of this design is either
A) they don't know how to code a MMO for the modern era.
or
the know their netcode sucks really bad and can't/don't want to fix it so designed the game around it.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Seriously thinking about buying FF14:ARR, but this post is also seriously making me reconsider.
I would suggest finding out for yourself.
No, don't bother. That guy nailed it. I mean, normally with that much text I would toss it aside as some kind of a tirade. But everything he said was spot on.
Actually, I think you should try it for yourself. It's only $30 and you can see just how spot on this guy was and analyze it for yourself.
It kinda makes me laugh when people claim that combat is slow because you "need to think" or something. That just isn't true for the seasoned MMO player who knows quite instinctively what to do at any given time, in my humble opinion—your mileage may vary depending on your experience with MMOs and your skill/response time as a human.
In my case, here's what I observed.
In FF14 you find yourself often waiting on something. Instant abilities are not really instant, since you can't use them while another animation is ongoing (meaning you usually can't use them halfway through the GCD or even more). Furthermore once you click on an 'instant' ability in FF14, you still have to wait for the animation to happen before that ability's effect is applied.
This results in frustrating situations like:
Enemy starts casting something.
*smashing button of instant stun ability* — why the hell doesn't it fire?!
*smashing more* —"still not happening… come ooooon"
*reason why you wanted to use the ability now moot* — "ooh gosh another interrupt that I just couldn't do"
*healer heals you*
It often doesn't feel like you're in control of your character. I don't like that.
In the same vein, defensive cooldowns and temporary buffs in general must be used preemptively since there's usually no way you have enough time to use them unless you planned for it. There's no such thing as a "panic button", even if there are "panic skills". That lowers the adrenaline for me, since you find yourself either correctly predicting what's next, or helplessly watching you fail, your character always one step behind what you're thinking.
Furthermore there's no customisation whatsoever: you level up 2 other classes to level 25 and 35 respectively (which is nothing but a grind of FATEs), on the same character, to pick a 5 additional skills for your main class, but everyone takes the same sub-skills for a given class since there are only so many choices.
Overall compared to other recent MMOs, the rotations (DD) and tanking/healing is as basic as it gets. There's one way to do it well and that's usually it (which prompts my earlier saying that there's not much to think about once you know your class well). It's a basic 3-step combo (press 1, 2, 3, rinse and repeat) for most classes. Granted, some have more interesting rotations (Black Mage, the primary caster; Monk, a melee class; Dragoon, another melee class; and Bard, a ranged bow-wielder), but it's nothing particularly better than other games.
Beyond this intended gameplay, there's the matter of server live-state latency with the client (see this post for a more comprehensive take on the matter). This results in your buffs sometimes not being registered in time, even if they were on your screen (you're always one step behind the server which runs the live-state, unlike most MMO), even bugs where activating several buffs too quickly will result in them going on cooldown but the effect not applying.
Which brings us to the "memory game". Since your client is always a bit behind what's really happening in the game (server-side, pretty much all of it), in a way which is therefore aggravated by your internet latency to the server (ping), coupled with a positional check that only happens every .3 seconds (which is quite slow and is also aggravated by your ping, meaning you can easily reach .5s if you don't live close enough to the Canadian datacenter), the only way to clear the hardest encounters, which feature many OHKO (One-Hit Knock-Out) mechanics such as AoEs, is to memorise exactly the boss rotation. Bosses in FF14 usually don't do random stuff, they perform the exact same skills all the time, in the same exact order. This is how people in farm mode kill them quite easily, and actually manage to kill them in the first place. It's a memory game, much more than a reaction-based game, and it's obviously aggravated by the slow GCD.
If you think about it though, it does form a quite coherent whole, wherein you memorise stuff, then anticipate your own actions. If you happen to like that, it's arguable that the flow is nicely crafted. However that means little improvisation on your part, very generic encounters once you know them, since it's always more of the exact same.
The grind therefore gets quite tedious, as far as I'm concerned. Each boss, each dungeon, each raid is always exactly the same once you've mastered it. Down to trash mobs, you just know that this mob is going to do 'cone AoE', then hit twice, then 'cone AoE' again, and so on for each single mob and boss in most of the game. I've observed variations, sometimes, in lower level dungeons, but it's far from being an engaging enemy AI to me. Even WoW, which is a reference but certainly not a world of surprises, is much more dynamic and able to throw you off your game, in my personal experience (MoP). This especially shows in late-game encounters, where farming raids in WoW was fun for a much longer time than in FF14, if only because things get less predictable. I've cleared up to Coil T2, tried on T4, and thus can't really comment on T5 (the 4th and last raid boss of the game so far) since I haven't tried it before I left.
Initially when I tried this game in beta, I really enjoyed combat (level was limited to 20). I found it dynamic enough even with the slow GCD, and animations/effects are really beautiful (that's FF for you). But it gets old once you try to dig into a more complex perspective—or rather lack thereof. As time went by into release, reaching max level, I really found it less and less interesting.
Along with their network model, it's a reason why I left the game and don't really plan on going back, unless they drastically improve the responsiveness (don't know how unless they pour millions more into their code/architecture and take many months to achieve it), and revamp the class design to allow for more combat variety with each class, and more customisation.
It looks like I'm trashing the game but most of this is factual, I've tried to say when it was opinion. Admittedly, some players are enjoying combat in this game, but given the sheer fandom that surrounds Final Fantasy, I can't help but wonder how many of these players do actually really like this game's mechanics (should they appear in another game not called FF and without the lore, music and graphics of that franchise). As in, 'bias of confirmation', "It's FF thus it's great" (especially those who stuck with 1.0 even though it was universally admitted that it was just an awfully designed game). I do find puzzling the level of white-knight-ing when one tries to criticise this game; there's something just off about that. Compared to more obscure IPs, I mean.
To conclude, please don't take this as "the truth", because it's not, it's just my take—and please don't attack me for it. I would still recommend buying this game if you like FF and want to spend a month leveling and grinding some endgame stuff ($30 isn't that much for that, arguably). However, I'd cautious you against imagining that you're going to want to stick with it for a long time, because it might just not be true. Granted also, with more patches, and as I said, a good overhaul of some lacking designs and especially their netcode (which won't bother you much until you reach endgame), it could become a very good game. Right now combat and class design are not worth more than 5/10 for me however, compared to other MMOs. Probably less, actually.
Seriously thinking about buying FF14:ARR, but this post is also seriously making me reconsider.
I would suggest finding out for yourself.
Too expensive to find out I don't like the game. The speed of the combat sounds fine, it's the endgame mechanics of memorizing fights, rather than reacting to situations, that is keeping me from diving in.
It kinda makes me laugh when people claim that combat is slow because you "need to think" or something. That just isn't true for the seasoned MMO player who knows quite instinctively what to do at any given time, in my humble opinion—your mileage may vary depending on your experience with MMOs and your skill/response time as a human.
In my case, here's what I observed.
In FF14 you find yourself often waiting on something. Instant abilities are not really instant, since you can't use them while another animation is ongoing (meaning you usually can't use them halfway through the GCD or even more). Furthermore once you click on an 'instant' ability in FF14, you still have to wait for the animation to happen before that ability's effect is applied.
This results in frustrating situations like:
Enemy starts casting something.
*smashing button of instant stun ability* — why the hell doesn't it fire?!
*smashing more* —"still not happening… come ooooon"
*reason why you wanted to use the ability now moot* — "ooh gosh another interrupt that I just couldn't do"
*healer heals you*
It often doesn't feel like you're in control of your character. I don't like that.
In the same vein, defensive cooldowns and temporary buffs in general must be used preemptively since there's usually no way you have enough time to use them unless you planned for it. There's no such thing as a "panic button", even if there are "panic skills". That lowers the adrenaline for me, since you find yourself either correctly predicting what's next, or helplessly watching you fail, your character always one step behind what you're thinking.
Furthermore there's no customisation whatsoever: you level up 2 other classes to level 25 and 35 respectively (which is nothing but a grind of FATEs), on the same character, to pick a 5 additional skills for your main class, but everyone takes the same sub-skills for a given class since there are only so many choices.
Overall compared to other recent MMOs, the rotations (DD) and tanking/healing is as basic as it gets. There's one way to do it well and that's usually it (which prompts my earlier saying that there's not much to think about once you know your class well). It's a basic 3-step combo (press 1, 2, 3, rinse and repeat) for most classes. Granted, some have more interesting rotations (Black Mage, the primary caster; Monk, a melee class; Dragoon, another melee class; and Bard, a ranged bow-wielder), but it's nothing particularly better than other games.
Beyond this intended gameplay, there's the matter of server live-state latency with the client (see this post for a more comprehensive take on the matter). This results in your buffs sometimes not being registered in time, even if they were on your screen (you're always one step behind the server which runs the live-state, unlike most MMO), even bugs where activating several buffs too quickly will result in them going on cooldown but the effect not applying.
Which brings us to the "memory game". Since your client is always a bit behind what's really happening in the game (server-side, pretty much all of it), in a way which is therefore aggravated by your internet latency to the server (ping), coupled with a positional check that only happens every .3 seconds (which is quite slow and is also aggravated by your ping, meaning you can easily reach .5s if you don't live close enough to the Canadian datacenter), the only way to clear the hardest encounters, which feature many OHKO (One-Hit Knock-Out) mechanics such as AoEs, is to memorise exactly the boss rotation. Bosses in FF14 usually don't do random stuff, they perform the exact same skills all the time, in the same exact order. This is how people in farm mode kill them quite easily, and actually manage to kill them in the first place. It's a memory game, much more than a reaction-based game, and it's obviously aggravated by the slow GCD.
If you think about it though, it does form a quite coherent whole, wherein you memorise stuff, then anticipate your own actions. If you happen to like that, it's arguable that the flow is nicely crafted. However that means little improvisation on your part, very generic encounters once you know them, since it's always more of the exact same.
The grind therefore gets quite tedious, as far as I'm concerned. Each boss, each dungeon, each raid is always exactly the same once you've mastered it. Down to trash mobs, you just know that this mob is going to do 'cone AoE', then hit twice, then 'cone AoE' again, and so on for each single mob and boss in most of the game. I've observed variations, sometimes, in lower level dungeons, but it's far from being an engaging enemy AI to me. Even WoW, which is a reference but certainly not a world of surprises, is much more dynamic and able to throw you off your game, in my personal experience (MoP). This especially shows in late-game encounters, where farming raids in WoW was fun for a much longer time than in FF14, if only because things get less predictable. I've cleared up to Coil T2, tried on T4, and thus can't really comment on T5 (the 4th and last raid boss of the game so far) since I haven't tried it before I left.
Initially when I tried this game in beta, I really enjoyed combat (level was limited to 20). I found it dynamic enough even with the slow GCD, and animations/effects are really beautiful (that's FF for you). But it gets old once you try to dig into a more complex perspective—or rather lack thereof. As time went by into release, reaching max level, I really found it less and less interesting.
Along with their network model, it's a reason why I left the game and don't really plan on going back, unless they drastically improve the responsiveness (don't know how unless they pour millions more into their code/architecture and take many months to achieve it), and revamp the class design to allow for more combat variety with each class, and more customisation.
It looks like I'm trashing the game but most of this is factual, I've tried to say when it was opinion. Admittedly, some players are enjoying combat in this game, but given the sheer fandom that surrounds Final Fantasy, I can't help but wonder how many of these players do actually really like this game's mechanics (should they appear in another game not called FF and without the lore, music and graphics of that franchise). As in, 'bias of confirmation', "It's FF thus it's great" (especially those who stuck with 1.0 even though it was universally admitted that it was just an awfully designed game). I do find puzzling the level of white-knight-ing when one tries to criticise this game; there's something just off about that. Compared to more obscure IPs, I mean.
To conclude, please don't take this as "the truth", because it's not, it's just my take—and please don't attack me for it. I would still recommend buying this game if you like FF and want to spend a month leveling and grinding some endgame stuff ($30 isn't that much for that, arguably). However, I'd cautious you against imagining that you're going to want to stick with it for a long time, because it might just not be true. Granted also, with more patches, and as I said, a good overhaul of some lacking designs and especially their netcode (which won't bother you much until you reach endgame), it could become a very good game. Right now combat and class design are not worth more than 5/10 for me however, compared to other MMOs. Probably less, actually.
Seriously thinking about buying FF14:ARR, but this post is also seriously making me reconsider.
I would suggest finding out for yourself.
Too expensive to find out I don't like the game. The speed of the combat sounds fine, it's the endgame mechanics of memorizing fights, rather than reacting to situations, that is keeping me from diving in.
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
Really? This has got to be the SLOWEST combat I've every experienced in any MMO. 2.5 second global cooldown? I feel like I'm sitting on a dentist chair and getting a root canal, that's how painfully slow this is...and people complained about TSW and RIFT's combat? They both trounce FFXIV. I have to force myself to log in because I feel guilty I spent $30.00 and played so little so far.
Sorry for the drama. It's just DAMN! Really? Ok please flame on.
I got a dragoon up to about level 42. It was really hard to keep logging in. But, I wanted to give the game a fair shot. It bored me to tears. For all those people saying it gets a lot faster etc. Well, I didn't see it lol. Only difference between level 1 and level 42 is I had more slow boring abilities.
Agreeeeeed OP haha! People will tell you that it seems to get faster as you progress but really? +20% faster maybe with MONK only?? Sounds about right, root canal type combat, painfully non-immersive world (especially for the FF universe and also while experiencing TSW), odd endgame and no pvp at launch? Haha I feeel like I'm being rubbed but not finished.
It is not only slow combat, the game overall is utterly piece of crap, worst mmo i ever bought, just remember this crappy asian man from introduction video, which you cant even skip, cant beliave i spend 30$ on that, damn >_<
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Really? This has got to be the SLOWEST combat I've every experienced in any MMO. 2.5 second global cooldown? I feel like I'm sitting on a dentist chair and getting a root canal, that's how painfully slow this is...and people complained about TSW and RIFT's combat? They both trounce FFXIV. I have to force myself to log in because I feel guilty I spent $30.00 and played so little so far.
Sorry for the drama. It's just DAMN! Really? Ok please flame on.
This is how you know where this player has come from. See, for me the combat pace feels finee because I played EQ in 2001 - if you were a melee class you had 1 or 2 abilities - kick, bash, taunt.....other than that you auto attacked every 2.4 seconds if you had a good weapon.
World of Warcraft much?
Actually I never played WOW. I came from GW (7 years) and a slew of other MMO's in between. Most recently been playing AoC.
There's literally no excuse to not have played WoW.
Oh yea You're so cool. The poster gave their EXC USE in the comment, didn't you see that they played GW ??? Pay attention.
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Now see, this doesn't sound so bad. It sounds like ex: "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." Or "Nefarian is about to do a class call, get ready." Or "Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, tank kites."
As someone that's played GW2 (Woot for legendary weapon!) since beta, I'd have to disagree. While it's true that at early levels the game is slow and feels boring, its very different end game. Titan is so fast paced alot of people can't keep up with it. And first timers to the Demon Wall in AK take a while to adjust to the movements required. The difference is that GW2 lets you spam skills, but not much happens environmentally that's a huge risk. Yea you might get hit, you might even die, but death is so temporary that it really doesn't matter. In FFXIV, it's quite the opposite. The skills take a while to cast and then there's cool down. However, most of the challenging fights have alot happening in the environment that you need to keep up with, or it's going to cause a wipe. A death in FFXIV is much more risky since the raising takes a long time, whether its the cast time or the recovery time after a raise, which makes it so that you have to know when to raise in most end game battles, as opposed to raising whenever in GW2.
Honestly the battle system is the only thing I like about the game. Chat system is god awful. Maps are almost illogical. Teleporting could be WAY easier. And the server side lag is horrid. However, the battle system is fun enough to make up for it. The requirement for frequent movement during battles makes end game a much faster pace. Yes the game requires you to know what's coming up in end game battles, but it doesn't take away from the experience because keeping the cycles correct while dodging and juggling your rotation simultaneously keeps you as busy as you could hope to be. Not to mention that there are critical points at which certain actions need to take place or it's a guaranteed wipe. And then there's supposed to be an insane mode coming with 2.1 which I can't even begin to imagine since some of the fights (Titan and Gaurda) are already low chances of completion for most.
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Now see, this doesn't sound so bad. It sounds like ex: "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." Or "Nefarian is about to do a class call, get ready." Or "Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, tank kites."
I am not sure how to read this. You said you want to react to things, In this game you can't or you will fail even as a tank. Btw my main was a tank PLD.
It's more like start moving just before the "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." or you will not be able to avoid the attack.
It is not a game where a boss can spam skills in different orders and you use skill, knowledge of the game or gear combinations even to survive, dodge or mitigate an attack by knowing the boss "tells" etc.
The only thing that matters really is have decent gear for the content and knowing the "script" or order of attacks so to speak cause they never vary.
My wife and I paid 60 buck or so each for the CE edition preorder (we actually got the preorders on sale) and it was worth the cost for the time we played but for a new person I would say try the cheaper 30 buck version first cause there is good chances you will be done after a month or two at most.
If you really want more info on endgame try the official forums and this thread in particular. My self I am back to DDO and enjoying it. Might give ARR another go if they ever fix some of the issues at some point seeing as there should be new content then if not oh well.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Now see, this doesn't sound so bad. It sounds like ex: "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." Or "Nefarian is about to do a class call, get ready." Or "Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, tank kites."
I am not sure how to read this. You said you want to react to things, In this game you can't or you will fail even as a tank. Btw my main was a tank PLD.
It's more like start moving just before the "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." or you will not be able to avoid the attack.
It is not a game where a boss can spam skills in different orders and you use skill, knowledge of the game or gear combinations even to survive, dodge or mitigate an attack by knowing the boss "tells" etc.
The only thing that matters really is have decent gear for the content and knowing the "script" or order of attacks so to speak cause they never vary.
My wife and I paid 60 buck or so each for the CE edition preorder (we actually got the preorders on sale) and it was worth the cost for the time we played but for a new person I would say try the cheaper 30 buck version first cause there is good chances you will be done after a month or two at most.
If you really want more info on endgame try the official forums and this thread in particular. My self I am back to DDO and enjoying it. Might give ARR another go if they ever fix some of the issues at some point seeing as there should be new content then if not oh well.
Hmmm, I see. So there's nothing in "the fight" that would really tell you to "get to the sides," you just have to know that it's time to "get to the sides." That does sound like a bummer. Maybe I should just go play World of Warcraft.
Yes you will have to memorize mechanics in fights but believe me they aren't easy mode, good luck doing things like titan hard mode with a pickup. But hey if you like pure tank and spank games you won't like this.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Now see, this doesn't sound so bad. It sounds like ex: "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." Or "Nefarian is about to do a class call, get ready." Or "Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, tank kites."
I am not sure how to read this. You said you want to react to things, In this game you can't or you will fail even as a tank. Btw my main was a tank PLD.
It's more like start moving just before the "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." or you will not be able to avoid the attack.
It is not a game where a boss can spam skills in different orders and you use skill, knowledge of the game or gear combinations even to survive, dodge or mitigate an attack by knowing the boss "tells" etc.
The only thing that matters really is have decent gear for the content and knowing the "script" or order of attacks so to speak cause they never vary.
My wife and I paid 60 buck or so each for the CE edition preorder (we actually got the preorders on sale) and it was worth the cost for the time we played but for a new person I would say try the cheaper 30 buck version first cause there is good chances you will be done after a month or two at most.
If you really want more info on endgame try the official forums and this thread in particular. My self I am back to DDO and enjoying it. Might give ARR another go if they ever fix some of the issues at some point seeing as there should be new content then if not oh well.
Hmmm, I see. So there's nothing in "the fight" that would really tell you to "get to the sides," you just have to know that it's time to "get to the sides." That does sound like a bummer. Maybe I should just go play World of Warcraft.
No there is a big red circle that appears and the boss has a skillbar timer thing that shows up near his name but if you wait till that shows up you more often than not are in trouble, the animations don't sync well together.
Like I said if you are strafing to the side say just before the attack pops up (cause you know the script) you can actually jump back right in front even if the boss cast skillbar is at 90% and wont get hit by his attack evfen though the animation has you standing right in his "fire breath of doom".
Your party mate though that wasn't strafing (but got out before the boss cast skillbar was complete) and isn't in the "fire breath of doom animation" can skill take damage from it even if hes on the other side of the room behind a pillar.
If it wasn't for this type of combat mechanics I would be in the game like white on rice. I have givin up hope this will be corrected though.
Heh SE even has this as an "accepted bug" but they don't see to want to fix it. closest remark people got was scroll the camera back.
Other than this the game was fun and gave me a FF feel with the storyline but this endgame shenanigans just broke it for me.
This is just my opinion and such being subjective YMMV .
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Comments
[mod edit]
I love the combat, not one for button crunching. If the game is so boring move on instead of coming to the forums to cry about it. You had to of played a Final Fantasy Game in your life before unless you were just born so what did you expect? This is the Final fantasy style. With that said, Final Fantasy XiV ARR was made with fans of the IP in mind. Not to plz everyone.
You should try Tera Online out. I hear that game has fast combat. That might be a better suit.
[mod edit] I guess I came to vent pissed off that I wasted $30.00. I tried TERA but questing was boring and too repetitive. Didn't enjoy the action style combat. I thought NW did it better.
Right! I mean c'mon! It's crazy that people complain about the combat speed and claim the game sucks because its not as fast as they would like. For one, its everyones fault that wasted their money on a Final Fantasy title expecting something different when its always been that way with FF. Also, Don't most of these people think that A LOT of people (Myself) enjoy combat speeds a bit more relaxed. I HATE fast tweaky button crunching combat, so maybe i should go on the forums of games with super fast combat and complain that i think they suck because the combat is to fast. Lol
[mod edit] Next time before you waste money on a title you are not familiar with, wait for the game to come out, then Youtube game play footage and do some research on other gameplay features to see if its a suit for you. Can't say i feel your frustration because i don't run on and waste money on anything before i know that its something i want. G'luck to you in the future friend and i hope you take my advice
To judge combat based on how fast or slow it is and not how good it is,is probably the most shallow complaint i could hear.
I personally don't like FFXIV combat,not because of speed although there is a lot more can be done if it was slower yet.
A fight in FFXI could take 1-2 minutes,a fight in FFXIV can take around 15-20 seconds.
When cool downs are too fast,the game becomes spamming ,the worst kind of combat,FFXIV cool downs are too fast as is.
In FFXI some skills might have 15 or 30 second timers,some had 2 minutes,some 5 minutes and the best skill was a 2 hour skill.It means you have to "THINK" you have to manage your skills and play your player to the best of your ability.Slower combat also meant a good chance the mages mana supply would come under duress,so again smart management of resources,work as a team not as an individual spamming.
Things have all changed now,even FFXI is a ton faster now,it ruined the game badly.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The combat speed is largely based on the way high level encounters are set up. It takes in account that you should be thinking about what you are going to do rather than spamming buttons/skills like a coked up chipmunk. But this is more about the restraint placed on skill cooldowns rather than the actual speed of the combat. Some skills shared a GCD for a reason and some do not. The ones that do not are instant and highly situational.
For instance, trying to time a interrupt on Ifrit HM's eruption while spamming skills as soon as the GCD has expired will get your group wiped quick. Also it doesn't help to spam that interrupt because the boss will build a immunity if you're spamming it before he starts readying the skill. Therefor you have to coordinate with the other classes that can interrupt to pay attention to the skills they are using.
But what it ultimately boils down to is that FFXIV's combat pace works for FFXIV's encounters and TSW's combat pace works for it's encounters. And so on and so forth. So if you think that having a GCD for more skills/spells it less intense for an encounter I dare any of you to heal through a Titan HM fight or introduce yourself to AK's demon wall.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
100x this
slower? yes
better? hell yes
Its amazing how all the people who talk about not having consequences, challenege, etc etc in themeparks on other threads are the same ones knocking this combat.
It starts off slow, it finishes almost faster than I'm able to keep up.
Yes, I'm talking about Twintania (hardest boss in game). Timing is utterly critical. Between stacking to spread damage, positioning conflags, killing adds, avoiding dive bombs, and mitigating/healing the whole raid - you are going to wish you had more time.
Oh, and I left off the hardest part of the battle.
That said, the difficulty curve on the game is pretty whacked out. The entire game is mega easy until Titan HM. Then you have to master basically one mechanic. From there you refine all previous mechanics through Turn 4.
Then you get hit in the face with a sledgehammer. Makes me wonder what future content will be like.
It kinda makes me laugh when people claim that combat is slow because you "need to think" or something. That just isn't true for the seasoned MMO player who knows quite instinctively what to do at any given time, in my humble opinion—your mileage may vary depending on your experience with MMOs and your skill/response time as a human.
In my case, here's what I observed.
In FF14 you find yourself often waiting on something. Instant abilities are not really instant, since you can't use them while another animation is ongoing (meaning you usually can't use them halfway through the GCD or even more). Furthermore once you click on an 'instant' ability in FF14, you still have to wait for the animation to happen before that ability's effect is applied.
This results in frustrating situations like:
It often doesn't feel like you're in control of your character. I don't like that.
In the same vein, defensive cooldowns and temporary buffs in general must be used preemptively since there's usually no way you have enough time to use them unless you planned for it. There's no such thing as a "panic button", even if there are "panic skills". That lowers the adrenaline for me, since you find yourself either correctly predicting what's next, or helplessly watching you fail, your character always one step behind what you're thinking.
Furthermore there's no customisation whatsoever: you level up 2 other classes to level 25 and 35 respectively (which is nothing but a grind of FATEs), on the same character, to pick a 5 additional skills for your main class, but everyone takes the same sub-skills for a given class since there are only so many choices.
Overall compared to other recent MMOs, the rotations (DD) and tanking/healing is as basic as it gets. There's one way to do it well and that's usually it (which prompts my earlier saying that there's not much to think about once you know your class well). It's a basic 3-step combo (press 1, 2, 3, rinse and repeat) for most classes. Granted, some have more interesting rotations (Black Mage, the primary caster; Monk, a melee class; Dragoon, another melee class; and Bard, a ranged bow-wielder), but it's nothing particularly better than other games.
Beyond this intended gameplay, there's the matter of server live-state latency with the client (see this post for a more comprehensive take on the matter). This results in your buffs sometimes not being registered in time, even if they were on your screen (you're always one step behind the server which runs the live-state, unlike most MMO), even bugs where activating several buffs too quickly will result in them going on cooldown but the effect not applying.
Which brings us to the "memory game". Since your client is always a bit behind what's really happening in the game (server-side, pretty much all of it), in a way which is therefore aggravated by your internet latency to the server (ping), coupled with a positional check that only happens every .3 seconds (which is quite slow and is also aggravated by your ping, meaning you can easily reach .5s if you don't live close enough to the Canadian datacenter), the only way to clear the hardest encounters, which feature many OHKO (One-Hit Knock-Out) mechanics such as AoEs, is to memorise exactly the boss rotation. Bosses in FF14 usually don't do random stuff, they perform the exact same skills all the time, in the same exact order. This is how people in farm mode kill them quite easily, and actually manage to kill them in the first place. It's a memory game, much more than a reaction-based game, and it's obviously aggravated by the slow GCD.
If you think about it though, it does form a quite coherent whole, wherein you memorise stuff, then anticipate your own actions. If you happen to like that, it's arguable that the flow is nicely crafted. However that means little improvisation on your part, very generic encounters once you know them, since it's always more of the exact same.
The grind therefore gets quite tedious, as far as I'm concerned. Each boss, each dungeon, each raid is always exactly the same once you've mastered it. Down to trash mobs, you just know that this mob is going to do 'cone AoE', then hit twice, then 'cone AoE' again, and so on for each single mob and boss in most of the game. I've observed variations, sometimes, in lower level dungeons, but it's far from being an engaging enemy AI to me. Even WoW, which is a reference but certainly not a world of surprises, is much more dynamic and able to throw you off your game, in my personal experience (MoP). This especially shows in late-game encounters, where farming raids in WoW was fun for a much longer time than in FF14, if only because things get less predictable. I've cleared up to Coil T2, tried on T4, and thus can't really comment on T5 (the 4th and last raid boss of the game so far) since I haven't tried it before I left.
Initially when I tried this game in beta, I really enjoyed combat (level was limited to 20). I found it dynamic enough even with the slow GCD, and animations/effects are really beautiful (that's FF for you). But it gets old once you try to dig into a more complex perspective—or rather lack thereof. As time went by into release, reaching max level, I really found it less and less interesting.
Along with their network model, it's a reason why I left the game and don't really plan on going back, unless they drastically improve the responsiveness (don't know how unless they pour millions more into their code/architecture and take many months to achieve it), and revamp the class design to allow for more combat variety with each class, and more customisation.
It looks like I'm trashing the game but most of this is factual, I've tried to say when it was opinion. Admittedly, some players are enjoying combat in this game, but given the sheer fandom that surrounds Final Fantasy, I can't help but wonder how many of these players do actually really like this game's mechanics (should they appear in another game not called FF and without the lore, music and graphics of that franchise). As in, 'bias of confirmation', "It's FF thus it's great" (especially those who stuck with 1.0 even though it was universally admitted that it was just an awfully designed game). I do find puzzling the level of white-knight-ing when one tries to criticise this game; there's something just off about that. Compared to more obscure IPs, I mean.
To conclude, please don't take this as "the truth", because it's not, it's just my take—and please don't attack me for it. I would still recommend buying this game if you like FF and want to spend a month leveling and grinding some endgame stuff ($30 isn't that much for that, arguably). However, I'd cautious you against imagining that you're going to want to stick with it for a long time, because it might just not be true. Granted also, with more patches, and as I said, a good overhaul of some lacking designs and especially their netcode (which won't bother you much until you reach endgame), it could become a very good game. Right now combat and class design are not worth more than 5/10 for me however, compared to other MMOs. Probably less, actually.
Seriously thinking about buying FF14:ARR, but this post is also seriously making me reconsider.
The combat doesn't require skill or speed at endgame it requires learning the boss attacks, memorising them and moving ahead of time to avoid being hit.
That is it. TBH I am surprised there are not scripts and bots for endgame yet. lol
I really enjoyed the story and leveling in the game but heh the endgame sucks and so does the lame lame combat mechanics. The global cooldown is a form of artificial and sucky method to make endgame "harder".
I have come to believe much of this design is either
A) they don't know how to code a MMO for the modern era.
or
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
No, don't bother. That guy nailed it. I mean, normally with that much text I would toss it aside as some kind of a tirade. But everything he said was spot on.
Actually, I think you should try it for yourself. It's only $30 and you can see just how spot on this guy was and analyze it for yourself.
Too expensive to find out I don't like the game. The speed of the combat sounds fine, it's the endgame mechanics of memorizing fights, rather than reacting to situations, that is keeping me from diving in.
Pretty much the opposite of what I was trying to say. Memorization of fights doesn't bother me, but if that's all there is, and no reacting to things I didn't see coming, then that sounds pretty dull.
I got a dragoon up to about level 42. It was really hard to keep logging in. But, I wanted to give the game a fair shot. It bored me to tears. For all those people saying it gets a lot faster etc. Well, I didn't see it lol. Only difference between level 1 and level 42 is I had more slow boring abilities.
It goes like this, you need to memorize fights because if you react to things as you see them coming instead of just before they will hit you regardless of where you are on your screen. That is all there is too it.
The fights are scripted and the attacks always come in the same order. If you try to react to things more often than not you will die as many of the attacks that you need to avoid are instakills or near enough. I can't stress this enough you need to memorize the fights so you can "react" before" the attacks come up.
Now by react we mean move away, you can actually move out of the way, just before an attack, and then move right back in the danger area see the animation hit you and you get zero damage but you can also avoid an attack be no where near it and get hit as well.
Like I said I liked the game while leveling and the story but damn this endgame and the mechanics used in it suck arse. Some people will say it takes skill and strategy. Frankly I don't agree.
I am a big big fan of most of the old FF single players games baring FFXIII and sadly I would have preferred a DDO style combat to this mess. It's kind of like they tried to do like the Neverwinter game from PW but then messed it up, add in really poopy netcode to acerbate things.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Oh yea You're so cool. The poster gave their EXC USE in the comment, didn't you see that they played GW ??? Pay attention.
Now see, this doesn't sound so bad. It sounds like ex: "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." Or "Nefarian is about to do a class call, get ready." Or "Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, tank kites."
As someone that's played GW2 (Woot for legendary weapon!) since beta, I'd have to disagree. While it's true that at early levels the game is slow and feels boring, its very different end game. Titan is so fast paced alot of people can't keep up with it. And first timers to the Demon Wall in AK take a while to adjust to the movements required. The difference is that GW2 lets you spam skills, but not much happens environmentally that's a huge risk. Yea you might get hit, you might even die, but death is so temporary that it really doesn't matter. In FFXIV, it's quite the opposite. The skills take a while to cast and then there's cool down. However, most of the challenging fights have alot happening in the environment that you need to keep up with, or it's going to cause a wipe. A death in FFXIV is much more risky since the raising takes a long time, whether its the cast time or the recovery time after a raise, which makes it so that you have to know when to raise in most end game battles, as opposed to raising whenever in GW2.
Honestly the battle system is the only thing I like about the game. Chat system is god awful. Maps are almost illogical. Teleporting could be WAY easier. And the server side lag is horrid. However, the battle system is fun enough to make up for it. The requirement for frequent movement during battles makes end game a much faster pace. Yes the game requires you to know what's coming up in end game battles, but it doesn't take away from the experience because keeping the cycles correct while dodging and juggling your rotation simultaneously keeps you as busy as you could hope to be. Not to mention that there are critical points at which certain actions need to take place or it's a guaranteed wipe. And then there's supposed to be an insane mode coming with 2.1 which I can't even begin to imagine since some of the fights (Titan and Gaurda) are already low chances of completion for most.
We that's was my 1/50th of a dollar.
I am not sure how to read this. You said you want to react to things, In this game you can't or you will fail even as a tank. Btw my main was a tank PLD.
It's more like start moving just before the "Onyxia is about to Deep Breath, everybody get to the sides." or you will not be able to avoid the attack.
It is not a game where a boss can spam skills in different orders and you use skill, knowledge of the game or gear combinations even to survive, dodge or mitigate an attack by knowing the boss "tells" etc.
The only thing that matters really is have decent gear for the content and knowing the "script" or order of attacks so to speak cause they never vary.
My wife and I paid 60 buck or so each for the CE edition preorder (we actually got the preorders on sale) and it was worth the cost for the time we played but for a new person I would say try the cheaper 30 buck version first cause there is good chances you will be done after a month or two at most.
If you really want more info on endgame try the official forums and this thread in particular. My self I am back to DDO and enjoying it. Might give ARR another go if they ever fix some of the issues at some point seeing as there should be new content then if not oh well.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Hmmm, I see. So there's nothing in "the fight" that would really tell you to "get to the sides," you just have to know that it's time to "get to the sides." That does sound like a bummer. Maybe I should just go play World of Warcraft.
No there is a big red circle that appears and the boss has a skillbar timer thing that shows up near his name but if you wait till that shows up you more often than not are in trouble, the animations don't sync well together.
Like I said if you are strafing to the side say just before the attack pops up (cause you know the script) you can actually jump back right in front even if the boss cast skillbar is at 90% and wont get hit by his attack evfen though the animation has you standing right in his "fire breath of doom".
Your party mate though that wasn't strafing (but got out before the boss cast skillbar was complete) and isn't in the "fire breath of doom animation" can skill take damage from it even if hes on the other side of the room behind a pillar.
If it wasn't for this type of combat mechanics I would be in the game like white on rice. I have givin up hope this will be corrected though.
Heh SE even has this as an "accepted bug" but they don't see to want to fix it. closest remark people got was scroll the camera back.
Other than this the game was fun and gave me a FF feel with the storyline but this endgame shenanigans just broke it for me.
This is just my opinion and such being subjective YMMV .
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.