Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
FFXIV... How do people?
Spankster77
Member UncommonPosts: 487
Play this game?
I keep resubbing for a month playing for 2 days then unsubbing, I have done this 4 times now. The game is just really boring to me. For starters there is no openness to the world at all, everything is heavily instanced, which just really kills the immersion aspect for me.
The quests make you just want to click through without reading, the animations for quests don't match the words, and there are no voiceovers at all.
Lastly, the combat! It feels like I am waiting to do things between attacks.
I will say that the scenery is pretty and the music is good but that's about all this game has going for it in my opinion.
Comments
Sounds like you should just stop trying to like the game and spend your money elsewhere. For many it is a fun game and they enjoy it. The crafting is more in depth than most MMOs and the boss fights are pretty intense and challenging, not to mention the fact you can unlock and play all the classes on one character is nice.
As far as the voice overs..... you are incorrect... there is voice overs in the main story line, but unfortunately (imo) not enough in the game. This game would have been much better with complete voice overs in the main story line and a streamlined version of text for regular quests.
I've been enjoying FFXIV:ARR quite a bit over the past month or so. For me, the combat reminds me of the "Active Time Battle" system of the older single player final fantasy games. While it's not for everyone, I find the combat a pleasant throw back from all the twitch based "action combat" that games have had lately. I feel like FFXIV has more of a social focus than a lot of games have lately. Also the community is one of the best that I've encountered in recent years.
Just out of curiosity, how far has the OP gotten in the game? The game world really seems to open up once you get airship access and a mount.
Sadly, the game is not for everyone. However, 2.7 million people seem to be enjoying it ... or at least keep subscribing.
It ultimately comes down to each their own but to answer some of your concerns.
There's only voice acting on certain story missions and not much else. The story is good but honestly SE is cheap at heart.
As for the combat, the caster classes are more fluid than the melee/archer classes. The melee/archer classes need to utilize a tactic called "weaving" which is using your global cooldown skills inbetween your regular spam skills to make it feel more fluid. Honestly a lot of games do this, just SE has the timers too long imho, so at starters it feels very slow, but gets better overtime as you get higher level.
I wont bother asking what level you got to, but given the time you stated and your experience, it doesn't sound very far. My suggestion is just playing a caster, probably conjurer/white mage first to get a better feel for the game since you already have the time open. The story is good but they could've did a better job conveying it. For some games, namely Divine Souls, I will commend SE not using voice acting at all in comparison to the voice acting in Divine Souls (so horrible, youtube some gameplay).
The game is really challenging at end game and can provide you with a lot fun and frustration, so hopefully you do get into it eventually. You just might not have found the right class yet is all. Rogue/Ninja is out in a month or two as well, so maybe try again when its out.
I keep trying because back in the day I was a huge FF fan. I played the first one on 8 bit Nintendo all the way up to 10 on my PS2. I dread clicking on quest givers because I know that 9 x's out of 10 I will have to click through multiple chat windows of uninteresting text.
Everywhere I run there are blue balls and loading screens separating me from where I need to be. Oh I have to go to the floor below, I will just jump over this ledge, oh wait no I won't there is an invisible wall there. My quest is over there, I will just swim 10 feet to that area, no I won't my character can't swim (he can cast magic, create invisible shields, heal himself, but swimming is beyond his capabilities).
I am happy for those that find enjoyment in this game but sadly I really can't.
I have only got to level 10 on 3 different toons. So yeah, I will be the first to admit that I am judging a game on limited experience but some of the things that bother me about the game like the everything being instanced, the invisible walls, not being able to swim, etc don't seem like they will change once you get to a higher level.
Out of curiosity what level do you get a mount? What level can you do dungeons?
It's a darling little game, and I say little because the game world is tiny for an MMO. It is a very likeable game in many ways. I can't put my finger on it.
However, the downsides are too big for me, small, instanced zones, long global cooldowns in combat, close up cinema style cameras with no voice acting. (If you dont have voice acting, then all dialog should be with the camera back. Up close it looks silly like pantomimes.). There is no real reason to explore the world and you basically just queue up for everything.
If this game didn't have the Final Fantasy name no one would be playing and thats the truth.
Open world. Mods, you can't edit in the mobile version of the website. You seriously have to fix it.
I played it because I liked the world and story.
But to comment on what you said. There are loading screens between the zones but there are not separate instances of them in a server. For example you will always be with all the people that are in that zone from your server. The early quests are mostly just explaining how to play the game but later on there are some interesting and humorous quests. The mouth animations for the quests match the japanese text rather than english and a few of the main story quests do have voice acting. You'll find that the gameplay becomes more active as you level up and get off gcd and cross class abilities. Certain classes like lancer and pugilist require lots of maneuvering to meet the positional requirements for their attacks and many end game bosses will keep you on your toes.
OP i think you should look somewhere else. Just like NobleNerd said, dont try to force yourself to like a game. You may be a huge FF fan, but the FF mmos are firstly traditional mmorpgs, and then are FF games.
It happens to me with WoW, ESO, and FFXIV but for different reasons. I sub for a month, play for a week and then waste the rest of the money/time. I like the games, enjoy them, but i play more games so i cant justify paying for a whole month and playing only for 1 week or less.
FFXIV is pretty good but dont forget, like i said, its a traditional mmorpg more than a FF game. Maybe you are getting burned of the already old mmorpg recipe.
OP has valid points. FFIV is the only MMO I play right now (wiht some GW2 on the side) but I totally get where hes coming from. I skip'd through 80-90% of the dialouge myself, because it just wasn't interesting. Some of the quest are funny and I enjoyed the humour, but they were far and few inbetween. With that said, I stick around because I actually enjoy the world, the community, and the end-game. If you find a good FC, it will keep you logging in. The game does have a charm to it that I find is sorely lacking in alot of MMO nowadays, so its a worth a sub. It's also super polished, very little bugs, great animations, decent frame rates, good graphics - it feels like a well-made game instead of alot of these cheap F2P games you see nowdays.
Theres also alot of content and side crap you can do if your not interested in battling. The crafting in this game is practically a game within itself, plus you have chocobo breeding and dyeing and alot of other little mini things you can. I enjoy having only 1 character that can do everything, that was a selling point for me as well.
I enjoy undercutting people in the market place - it's the only PvP a crafter gets.
I'd normally rush to the defense of anyone with legitimate concerns about the game, but the sheer number of basic things about the game you do not like generally leads me to parrot what others have already said. It would take a completely different kind of game to satisfy your particular needs if what you are saying is not merely the venting of frustration at other issues.
That being said...
I completely agree on the quest text issue. Things tend to get verbose too much of the time. I also agree that combat needs some work. Tank/DD/Healer trinity has been beaten to death and back, so it is safe to say after ten years it is impossible to pull any significant depth of strategy out of it. They really should have gone with tank, healer, and controller as being roles to avoid damage being a deciding factor in anything, but I digress.
The end game needs serious work, both in terms of depth of strategy (which is sorely missing) and in terms of end game raid accessibility. I'm about to pull the plug on this one just for the obsessive hunt grinds with little else of value to do.
Nothing screams "value" more, than seeking virtual items whose only purpose is to help you clear content you wouldn't even do if it wasn't for said items.
If I ever get to the point in my MMO career you're stuck in, I think I'll be wise enough to pull the plug on the whole genre.
Anyway, my condolences OP. I hope you, too, can find something to enjoy in life like the rest of us having fun playing this game.
That is a very well researched number which you didn't just randomly make up.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. People are literally getting blocked from participating in the last piece of story related content in the game (SCoB) by the lockout system and overall issues with the community being unable to clear t5.
In light of that, we are not grinding for items that will help us with getting to future content because we can't even get in to do the current content. For a lot of people, all that is left in the game is to grind items for the sake of items.
Yeah, and you know what's disturbing? You calling this kind of activity something of "value". Not surprisingly, according to you the content with "value" is also the content which enables you to get the items you "need" marginally the fastest.
Sensible people know to actually quit the game when it doesn't offer them anything of real value. What are those items doing for you exactly?
In this post there is a hint to "a lot of people". I would like to say that most people actually quit the game if they find themselves in your position, at least until their problem gets fixed. I do hope that you will someday find the strength in yourself to be able to pull off the same.
Right now, you are enabling SE.
OP like many other people on this site appears to confuse division of the game world into zones with instancing (multiple copies of individual zones, either private to a player / party a la GW1, or dynamically created due to limitations of the game engine or for server side balancing (TSW for instance)).
ARR uses instanced copies of bits of the game world for some solo encounters in main story or class quests, but for most purposes there is one copy of each zone per server, which can result in somewhat degraded game performance when a few hundred people zone in to fight a world boss, for instance.
Agreed on all counts. Just a boring, dull, borderline creepy game (the mute cutscenes are just weird to me). Just couldn't get into it. And don't even get me started on the combat.
My only question is, why would you come back to this game 4 times? Simply because other people like it?
They just play because its final fantasy. Honestly, its the worst of any big MMO out there to me as well, but I played a little while for the nostalgia of "its FF!!!" also.
The graphics/music are the best thing about the game. Combat, questing, and everything else are all below average.
But yea, you can be the classes from old FF games, pick up items with old FF names, face FF classic enemies, and so on, so many people love this series enough to play a bad game just because its in this series, that is the answer to your question.
GAME TIL YOU DIE!!!!