Final Fantasy XIV is not a perfect game by any means, but that doesn't mean it's not worth playing. Here is a list of 10 reasons you should play it anyways!
So I use to love playing this game, but as far as I know they still haven't fixed the convoluted Housing system, I may go back if that ever changes. If an MMO has housing it shouldn't be available to just a limited amount of players.
While people said the story is amazing, I found it very boring x.x
When I read this comment I had a wtf moment. How far did you get in the story? I've played the entire story including all the side quests up to the present endgame (twice) and I'm in the middle of another play through at the moment. So yes I love the story. Any story that can make me cry or laugh out loud is a great story. There is even one Endwalker scene that made me disgusted and angry (anyone reading this will know what I'm talking about). That has never happened to me in any other game before. I've been playing now for over 5 years and will continue playing for the foreseeable future.
While people said the story is amazing, I found it very boring x.x
When I read this comment I had a wtf moment. How far did you get in the story? I've played the entire story including all the side quests up to the present endgame (twice) and I'm in the middle of another play through at the moment. So yes I love the story. Any story that can make me cry or laugh out loud is a great story. There is even one Endwalker scene that made me disgusted and angry (anyone reading this will know what I'm talking about). That has never happened to me in any other game before. I've been playing now for over 5 years and will continue playing for the foreseeable future.
Early story was kind of slog at times, not gonna lie..but really picked up towards the first expansion. I have no personal experience with it now that they streamlined it, but it is very memorable, at least for me compared to other MMOs I've played. I can see why it was boring for some. The best advice I can give is to stick with it.
My biggest hang up with the game was the 2.5 second global cool down. Game felt like one of those turn based RPgs. Combine that with my mistake of trying to main a tank build as my first uh.. job? .. I guess it's called... Anyway low dps and a 2.5 second GCD and it was incredibly boring. Took 90+ seconds to kill one mob. One of the few MMOs I've played where I didn't make max level. Quit in my early 50's of I remember correctly. I haven't played in years, though. Maybe that's all changed.
Story is highly subjective. There are films that won Oscars that people fell asleep in. There are films that were panned that people loved. Then there are those that are just not story people. They wouldn't watch a cut scene or read a quest if their life depended on it. The Final Fantasy series has always been a slower paced play with deep stories. Kind of have to know what you are getting into. Now if they made a Call of Duty MMO and it had a long global cooldown I might understand a little more as that franchise is not known for being that way.
Final Fantasy 14 is probably the most fleshed out, polished MMOs out today with a great breadth of activities both combat and otherwise with a huge player base to support it. More recent design decisions have been made quite clearly for money driven reasons above good game design but that happens and overall the game continues to shine. With no real other options coming anytime in the next decade it seems I imagine it will continue to hold its place of dominance for a while.
Yea, I don't know why people keep on overhyping FF14's story as something extraordinary. It was good, better than the storywriting in most MMOs, but it's not flawless and there are plenty of bad parts - the ARR story involves HUGE amount of "filler" quests which are still part of mandatory MSQ (and this is after SE trimmed some of them out), the later parts of main story were ok, but when playing Endwalker I started to use "skip" button a lot because I got fed up with redundant dialogue boxes (when NPC already said the important part but developers still give it 2-3 more textboxes of dialogue of generic filler words), the "camera focuses on clinched fist/angry face of NPC for several seconds" parts and all the silent pauses where your character just stands with no dialogue boxes to read but you can't interact with anything or move your character because you're still locked in "conversation mode".
And even in Endwalker, you'll still have to suffer through extremely annoying "timesink" quests as a part of main story (just like you did in ARR) which you can't just skip in any way, best example being "In from the Cold" quest, which is one of the most annoying experiences I've ever had in any MMO and made me almost disinterested to continue to care about playing the rest of the expansion.
I do agree that the music being a good reason to play this game, especially if you like variety of music styles - the variety of music is unmatched by any other MMO (most of whom just use "generic fantasy instrumental soundtracks"). The community is also great - you can still experience some sweaty basement-dwelling neckbeards who get annoyed at you proceeding through dungeons/raids slower than they want to or because you might occasionally screw up some mechanics and you do get some occasional stalkers/trolls but overall it's much, much more friendly than in many other MMOs.
I'd personally never recommend Final Fantasy to any of my friends at this point, they have to slog through 100+ hours of story content to get to the end game. It's also incredibly boring when it's surrounded by generic MMO style gameplay.
People also keep saying the community is great. My experience is that it's not any better or worse than virtually any other MMO community out there. You have the toxic server personalities sitting in major cities saying inane/horrible crap in say/yell, ERPers and RPers sitting naked in every city, a "nightclub scene" that is rampant with pay for ERP services without any way to check if the people they're "serving" are underage or not.
I suspect it's a haven for predators and manipulators.
Now if they made a Call of Duty MMO and it had a long global cooldown I might understand a little more as that franchise is not known for being that way.
Nah, you don't need to run the needle all the way to the other side of the scale and bring Call of Duty into the argument. Just compare FFXIV to WoW. Same medium (tab target MMO), same genre (high fantasy). Pretty apples to apples. Melees in WoW have a 1 second GCD, casters get 1.5 second GCD. I believe that all can be lowered by haste, but even at the baseline playing a WoW melee class you're executing 2.5x the abilities per minute you are in FFXIV. As much as I hate the direction WoW has gone since MoP, its combat is still WAY more engaging than FFXIV. FFXIV is like watching paint dry or grass grow. All opinion, of course, and I'm totally fine that people love it and are committed to it. I'm glad it's out there and successful, but I need something more engaging.
I remember trying FFXIV...Somehow I got a free trial?....All I remember is starting the first quest, but deciding I wanted to look around before doing it.....The world is important to me....Every direction I went, I got a message that said "Your quest is not in that direction" and I couldnt go any further....I was forced to do the quest and nothing else....Lets just say I am not a fan of games on rails that follow a strict script or story line and I left.
I remember trying FFXIV...Somehow I got a free trial?....All I remember is starting the first quest, but deciding I wanted to look around before doing it.....The world is important to me....Every direction I went, I got a message that said "Your quest is not in that direction" and I couldnt go any further....I was forced to do the quest and nothing else....Lets just say I am not a fan of games on rails that follow a strict script or story line and I left.
So... you're saying you didn't beat the single quest tutorial... which teaches you how to move, accept and turn in a quest.... after which the world is unlocked for you to explore. Something tells me you went into the game not actually wanting to give it a chance.
The community is the most insular, insecure, and toxic community out of any MMO I've ever played. That was before the mass exodus from WoW and the subsequent massive uptick in smug self-righteousness for being "better" than WoW despite the game's first expansion being a literal parody of its own community (Shiva represents the game and what its community did to it).
It was so bad I literally got reported for hate speech in a dungeon where I literally said nothing at all just because the DPS didn't like how slow I was tanking. I took the screenshots of the conspiracy to false report to the GMs and they straight said to my face they didn't care. The guy literally acknowledged I didn't say anything, but he was going to report me for hate speech because I was tanking too slow, and they gave me a 3-day ban (first offense). I've not played since. If I want the Dissidia game franchise storyline I'll just play Dissidia.
The game is a seriously mediocre single-player experience, that doesn't hold up to other FF games (even XI), made completely unplayable as a MMO by its community--not just the players but also developers & publisher's collectivist desire to save face even when they're in the wrong.
While people said the story is amazing, I found it very boring x.x
When I read this comment I had a wtf moment. How far did you get in the story? I've played the entire story including all the side quests up to the present endgame (twice) and I'm in the middle of another play through at the moment. So yes I love the story. Any story that can make me cry or laugh out loud is a great story. There is even one Endwalker scene that made me disgusted and angry (anyone reading this will know what I'm talking about). That has never happened to me in any other game before. I've been playing now for over 5 years and will continue playing for the foreseeable future.
All the way up to shadowbringers the game is just literally a re-mix of the best plot points from the Final Fantasy Dissidia storylines. Then shadowbringers goes up its own ass in AU fan fiction based on a vanilla raid you'd never know about if you weren't there for it (which BTW has every part of its a storyline directly stolen from FFXI). You don't have to get very far into the story if you've seen the whole story before but told better in other games. Especially if you played the story before THE GREAT FILLER CULLING that actually made the base game playable.
I remember trying FFXIV...Somehow I got a free trial?....All I remember is starting the first quest, but deciding I wanted to look around before doing it.....The world is important to me....Every direction I went, I got a message that said "Your quest is not in that direction" and I couldnt go any further....I was forced to do the quest and nothing else....Lets just say I am not a fan of games on rails that follow a strict script or story line and I left.
You shared this story before. I find it amazing you haven't tried since that early half attempt at playing lol. You must have literally just loaded in as that isn't a thing in the game as of now.
When I first tried the game I thought it was for me, but I returned 2 years later and actually put the effort into it found a great game.
It was so bad I literally got reported for hate speech in a dungeon where I literally said nothing at all just because the DPS didn't like how slow I was tanking. I took the screenshots of the conspiracy to false report to the GMs and they straight said to my face they didn't care. The guy literally acknowledged I didn't say anything, but he was going to report me for hate speech because I was tanking too slow, and they gave me a 3-day ban (first offense). I've not played since. If I want the Dissidia game franchise storyline I'll just play Dissidia.
After I read this part, I just ignored everything else you said. You aren't getting a 3 day ban because someone reported you for something you didn't do. If they banned you for 3 days, you deserved the ban. That's one thing about SE and FFXIV, they don't just ban you for nothing.
It was so bad I literally got reported for hate speech in a dungeon where I literally said nothing at all just because the DPS didn't like how slow I was tanking. I took the screenshots of the conspiracy to false report to the GMs and they straight said to my face they didn't care. The guy literally acknowledged I didn't say anything, but he was going to report me for hate speech because I was tanking too slow, and they gave me a 3-day ban (first offense). I've not played since. If I want the Dissidia game franchise storyline I'll just play Dissidia.
After I read this part, I just ignored everything else you said. You aren't getting a 3 day ban because someone reported you for something you didn't do. If they banned you for 3 days, you deserved the ban. That's one thing about SE and FFXIV, they don't just ban you for nothing.
I've seen and heard a lot of things in FFXIV over the years that I questioned but never led to a ban for the individual. I've always been under the assumption that you really have to stand out as being absolutely deplorable to get banned.
Comments
When I read this comment I had a wtf moment. How far did you get in the story? I've played the entire story including all the side quests up to the present endgame (twice) and I'm in the middle of another play through at the moment. So yes I love the story. Any story that can make me cry or laugh out loud is a great story. There is even one Endwalker scene that made me disgusted and angry (anyone reading this will know what I'm talking about). That has never happened to me in any other game before. I've been playing now for over 5 years and will continue playing for the foreseeable future.
Early story was kind of slog at times, not gonna lie..but really picked up towards the first expansion. I have no personal experience with it now that they streamlined it, but it is very memorable, at least for me compared to other MMOs I've played. I can see why it was boring for some. The best advice I can give is to stick with it.
Final Fantasy 14 is probably the most fleshed out, polished MMOs out today with a great breadth of activities both combat and otherwise with a huge player base to support it. More recent design decisions have been made quite clearly for money driven reasons above good game design but that happens and overall the game continues to shine. With no real other options coming anytime in the next decade it seems I imagine it will continue to hold its place of dominance for a while.
And even in Endwalker, you'll still have to suffer through extremely annoying "timesink" quests as a part of main story (just like you did in ARR) which you can't just skip in any way, best example being "In from the Cold" quest, which is one of the most annoying experiences I've ever had in any MMO and made me almost disinterested to continue to care about playing the rest of the expansion.
I do agree that the music being a good reason to play this game, especially if you like variety of music styles - the variety of music is unmatched by any other MMO (most of whom just use "generic fantasy instrumental soundtracks"). The community is also great - you can still experience some sweaty basement-dwelling neckbeards who get annoyed at you proceeding through dungeons/raids slower than they want to or because you might occasionally screw up some mechanics and you do get some occasional stalkers/trolls but overall it's much, much more friendly than in many other MMOs.
People also keep saying the community is great. My experience is that it's not any better or worse than virtually any other MMO community out there. You have the toxic server personalities sitting in major cities saying inane/horrible crap in say/yell, ERPers and RPers sitting naked in every city, a "nightclub scene" that is rampant with pay for ERP services without any way to check if the people they're "serving" are underage or not.
I suspect it's a haven for predators and manipulators.
Nah, you don't need to run the needle all the way to the other side of the scale and bring Call of Duty into the argument. Just compare FFXIV to WoW. Same medium (tab target MMO), same genre (high fantasy). Pretty apples to apples. Melees in WoW have a 1 second GCD, casters get 1.5 second GCD. I believe that all can be lowered by haste, but even at the baseline playing a WoW melee class you're executing 2.5x the abilities per minute you are in FFXIV. As much as I hate the direction WoW has gone since MoP, its combat is still WAY more engaging than FFXIV. FFXIV is like watching paint dry or grass grow. All opinion, of course, and I'm totally fine that people love it and are committed to it. I'm glad it's out there and successful, but I need something more engaging.
So... you're saying you didn't beat the single quest tutorial... which teaches you how to move, accept and turn in a quest.... after which the world is unlocked for you to explore. Something tells me you went into the game not actually wanting to give it a chance.
It was so bad I literally got reported for hate speech in a dungeon where I literally said nothing at all just because the DPS didn't like how slow I was tanking. I took the screenshots of the conspiracy to false report to the GMs and they straight said to my face they didn't care. The guy literally acknowledged I didn't say anything, but he was going to report me for hate speech because I was tanking too slow, and they gave me a 3-day ban (first offense). I've not played since. If I want the Dissidia game franchise storyline I'll just play Dissidia.
The game is a seriously mediocre single-player experience, that doesn't hold up to other FF games (even XI), made completely unplayable as a MMO by its community--not just the players but also developers & publisher's collectivist desire to save face even when they're in the wrong.
All the way up to shadowbringers the game is just literally a re-mix of the best plot points from the Final Fantasy Dissidia storylines. Then shadowbringers goes up its own ass in AU fan fiction based on a vanilla raid you'd never know about if you weren't there for it (which BTW has every part of its a storyline directly stolen from FFXI). You don't have to get very far into the story if you've seen the whole story before but told better in other games. Especially if you played the story before THE GREAT FILLER CULLING that actually made the base game playable.
After I read this part, I just ignored everything else you said. You aren't getting a 3 day ban because someone reported you for something you didn't do. If they banned you for 3 days, you deserved the ban. That's one thing about SE and FFXIV, they don't just ban you for nothing.
I've seen and heard a lot of things in FFXIV over the years that I questioned but never led to a ban for the individual. I've always been under the assumption that you really have to stand out as being absolutely deplorable to get banned.