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FFXIV, WoW, & XC. A wall of text that no one cares about.


Bacon

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So, I have been playing FFXIV for a few months now and I reached max level not that many days ago. I played back when A Realm Reborn launched and hit max level back then as well, but I never did any of the endgame content. I'm still playing a bit of catch-up, but man, FFXIV is a really great, amazing game. The story is absolutely fantastic with Shadowbringers being the best part. Even when I first played the game I thought it wasn't worthy of being a numbered FF game. It was why I never played XI. But I still thought FFXIV was a good game. Just not something I'd call Final Fantasy. Now, it is by far my favorite FF of all time. 


Something I have wanted to talk about since I beating the Heavensward portion of FFXIV is MMO combat and Xenoblade. I kinda crap on MMO gameplay because it usually isn't fun, but with how encounters are designed in FFXIV I have really been just enjoying the combat, especially with kinda being able to just play another class whenever you want. That and I usually think of WoW when I think of MMO combat. And while they are similar, FFXIV and WoW are different in ways that matter. WoW has this system where you are usually using the same ability over and over again until you gain enough of your resource and then you press a button to spend it all in one single big hit. FFXIV isn't really like that. At this point, every class/job has its own resource or builders and spenders but it isn't the same. You aren't just pressing one button but a series of buttons thanks to the combo system. And while it could be said that you are just pressing more buttons to get the same result, it really isn't like that and I can't really explain it better. 


But like, the Dragoon has a 5 part combo and while it is considered simple, is it more satisfying than just pressing Sinister Strike 5 times and then pressing Dispatch to spend your combo points, or using raging blow and whirlwind until you have 100 rage and then using rampage. With Dragoon you go: True Thrust >  Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw. That is your first combo and then you follow that up with your second combo which is: True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust.  And there is much more to it than that with have to use non-combo breaking abilities (oGCD/off gobal cooldowns) in between the majority of those abilities. 


Anyway, FFXIV made me realize this kind of MMO combat is actually pretty good. And it made me realize that Xenoblade could really benefit from basically becoming FFXIV. Xenoblade is just you walking up to an enemy, letting your guy auto-attack, and using like 1 of 6-10 abilities on your 'Hotbar' and then that ability becomes unusable for a short while, it goes on cooldown. Of course, you have like 3 or 4 people in your party at one time, but you have way too much downtime. You can actually run out of buttons to press. Even in classic turn-based games you still have to press attack to attack There are no filler abilities. In both WoW and FFXIV, there are always buttons to be pressed.  Whether it be pressing the same ability 5 times in a row, or having two 5 part combos you are always actively engaged. In a way, there is an action RPG element to MMOs like WoW or FFXIV that I feel Xenoblade needs. It is why I have literally quit every Xenoblade game exactly 50 hours in, and why the only Xenoblade game I have ever beaten is the first one. Even in that one I stopped playing it for a whole year, restarted, stopped again for a whole month, and then finally beat it. I can spend 300 hours in a Soulsborne game where all you do is dodge and attack because there is no downtime in combat, but I can't finish the Xenoblade games. 


In general, I think the Xenoblade game would be better off being more like an MMO. In Shadowbringers, you have the option to take AI companions into dungeons instead of playing with real players. These are called "Trusts," and while it is slower this way, the AI almost never messes up. I think Xenoblade could really work with this kind of system in place. You would only get to control one character this way, but that just means your character would have more abilities to use. Like, Dark Knight has 30 abilities that I use. I don't use all of them all the time. Some abilities have cooldowns, and some you only use for certain situations. Still, you have far more actions per minute in FFXIV. With the announcement of FFXVI, I was surprised by how many people didn't like the I deal of a party-less Final Fantasy or at least a party you didn't control. I very much prefer games where you basically control one character and the others are there for story reasons. Not dissimilar to BioWare games of the Tales of series. You can control other characters in those games to varying degrees, but I generally only controlled a single character and would either issue commands or swap to a character just for a second to make them do something specific. 


I also wouldn't mind if Xenoblade became something similar to the Destiny games. A Pseudo-MMO. Especially if they were to continue the XCX type of games. At that point, it really would be like FFXIV. A mostly single-player main quest, and a multi-player instance, dungeon, and raid, portion. Though, I think that might be a bit much. What I would really be happy with is if they took FFXIV's combat and the "Trust" system and apply that to a fully massively single-player RPG. And it would totally work with a controller because you can play FFXIV with a controller. 


I kinda forgot somethings I wanted to include as I had to use the bathroom when typing this up and I lost my train of thought but I feel like I have typed enough at this point. And it would be fair to say I wanted a whole different kind of game and that I don't want a Xenoblade game, but I feel like if the games changed in the way I wanted them and you actually go to play it, you would still think it played like Xenoblade but faster and maybe more hectic. The only issue I could see happening with these changes is the difficultly of the game. MMOs, at least these days, aren't particularly hard. There are hard things to do in MMOs, but the content that most players actually engage in is definitely on the easier side. 

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2 hours ago, Bacon said:

With Dragoon you go: True Thrust >  Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw. That is your first combo and then you follow that up with your second combo which is: True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust.  And there is much more to it than that with have to use non-combo breaking abilities (oGCD/off gobal cooldowns) in between the majority of those abilities. 

Oh yeah, there's a LOT more to Dragoon than the basic rotation. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ua5uewclVNvIaVJ44eX3F3-y3QLKcn2z8R8d9Vvj5B0/edit

 

So much to do for them deep gains!


Anyhow, I largely agree. FFXIV starts off really slow, as most MMOs do, but it picks up quite a bit and by the end you have an absolute plethora of abilities to use, and you know when and how to use them, because you've spent so long with them. Unlike WoW, you also GET to use them, I feel like WoW lately, in addition to pruning out abilities, also has essentially always been about using just a few of your several hot bars, or in recent expansions, just a few abilities total.

 

That said, I still really enjoy turn-based combat where you control the entire party, and where it's like a complex game of chess rather than button mashing. Frankly I'm really disappointed in how deep down the pseudo-action-game hole Square has gone with Final Fantasy. Despite me liking FFXIV, and FF7R's combat being a good step up from their previous trash, I feel like on average they still make really bad action combat for the most part. Even with FF7R, I felt like half of it was just really flashy animations. It was definitely combat I'd describe as good, it wasn't sad like FFXV's, but it still didn't rock my world. I was more pleasantly surprised rather than blown away.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles, though, is so much worse than anything else we're talking about. The combat is so bad it's almost pathetic. XC2's was better, but still largely the same thing. Again, just flashier. XCX was more of the same. I feel like the awful combat combined with the sprawling open worlds (which I liked in concept, but their execution was just "big plains of occasional enemies, sprinkled with completely random items that all look like identical glowing orbs") and generally tedious quests outside of the main storyline make each title such a huge, boring, anti-fun chore. Which is a shame, because they tell some interesting stories. I have yet to beat XC2 because it went a little too cutesy weeb bullshit for my tastes, but XC1 had a fairly interesting story and I really liked the entire concept from beginning to end of XCX's, despite it being over fairly abruptly once you cut out the side nonsense. Would love to see more of that world and what caused the events in that game to transpire as they did.

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I've been playing FF14 for almost a month now, and it's a decent mmo with some cool mechanics. But like all long standing mmo's, it's at a point where there's so much content that a lot of the various applications are too tiring to want to try and pick up. Crafting is so far along that it's almost too complicated to figure out. Leveling (even with the 70 boost) makes the game feel unbalanced (you're always 10 lvls above your actual main story quest, and that's even if you skip all the side quests so you don't level as fast). But there's sooooo many branching story lines that even trying keeping up with them all is almost near impossible unless you have a full 6 months to a year of time to play them all out. And the pvp system is too full that you basically just stand in a mob, let all the seasoned players fight it out, get your points, and hope to spend them on one single item you maybe want (mount, armor, etc) within a few days...

 

But what really kinda spoiled me as an MMO player was how SWtOR put everything right in your face, all in one location, and didn't have you spending 40% of your time doing all fetch quests that FF14 (and definitely WoW) does. Now I get annoyed when I have to travel across the map just to right click on an npc to talk to them and then travel all the way back to turn it in, and then rinse and repeat to someone/somewhere else. Plus I think what's really disappointing in FF14 is the custom armor system. Most all pieces look the same, and at best you get to color them all as a whole and not individually. If there's a skirt you like, or shoes or gloves, you kinda only get to blanket color them one way without being able to mix and match. And while SWtOR has the same color system, at least they have a two-tone color palette where the armor can be mixed in color. Here, even if you find 1 armor piece that;s somehow not the same as the 20 other ones on the market, you get one color. And what's worse is that Mog Station charges you for the unique pieces that still have a blanket color style to them... It jsut feels kinda futile playing this when you know anything you wear is gonna look the same as everyone else =/

 

Still, my friends and I are playing it daily just because we have nothing else to do with each other. Being older FF fans, it's fun seeing the mix of enemies from past titles. But even with the nostalgia factor keeping us entertained, I'm definitely sitting at my computer doing the daily roulettes and kinda falling asleep at my keyboard because the game play is getting repetitive at lvl 70+ no matter what class I choose =/

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9 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Xenoblade Chronicles, though, is so much worse than anything else we're talking about. The combat is so bad it's almost pathetic. XC2's was better, but still largely the same thing. Again, just flashier.


Hard disagree.  There’s many more layered systems to juggle in XB2.  Timed press bonuses for basic attacks, elemental combo chains, seals, ‘blade‘ swaps and cancels, animation cancels, break-topple-launch-smash, elemental orbs, health pellets, etc.  It’s quite satisfying to stack multiple elemental bursts into one massive chain attack.  You need it against most of the late game and end game bosses, unless you find other ways to cheese it through the gatcha and blade leveling (there are a couple).  For better or worse, XB2 addresses simplicity concerns by overstuffing it with systems to manage and optimize.

 

I think I might be the only one here who actually beat it?  Shame since it’s really worth seeing through to the end.  XB2 is also highly relevant to this thread in what it changes to combat, how many more abilities you have access to, there being no real downtime once you discover how the cancel systems/auto-attack timing bonuses work, etc.  Have you played it @Bacon?
 

I never found XB1s combat bad, but we’ve had that discussion before.  XBX is the game that’s mostly more of the same in combat.  Traded off visions and more unique combat styles (like Melia) for homogeneity, with slow ass Skell combat and a color bonus system you can’t really strategize around.  It’s worse overall, IMO.  But also much more samey than XB2.

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I have played XC2. I was somewhere after "unlocking" Mythra. I watch an all bosses video before I posted this and I skipped far enough a head, I think, to reexamine the combat. This (SPOILERS XC2) is the fight I watched. And There are plenty of auto-attacks, and that is the issue. 

 

And of these things: Timed press bonuses for basic attacks, elemental combo chains, seals, ‘blade‘ swaps and cancels, animation cancels, break-topple-launch-smash, elemental orbs, health pellets, aren't particularly exciting. Like, you still only have 3 main abilities per blade and you use auto-attacks to refill their use. Like, yeah, you can set things up so you knock down enemies, but you aren't really doing more things, you are just doing the same 3 things in a specific order. When it comes to fighting an enemy you have very few actions to actively perform. 

 

I will say XC2 is better than the other XC games, but it is still some of the most boring, unriveting combat to ever have been made. 

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8 hours ago, Bacon said:

I have played XC2. I was somewhere after "unlocking" Mythra. I watch an all bosses video before I posted this and I skipped far enough a head, I think, to reexamine the combat. This (SPOILERS XC2) is the fight I watched. And There are plenty of auto-attacks, and that is the issue. 

 

And of these things: Timed press bonuses for basic attacks, elemental combo chains, seals, ‘blade‘ swaps and cancels, animation cancels, break-topple-launch-smash, elemental orbs, health pellets, aren't particularly exciting. Like, you still only have 3 main abilities per blade and you use auto-attacks to refill their use. Like, yeah, you can set things up so you knock down enemies, but you aren't really doing more things, you are just doing the same 3 things in a specific order. When it comes to fighting an enemy you have very few actions to actively perform. 

 

I will say XC2 is better than the other XC games, but it is still some of the most boring, unriveting combat to ever have been made. 

 

Not if you're tying to maximize elemental bonuses and blade synergy.  When and how you switch between blades becomes the focus in the late game.  And that's very much dependent on the battle situation.  What element orbs does the enemy already have? What blades elements do you and your party members have equipped?  Do you go for riskier elemental chains or topple combos?  Can you do both to maximize damage?  What about healing?  Etc.  By the end of the game I had that elemental flow chart pretty much memorized.  There's a ton of the character/blade abilities and pouch items that make auto-attacks less needed and charge arts faster too.

Last thing I'll add is that I really do think the auto attack changes from XB1 matter.  You talked about that game having issues with just sitting there and not pressing buttons.  In XB2, there's the Mario RPG style timed hits, in addition to left stick taps to cancel animation frames.  Or you can decide to stop your attack strings to chase health pelletes.  It's not as direct as an action game or even FF7R, but it is way more involved than the movement in XB1 mainly being about attack position bonuses.

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10 hours ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

I've been playing FF14 for almost a month now, and it's a decent mmo with some cool mechanics. But like all long standing mmo's, it's at a point where there's so much content that a lot of the various applications are too tiring to want to try and pick up. Crafting is so far along that it's almost too complicated to figure out. Leveling (even with the 70 boost) makes the game feel unbalanced (you're always 10 lvls above your actual main story quest, and that's even if you skip all the side quests so you don't level as fast). But there's sooooo many branching story lines that even trying keeping up with them all is almost near impossible unless you have a full 6 months to a year of time to play them all out. And the pvp system is too full that you basically just stand in a mob, let all the seasoned players fight it out, get your points, and hope to spend them on one single item you maybe want (mount, armor, etc) within a few days...

 

But what really kinda spoiled me as an MMO player was how SWtOR put everything right in your face, all in one location, and didn't have you spending 40% of your time doing all fetch quests that FF14 (and definitely WoW) does. Now I get annoyed when I have to travel across the map just to right click on an npc to talk to them and then travel all the way back to turn it in, and then rinse and repeat to someone/somewhere else. Plus I think what's really disappointing in FF14 is the custom armor system. Most all pieces look the same, and at best you get to color them all as a whole and not individually. If there's a skirt you like, or shoes or gloves, you kinda only get to blanket color them one way without being able to mix and match. And while SWtOR has the same color system, at least they have a two-tone color palette where the armor can be mixed in color. Here, even if you find 1 armor piece that;s somehow not the same as the 20 other ones on the market, you get one color. And what's worse is that Mog Station charges you for the unique pieces that still have a blanket color style to them... It jsut feels kinda futile playing this when you know anything you wear is gonna look the same as everyone else =/

 

Still, my friends and I are playing it daily just because we have nothing else to do with each other. Being older FF fans, it's fun seeing the mix of enemies from past titles. But even with the nostalgia factor keeping us entertained, I'm definitely sitting at my computer doing the daily roulettes and kinda falling asleep at my keyboard because the game play is getting repetitive at lvl 70+ no matter what class I choose =/

While customization in any game can always use improvements and FFXIV is certainly no exception with its barebones dye system, I don't really get the first paragraph. It's an MMO, it's supposed to have lots of content to keep you occupied. You talk about all the content you don't have time to do, but then talk about how you just sit around doing dailies. You're not supposed to just hop in and have everything done in a month, that would be a terrible way to retain players, and is exactly why The Old Republic died so hard. It's not a single player game that you just "beat" and move on from.


You seem to want all the rewards and to fully understand everything, but with like zero commitment or effort. Also, there's multiple PvP modes, one isn't "too full," as it's just a few people vs a few people, much tighter and more controlled. There are a few giant mob ones, but then there's fun strategic ones like the one where you save up resources to buy giant robots and then use those to absolutely destroy mobs of other players before they can kill it. The game play getting "repetitive" makes it sound like you might not fully understand your class(es) yet. While there's definitely some overlap, especially with tanks, a lot of the classes play very differently, at least if you're actually trying to play in a way to maximize your output rather than to just get whatever you're doing done. You'll definitely want to focus on that output if you want to do any of the endgame stuff, which you're clearly not at yet being only "70+" instead of 80.


That said, at the end of the day, it's still the same core game. Bozjat I find to be super fun and interesting, but you're still going around doing something very similar to FATEs, just much harder, with player limits and other interesting restrictions. Just about any quest in most games I can imagine can eventually be boiled down to either "fetch quest" or "kill quest," even outside of MMOs. I could really do with more Secret World puzzles where you're actually figuring things out, FFXIV sadly only has a few brain teaser quests with puzzles and no hints.

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7 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

You talk about all the content you don't have time to do, but then talk about how you just sit around doing dailies.

 

What I said was that SWtOr spoiled me because they put all their content in one area while FF14 has you running around 40% of the time to do all of theirs, and that's what's frustrating. When you add up all the quests (main and side) in FF14, it should take about 6-12 months to finish it all. But because there's the lvl-to-70 buff, you're always gonna be 10 lvls ahead of where you should be, and that's only when you're doing the main story quests and none of the side. The content then gets boring because there's no challenge when doing the quests. I do the dailies and none of the side quests just because I'm sparing myself from running halfway across the map, killing one mob of enemies that I'm op against, then running back to turn the side quest in, and rinse / repeating... If you do the math on the full year, you're actually spending 21 weeks worth of time just running around doing nothing more than fetching those quests, and it's tedious.

 

My complaints are that there's too many quests, the level buff puts you way above them making none of them a challenge, and to actually do them you have to spend more time world traveling than you do spending time to beat them. Again, SWtOR spoiled me while this game is kinda punishing me, and there isn't much reward for doing them all other than seeing the same armor drops in the same colors as each other *shrugs*

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15 minutes ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

When you add up all the quests (main and side) in FF14, it should take about 6-12 months to finish it all.

What do you mean by this? The gold quests are generally worthless. Quests just for exp. You don't have to do all the blue quests either. You need to do the crystal tower series, and kinda need to do the Return to Ivalice series. Sure, maybe it would take that long to do the truly optional stuff, but to get to endgame with one class it should only take a month going 1-80 without skipping any story. In two months I got Dragoon, Dark Knight, and SMN to 80 and Dark Knight and Dragoon are both at ilvl 480+ thanks to a kind crafter. 

 

I will agree that in the MSQ there are way too many quests that are: Go here, talk to NPC, go there talk to NPC, return here talk to NPC, go there pick up item, return here and turn in quests. But all of that is just for telling a story, and it is only really bad because you have a lot to do because you haven't been playing the whole time. 10 quest of doing that after 3 months of no new story content isn't bad at all. 

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10 minutes ago, Bacon said:

What do you mean by this? The gold quests are generally worthless. Quests just for exp. You don't have to do all the blue quests either. You need to do the crystal tower series, and kinda need to do the Return to Ivalice series. Sure, maybe it would take that long to do the truly optional stuff, but to get to endgame with one class it should only take a month going 1-80 without skipping any story. In two months I got Dragoon, Dark Knight, and SMN to 80 and Dark Knight and Dragoon are both at ilvl 480+ thanks to a kind crafter. 

 

"All the quests"... that's what I mean. Doing every single exclamation point on your map, in every single region should take about a year. There's story, there's side, there's leve, there's guild, there's special events... everything. And that's not including doing every class quest, leveling every class to maximum, etc.

 

Right now I'm at 78 with SCH, I have another char that's mixed DRG / SMR / MCH (average around lvl 65-70), and a third char that's like lvl 30 BRD and ARW (arrow?). And I'm only doing separate chars with different classes just because I'm getting bored having to level one up to 50 just to switch to the higher end classes, and I kinda want immediate satisfaction by trying something new right away that I can learn from lvl1 in the lower quests.

 

And I'm not saying this is a bad game. I'm just saying a game like SWtOR spoiled me by putting all the quests in one area, with very little need to fetch and complete them, while FF14 is totally opposite (get this quest, go to an entirely different town to talk to someone, then warp to an entirely different area to have to talk to someone else, then go back to the original town to talk to that first guy again, and then go attune with some crystal in the middle of nowhere, etc)... And what's your reward? Maybe a minion you have to roll on, maybe some piece of armor that looks like something else already, and maybe some crafting material that you'd need to lvl just to be able to use it. It's just tedious at times with not much payout.

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3 minutes ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

Doing every single exclamation point on your map, in every single region should take about a year.

Maybe, but you really shouldn't be doing that. That is a huge mistake if your goal is to empty the maps of quests.

 

4 minutes ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

Right now I'm at 78 with SCH, I have another char that's mixed DRG / SMR / MCH (average around lvl 65-70), and a third char that's like lvl 30 BRD and ARW (arrow?). And I'm only doing separate chars with different classes just because I'm getting bored having to level one up to 50 just to switch to the higher end classes, and I kinda want immediate satisfaction by trying something new right away that I can learn from lvl1 in the lower quests.

Man, this just... You really shouldn't do alts. And like, you have to start at level one on each job unless they are MCH, DRK, GNB, RDM, DNC, SAM, and I think AST. That just seem like you much a bunch of time into the game that you have effectively thrown away. It takes no time, in the grand scheme of things, to level to 50 with POTD, Roulettes, and dungeons (if you are a tank or healer). 

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8 minutes ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

 

"All the quests"... that's what I mean. Doing every single exclamation point on your map, in every single region should take about a year. There's story, there's side, there's leve, there's guild, there's special events... everything. And that's not including doing every class quest, leveling every class to maximum, etc.

Uhh... but you're not really supposed to do all of them all at once. They're there so you continue to have something to do, not so that you can relentlessly grind them out to clear your map. There's so many because you can level every class on the same character. Having lots of extra quests means that after you get through the main story with your primary class, there's still plenty of content you haven't seen while leveling up other classes.


And I kind of get the TOR thing, but FFXIV is about the people in each region, their problems, not just having a giant billboard in your home that offers you every quest from every person around the world. Place, location, regional culture, all those are like huge themes of the game and old zones are generally not just left by the wayside once you've completed the quests in them, we're repairing a huge portion of the first expansion's city right now as well as reclaiming a part of Bozja, which was something from 1.0, as part of the latest update. Getting all the quests from your main city would really kill the feeling of these places being connected and full of actual people who you need to see in person to hear about their problems. I mean, in the end, getting around the world is pretty easy, so it's not like it's a huge deal anyway.

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7 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Maybe, but you really shouldn't be doing that. That is a huge mistake if your goal is to empty the maps of quests.

 

Man, this just... You really shouldn't do alts. And like, you have to start at level one on each job unless they are MCH, DRK, GNB, RDM, DNC, SAM, and I think AST. That just seem like you much a bunch of time into the game that you have effectively thrown away. It takes no time, in the grand scheme of things, to level to 50 with POTD, Roulettes, and dungeons (if you are a tank or healer). 

 

I've been a healer through all mmo's of the past 20 years, so I don't feel comfortable playing any other type of class. And that's definitely on me doing multiple characters. But it's how I feel most comfortable learning them, by starting at lvl1, so it's my cross to bare, lol

 

 

5 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I mean, in the end, getting around the world is pretty easy, so it's not like it's a huge deal anyway.

 

Tell me that after I find all the stupid aether currents from Heavensward+, lol

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5 minutes ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

 

I've been a healer through all mmo's of the past 20 years, so I don't feel comfortable playing any other type of class. And that's definitely on me doing multiple characters. But it's how I feel most comfortable learning them, by starting at lvl1, so it's my cross to bare, lol

 

 

 

Tell me that after I find all the stupid aether currents from Heavensward+, lol

You still start alternate classes at level 1 on the same character, you definitely don't just switch from an 80 healer to an 80 tank. (Level is retained when you switch back, of course, you never lose progress.)

 

And you can get a friend with a multi-seat mount to fly you to the aether currents!

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I actually played this for around 70 hours early in the pandemic. It was my first MMO.

 

I played tank which I probably wouldn’t do again in hindsight, but I enjoyed it regardless (a lot of pressure for a noob tho). 
 

I only played through the initial game content (right before they made it more manageable to do so with a patch). 
 

At times I found the game very fun, stylish and satisfying, and others I found it to be insanely tedious and boring. Bear in mind I played the entire thing solo, and I recognize I was playing the weakest part of the game. 
 

I was impressed at how kind people were even when I was messing up as tank at times. 
 

I could see how if you had a good group of friends these games would be some of the must beloved things you could play, but my experience just left me past wanting more and part meh I kinda wish I had those hours back. 

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21 hours ago, Bacon said:

Something I have wanted to talk about since I beating the Heavensward portion of FFXIV is MMO combat and Xenoblade. I kinda crap on MMO gameplay because it usually isn't fun, but with how encounters are designed in FFXIV I have really been just enjoying the combat, especially with kinda being able to just play another class whenever you want. That and I usually think of WoW when I think of MMO combat. And while they are similar, FFXIV and WoW are different in ways that matter. WoW has this system where you are usually using the same ability over and over again until you gain enough of your resource and then you press a button to spend it all in one single big hit. FFXIV isn't really like that. At this point, every class/job has its own resource or builders and spenders but it isn't the same. You aren't just pressing one button but a series of buttons thanks to the combo system. And while it could be said that you are just pressing more buttons to get the same result, it really isn't like that and I can't really explain it better.

I mean yes, but no. Sure some of the brain dead classes like Havoc Demon Hunter are just a basic rotation in every situation, but when you get into some of the more complicated classes it very much becomes situational and you're rotation can change constantly given the dungeon/raid.

 

I honestly didn't feel FFXIV was anything to write home about combat wise. Tera is something I wish had gotten more attention or at least its combat because that game was downright fun to play. I actually felt like my character was doing something other than stand in one place and push buttons.

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1 hour ago, Nokt said:

I mean yes, but no. Sure some of the brain dead classes like Havoc Demon Hunter are just a basic rotation in every situation, but when you get into some of the more complicated classes it very much becomes situational and you're rotation can change constantly given the dungeon/raid.

 

Well, Outlaw/Ass Rogue, Fury Warrior, BM Hunter, and, Frost DK, are all pretty basic. Frost Mage and Destro Warlock aren't much better. And yeah, your rotation can change, but it is pretty simple change. You call Demon Hunter brain dead, but I don't consider the specs I listed to be any less brain dead. Especially Fury and Rogue. All of this is said with PvE in mind. Like, I barely get a full hotbar of consistently useful abilities.

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And the only reason Demon Hunter looks so empty is because it doesn't have like any extra class buttons and I don't have any non-spell books things on the bars. Except for the ability on 5. 

 

FFXIV has me using much more of my hotbar. 

 

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Your rotation changes in WoW, but you aren't really doing much more stuff. I know Enh Shaman had a bit more going on when I was using the Natural Harmony traits. I haven't really played the other specs of Warlock or Mage. I leveled those classes up but I hate caster classes. Never played a Druid, and I can't remember shit about Ret despite getting that to 120 as well. Never leveled a (shadow)priest either. Well, not past 44 anyway. I mean, of course there is more depth to it than pressing the same button 5 times in a row and then pressing your big dam button, but not a lot and not in the majority of the PvE content. It isn't PvP or Raids, WoW classes feel very samey, or I hear people talk about how all of the classes have been homogenized. Even then, with the Class/Spec combos I play, it is all very simple. With how my WoW keybinds are set up there is almost no difference when I switch character/classes. 

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13 hours ago, Bacon said:

Well, Outlaw/Ass Rogue, Fury Warrior, BM Hunter, and, Frost DK, are all pretty basic. Frost Mage and Destro Warlock aren't much better. And yeah, your rotation can change, but it is pretty simple change. You call Demon Hunter brain dead, but I don't consider the specs I listed to be any less brain dead. Especially Fury and Rogue. All of this is said with PvE in mind. Like, I barely get a full hotbar of consistently useful abilities.

 

And the only reason Demon Hunter looks so empty is because it doesn't have like any extra class buttons and I don't have any non-spell books things on the bars. Except for the ability on 5. 

 

FFXIV has me using much more of my hotbar.

 

Your rotation changes in WoW, but you aren't really doing much more stuff. I know Enh Shaman had a bit more going on when I was using the Natural Harmony traits. I haven't really played the other specs of Warlock or Mage. I leveled those classes up but I hate caster classes. Never played a Druid, and I can't remember shit about Ret despite getting that to 120 as well. Never leveled a (shadow)priest either. Well, not past 44 anyway. I mean, of course there is more depth to it than pressing the same button 5 times in a row and then pressing your big dam button, but not a lot and not in the majority of the PvE content. It isn't PvP or Raids, WoW classes feel very samey, or I hear people talk about how all of the classes have been homogenized. Even then, with the Class/Spec combos I play, it is all very simple. With how my WoW keybinds are set up there is almost no difference when I switch character/classes. 

Frost DK's have been openly mocked for how simple it is since WotLK. Though for the most part Unholy has output more DPS in most expansions. I haven't played Hunter since Vanilla - WotLK, Never gotten past just leveling a Warrior/Rogue so I can't say much about them.

 

Havoc Demon Hunter has one rotation, regardless of situation this is it. It has a total of 7 buttons.

Immolation Aura > Fel Rush > Eye Beam > Death Sweep > Metamorphosis > Death Sweep > Eye Beam > Metamorphosis > Immolation Aura > Eye Beam > Chaos Strike/Annihilation > Demon's Bite

 

Frost Mage has 2 basic rotations, one for multi-target and one for single target. Together it still only totals about 12 abilities, but everything depends on whats proc'd, what debuff is on the target(s) and how you choose to use your cooldowns. It massively affects how much DPS you're doing.

 

I'll admit I haven't played end game FFXIV or even really gotten that far, I think I'm level 40 on a DPS class and 20 on a healer.

But Dragoon is what I wanted to play so I went searching for its rotation and for the most part its

True Thrust > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw > True Thrust (Raiden) > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust.

That doesn't seem massively different than whats going on in WoW.

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5 hours ago, Nokt said:

Frost DK's have been openly mocked for how simple it is since WotLK. Though for the most part Unholy has output more DPS in most expansions. I haven't played Hunter since Vanilla - WotLK, Never gotten past just leveling a Warrior/Rogue so I can't say much about them.

 

Havoc Demon Hunter has one rotation, regardless of situation this is it. It has a total of 7 buttons.

Immolation Aura > Fel Rush > Eye Beam > Death Sweep > Metamorphosis > Death Sweep > Eye Beam > Metamorphosis > Immolation Aura > Eye Beam > Chaos Strike/Annihilation > Demon's Bite

 

Frost Mage has 2 basic rotations, one for multi-target and one for single target. Together it still only totals about 12 abilities, but everything depends on whats proc'd, what debuff is on the target(s) and how you choose to use your cooldowns. It massively affects how much DPS you're doing.

 

I'll admit I haven't played end game FFXIV or even really gotten that far, I think I'm level 40 on a DPS class and 20 on a healer.

But Dragoon is what I wanted to play so I went searching for its rotation and for the most part its

True Thrust > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw > True Thrust (Raiden) > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust.

That doesn't seem massively different than whats going on in WoW.

Yeah if you just hit those few buttons your damage is going to be pitiful.

 

Like I said: 

QaE5riKzPG0rwHWvJFnB6Moib1tDXPW7lfBUc-pm
DOCS.GOOGLE.COM

Last updated: 6/12/2020 Art below by Daniela Hristozova-Popova Overview The Brains Behind the Operation Resources Global Cooldown (GCD) Actions The Chaos Thrust Combo The Full Thrust Combo Raiden Thrust The Coerthan Torment Combo Basic Rotation Positionals How do I know if I’m at the Side or R...

Yes, your "basic" rotation is that, but there's so much more to do than just hit those abilities in a cycle over and over again.


Although it is significantly pared back from the meme it used to be where you had to cycle through like 60 abilities (not 60 different abilities, but quite a few of them) in a specific order with super precise timing, including positionals, or you'd lose out on tons of damage and would have to start over from the beginning.

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1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

Yeah if you just hit those few buttons your damage is going to be pitiful.

 

Like I said: 

QaE5riKzPG0rwHWvJFnB6Moib1tDXPW7lfBUc-pm
DOCS.GOOGLE.COM

Last updated: 6/12/2020 Art below by Daniela Hristozova-Popova Overview The Brains Behind the Operation Resources Global Cooldown (GCD) Actions The Chaos Thrust Combo The Full Thrust Combo Raiden Thrust The Coerthan Torment Combo Basic Rotation Positionals How do I know if I’m at the Side or R...

Yes, your "basic" rotation is that, but there's so much more to do than just hit those abilities in a cycle over and over again.


Although it is significantly pared back from the meme it used to be where you had to cycle through like 60 abilities (not 60 different abilities, but quite a few of them) in a specific order with super precise timing, including positionals, or you'd lose out on tons of damage and would have to start over from the beginning.

Cool.

 

The argument wasn't which has more depth. I was saying the FFXIV isn't doing anything drastically different than WoW. You have a few more buttons to push and WoW doesn't boil down push buttons until big attack is ready.

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