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Everyone keeps saying FFXIV is the best Final Fantasy experience in many, years? It is smart to jump in now?

Viale

Viale

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,617
entremet said:
Stay on topic, bud ;)
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Lol, you knew exactly what you were doing when you put that though. 87 Mc isn't tepid.


OT:
I've tried ff14 about 3 times, and I just can't get into it. I like pretty much everything about it... Besides actually playing it. I think I just have a heavy disdain for the traditional mmo style unfortunately. Sucks cause some of the later stuff especially looks awesome.
 
Skunk

Skunk

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,066
MochaKoffee said:
For better or for worse, this game is designed with the idea that most people are going to be re-subbing when new content drops, finishing it within a week, doing dailies and weeklies for maybe another week until their interest wanes, and then dropping their sub until the next content patch comes out.

It really isn't a massive time/money sink unless you want it to be. An hour/hour and a half a day is more than enough to make decent progress.



Witness the greatness of 1.0 Black Shroud in its full glory:

U5LViQY.jpg



(the entire West Shroud got excised during 1.x-2.0 transition, outside of like a single PvP map)
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W-w-why... in the turkey-fucking hell would somebody design that? *And with no quest markers*?!?!
 
Eriol

Eriol

Member
Oct 27, 2017
817
Santiago, Chile
HarryDemeanor said:
Probably not today but this was last summer. Queues for over 53 minutes just for Heavensward content and sometimes longer. Just kinda got tired of waiting to progress. So I've just been waiting for 5.3 the entire time.
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The only stuff with queues that long could be Old savage and extreme fights, level synced, and nobody is doing that, because savage/extreme stuff need some learning, and if its old, people can jump in smaller groups with lvl unsynced
 
Joelington

Joelington

Member
Sep 13, 2019
180
Canada
Off topic: What are you talking about, 7 Remake is getting near universal acclaim.

On topic: 14 is incredible and absolutely worth it. It is an mmo, so if those aren't your thing, then this probably won't change your mind. That said, I've only ever played 3 other mmos, and this is by far the best I've ever played. I got in at the beginning of January and there's an incomprehensible amount of content... All the classes feel really unique and fun to play.
That said, early game is pretty tedious, which will be addressed in an upcoming patch. Might be worth it to wait for that to drop.
Community feels pretty good, I've only encountered 3 toxic players in over 100 hours.
There is a free trial up to lvl 30 I believe so try it out and see what you think I guess.
 
rpm

rpm

Into the Woods
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
12,356
Parts Unknown
MillionStabs said:
I checked around, and it seems like when you buy the game your 30 days starts immediately. So with the sale on the Complete Edition ending at the end of April and the reworked main story not coming until June/July, I guess I need to decide if I wanna just in now and save $25 or wait for later in summer and spend more.
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You could just buy it and not use it.
If you're on PC or PS4 (physical copy), it comes with a registration code, just don't use it until you want to start. You'd be able to play the free trial until then, too, if you want.
If you're on PS4 (digital copy), it registers the game when you start it up, so just don't start it up until you want to start. You wouldn't be able to play the free trial in the meantime, since that would require starting the game up and it would prompt you to register the licence you bought
 
Squishy3

Squishy3

Member
Oct 27, 2017
811
MillionStabs said:
I checked around, and it seems like when you buy the game your 30 days starts immediately. So with the sale on the Complete Edition ending at the end of April and the reworked main story not coming until June/July, I guess I need to decide if I wanna just in now and save $25 or wait for later in summer and spend more.
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It only kicks in when you apply the key to your account, not when you buy it.
 

Deleted member 18021

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,000
Skunk said:
W-w-why... in the turkey-fucking hell would somebody design that? *And with no quest markers*?!?!
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1.0 map design was more or less focused on showing off how they could have really big areas that you could explore seamlessly without encountering a loading screen (please pay no attention to the obvious loading tunnels) until you entered a different region. As a consequence, the copy+pasting of assets practically every five feet was extremely blatant. Sure, they might be rotated 90 degrees or so, but it was basically impossible to ignore.

Here's old Eorzea, if you want a better glance at just how much the 2.0 team did to make Eorzea not terrible to traverse:

f5CSEBW.jpg
 
Cloud-Strife

Cloud-Strife

Alt-Account
Banned
Sep 27, 2019
3,140
Saikyo said:
lol dont fall for the meme op...unless you have 100 hours and money to spare.
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Of course you need lots of hours but no one is rushing you.. you can play it at your own pace and just like WoW it's a sub based game.

I hope the OP can ignore this comments that have nothing to do with reality.

Here a little example of what people is missing in FF XIV. The Epic boss battles are so many and the music is always godlike.

 
SoundLad

SoundLad

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,251
I was in your shoes last year and decided to dip my feet. Now I've been playing XIV since August, clocked over 1000 hours and I adore it. I play on PC but did try the controller mode and support for it seems excellent.

It's a uniquely single player focused MMO, lots of story and optional content. It's my favorite FF by a long shot, XIV feels like a love letter to all the FF games that came before it. Incredible OST!

ARR is a bit of a slog as everyone knows, but I enjoyed the story quite a bit. Tail end of ARR had some genuinely awesome story development.
 
Bit_Reactor

Bit_Reactor

Banned
Apr 9, 2019
4,413
MochaKoffee said:
1.0 map design was more or less focused on showing off how they could have really big areas that you could explore seamlessly without encountering a loading screen (please pay no attention to the obvious loading tunnels) until you entered a different region. As a consequence, the copy+pasting of assets practically every five feet was extremely blatant. Sure, they might be rotated 90 degrees or so, but it was basically impossible to ignore.

Here's old Eorzea, if you want a better glance at just how much the 2.0 team did to make Eorzea not terrible to traverse:

f5CSEBW.jpg
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Wow I had no idea it was this bad.
 
Frosty Death Knight

Frosty Death Knight

Member
Oct 31, 2017
229
I got Ffxiv with Shadowbringers shortly After the expansion launched and I loved it and played up to Stormblood then stopped because school picked up again. With COVID causing a quarantine and classes are online only I picked it up again and today finished the Shadowbringers quest line. I can say that this is one of my favorite games of all time story wise.

Now is it a good time to start? I think so. The game can very easily be enjoyed by yourself and just queuing into the dungeon finder when necessary. The amount of content available is very large and there have definitely been things I've missed (namely hunts for me, somehow managed to never open the hunting log) but the game doesn't really punish you in any way for not being hyper aware of everything available. It's more of a "does this interest you? Well then here you go, have fun" for most everything outside of the main story quest.

Overall the game is an absolute blast and I have 0 regrets hoping in and as someone with a lot of FOMO I still really enjoyed what this game is offering.
 
MetatronM

MetatronM

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,851
This has been answered plenty of times now, but I might as well jump in. If you're not into MMOs, I don't know that XIV is going to win you over given its general structure, but its world and story are top shelf, and at its very best it competes with (and I'd say beats) the best the rest of the FF series has to offer in terms of story. It's a looooooooong build up, though. Each of the expansions is basically a full-fledged 40-60 hour JRPG in their own right.

If you're curious, personally I would say to wait until 5.3 drops with its overhaul of A Realm Reborn, which should probably be in about 2 months, if you're not really champing at the bit to get started this very moment. To be honest we don't know exactly what the streamlining for ARR is going to entail, but if it can speed up the pace of the early game and eliminate some of the more frustrating segments of filler in the 2.x series it will be a worthwhile update.
 
Haze

Haze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,785
Detroit, MI
Feep said:
How FUCKING dope was that climax, at
Amaurot?
Jesus Christ. Took my breath away.
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It's probably the most anime thing I've ever witnessed but in the BEST way.

What I love about ShB story is the way they make you sympathize, maybe even empathize with the antagonist. Something few video games can do is create a relatable villain that you're able to at least see where their motivations come from (FFXV did this too but not quite as well).

God, ShB by itself might be a top 3 Final Fantasy. The finale is just immaculate execution and the catharsis from thousands of hours of investment being released at once....
 
Potterson

Potterson

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,416
Sure it's amazing story-wise. But you have to also play it and that's the problem - at least for me.

Gameplay-wise this is a traditional MMO. I bought Shadowbringers and I dropped the game before even getting to the first Shadowbringers quests, that's how the mechanics bored me while I was playing through post-Stormblood questline.
 
Haze

Haze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,785
Detroit, MI
Potterson said:
Sure it's amazing story-wise. But you have to also play it and that's the problem - at least for me.

Gameplay-wise this is a traditional MMO. I bought Shadowbringers and I dropped the game before even getting to the first Shadowbringers quests, that's how the mechanics bored me while I was playing through post-Stormblood questline.
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What job did you play?
 
Theswweet

Theswweet

RPG Site
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
6,417
California
About a week and a half ago I picked the game back up again after years of not really touching it right near the end of 2.0. Just tonight I finished up Keeper of the Lake (2.5 patch MSQ dungeon), and I'll probably reach Heavensward either tomorrow or Wednesday.

COVID-19 really was the straw that broke the camel's back.
 
Philippo

Philippo

Developer
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
7,918
I bought this a month ago after a friend suggested me the base ARR+2 expansions was very cheap.
Could never get into MMOs (outside of an exception with Guild Wars 2) but this one is sticking with me.
It's still full to the brink of MMO stuff I hate (just how the mecahnical everything feels and how most stuff is conveniently close to you, the combat and the quests and everything else), but FFXIV has a weird mix of aesthetics, music, charcters and a general flow that I find very relaxing to play before going to bed, and I am having a blast with dungeons and so on.
I even dipped my feet in some optional content that is mildly interesting.

I am mostly solo-ing everything, but even I don't spare a clap or a cheer to some goof dancing around.

Will definitely pick it back up once I am over VII.
 
Potterson

Potterson

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,416
Haze said:
What job did you play?
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I've tried Black Mage, Machinist, Scholar during my many hours with the game. It's not even gameplay itself, more the boring quests that are filler between quests with cool story. I've made an OT about it here, how I hate quests that just make you go visit some place on other continent just to talk to one person and go back.
 
Tyaren

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
24,787
entremet said:
My only issue is that I'm not an MMO person.
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PlanetSmasher said:
If you don't like MMOs, you probably won't like XIV. The story in the expansions is good but you still have to slog through a TON of slow, badly-paced MMO content, especially in the main ARR storyline.
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This.
I did the free trial and I even had friends that were veterans of the game and that were able to explain everything and help me out a lot (which I really needed). I still dropped it after a week. Not a game for me at all. I simply don't like MMOs and thus also not FFXIV.
 
eXistor

eXistor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,304
As much as FFXIV looks like the FF I've wanted for years, it doesn't change the fact that it's an mmo. Even if you could solo it, it's not gonna be structured the way I want it to.

I really hope future FF's can be like FFXIV but in a proper, offline, single player setting.
 
mogster7777

mogster7777

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,980
When does this story get good? I've done about 10 MSQ in Heavensward now and it's still boring and mmo-ish
 
Xion_Stellar

Xion_Stellar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,286
eXistor said:
As much as FFXIV looks like the FF I've wanted for years, it doesn't change the fact that it's an mmo. Even if you could solo it, it's not gonna be structured the way I want it to.

I really hope future FF's can be like FFXIV but in a proper, offline, single player setting.
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Considering that the main man behind FFXIV Yoshi-P is directing the next FF game you just might get your wish.
 
His Majesty

His Majesty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,171
Belgium
mogster7777 said:
When does this story get good? I've done about 10 MSQ in Heavensward now and it's still boring and mmo-ish
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In my opinion it remains that way for every expansion. I'm playing through Shadowbringers and there are still these quests that require me to kill three beasts to make crab soup for some poor lady or whatever. The writing has significantly improved from A Realm Reborn but the main issue is that the quest structure remains very basic. It also doesn't help that none of the overworld content is even the least bit challenging, so combat will always boil down to spamming the same DPS rotation over and over again.
 
mogster7777

mogster7777

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,980
His Majesty said:
In my opinion it remains that way for every expansion. I'm playing through Shadowbringers and there are still these quests that require me to kill three beasts to make crab soup for some poor lady or whatever. The writing has significantly improved from A Realm Reborn but the main issue is that the quest structure remains very basic. It also doesn't help that none of the overworld content is even the least bit challenging, so combat will always boil down to spamming the same DPS rotation over and over again.
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Yeah it's not the story but the overworld stuff just doesn't seem that engaging either. I just wish the story got better but it feels like it never will?
 
Feep

Feep

Lead Designer, Iridium Studios
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
4,603
mogster7777 said:
Yeah it's not the story but the overworld stuff just doesn't seem that engaging either. I just wish the story got better but it feels like it never will?
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The overworld is not meant to be challenging. Only dungeons and raids are, and specifically, the bosses. It's not ideal, but it's also a design decision: the devs didn't want the players to feel in any real danger unless they specifically chose to be in it.

Of course, they should be forcing very little "trivial" combat on the player, in my opinion, but they do. Quest design is simply...not good.

As far as the narrative, Heavensward improves steadily as it goes along. Stormblood is worse than people say it is, but Shadowbringers is every bit as good as people say it is, which is incredible.

But TBH, it just doesn't sound like your thing? And that's totally okay.
 
Nakenorm

Nakenorm

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
22,336
I jumped in earlier this year and the grind in the the game, as well as leading up to the first expansion is insane. I would wait for the new patch if I were you.

Really enjoying Heavensward right now though, a big improvement.
Just play at your own pace because there's a ton of content.
 
Gibson

Gibson

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,270
I still love the whole FFXIV story. When the original game launched it took so much flack and ridicule and SE triumphantly turned things around well beyond anyone ever imagined. It's probably the best salvage operation in gaming history.
 
JoelStinty

JoelStinty

Member
Aug 15, 2019
1,280
Aside from the bait at the start, this is a question I've been pondering for a while. Whilst missing out on the game, and people always saying jump in lol. It just been out for so long it always felt a new online Final Fantasy title will be announced anytime soon.

Seems they're going to make changes to its base game, so might jump in there.
 
TheZynster

TheZynster

Member
Oct 26, 2017
13,285
wait for the revamped ARR post game. At that time it will launch on xbox and then the player base will go up a significant bit.
 
DL Clyde

DL Clyde

Member
Oct 25, 2017
148
entremet said:
I'm assuming mouse and keyboard are recommended?
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It probably is recommended but the game surprisingly works well with a gamepad. Once you get use to it, it's a lot of fun to use. End game stuff I can't comment because I never attempt those but for doing the story and other content, gamepad absolutely is playable but I also would recommend having a keyboard (assuming you are playing on PS4) available because you might need to communicate quickly. That's how I play, gamepad for playing and keyboard for chatting.
 
MillionStabs

MillionStabs

Member
Jan 11, 2018
511
rpm said:
You could just buy it and not use it.
If you're on PC or PS4 (physical copy), it comes with a registration code, just don't use it until you want to start. You'd be able to play the free trial until then, too, if you want.
If you're on PS4 (digital copy), it registers the game when you start it up, so just don't start it up until you want to start. You wouldn't be able to play the free trial in the meantime, since that would require starting the game up and it would prompt you to register the licence you bought
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Oh okay, that's better. It would be the digital version but I suppose I'll just wait to play until 5.3 and just skip the free trial
 
Z-Brownie

Z-Brownie

Member
Nov 6, 2017
3,912
i've tried but i could not stand the mmorpg structure of quests, the narrative is tied to the same mechanics, at least on the beginning, but i could not enjoy the game.
 
Chudah

Chudah

Member
Apr 23, 2019
301
I remember being really worried about ARR being a slog before I bit the bullet and bought the game. But honestly, I took my time and went full casual for the leveling, and it wasn't nearly as bad as people were saying. Sure, if you're absolutely dead-set on getting to the GOOD stuff ASAP (Heavensward), then yeah, it's going to feel like it's taking forever. But I actually felt like Stormblood had a less interesting story than ARR. I know it's a lot of buildup for future payoff, and there were a few really cool parts (mostly in the post patches) but I just couldn't give less of a crap about the Far East, and Zenos has been the most uninteresting villain in the game thus far, imo. And don't even get me started on Lyse...

But I digress, do NOT skip ARR. I know it's really tempting, but there is important story, character and world building in 2.0 that makes later story points mean so much more. Also, the 2.5 finale was jaw-dropping for me. Going into Heavensward without experiencing it really lessens the impact of that expansion.

Just a little anecdote, I remember seeing a commercial for Shadowbringers in the theater before Spider-Man: Far From Home, and I was just sitting there thinking how epic it looked, wishing I could feel that way about WOW again (haven't had that feeling since...probably Wrath, and I'd been playing it non-stop for 15 years). Fast forward 8 months, and I'm just NOW working my way through Shadowbringers. I don't regret taking so much time to get here. Aside from having to force my way through half of Stormblood, it has all been a joy. I also like to take my time once I get to the end of each expansion and thoroughly experience each one's endgame, which is totally possible with the Duty-Finder. All content remains relevant, which is another thing I love about the game.
 
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JooJ

JooJ

Member
Oct 27, 2017
576
Tepid? Game has 87 metacritic! What is the problem with people on this forum?
 
Phoenixazure

Phoenixazure

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,444
CliveLH said:
I can't recommend enough the NoClip documentary on the 1.0 and 2.0 release and how the team dealt with the horrible reception, had to rework, and how they successfully rebooted an MMO.
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If you want something more abridged and comedic IMO I've always linked this video as a funny reference

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Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 in a nutshell

Credited to Just a Pancake & Jamezietocool for l̶e̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶y̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶ inspiration.Follow me on:Tumblr:http://truebladeseeker.tumblr.com/Twitter :h...
youtu.be youtu.be

Hoo boy
 
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