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On the Fence
Tyr216
Member UncommonPosts: 168
I'm a veteran MMO player. I've played pretty much every major MMO since Asheron's Call and EverQuest. I've got WoW, RIFT, SWTOR, GW2, TERA, and Wildstar currently on my hard drive, among others. I enjoy a mix of PvE and PvP as long as the PvP is balanced. I've also dabbled in RP. I've been on the fence about purchasing this game. I've heard that it's really good but I've never been a fan of either Final Fantasy or the anime art style in general. But if the game is good enough, I can get past the art style. It's just rare that I find an anime game good enough for that to happen. Knowing the kind of games I play and how I like to play them, how well does FFXIV stack up? Some big concerns of mine are:
1) Is it grindy like one of those typical Asian grinders like Lineage 2, etc?
2) How customizable are the classes? For example, can I be a DPS Paladin?
3) How balanced is the PvP? Are half the classes god mode and the other half worthless?
4) Is the PvE casual or hardcore? Can I log in for a few hours and feel like I've made meaningful progress or do I have to play for days on end to get anywhere?
5) Is there a flourishing roleplay community or is the game pretty much swarmed by Call of Duty kids with character names like "Wtfpwndlol"?
I've read a bunch of reviews but most of the well written ones are kinda dated. I'd like to gather the perspectives of players who have been active recently since the game has received some updates since it was relaunched. I don't want to waste my time and money so any feedback you can provide regarding my concerns and just the quality of the game in general would be most appreciated. Thanks!
Comments
Final Fantasy XIV is definitely not grindy by default, though it has grinding if that is what someone is looking for as it has Atma farming, fates (dynamic events that people do for currency) and repeatable quests via leves or beastman tribes. Classes are customizable: someone could make a DPS gladiator or tanky archanist with enough heals, but those builds only work early on in the game, as post level 30 is the domain of the Job system. Unfortunately, the Job system is much less flexible: basically every Job has a specific role, and your class customization options become limited once someone picks up a job.
As for the PvP and PvE questions, I have no experience with the PvP in this game even after playing it for a long while, but it seems very much like scraping the bottom of the barrel with it's arena system and Frontlines will likely be similar to battle grounds. PvE is a whole different story, however. It's casual 90% of the way through and the last 10% gets into hardcore raiding modes and extreme fights that will take a ton of practice to get through.
Hope that helps.
1) Grindy all the way to 50 and then the true grind begins.
2) Role locked. Warriors/Paladins = tanks, White Mages/Scholars = Healers, rest dps, the end.
3) Dont know how pvp is. Some say frontlines is ok.
4) Depends on what you want to do and what you play. If you're a healer/tank without a free company(guild), you might make the same progress as a dps with a decent free company. But logging on and doing what you want in this game depends on your server mainly since endgame in this game depends on people. Utilizing the duty finder for raid content should come with a disclaimer since you'll probably fail a lot and waste hours of your life accomplishing nothing but a shorter life span.
5) Depends on your server. Trolls exist everywhere regardless.
Overall, I would say try it since steam and amazon almost constantly have this game on sale. You'll probably hit cap in 2-3 weeks depending on how you play and see if the game is for you. Good thing about this game is that you can play whatever job you feel like without changing characters and your other jobs get a 50% exp bonus if they are under the level of your highest job. So if you concentrate one job to 50, all other jobs you level after that will get the exp bonus, cutting your leveling time in half.
1; I didn't really experience and hardcore grind. It felt rather smooth and nice while I played. But when you pull up more than one job on your character it might feel a tad grindy as you can't rely on quests etc. But not in the Lineage 2 league.
2: locked classes pretty much. You -can- dps with the tanks as well but usually you do the roll as off-tank or similiar. All classes have several uses other than the holy trinity things (I E, healers can alternate to dps while not healing, tanks dealing more damage than tanking, dps crow controlling if they can) You can also do cross-class skills and customize some there to your liking.
3:I have not touched pvp but I've heard mixed feelings about it.
4: I found it casual, I could play for a few hours per day and feel that I have done something. The beauty if daily dungeon finding, quests with an actual storyline and other non-combat activities.
5: Yes. On balmung we had -a lot- of rp'ers and you can easily find lots of them roleplaying all over. There are also Free companies that are strictly Rp only and they run around doing lots of fun stuff. As someone said earlier there is bound to be those "Sep1r0thKillaxxx" people but they are fewer as the game is more niche than anything.
Also, the content updates are every ~3rd month give or take and they are basically a mini-expansion with so much new content to do. I would highly recommend the game and give it a spin. It's also important to point out that the real game starts at 50 and there is where the real fun begins. The game is also slow in the beginning but I found it picking up pace rather quickly after some levels.
The speed of the mole and the power of steel is my weapon
Out of all the games I have played recently (FFXIV, GW2, Wildstar, WoW, TERA, Marvel Heroes, and Firefall) FFXIV has been the most fun for me. I may be partial because I have always loved Final Fantasy but I think this game has a lot to offer. So on to your questions:
1) I think it is only as grindy as you make it. For your first "job" you are playing through the story and I feel that there is so much going on that you don't even really feel a "grind". Now if you decide to level all of the other disciples of war and disciples of hand/land to level 50 then you might feel the grind. But that is 20ish classes? (9 you can fight with, 8 you can craft stuff with, and 3 you can farm stuff with). I love healers and have both of the healing classes and one dps class at level 50 and I play quite casually.
2) The classes aren't nearly as customizable as in other games however they aren't quite set in stone. In lower level content most dps classes with a heal could take the place of a healer. In higher level content not so much but that doesn't mean you don't do more than just your role. I usually play a White Mage (One of the healing classes) but I can put out probably the highest AoE dps out of any of the classes but it isn't sustainable due to it's large mana costs and my need to be... healing!
3) I haven't tried pvp myself yet but the people in my free company (like a guild) just rave about how much fun the most recent add-on to pvp is. I think it is kind of like capture the flag.
4) FFXIV can be either hardcore or casual depending on how you play it. Currently you can get ilvl 100 gear through medium difficultly content. (With max currently being 110ish). I think how they set it up is you can do it with less difficultly and it will take longer (time gated) or you can do it with a lot more difficulty but it will go faster (skill gated).
5) I don't play on a RP server but I have heard of some people getting pretty into the RP thing. Going as far as to write stories about their characters/cosplay as their characters while they are playing their characters. Woah I'm dizzy...
I say give it a try! What do you have to lose? It is like what $25? You can't go out and get a ps4 game for $25! Good luck!
Not to get too off topic but I am also playing the ArcheAge alpha and I miss the rigidity of defined jobs, without it everything gets kinda messy.
I'll try to be brief -
1) No is the answer, nothing like an asian grinder, not in the slightest. Everything is a treat. But of course, it has traditional MMO tropes, such as questing. So, depends on your definition of "Grind" but for how I think you mean it, then its a certain no.
2) No, you cannot be a DPS Paladin in a traditional sense, for example being a Paladin means playing a class in a certain way. Each class has a story and a function. You can however take abilities from DPS classes you've leveled and slot them on to your paladin, but this will only benefit you as a solo experience than a grouping one.
3) Not sure I can answer this one as not much of a PvP player. When arena came into play, I was a bit annoyed as I felt that people who invested early into it was provided a greater advantage than those who did not have the PvP gear. So, it was a painful transition. However, the new Front Line content for PvP may actually address all my woes.
4) Despite some of the content being difficult, the game is very casual friendly. It guides and teaches you how to play your class and never expects you to do something you're not capable of dealing with.
5) Gladly no, I have not. Off course there are stupid names out there. For what I know thus far, RP is healthy in FF and there is a lot of content out there that encourages it.
In short, the game has depth, soul and immersion, filled with a combat system which is a little slower than you might be used to on the outset, but you'll be glad it is due to how hectic things become late game. It is friendly, with unique clicks (I just joined a hunting link shell) great story and characters and varied content so you don't have to bottleneck into raiding.
Yeah, that's the odd thing about this game. It's a great Final Fantasy JRPG diversion when it's in the story mode and we are following the tale, but then at the same time it has an end game grind that can feel like a second job. I feel like they should probably forget about bahamut's coil development and just focus more on the Crystal Tower / hunting mark grind and extreme primals to reach the highest gear level. Maybe even find some way to get the main story NPCs involved in the whole process so we don't keep forgetting they exist for two months after we blow through the new main story content.
isnt that the case though? I mean crystal tower dropping sand and oil and allagen tombstone will make all your gear 110, but the catch is if you are doing this casual content, SE is making sure it will take longer for you to get it. However, if you really want the best gear immediatly , the hardcore content will supply you with it and takes shorter time because of your skill/ dedication to learn.
the only thing that can not be obtainable from casual content now is basically the 115 weapons from coil, all other armor/gear can be obtained casually.
Mana regen is more about mana management, it wants you to play responsibly rather than burst. It kinda conditions you to be more thoughtful rather than just pumping into a secondary stat to compensate.
You can also now talk to NPC's from mounted position, I understand why they initially did it, after all I have become frustrated in many games when an NPC is bottle necked by 50 large mounts on top of it, but they have addressed it in their own way and it works.