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Best parts of this game?
DKLond
Member RarePosts: 2,273
I'm looking for the "right" MMO to play cooperatively with my GF. As in, the best duo MMO out there.
I really like ESO - but it turned out to be too frustrating to play as a duo.
I'm leaning towards SWtOR - even though I'm not really a big fan of that game, and I especially hate the engine.
As for FFXIV - I've only tried it briefly - and suffice to say I wasn't impressed. The visuals were so-so - and the world just didn't "do it" for me. But I keep hearing it's one of the greatest MMOs out there.
Can someone please explain what's so great about it - and how would it work for a duo? Is content doable with a duo?
I really like ESO - but it turned out to be too frustrating to play as a duo.
I'm leaning towards SWtOR - even though I'm not really a big fan of that game, and I especially hate the engine.
As for FFXIV - I've only tried it briefly - and suffice to say I wasn't impressed. The visuals were so-so - and the world just didn't "do it" for me. But I keep hearing it's one of the greatest MMOs out there.
Can someone please explain what's so great about it - and how would it work for a duo? Is content doable with a duo?
Comments
I play FFXIV on and off, still subbed to it. Its a great thempark, very well structured and players new can pick it up and learn their class steadily through a very stable progression.
The pros in my opinion only are :-:
1. Leveling.
Low level content is still not phased out, so every character you level will always be joined by many otehr players on the map specially at peak times, doing fates together (group events like in rift or dynamic events like in gw2)
All level dungeons are pretty active because of daily roulette which has rewards for high level players as well... i found this to break the patterns of monotonousness leveling a bit and it does nto let you feel like the game is dead at any point.
2. One character for all!
In ffxiv, you need only 1 char and you can be any class on it, regardless of what class you start off as. All you have to do is find the Class guild in the main cities and take a quest to become that said class, then change your class on the go by the switch of your weapon, while retaining all the levels of class you were previously playing, which you can go back to anytime.
3. Armory XP bonus:
Also part of leveling, in this whichever class you level up, any class you level which is below your highiest level class in the char , gets a significant exp bonus which makes things alot easy .Making this very alt friendly, without actually having to create alts!
4. Trinity and Group content:
I find ffxiv to be very organized in terms of its gameplay, strict rules of entry into dungeon specially when using DF , 1 healer 2 dps 1 tank for 4 man/woman (#feminism) content and 2 healers 2 or 1 tank, and 4 or 5 dps for 8 player content, and there are 24 player content and even 72 player pvp content O.o
You can create your own party config too if you know enough players or are in a guild.
But the rule of the tank applies... only a tank can tank and only the healer can heal well enough. can get back on minor strategies if in trouble ofc.
5. Community !
The community in this game is absolutely adoring, most players are very helpful in pug groups, some more than others ofc, but this varies on individual experiences.
6. New player friendly:
Game mechanics are friendly for new players to learn, and the game itself has other provisions to practice your gameplay . You can yolo it and go into a dungeon tell the players you are new and learn it without many mistakes (specially in lower dungeons) or can simply look at a video on youtube , quick guides of 1-3 mins long) and then be able to jump in.
This may not be true for raiding content or extreme content, which requires practice and lots of coordination, but by the time you reach this stage you will have most figured out and how to go on about .!~
7. Gearing!
What i love is that the game does not make you feel like you cannot be top geared like most players who have been playing for years. everyone has the same opportunities i feel. You don't need to buy gearsm, you can play through your level appropriate contents and then gear approptie contents to progress steadily and get the BiS eventually, its something ppl often enjoy. Gear scaling for lower level content is also very decent leaving no one out.
8. Story!
I dont' usually care for mmorpg story, and usually skip or quick fast through quests, i did so even in ffxiv, but still got a good insight on the story through cutscenes and voice actings , if not as many was SWOTR (which i think is far superior in story telling). I enjoyed the story and the ppl i was playing with did too, and we often discussed some aspect of it in the guild chat ! even found myself get a bit teary here and there or goosebumps.... i'm easily wooed..what to say ...
9. Bit of content for everyone :-
The game mechanics are easy and hard as well, bit of everything for every kind of player... and a very indept form of crafting ..well fairly indept.. i may be overselling a bit. But because of the dept i myself could not get into it
10: Develope
The love and care the devlopers show is amzing, this is a game that was rebooted and relaunched with a near complete overhaul because the previous version did not meet the expected quality standards of the franchise and in a way FFXIV ARR is formal apology to the ff player base. content patches are steady and developer communication is outstanding, it really feels that waht one writes on the forums ..matter. There is a content patch every 3 months... atleast thats the track they try to follow. well worth the sub
Ok, now the CONS! In my opinion!
1. Burnout : ::
I found myself hating the game after a few months of play and then not playing it for quite some timean d then suddenly wanting to come back to it and then off again ..... this is probably just because of how i am zzz
Main strengths are a very polished themepark, all classes on 1 character (though you can make alts if you really want to), a bit of something for everyone, and good speed of development (significant content about every 3-4 months).
Main cons would be burnout (yay, a new token grind) and basically no character customisation beyond visuals.
With regards specifically to playing as a duo, it's not exactly designed for it, with most content being designed for either solo (quests), or 4/8/24 players (dungeons, raids / trials, big raids). That said, you can do most quests in a party (though some a solo only / instanced), and as of last patch you can sign up to almost all duties (group content) with whatever number of people you like (within role requirements of course)... so as long as you don't mind not being attached at the hip 24/7, and running with a few randoms for group content, playing as a duo is perfectly feasible.
As a tip I would say roll Tank + Healer, or Tank + DPS to start... it will make duo work a bit easier, and (probably significantly) lower waiting times for duties. Also, while it ultimately doesn't matter, you will be stuck with your starting nation (and class) until level 15, so probably best to pick starting classes from the same nation.
Based on your feedback, I'm pretty sure this isn't the game for us. I just wanted to make sure, though.
I know we both touched on it, but one of the best things about having all classes on 1 character (oh and dungeons also scale you down to an appropriate level, and continue giving exp / tokens) is that even if one of you plays more than the other (or has a head start) you can still do content together without it feeling like a waste of the higher level players time.... which, for all the MMOs I've played, is one of the best features to have for people that want to play together.
As for scaling dungeons, that probably won't help if they're designed for 4 players. We prefer to play alone as a couple - and I don't like having access to dungeons cut off like that.
Unfortunately, the good parts you're talking about don't appeal to me - and the bad parts sound pretty bad.
I just wanted to hear if there was something I missed when I tried it, because I didn't give it much of a chance.
That was just painfully stupid for a game like GW2 - which seems otherwise designed around flexible group play.
Also something that comes to mind is black desert... it just has an overwhelming amount of things to do and quest objectives can be achieved in party like archeage.
But I think I'm going to try SWtOR again. I love Star Wars as a setting - and I found the quests decent enough, even if I found most of the storylines a bit overrated. It seemed every single story quest ended with a "big fight" with the nasty baddie - which gets old after the 20th time.
The key thing, though, is that we can do all the content as a duo, except for the Operations. It's also incredibly helpful that we can listen to quest dialogue and participate together, instead of having to wait on each other. That kind of thing really drags when you're playing as a couple - and especially as one person tends to be much slower than the other.
That's pretty important for us
As a duo you can pretty much just level together, youll have to join other people for group content but youll always have plenty of duo gameplay leveling all classes, doing their hunts, crafting even.
If not... maybe... the combat in FFXIV is noticeably slower than in most other recent MMOs. For the people who like it, it makes FFXIV one of the best games on the market for them. For the rest of us that can't stand it, it makes an otherwise good game nearly intolerable.
Keep in mind in FFXIV you can level multiple jobs on the same character which makes it much easier to have something in range of another player who might not be playing as much.
There's really no MMO out there that truly catches my fancy - so it's really just the cooperative experience that interests me. That's not to be underestimated, though, and I can enjoy most RPGs if I get to share them.
She's very much into games with no fuss - and she loves crafting. She's much more bloodthirsty than I am - and I tend to prefer deeper and more lore-oriented stuff. She basically just wants to kill and click buttons
I've played more or less all modern MMOs - but I haven't tried them all in two-player mode yet.
Of our recent adventures, the game we've enjoyed the most has actually been The Division. Mostly because it was something new and shiny.
ESO is the closest to my heart of the newer ones - but it's just not very good for a small group. Great as a solo player, though.
ArcheAge had a feature-set that I loved, but I hated the execution and found the PvE abysmally bad.
We've played WoW before - but we're waiting for Legion, because we want to level up together with new characters - and I'd rather do that with the new animations and with the additional tuning that's coming.
LOTRO and DDO are both games I adore - but they're simply too old for the most part, and we can't quite get past the age-related issues.
EQ2 I've never actually played THAT much - but it's also very old and clunky today.
I doubt there's a better alternative than TOR at the moment, sadly.
I tried the trial for FFXIV and made it to level 6 only. I found it really dull and boring and couldn't imagine playing that for any length of time.
The problem is that a lot of the best quests are solo only - and quite a few of them involve multiple choices (which can result in different "phases" for the quests) and a LOT of running back and forth to talk to different NPCs. That might not be a problem for you - and maybe it's not apparent right away.
But after a while, it gets really frustrating when you just have an hour to sit down and play before you have to call it a night - when you spend 30 minutes just talking to NPCs and you don't seem to get anywhere.
Beyond that, the group content is tuned for 4 players - which means you can't duo group dungeons (unless you're in super gear and so on) - and dungeons tend to be the best part of modern MMOs.
Beyond that, I'm personally finding the progression sort of underwhelming - because you gain access to your primary 6 skills after a short period of time, and after that most progression is sort of boring.
That might just be me, though. I had the same problem with Guild Wars 2 at release.