If You Are Tired Of This Game Or Just Want A Break

I started playing XIV a month ago and while I like it, I am always stressed out by fights. You have to be constantly doing something, rather than waiting for WS to be ready.

I tried it. Its okay.

My friends invited me to give the free trial a whirl. I went in really wanting to like it so I could play with them, but by the time I got around level 40 I realized the game really wasn't for me.

I'm not a huge fan of how they handle the free trial either. I get that you aren't allowed to chat to people, but you can't even send /tells to friends or reply to people who've already sent you a /tell. On multiple occasions I had people try inviting me to parties and on their end it probably looked like I was ignoring them. And I had to send texts to friends to chat with them >_>;

Thanks for sharing this. FFXIV isn't a bad game. I played it for a long time. Faster-paced combat and more interactive crafting.

The only bad things are that the community is well known to be one of the most garbage communities of any game outside of LoL and rightfully so. It also doesn't have the kinds of campaigns FFXI has that keep you wanting to log in even when the game is old.

The game pre-50 isn't anything like the game post-50, and it's a problem, especially for damage-dealing jobs. Minimal/boring/incomplete rotations, limited AoE options for dungeon trash, and a real lack of flavor that defines the job at higher level (BLM and DRG are especially bad in this regard).

And yeah, the free trial is really nice in some ways - go all the way to Heavensward! - but the restrictions make it hard to be social, as you pointed out. They're pretty much all in place to slow down RMT/force them to buy real accounts, which is understandable to some degree, but just because something is mostly justified doesn't mean it's not got flaws.

That's weird. I've had pretty much the complete opposite experience, especially seeing people deal with newbies. It was a lot worse in the 2.x days, but it's gotten significantly better since then, at least on Primal. I'm not a raider though, so maybe the raid community is just dogshit and I haven't dealt with them enough to see it.

ARR I thought was Excellent. HW was ok. The game slid downhill after that. Or maybe it just was too repetitive.

Tank stance dancing was pretty awesome but they removed it from the game.

The differences between FFXI and FFXIV are very subjective. The two almost couldn't be more different, and that's not a bad thing.

XI plays more like Whack-A-Mole, while XIV is more akin to Dance-Dance Revolution. The former being more about reacting to the situation and the latter being about mashing an endless cascade of buttons.

XI's jobs are significantly more diverse in what they bring to the party, but that comes at the price of most jobs being unable to solo. XIV on the other hand is more homogenized.

I could go on. I guess the point I'm trying to make is if you like one you're probably not going to like the other. But since it has a free trial, it doesn't hurt to try!

FF11 was tailor made for our generations tastes and desires, which is why we enjoy it so much. FF14 is newer, and so wasn't made for our generation and instead was made for the current generation of teenagers and young adults tastes and desires specifically.

Not to say you can't like it, but it wasn't designed for you and so it will be less likely to hold onto you longterm. This being the case, 20 years from now you will still prefer FF11 and this generation will still like old FF14 and the younger generation will love FF18.

Video games are no different than movies or music, you're always going to prefer the products that were designed for your generation.

I liked the 4.0 enmity mechanics on the whole. Stance dancing, party members have to think about enmity and their effects on it. I get why they made the change in ShB but tanks are mostly justly just a blue DPS with a couple of added responsibilities and you're right, it's not as fun.

The difference between XI jobs and XIV jobs is that XIV jobs are meant to be a complete, coherent concept, which is why they suffer so much under the level cap (and it's worse the farther under it you are). XI jobs are more like toy boxes, and the really interesting part is using subjob combinations to make really interesting sets of toys (PLD/BLU, anything /NIN, etc).

I greatly prefer the XI model and I'm sad that they've stripped all of that aspect from XIV. Again, I get why they did it, but it's a less rich experience for the change.

the difference that all of you keep making excuses for is ff14 is difficult and ffxi is a cake walk unless you're multi boxing.

no one in their right mind thinks ffxi is a difficult game. that doesn't mean its unfun, it's just not hard. ff14 and wow(and games like mobas/fps) introduce difficulty by requiring fast or at least intelligent reactions, ffxi is unable to do this due to its archaic combat system.

they are both fun games but if you don't want to have a challenge other than the grind/achievements you should stick with ffxi. ffxi is more akin to runescape in my opinion than any of these other MMOs whereas its just a constant easy grind

gear itemization ruined it for me. what's the point of getting the next ilevel if you are still bound by the same set of rails. you do a tiny bit more damage, but usually not enough to break the script of the fights you're doing.

FFXI is more about set up than difficulty. Hours spent building Gearswaps, grinding pieces to finish your sets. Once you have the fundamentals in place its not a hard game at all. But you also have the option to start that grind over with another job which is one of the coolest features of FFXI.


The gear also last years and some decades. You put in the work and it truly pays off. FFXIV your gear is trash every 6 months.

Just about every place I've read said it was absolute garbage. It took me about a year to finally see it.

Raiders are the majority of the reason why most people think that. Nothing like entering an expert dungeon for your daily while you try gearing up and having some raider with a glowing weapon whos gear exceeds all expert level gear joining your dungeon and calling everyone noobs and scrubs and bragging about how he's blowing them all away in a parse. Or the way they treat healers who just want to heal. Heaven forbid people want to be casual in a game.

i mean you aren't wrong but set up doesn't equate to difficulty at all, and i don't think you're saying that it does.

99.5% of the people who use gearswap or build them don't understand how it works they just plug and play their gear, the fact that it's such a pivotal part of clearing content is actually sad if you remove yourself from your love of it. on that same note, in the early days of ffxi the game worked differently and there was still some difficulty surrounding strategy in closer knit communities but now most is known and figured out and strategies are posted and content(lol what content) cleared near instantly.

still not saying ffxi is bad, it's just not like ff14 past job similarities/the ability to change jobs. it's a grinder game with almost no difficulty in the ways ff14 has introduced.

i think a person can enjoy grinding but also enjoy difficulty, they won't get both from either. also think at this point most people would love to replace some gear instead of having some shitty augment system slapped onto it and no content

FFXI in it's current state is an autism-fueled collection game. Think Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, etc. The more automation you write or obtain, the more quality gear and jobs and characters you obtain or buy, the faster you can continue to obtain more of it. It's never, at any point in the process, challenging in the sense that it requires quick reflexes, intense thought or planning, or anything of the sort.

The game is enjoyable to people who like virtual accomplishments, as highlighted by the playerbase's need to validate unofficial rankings and obsessively collect RMEA that they know they won't even use. It has a very wide depth of things to collect, and is extremely difficult to '100%'. It's not necessarily a bad game, as the purpose of games in general is to kill time and plenty of people enjoy that style of gameplay. But, if you're still operating under the impression that there is any skill involved, you most likely just want to pretend you have that skill and are in some way better than the other collectors.

FFXIV is the most bland and generic version of WoW's mmo model. All jobs are entirely interchangable within their role, you have no way to excel, and customization is limited to appearance. It has objectively more difficulty, though as a MMO, that's still not saying much. The main appeal to FFXIV is for roleplayers and fetishists who can't get enough of their virtual avatar. It's without a doubt the #1 MMO for creepers trying to have cybersex with children.

Maybe it's me, but most FFXIV DD jobs fall into the same "press these set of buttons in a row to win!" category.

Take DRG for example (since that's the job I'm working on currently on my newish character). You got 2 groupings that pretty much end at the same ending: True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust > win, or True Thrust > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw > win.

Sure, you get some variety too, such as the Doom Spike > Sonic Thrust > Sonic Thrust for "AoE" capability (really, it's just conal), but it's pretty much a cycle method over and over again.

It certainly doesn't have the charm that FFXI DRG has, which kindof sucks.

I just know that I had a really hard time even picking which job I wanted to play because they were all exactly the same to me. That's not even a problem with the game, that's a problem with me (and I know it). What I like about FFXI is that no two jobs contribute the same things to a party, and even the lines between roles are pretty fuzzy. So to me seeing the three roles in FFXIV and how they're pigeonholed to that one task just breaks my brain. Even though their rotations are flavored differently, a Black Mage contributes 'damage', a Ninja contributes 'damage', a Monk contributes 'damage'.

I just don't even get it. If I'm added as a friend, why can't I talk to them? That can't even be abused from an RMT perspective lol

I think that have a little variety between jobs.

In my opinion, BLM is Spam Fire until out of MP, than cast Blizzard to get MP back, then Spam Fire (aka rinse/repeat). SMN is just spam Ruin/Bio/Miasma. The other jobs I don't know too much about.

They have different rotations, but serve the same exact effect in party for the most part. You may play BLM and SMN a little bit differently, but the cases where a party's chances of success will differ from having a BLM instead of a SMN or vice versa are extremely minimal.

This is a stark contrast to XI, where we have a half dozen or so widespread styles of party setup each with it's own benefits and drawbacks. There are events where certain jobs will be absolute game changers compared to the alternatives, and ways to leverage jobs' unique mechanics to accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible for your gear level and quantity of party members.

Of course, XI's variety has the obvious drawback of making the game incredibly unbalanced and easy. But, that variety is still what most XI players will miss most when looking at XIV.

Ha! Ain't that the truth.

People do that and/or cheat in this game more than any other game I've played and go through hoops trying to increase their notoriety but for what? People to acknowledge or praise you in a 17 year old game?


Most of the time, yes, that's correct. And it's like that in most all more modern MMOs. People today want bigger success for minimal effort. I picture newer age gamers trying to play vanilla FFXI.

They can't even play old school RPGs. I tried to talk my nephew, who turned 13 this year, into playing FFVII, since he likes Smash Bros and plays Cloud often.

When Sephiroth came out, I was freaking out but my nephew who we were Discording together didn't know who he was....

I feel bad for these kids.

/getoffmylawnwhippersnapper.gif

not sure why we're under the illusion that there isn't an optimal set of buttons pressed to win ffxi.

there absolutely is, its just not as necessary because you can still win without doing so. must fights in WoW/ff14 are DPS checks where if you don't hit the upper potentials of your DPS you aren't going to clear the fight. ffxi doesn't have anything close to this

FF11 is all about building to power, building your character, building your weapons, building your armor, unlocking things. It's like a Rocky training montage but over a very long period of time and where the accomplishmetns last. Months and years or work to build your character up to be a behemoth, this is where the difficulty is. Lots of work and time pays off.

A lot of people like that kind of game and enjoy the accomplishment aspect instead of twitch reaction gameplay, where your effort and mini victories over long periods makes you powerful.

Most games have a mix of both, FF11 just puts far more emphasis on the building part and that is its niche and where the difficulty is. FF14 puts far less emphasis on the building part and wipes all your building phases away every 6-12 months when it creates a new tier.

I'm a total sucker for this kind of gameplay, which is why I enjoy this one so much. I spent months on The Forest, Subnautica and Ark for example. When I played Dark Souls I ground out levels and gear, as opposed to trying to kill things at a minimum level.

When you try to compare a game based more on twitch reactions to one based more on accomplishments you're comparing apples to oranges. They are both difficult, just in different ways.

One thing I like FFXIV over FFXI, and that's the crafting system.

Is that variety, though? It's still all just damage. The only difference lies with where the spikes in damage rise and fall. Even jobs with a few "support" skills like Ninja's Trick Attack is simply there to add to the team's damage.

Once you've realized the optimal order in which to use your abilities and spells, that's about it. There's very little actual interaction once you've memorized your job's version of Electronic Simon.

When I was trying to decide which job to aim for, I went online and looked up tons of guides. Every guide just went on to recite the job's optimal rotation. After a while I realized that those rotations were the only real differences between the jobs, and that's when I realized that it probably wasn't for me.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. The long cooldowns, limited MP pools, and tradeoffs for many things in FFXI make a lot of things about choice. You have to adapt your strategy to win. Activating Berserk at a time just before you accidentally pull aggro will mean you have to disable it right away or else suffer huge damage. And by deactivating it, you have to wait a long time to use it again.

Honestly, I don't play FFXIV for the battle system. I play it for the storyline.

But that's just me.

ok but you're wrong, my statement in a vacuum is correct for every game possible. there's always going to be an optimal set of actions or a "rotation". "it's my 12.95 and i'll play the game how i want" doesn't make you special, it just means the game is easy as *** which is what i came to this argument with. it's a grinder, there is no difficulty. also not sure what you're doing that you're running out of mp or choosing the perfect time to berserk. still in the dunes?

i disagree that FFXI is any more nuanced than most other games. maybe ff14 is more cookie cutter than most

Same, especially now that Shadowbringers has set such a high bar. The Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/Diamond weapon story has been good so far too.