FF14 first impression/initial experience as a GW2 veteran.

[DaniTheHero]

This isn't supposed to be an actual rant, nor am i intending to offend anyone who plays either game.
I felt like i should share my experience as a new player in this now increasingly popular MMORPG.


Note this is going to be VERY long.



First i'll tell about why i chose to be playing GW2 up until now to reflect on my latest experience with FF14.
I am not trying to sell the game to you, nor to "take away players" from here, as i barely play GW2 myself now.

I have been playing GW2 for a very long time, and although i have been taking breaks from time to time (as GW2 is known to having content droughts between Living world/Expansion periods) i always come back to it eventually.

GW2 has many things going for it.:

It has a completely free Base game with no time limit, so you can get any friend to try it out and not be restricted to pretty much any content from the Original/Vanilla game pre expansions other than some Spam avoidance and trading/mail system restrictions to avoid botting.

If you decide to pay, you get the entire game, including previous expansions at the price of one, with no monthly subscription, i repeat no monthly subbing.
You pay once, and hop on whenever you want, FOREVER.
No need to cancel every time you take a break and pay again when you return and if you play long term, no large stacked up sum. Just play when you want.

GW2 has no gear chase/treadmill. From the release of the game, the highest tier of gear has been something called "Ascended" and it always remains relevant as the best Tier of gear even a decade later. Meaning even if you take long breaks, you don't need to chase a new ceiling just to enjoy new content properly, and you can hop rightinto it as the same End game character you were before.
The only time that you'll need to get new gear, is if you want a different sort of build for your character, so you'll need a different set of ascended gear for those stats (This can be negated by Legendary armor, that has the same stats as ascended but you can change it's stats whenever you want. This however requires a huge grind to get).

The game has no Mana/Stamina system, nor do you use potions to even heal yourself.
Your attacking is only depended on your cooldown managements and your healing depends on your global class heal (That is by default your 6 key) that varies between classes. No annoying potion usage and purchase management. There is food, but it's used for self buffing.
This system complimented the game well, as the game, at least initially didn't have the concept of holy Trinity. Everyone mostly did everything, or more specifically, everyone was DPS who was capable, and accepted to heal themselves.
Later on as end game raids were introduced more properly, some sub-classes have emerged to sort of fill that old gap, Druid being an old school healer sort, and Chronomancer being a more traditional tank among others, but the mentality of everyone technically being DPS still exists. Some just serve side roles, such as DPS's that can also do useful Squad/party buffs.

The game has a dodge/roll system sort of like in Dark souls, that is limited by a cooldown. This makes the gameplay more mobile and dynamic, and instead of just standing still most of the combat,you dodge and rotate a lot to avoid damage that isn't just enemy AOE.

The combat is very fluid and action-y. Fast. You are constantly on the move, and at times even 'Spamming' moves as cooldowns are short and most classes don't really have more than 5ish damage dealing attacks, unless you weapon swap mid fight. There isn't really a time when you aren't attacking.

Mounts are fairly a new concept in GW2, but instead of having many of them, there's only one of each "type" of mount that serves a purpose(One for dashing, one for jumping, one for flying and so on), and you can change it's appearance with paid skins if you wish to do so.

Questing, although sort of only existing in the base game, is managed through heart areas, meaning you reach an area where the certain quest exists, and you are meant to to tasks around this same area to complete it. There's no fetch quests, no backtracking, no unneeded walls of text just for killing 3 rats.

in GW2 there is no "EXP" grind from killing mobs. You level up near exclusively from doing world events, quests on the map and map exploration. As you you reach the level cap in the base game, the EXP you gain in the expansion zones is used for gaining different sort of mini abilities, passive buffs or unlocking sort of mechanics or merchants that exist in these new zones. No boring hours of fighting the same batch of mobs to level, at ANY point of the game.

Structured PVP works well in theory, the action combat, the fairly decent balancing and the fact that most classes can technically do anything works well. SPVP is also separate from the "main"/PVE game. You can hop into SPVP from level 2, and inside there, gear doesn't matter, you are max level and all your abilities are unlocked. The only thing that counts is your skill as a player, your teammates performance and of course what you pick for your SPVP 'build' (The builds are instantly changable in SPVP). Sadly SPVP and WvW(World vs World) is mostly abandoned by the devs for quite a long time, so you won't really be experiencing anything new there after a while.

Voice acting. Almost everything is voiced. Story missions, the NPC talking around you, world events and so on.

Most of the content encourages, almost demands cooperative play. Soloing is almost never recommended, sometimes may not even be possible. For people that play MMORPGs, for the actual MMO aspect rather than playing it as a singleplayer RPG that sometimes have real people walking around you, this is very nice.

Of course i can go on praising the game for a long time, but the elephant in the room is:

The biggest issue with the game is that due to lack of funding from NCSoft, and generally the huge loss of capital for being one of the only MMORPGs without monthly subbing, content gets added less often. And periods of content droughts are common. if you are a veteran player that plays a lot you run out things to do, unless you grind for fashion or Legendary equipment.
However as a new player, you still have A LOT of content to go through for months or even years before you reach that drought yourself.

A lot of the content, or pretty much all of it that isn't Raids or fractals(End game dungeons), can be summed up to "zerging". A huge amount of players stacking together spamming something until it dies. Can be fun when it's new content, but gets old REAL quick if repeated. Raids and Fractals do require a more old school approach though.




Now let's actually dive into my FF14 experience.


I've obviously known about this game for a long time, as FF14 pretty much is ( or was?) a direct competitor to GW2, but i never researched or bothered with it as i was content with GW2 and the idea of paying sub didn't appeal to me.
However after many many years in GW2, the recent Exodus of WoW players to FF14 and me dying inside from the anticipation for Ashes of creation, i have decided to finally try FF14.
The game stated to give a 30 day trial that is mostly not limited, which didn't sound bad at all.
I haven't done much research still, and decided to just sign up, install and hop on.

I was first greeted by a.. confusing server selection. As i'm European, Light or Chaos seemed to be the relevant options and Light, was highlighted for some reason, so i assumed it meant i'd have better ping there so i chose it. Inside the server i also needed to pick a World and most were already full apparently. I picked one of the open ones, Lich.

I was then greeted by a fairly robust character creator which was nice, however apparently most of the choices do have some sort of influence on different ingame stats, though upon googling the differences, they are pretty much negligible (I wonder if some people pick things they don't like, but have favorable stats for the job they want in order to minmax here. A bit of a shame if this is a thing).

I was then presented with 8 classes that seemed fairly traditional in nature.
I usually play Strong DPS melee dudes, but i wasn't exactly sure what each job does from the ingame descriptions so I have decided to research a tiny bit and learned that 2 of the melee ones are more focused on tanking, the other two are more DPS oriented.
I have decided to go for the Lancer, as not having an actual weapon and using my fists didn't appeal to me.
Upon further research i have learned there are a lot of more classes to unlock in the game, either by "upgrading" the current classes, or complete new ones you can switch into at around level 50.

The opening of the game was a terrible slog. A lot of conversations and wall of texts of things i don't care about (yet?), no voice acting, seemingly outdated animations and no combat involved.
You're then treated to a lot and i mean A LOT of text walls, dull fetch quests, backtracking, and once again none not even the main quest ones are voiced.

The game, also assumes you have never played an MMORPG, or any video game before.
I appreciate the effort to make this accessible for pretty much everyone, but as someone who isn't playing a video game for literally the first time, this was excruciating.

I was itching for some combat to actually experience the gameplay, and i assume that at some point i could have ignored most of these and go outside to fight, but i didn't want to miss vital information that i may need by not doing these starter quests.

Eventually i was finally sent out to kill some mobs ( Kill some squirls! yey ! ).
And the moment i hit my first enemy, it struck me.
GCD 2.5sec. The combat is very, very very slow.
Even with more moves unlocked later on, every move you make, gives you a near 3 second delay before you can do another move. This was devastating. I could feel literally my brain counting down the miliseconds of the delay between me chaining even something as basic as ability 1 and ability 2.
There's also no real way to avoid damage, enemies completely lock on you so unless you are ranged, you might as well seem to be standing still.
I assume later in the game, enemies will have AOE's that you will need to move away from, but still, this seems awfully static.

It seems that a lot of aspects of the game are slow upon further research. Traveling, moving around the map and although they are mounts, they seem to be restricted in a lot of ways.

I also have learned that as a free player, i can't even party anyone ( unless a paid player invites me himself) or add anyone to my friendlist. Why? What if i wanted to team up with other free players that are trying the game with me?

I continued trying to grind ( As this seems to be the most efficient way to gain exp, and because i was tired of meaningless tasks and endless text from the side quests) to see if something speeds up, but no.
Upon even further research, late in the game there are some abilities that aren't restricted by the GCD that you can weave in, but the combat itself doesn't REALLY speed up.

I also noticed, although the character models, when zoomed looked quite nice and rather fan service-y. The graphics and the engine itself seemed awfully outdated.
Sure GW2 isn't the biggest looker anymore, and the engine is quite dated as well as the game IS from 2012, but FF14 being a newer game, a bigger IP in general, and having far more income brought in and funding put into the game, it's a bit disheartining that the game.. doesn't look good.

At this point i've done further research. How late game works, how gear works, how many things that MMO's do, work here. and the more i read, the more disappointed i started feeling.

Now after having all these first impression thoughts and after learning a bit about the future, i had one final thought lingering on my mind.
Even if this DOES get better later on, do i really want to be buying the game all it's expansions AND be paying 13$ a month for this?


When this realization caught on to me, i swiftly exited, uninstalled and after some thought, came here for this post.

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Silamon:

Diposting pertama kali oleh smug anime girl:

It is nice how gw2 doesn't charge a monthly fee. I wish this was the norm.

This game does not make a good first impression but it gets much better if you continue. It's a hard sell though for someone who's not feeling it at the start that's for sure. I think a lot of people end up quitting before level 50, which is understandable.

The combat does get much better. Travelling has never been an issue for me in the game.

Honestly I prefer mmos with a sub fee, they tend to have better content and less intrusive monetization.

When last I played it, GW2 had no sub fee, you bought the game and the expansions and that's it. There is a cash shop but it's optional, just like in ff14
Compared to ff14 (and wow) where you buy the game, the expansions, you pay a sub-fee and stuff is locked behind a cash shop too. GW2 is much more fair.

Diposting pertama kali oleh Turret Syndrome:

"I felt like i should share my experience as a new player in this now increasingly popular MMORPG."

I never understood this. Why? Can't you just have an opinion and not feel like you have to share it with strangers? Maybe its because I grew up pre-internet, where sharing your personal opinions with the world was impossible lol.

You saw the thread title... why did you open it? Obviously if you're on a forum you understand why people want to share their opinions... you're sharing yours right now... you could have not opened the thread, or not responded. This guy isn't doing anything wrong using the forum to state his dislike with the game. Lots of fanboys take issue with that though, you don't see this kind of "tldr" posts for new players that say "wow this mmo is so good im level 5 and i love it :)" spaced over 3 paragraphs. I don't agree with OP but I can see where he's coming from, this game is a slow burn. I had a friend try it with me and he stopped playing by level 18 or so because it's just so damn boring at the start and I get it.

[TerrorInduced]

I do agree with the fact that the game does start of painfully slowly. However, I also feel like I'm greatly rewarded for sticking through with it till HW.

[DaniTheHero]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Chiro:

GW2 is not fun, expecially when a guildleader hates a member in your guild and starts solely because of that member a war and pins the guild so long down until the guild kicks that member. thats a very bad stigma in GW2 and one reason why i quitted it. in seen it 2 times. once was i in a guild where the guild leader did that and i was like .. you not going to start a war because of a tiny argument with that member O_o? and i was in a guild where a member got victim of this and then got kicked because the guild was way weaker then the war declaring guild.

after that was i just like ... imma quit. too much drama in this game and you cant be really in a guild without getting forced into PvP because your guild leader is a sensitive emo dude which wants to bash a kiddo which said a wong word to him.

it happens way too often in GW2.
i could now mentition many things which are the same in GW2 like they are in FF14 but ohwell, the GW2 fan peoples here will never aknowedge that and same with the FF14 fans.
this is a true FF14vsGW2 fanbase topic xD

BTW OP tries to sell the game to us. even tho he said he dosnt.

oh ya edit, the thing i love in FF14 is that you can be all classes on just 1 character and i dont need like 8 characters to experience other classes =3.

I’m sorry you had this experience. In my experience GW2 has one of the most welcoming and kind communities and i heard that for the most part so does FF14.

Perhaps PVP only guilds are more toxic as that tends to be the nature of more competitive environments but I’m still surprised you had such an experience multiple times ):

[weiss]

Diposting pertama kali oleh TerrorInduced:

I think you're dismissing the combat in FF14 without actually experiencing it for yourself at 80. There is a difference between watching high level gameplay and actually playing it yourself.
GW2 does have fast fluid combat, I agree with that but FF14 is no slouch when it comes to the pace. The GCD is 2.50 for a reason so that it compliments all the OGCD you have. It can get pretty intense when you have to keep track of all the OGCDs and the making sure you're aware during the fights, especially Savage content.
Also, I think FF14 does balancing way better than GW2. GW2 balancing of classes is abysmal.

fun fact; GW2 starts pretty boring too. i wonder how he got over that part if he dosnt manages to get over it on FF14. i assume more the monthly fee and buying the addons scared him more away then the whole stuff which he wrote...
i mean he even wrote at the end "after i realized that i have to pay a monthly fee and buying the addons quitted i the game".

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh WetNose:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Jin-:

Then the norm would be aswell to lack of content and shady item store charging you for every little thing and game made intentionally frustrating with limitations.

I'd rather pay to get regular content and mostly bug free experience. 12€ is nothing for that.

On the button m8.
I would rather be up front and give them money for maintaining the game than have them fleece me under the table. F2P ruins a MMO's because they have to get the money from somewhere which always ends up with them converting what might have been a great game into a slot machine.

OK I feel like I'm repeating myself but in FF14 you buy:
the game(60$ on launch)
the expansions every 2 years or so (40$ if you don't get deluxe)
a subscription (180$ per year!!)
and there is still a cash shop with exclusive items in it!

GW2 you pay:
the game
the expansion
optional cash shop
no sub - that's 180$ per year you could drop in the cash shop if you wanted but you don't have to if you don't feel like it

Listen, I like ff14 more than gw2 but objectively gw2's business model is better for your wallet. Unless this changed, all the stuff in the cash shop is 100% optional, just like ff14.

[GeminiEclipse]

That's only if you started from the beginning. I've only bought the game, one expansion (Shadowbringers came with Stormblood) and a few months (or maybe it was just 2) of sub time. And I'm doing the cheaper sub with only one character spot because I don't need more than that on a server.

[weiss]

isnt FF14 free up to lv 60 aswell? with some restrictions tho? but it should be enough to get atleast to the point to get to experience a HS maxed character without addons ofcourse =x

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Chiro:

Diposting pertama kali oleh TerrorInduced:

I think you're dismissing the combat in FF14 without actually experiencing it for yourself at 80. There is a difference between watching high level gameplay and actually playing it yourself.
GW2 does have fast fluid combat, I agree with that but FF14 is no slouch when it comes to the pace. The GCD is 2.50 for a reason so that it compliments all the OGCD you have. It can get pretty intense when you have to keep track of all the OGCDs and the making sure you're aware during the fights, especially Savage content.
Also, I think FF14 does balancing way better than GW2. GW2 balancing of classes is abysmal.

fun fact; GW2 starts pretty boring too. i wonder how he got over that part if he dosnt manages to get over it on FF14. i assume more the monthly fee and buying the addons scared him more away then the whole stuff which he wrote...
i mean he even wrote at the end "after i realized that i have to pay a monthly fee and buying the addons quitted i the game".

All MMOs have a slow start but ff14 is miles ahead in terms of how long it takes to get your stuff to make your class decently fun.

I recently leveled dragoon. by level 30 your rotation is 1>3>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>3>repeat. This is really not fun and it only gets slightly better when you get to 50 but it's still bad.
at level 50 it's 1>4>5>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3 with 2 off gcd abilities (one 45 sec cd one 1 min cd). The class is starting to have something going for it but it's still super boring. Once you get to 60+ then it starts to play how it should have from level 30 and on.

GW2 when last I played:
by level 7 or so you have all your main skills unlocked for your current weapon and you get to switch weapons and weapon combinations to get other attacks if you want to. The game throws stuff at you as you level vs ff14's "you get an attack every 15 levels, and you get a long cooldown move every 5" FF14 takes forever for your class to be decently fun, we're talking past all the content in the base game... if you can't understand how people don't want to have to suffer through boring combat for many hours while waiting for the game to get good I don't know what to tell you. It's completely understandable, especially if you have things going on in your life to not want to have to put in 10-20 hours of boredom before you get a payoff, instead you'll just play something else that's fun from the get-go.

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh GeminiEclipse:

That's only if you started from the beginning. I've only bought the game, one expansion (Shadowbringers came with Stormblood) and a few months (or maybe it was just 2) of sub time. And I'm doing the cheaper sub with only one character spot because I don't need more than that on a server.

Well yeah, that's with everything if you're a late adopter. I'm sure the gw2 old expansions are either included with the newest one or heavily discounted, but there's no sub fee.

I paid so much money in sub fees with all the years I played WoW it's scary to look back. There isn't much of an argument for it when they come out with an expansion every 2 years.

[weiss]

Diposting pertama kali oleh smug anime girl:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Chiro:

fun fact; GW2 starts pretty boring too. i wonder how he got over that part if he dosnt manages to get over it on FF14. i assume more the monthly fee and buying the addons scared him more away then the whole stuff which he wrote...
i mean he even wrote at the end "after i realized that i have to pay a monthly fee and buying the addons quitted i the game".

All MMOs have a slow start but ff14 is miles ahead in terms of how long it takes to get your stuff to make your class decently fun.

I recently leveled dragoon. by level 30 your rotation is 1>3>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>3>repeat. This is really not fun and it only gets slightly better when you get to 50 but it's still bad.
at level 50 it's 1>4>5>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3 with 2 off gcd abilities (one 45 sec cd one 1 min cd). The class is starting to have something going for it but it's still super boring. Once you get to 60+ then it starts to play how it should have from level 30 and on.

GW2 when last I played:
by level 7 or so you have all your main skills unlocked for your current weapon and you get to switch weapons and weapon combinations to get other attacks if you want to. The game throws stuff at you as you level vs ff14's "you get an attack every 15 levels, and you get a long cooldown move every 5" FF14 takes forever for your class to be decently fun, we're talking past all the content in the base game... if you can't understand how people don't want to have to suffer through boring combat for many hours while waiting for the game to get good I don't know what to tell you. It's completely understandable, especially if you have things going on in your life to not want to have to put in 10-20 hours of boredom before you get a payoff, instead you'll just play something else that's fun from the get-go.

then quit FF14 and play GW2 :o?
^^
i am more the type which likes it more simple where i dont need to putt on every button around my WASD keys a skill so ... i in general dont mind. i like the jobsystem in FF14 waaaaay more too.

oh and edit, i am now with my gladiator lv 25 and i have already 1~5 in use + c-1~c-3 for the tank CD´s if i want to tank properly ... looks like DPS is more boring then,

[Zachward97]

I honestly felt the exact same way as a veteran MMO player this starting gameplay felt so dull and out dated. Likewise I created a post expressing the same frustrations. I am glad I am not the only one who was disappointed by this game.

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Chiro:

Diposting pertama kali oleh smug anime girl:

All MMOs have a slow start but ff14 is miles ahead in terms of how long it takes to get your stuff to make your class decently fun.

I recently leveled dragoon. by level 30 your rotation is 1>3>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>2>1>3>repeat. This is really not fun and it only gets slightly better when you get to 50 but it's still bad.
at level 50 it's 1>4>5>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3>1>2>3 with 2 off gcd abilities (one 45 sec cd one 1 min cd). The class is starting to have something going for it but it's still super boring. Once you get to 60+ then it starts to play how it should have from level 30 and on.

GW2 when last I played:
by level 7 or so you have all your main skills unlocked for your current weapon and you get to switch weapons and weapon combinations to get other attacks if you want to. The game throws stuff at you as you level vs ff14's "you get an attack every 15 levels, and you get a long cooldown move every 5" FF14 takes forever for your class to be decently fun, we're talking past all the content in the base game... if you can't understand how people don't want to have to suffer through boring combat for many hours while waiting for the game to get good I don't know what to tell you. It's completely understandable, especially if you have things going on in your life to not want to have to put in 10-20 hours of boredom before you get a payoff, instead you'll just play something else that's fun from the get-go.

then quit FF14 and play GW2 :o?
^^
i am more the type which likes it more simple where i dont need to putt on every button around my WASD keys a skill so ... i in general dont mind. i like the jobsystem in FF14 waaaaay more too.

Huh? I'm past the boring part of the game and I enjoy it. Why would I quit now?

OP couldn't get past it and he quit... so what's the problem?

As for what you said regarding your enjoyment, well eventually it becomes much more complicated with abilities filling your all your bars, so if you don't like it, why don't you quit?

[Serious Secare]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Slayze ツ:

thing long

giggity

[Schizovoker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Zachward97:

I honestly felt the exact same way as a veteran MMO player this starting gameplay felt so dull and out dated. Likewise I created a post expressing the same frustrations. I am glad I am not the only one who was disappointed by this game.

My understanding is they move abilities (and remove some) every expansion, so what ends up happening is the start of the game is way worse than it used to be in terms of the classes just being not fun to play. I can't say there's a single class that starts at level 1 I've found interesting until level 60, and I've played a lot of them. It's a real problem that people like to downplay but I don't really get why. The game is very boring until you reach a certain point and it starts to pick up. No one could be faulted for not wanting to sit through the boring parts. IMO.

[weiss]

*reposts my edit on the other post cause it gests probably overreaded now*

oh and edit, i am now with my gladiator lv 25 and i have already 1~5 in use + c-1~c-3 for the tank CD´s if i want to tank properly ... looks like DPS is more boring then.

i need to swap properly with shield bash around too to use the stuns effectively since i noticed that mobs getting an immunity. yes, you notice it, i am a new player but from what you described that it is simply only 123 etc. isnt true.