I'm done, I'm installing FFXIV

Community General Discussion
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Introduction

Hey, I’m sorry this might be a bit ranty but I just wanted to get this off my chest and talk to the community.

For context I’m a relatively new player, I started in BFA and have been playing up till today.

Confusing Covenants

The covenant system, I’ll be honest I don’t even know what the hell is going on here.

Renown, I can understand farming anima to dump into a reservoir to get some cool stuff, but why on earth do I have to grind through to renown 77 just for a set of transmog gear that seems massively ridiculous. Mostly okay with this system had it not been plastered with several others.

Command Table, what does this even add to the game, I don’t get it. The gear that it drops isn’t really good and apart from levelling up your soulbind characters I don’t see what the point of it is.

Soulbind Conduits. I’ll be honest this is fine I think? I don’t really know much about why it’s even useful to me but hey I’ll give my first one some abilities, I’m not farming for other soulbinds because to be honest it’s really boring.

I don’t really know what anything else does or why it’s even important, it’s not very interesting, I just wanted to jump into raids, dungeons and cool quests with my friends. I don’t understand why I have to jump through convoluted confusing systems I just want to play the new raids and dungeons with my friends.

Finally, why is switching covenants penalised so much? If you get to Renown 30ish you’d have to reset all of that to switch to another covenant, why? Aren’t they all allies? If you suddenly nerf the abilities of my covenant and buff others why can I not just jump between them to try out all of the cool things? More importantly how the heck am I going to find time to do this on other characters? Surely renown should be the same level across all covenants and account (or at least Faction) wide?

Acquiring gear & Torghast

I’m annoyed by the fact that information isn’t conveyed to me in an easy to understand way. For example more recently when making a legendary I had no idea that I needed to use more than 1250 soul ash to make a higher ilvl legendary as the quest only asked for 1250, but fine I say to myself, I’ll grind for more.

I then see that there is soul cinders, which I also need 1650 of, that’s annoying I don’t know why there is ANOTHER currency to use but okay I’ll go and do more grind. After checking up online to see just how the hell I get these items and use them (also very annoying I’d rather the game just explained it to me) I then see that I have a limit on the amount of these items that I can get per week for some reason.

Why is it that after clearing Torghast every resource is reduced by 80%, more importantly why do I have to sit and grind it out for three weeks to get a legendary? Why do these resources only drop in Torghast, its fun but I don’t like playing it all the time, then it becomes a chore. Just because everyone is playing it to get their legendries doesn’t mean we’re all loving it Blizzard! Why can’t I just keep going for a whole day on my day off to get all the grinding done and get on with my life?

Now I feel like I have to play the game for three weeks to get a cool item, which is just absurd I play games to have fun and relax not check in every week like I’m working at a job. I expect a bit of grind in an MMO but this is insane.

Furthermore, I can’t use a full set of crafted armour now? I bought a full 230 set to use so that I could just jump into the new raid, however for some reason I can only use one piece at a time. I feel like the game has artificial limitations to force me to come back and grind just to do the fun raids because they lack any actual fun content.

Outdated UI & Dependence on Add-ons

When I first started playing in BFA I had absolutely no idea why my dots are not displayed to me on screen, I had no idea why every bag was a separate window and took up so much space they could have just been one window, I had no idea why the map was so small and hard to see and I had no idea how to modify any of these. The next day I installed ElvUI and it fixes all of these problems. Other UI add-ons are out there and I think its fine if you want to use a different UI add-on but it shouldn’t be a requirement. The default UI in WoW needs to be as good, if not better than ElvUI.

When I began playing raids and dungeons I had no idea what to do or how to fight each boss as I kind of expected on-screen guidance, I’m so thankful deadly boss mods exists as it really helped me understand how to fight bosses and where I needed to go to avoid being hit. I know they are explained in the adventure guide but let’s be honest, new players never read it all, why not have short videos or gifs in the adventure guide that visually show you how to fight the boss?

WeakAuras is a really complicated application, and I value the freedom it grants to create prompts on-screen, but why is this required for raiding. The game shouldn’t be so hard that add-ons are needed to beat it, the UI should be good enough to play the game at a mythic raiding level without add-ons. Even for basic play I need to get new people to install third-party UIs to just enjoy the game it’s absurd.

Factions & Story

Why do we even have two factions at this point? Most of the leaders seem to get on and want peace. All you’re doing it splitting the player base. Even if you want to keep the faction based content why can I not play with my Alliance friends in quests, dungeons and raids. Gameplay is more important than odd lore reasons for me not to play with my friends. Would it not make sense to just have one unified mega faction and for legacy content we can just select a faction to use regardless of race? The factions have had armistice in loads of expansions anyway, wouldn’t it be cool if you could just go to any city and play with your friends regardless of what race they wanted to play? I can do that in other MMOs, why not here it just breeds tribalism. In terms of story PCGamer summed it up pretty well in their article “World of Warcraft’s latest cinematic is a narrative disaster and players hate it”.

TL;DR: There are currently too many confusing, grindy systems in place for the recent expansion. It’s confusing for players to figure out how to get to the fun content and gear and there’s just needless filler everywhere to force you to play for as long as possible. The UI is horrible and the game should not require add-ons to use properly. The factions system is pointless now and it should really be removed so that we can all play together regardless of race choice. The writing sucks, and for a game of this stature needs to be better.

I’m un-subbing, I’m going to play a game that doesn’t demand my entire life just to play and actually keeps me interested. Get a grip of yourself Blizzard.

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give me ur gold pls , u seem rich , i saw you bought full 230 set

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Hope you will find the game to enjoy
gl and hf!

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Can i have your alts

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Thanks for sharing your opinions! I hope the devs take note of us dissatisfied customers.

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Walk in the light! Have an amazing time in FF14 :slight_smile:

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Enjoy bud, honest enough. Give Shadowlands a miss, enjoy FF14 and perhaps give the game another whirl in 10.0.

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I can understand that finding out the absolute best covenant is a mess and borderline impossible without sims, but confusing really ? Things are fairly simple on their own.

Great source of profession resources, augment runes and gold, loved by gold farmers. Absolutely optional anyway, a fairly harmless feature imo.

Tbh you just passively get them from playing the game, and are actually one of the big issue in the game for some players as Blizz limited your ability to swap conduits. Overall a fairly simple feature, pick the upgrade you need & slot it in the path you took for your talent tree.

It’s important for the story, and once again I disagree with that notion of covenants being confusing… You get two abilities upfront, a covenant sanctum with a few clear upgrades and 3 customizable talent trees with barely 6 or 7 rows.

Honestly the entire feature is pretty bare-bones, and it doesn’t really stop you from doing any content beside high end m+ or mythic raiding. Will you be optimal ? Of course not but you don’t have to even care about it if you want to play casual content & low end m+ / normal raiding.

Lore wise because Blizz want to give the impression that we betrayed their trust, and that this choice has consequences

Gameplay wise so that we have to regrind multiple times the rewards

Finally it’s a way to prevent min-maxxers from swapping all the time & make sure that choice has consequences, that you can’t simply go back on it minutes later.

You don’t, the renown you unlocked is just tied to your previous covenant. Go back to it & you’ll get the 30 levels back.

There’s a massive catchup system with renown, you passively get levels while playing the game until you reach the current cap. The regular farm was 2 levels per week through two weekly quests, something you most likely never experienced.

You can catchup in a matter of days fyi.

Quest requires 1250 because it’s the cost for a rank 1 lego. Higher costs will require a higher level base item & more ash, which indeed isn’t explained afaik

Don’t worry about that i doubt you can even afford the base item.

As for the new currency tbh it felt fairly obvious when you actually play through it, you get the currency around when you actually need the higher ranks. Convulated perhaps but the rewards are shown on the interface before you start a run.

Timegating, also obviously shown on the interface.

By design, as for the chore part well i’m fairly sure that was planned, Blizz love to add player power to content to make it mandatory for progression & insure that tons of players go through their content.

That said they turned Torghast exclusively into an ash farm & it was very unrewarding in 9.0. It’s slightly better now with the research tree & cosmetics but still lacking overall imo.

Honestly ? Nah, buy a rank 1 & instantly craft it. You’ll need the higher ranks base item later on but the ash you use now will be deducted from the upgrade so don’t worry, start with a rank 1 lego you can instantly use and go from there.

There’s an actual reason for that tho. Legos are powerful & the whole point is to pick which one you want to use not get a free set of gear with a higher ilvl than any other item in the game.

There’s a title “unique-equipped” on the legendaries, that one is on you.

Core pillar of the game, let’s not simply throw everything away so you can play WoW like a MOBA.

Yet the factions are allied against a common foe in that narrative disaster. I fail to see the point with your argument, unless this is about another cinematic than the 9.1 raid with Sylvanas.

The entire Sylvanas storyline is a PR disaster, I wonder how many of the dislikes are there sorely because of that character rather than the overall story.

Back to the overall point it feels like it’s less about confusion but rather frustration. Many of the features you listed are pretty clear to me, with barely any complexity to them. I would qualify them as confusing if the features were liked together but as it stands now every single one of them exist in its own bubble & don’t impact the others.

See ya, have fun and all that jazz. Still don’t understand why people feel the need to throw FF14 left and right when they claim they are leaving. Who cares where you’re going, the whole point should be to talk about what made you leave not create free advertisement for another game.

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Did he at least did something useful and gave away his gold?
Whats the point of making an dramatic airport departure announcement if he doesn’t give his gold? :worried:

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Yes I got his gold.

WHAT a half hour in Goldshire inn it got me…

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welcome to FF14, you will have fun :slight_smile:

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Decent feedback. Sad to see people go but best of luck, hope you’ll find what you’re looking for in FF.

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I mean you say why throw in the FF bit.

But this is the big sticking point at present.

Players unsatisfied with WoW are seeing this new ‘boom’ on the market like WoW did way back when.
So generally if the person is genuinely going to FF, I personally hope Blizzard take not of the flock leaving.

I strongly believe it won’t be a mass exodus back as the state of the game at present and future is as clear as ink on parchment.

People do not like the direction this game is going. We have a raid designer for a world builder? The actual fudge?

The lore is weaker than ever. Granted it’s been declining for a fair while.

Classes are going to feel absolutely gutted after this expansion unless we keep our abilities somehow?

UI add ons and add ons in general are becoming more integral to understand what the actual hell is happening as the default UI is so…tired it’s ridiculous.

Is Shadowlands a bad expansion? In my opinion meh. It’s okay. But I can certainly see the appeal of other games as in my honest opinion it offers nothing new what so ever over BFA apart from punishing covenants (granted mainly for anyone pushing high which is a small portion).

I could go on and on.
But I believe OP is entitled to his/her opinion. Just because you personally didn’t find it confusing is a moot point to counter OP’s. He’s not the only one.

The 230 gear he was on about (new blues I’m guessing?) - unique equipped means sweet FA to any fresh player. No where else does the game state you may only equip one of these. In fact you’d only know if like me or you… you’ve been playing for awhile, or watch YT/read WoWHead.

Alas, OP I hope FF serves you well and you enjoy your adventures over there!
The games certainly deserving of its current recognition and I only hope Blizzard look at the love and community relationship the devs have with the players over there and remember what it’s like to create a game - NOT run a Monopoly!

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Combat is still better in WoW.

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I played FF14 for a while, a long time before this latest fashionable thing and while it has some good features, overall it didn’t keep my attention for that long, don’t give your stuff away as you will probably be back.

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FF14 gets boring so fast.

I resubbed it recently, played to max lvl and did some dungeons.

Every dungeon was:

Tank pulls a lot of mobs.

I spam holy. Spam holy harder. Smash that holy button some more. Then some more holy. Then I press some holy again. Then some more holy. Then I throw a heal on the tank. Then I smash holy again. Then some holy again. More holy. Even more holy. MORE HOLY.

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Well, considering they are something like m0, it’s the same here - the only difference being I spam CL.

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I mean in terms of how to use each feature and what they do, no not confusing, frustrating maybe? What I’m trying to say is with an endgame goal here of getting myself geared up, I didn’t understand what features were useful and what features were optional. Maybe I’m just not very smart idk.

That’s fair, I had no idea why it’s even used, It’s quite possible I missed an explanation of this.

I mean if that’s how ytou’re supposed to get them, then fair. I don’t really understand why they limited the ability to swap conduits tbh I’d forgotten to add that but it’ss another frustrration. Either way I’m beginning to see confusion was the wrong word to use here.

After reading through your replies I can see your disagreement of confusing. It’s not really confusing from the perspective of “how do I do x” but rather from the perspective of “how does x relate to me being able to hop into a raid, why should I do this”.

Lore wise fine if that’s how they want to go about it, although the logic of it still confuses me if they are all on the same side, but that’s just an opinion on lore so it’s fine.

For the gameplay reason, I understand the logic so I suppose my gripe really is that it isn’t fun and could have been done better. I can’t really say how it would be better because I’m not a game designer so I have no room to comment.

Ah I’ve never swapped back before. I apologise for the assumption and retract my incorrect statement.

Okay, I was unaware of the catch-up system, and I don’t remember anything coming up to let me know how this works and can be best utilised, however I may have clicked it off without reading I wouldn’t know.

That’s what I came to understand after, frustrating but my real gripe was the timegating on the grind to get resources for the Rank 6 after.

I bought a rank 6 chest, I have the base item, if there was no timegating I would have begrudgingly farmed it. In terms of the rewards being shown on the interface, they are there if you have the floors unlocked, but if you don’t have them unlocked it gives you no indication as to what floor you need to get to and what they give you, so you can’t plan your grind.

I’m aware that this is timegating, and shown on the interface. I’m trying to say that I don’t understand why they have needless timegating to stop you from getting into good content.

I feel like by asking why and using words like “confused” as oppose to “frustrated” I’ve sent the wrong message so that’s my bad. To clarify, I understand this is by design, I feel that creating new features that are chores by design and then forcing players to do them for power is unfun and bad design.

Given Blizzards financial situation and top-quality team I don’t understand why such design is being used in this game. It’s unfun and frustrating, I’d rather they just took some time to make good fun content to do as oppose to lacking content that we are forced to do for our power, and then on top of that timegating us so that we can’t just set a day aside to get it out of the way.

I mean I understand that’s a way you’re supposed to do it, I suppose I’m just frustrated at the system, and would have rather just brute forced it to get a rank 6 item.

I’m not talking about legendaries, I just mean crafted blue items. I assumed you could use blues in that manner I was fully aware legendaries were different. The blues also don’t say “unique-equipped” on them either but the legendaries do so I assumed it was different for the blues.

I understand that, I know my opinion on factions is not always well recieved. I don’t want to play WoW like a moba though? I just think that it’s silly that I can’t use my main char on horde to play with my friends on alliance. Usually I wouldn’t question it but considering all of the faction leaders are pushing towards peace with one another I don’t see why they can’t just do it already.

Sorry that’s on me but I suppose what I’m trying to say is I don’t understand alot of the characters motivations and overall I expected better from a team as large as this.

Yes it is more frustration than confusion I more than likley used the wrong word, they aren’t my specialty. It was less about misunderstanding, but more asking “why is this done this way when it could have been done so much better” but I didn’t really make that clear my bad.

The point i was going for, and alot of other people are going for when they mention FF14 is simply “This game is doing things well, look at your main competitor, and others, learn from them and be better, or others will follow and leave eventually”

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He’s not talking about legendaries here. You can get 230 crafted normal gear but you can only equip 1 piece which he didn’t know.

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They’re more like normal dungeons.

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