Shadow456 said:
I've heard good things about FFXIV, but I'm not an MMO guy. As people who've played it, would you recommend it?
I would say yes and no depending on your taste in games.
You see compared to FFXIV 1.0 the reboot now known as FXIV: A Realm reborn is a streamlined game made to cater to the casual playerbase and be playable for console players. Now an FF MMO isn't actually that odd given the last MMO from SE (FFXI) was also available on PS2 and Xbox(Forget if it was the 360 or OG). So why am I bringing this up? I bring this up to let you know the game is very very much streamlined to hell and back which has helped its community grow and thrive since people don't need to throw their lives away to get to most of the end content.
1) Duty Finder: One of the streamlined things and I think a copy of a similar system from the current WoW is the Duty Finder which is the tool that lets you drop in/out of a duty/dungeon/trial/instance which is the majority of what you will be doing in the game meaning you will be standing in Hubs a lot or if you're productive you will take the time to use this system's queue to do other things like Quests, Gathering or Crafting. Depending on who you ask its a blessing or a curse, I personally find it to be fine since like I said you do get the options to do other things instead of waiting at the entrance to get in.
2) Classes/Jobs: Unlike Blizzard's counterpart where jobs are locked to race(and maybe gender?) in FFXIV you are allowed to be all and any class regardless of your starting race. Meaning you can be a Tall Bulky Healer or be a small Potato Tank and if you get tired of that job well guess what? You can train another job without making a new character, you are free to make multiple characters but the system itself is placed so you can make one into everything at the change of your weapon/tool.
3) The World: This is probably the one thing I have a problem with in this game. Like I said in Duty Finder you will be spending a lot of your time using the tool instead of entrances of dungeons or trials so you can be free to do other things but you will not use the world much unless you're gathering, doing Hunts which take time to spawn if not one of your marks or cause a quest told you to do so. The areas are split into zones meaning you will see loading screens from teleport or zone change and mostly see players in the Endgame hubs or residential areas. The world in of itself is pretty and nice to look at but could use a graphical overhaul.
4) How to play a Job: The way combat works isnt really that deep in this game, over time the game will teach you your main combo which can only be described as 1-2-3 seeing as most main combos only have 3 actions at best but thats not to say you wont be using other abilities alongside them. Endgame consists of what I would call playing a song on repeat meaning you would have something along the lines of; 1-A-2-B-C-3-D-1-E-2-A-3-B (Obviously this is not THE EXACT PATTERN but gives an idea) which youll generally learn how to do on repeat while dealing with mechanics. The jobs that I say dont really follow this are Healers and maybe Machinist. The Crafting System on the other hand is more about adapting to your current status on crafting so you wont generally be following a rotation unless youre highly overgeared and making an item way under your current level.
Take this how you maybe and maybe look up some of the boss fights, it is in the long run a Themepark FF MMO seeing as most of it is references of old games slammed in there such as this expansions new 24man raid known as "Return to Ivalice" (FFXII) or the High Endgame raid "Omega" which brings back other FF characters to fight such as ExDeath.