Why WoW players moved to FF14 - An Analysis
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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The difficulty curve is rather gentle and the game is very long.
The original endgame rotation for summoner they had in the current expansion had to be modified because they reckoned it would give people carpal tunnel because it had so many off GCD abilities that had to be weaved in for optimal DPS.
I think if the LFG tool had remained server specific it would have been better received.
Except that behavior doesn't exist in FF14 even though it has a LFG tool for every piece of content in the game. No WoW just build a culture of being shitty to each other because they miss used the tool.
the whole reason you had to be nice before hand was because, like you say, people would know who the pricks were. The shittiness towards others was built from the way the loot system works in WoW. Loot was everything and it was not given freely so people developed a "Fuck you, got mine." Attitude.
The reason this doesn't exist in FF14 is that you get a piece of gear out of EVERY dungeon regardless of whether or not you won any loot roles. After the final boss is killed you are awards a piece of loot for your current class. And since this loot only appears when the dungeon is over, it motivates players to help each other and see the dungeon through because you all get something out of it. Even if your group wipes in FF, people dont get upset because the run back to the boss is instant and if you quit then you get nothing, so people are more willing to teach each other and stick it out so that everyone wins in the end.
It's a subtle difference in implementation, but I feel it is very important and has a drastic effect on how the community treats each other.
The guaranteed loot, and the instant return to the boss after a wipe, has done wonders for the tolerance of the community.
That's because the game eases you into the combat. Every class gets pretty fucking complicated pretty quickly and if they loaded you up with abilities right away it would be a struggle to learn. If you only give an MMO two minutes, then you are likely not patient enough to be playing an mmo tbh.
I mean, loot rolls exist in FF14, it's just that the culture isn't primed to be dicks about it and if your gear is already better, there's no real reason to roll on stuff
Yes there is loot throughout the dungeon. However you always automatically are given a piece of gear after the last boss dies no matter what. Even if you win every piece of gear in the rest of the dungeon, once that final boss dies you still also get your guaranteed piece.
This guarantee encourages players to see the dungeon through.
Whereas in wow if the group struggles even a little at any point, people bounce because to linger and help is a waste of time. There is no promised reward by seeing the dungeon to the end and therefore no motivation to try and help a group that struggles.
You're making way bigger deal out of LFG toxicity than it is (at least up until pandaria, can't talk after that).
Here's the chat log of 99% of LFG group from experience (probably over 1000 run):
Yeah nothing, there's no reason to talk about anything since the LFG content is so ridiculously easy. The group appear and immediately start killing everything, in most case just the tank and healer alone can finish everything so even if the DPS are completely useless the content gets done and DPS queue time was pretty long, so they have a pretty good reason to stick around. I also very rarely saw any case of loot being taken by people who didn't need it, not that there ever was much reason for it since LFG loot used to be outdated for most people after maybe a month. Also you never could kick at will, it required a majority vote. My only problem with LFG is that it required making dungeon into snoozefest (compared to BC, no more CC needed for trash, simpler boss, shorter dungeon) but I really don't think that killed the game.
Here's the chat log of 99% of LFG group from experience (probably over 1000 run):
Yeah nothing, there's no reason to talk about anything since the LFG content is so ridiculously easy. The group appear and immediately start killing everything, in most case just the tank and healer alone can finish everything so even if the DPS are completely useless the content gets done and DPS queue time was pretty long, so they have a pretty good reason to stick around. I also very rarely saw any case of loot being taken by people who didn't need it, not that there ever was much reason for it since LFG loot used to be outdated for most people after maybe a month. Also you never could kick at will, it required a majority vote. My only problem with LFG is that it required making dungeon into snoozefest (compared to BC, no more CC needed for trash, simpler boss, shorter dungeon) but I really don't think that killed the game.
Healers and Tanks doing enough damage to bum rush the dungeon on their own hasn't been true for ages. Not since both the scaling was implimented, and the heirlooms received a power nerf.
I played WoW for a couple weeks sometime after the initial release and then again for 2 months in 2008. I had a lot of fun with it at the time, but I just cannot understand the desire to play the same game consistently for decades. Also I'm too cheap to fork over for a subscription.
The trend already existed in WoW, because of the one thing I hadn't mentioned yet: heroic dungeons in TBC. TBC heroics were incredibly toxic thanks to the combination of (comparatively) high gear requirements to clear the dungeon, but no requirements to enter it, and highly-tuned encounters that required players to know and play their classes well to get through. Players tried to jump straight into heroics before doing regular level 70 5-man content, it predictably didn't work too well, and players would blame each other for the wipes.
WoW's LFG tool took that to the Nth degree, when the one thing keeping players in check -- their reputations -- ceased to be relevant.
No, not really. The only classes really impacted by this were hunters, paladins, and shamans. Which other classes got which loot was generally patently obvious, and players tended to not step on each others' toes as ilvl wasn't relevant before WotLK, simply gear breakpoints -- and even in WotLK, it was only nominally and artificially relevant.
For the three aforementioned classes, things got problematic because of how poorly the WoW team itemized loot before WotLK. That's where you ran into problems -- feral druids and rogues, and enhancement shamans and hunters, fighting over the same loot, and nobody quite knew what the hell paladins should wear. What made things worse was when gear of a lower armor class had more advantageous stats than what classes were intended to wear, leading to circumstances where balance druids and elemental shamans would be fighting with warlocks and mages over cloth DPS gear.
That's actually a newer feature added in Stormblood, that didn't exist in ARR and HW. And it only exists in leveling dungeons. It's an important mechanic not at all for the reasons you cite, but rather for the fact a single character can play as any job and it speeds up the process of keeping in current gear when leveling alt jobs. That has absolutely nothing to do with max-level play, especially as any content beyond level 50 rewards tomestones, which can be exchange for entry-level endgame gear.
Mention of first-time player tomestone bonus and second chance tokens: zero.
Summoner just has a shit rotation, period. But, I don't like DPS in FFXIV no matter what iteration. The only DPS class I can tolerate is dancer, simply because they're a proc/priority class and not a rotational class. I don't even like 5.x RDM, because of how ridiculous and convoluted their melee phase has gotten with 5.x (with no sign of stopping in 6.x).
Don't get me started on melee DPS. I have to wonder why Squeenix even bothered giving Reaper positionals in their first place, other than to say the job has them. Soul phase lines up with True North's cooldown, all players need to do is weave TN when they're going into soul phase. It's just dumb.
And yes, I loathe 5.x PLD and GNB for the same reason. I'm sure I'll catch shit for this, but the only thing PLD's confiteor phase and GNB's cartridge combo adds, are different graphics every minute to keep the rotation from getting "boring". At least with Delirium and Inner Release, you have to engage in a bit of planning to build up to it and (ideally) plan their use around party burst windows.
Too much focus on rotation, weaving, and hitting burst windows, for arbitrary DPS thresholds that only actually matter when progging savage/ultimate content at minimum or close to minimum ilvl.
Of course, I still gripe Squeenix removed cleric stance and tank DPS stances. So, grain of salt there.
Maybe, but from LK to pandaria there was essentially no toxicity in LFG because nobody spoke to each other's since everything was a snoozefest, so I have hard time thinking that introducing was somehow the root cause of a rise in toxicity which sanked the game. Even when they introduced the raid version there wasn't much toxity in it, it just felt like barren chat with people saying w/e, since most encounter would see 10-15 people die within the first minute of an encounter and the rest would just easily clear it by themselves.
The toxicity now, such as it is, mainly comes from the player base being unforgiving little fuckwads to new or returning players who are shaking off the rust. Now I'm no raid capable tank by any measure but normal 5-man should be something I can handle if I'm allowed to suffer the odd recoverable mistake or be given guidance by someone who knows. So when I tried to get a couple of quests done in dungeons levelling my warrior the past three days to 60, I got kicked from four out of my five dungeons. I don't know what I did wrong because it was apparently easier to just silently initiate a 'vote kick' than to type "Hey dickhead, don't do that, do this"
Precisely this. Folks want to frame toxicity in grouping around chat, but that's not the root issue in WoW. Silent votekicks absent any attempt to coach or constructively criticize, even based upon up to and including inspects on "unapproved" or "unoptimized" gear, are the root of it. Wrath was the peak of it with GS, morons would actually vote to kick players with BiS for that respective dungeon/raid tier, because it was a lower ilvl than current tier's drops and therefore artificially deflate gear score. You had players ninja looting shit they didn't need or want, and players loading out off-role gear, to meet player-enforced GS thresholds that were actually way above what was required to even have that content on farm.
I played resto druid during Wrath; the common practice for resto druids was to equip balance gear when queueing and until the first pull when players stopped inspecting gear other or running GS on them because resto itemization was just fucked. Resto wanted haste to cap before literally any other primary or secondary stat (more HoT ticks), spell power, and spirit in that order, so guess which stats Blizzard gave druids less of over time. I can't remember if it was tier 8 or tier 9 resto druids actually had to skip, because it tanked haste in favor of crit and had set bonuses built around criticals...which, y'know, was exactly what you wanted in a class designed around spamming heals over time.
So, resto druids had to keep two sets of gear, one of which was for use and the other to keep morons who didn't understand how itemization works and just followed groupthink from kicking them. Resto druids usually let rogues have gear intended for resto druids, because the itemization was subpar and rogues "needed" the ilvls to keep gearscore idiots from kicking them in turn.
"Best expansion in WoW's history".
The irony is, at least in ShB the most consistently toxic role I encountered was tank. Especially GNB. Usually folks rolling tank for shorter queue times, who don't have a solid grasp on mit, wall pull without communication, get salty with healers when they're not topped off, and inadequately communicate when they're about to pop invuln. That last one is especially important for GNB and DRK, particularly when tanks do it to skip mechanics on large trash pulls without communicating it first, and the end result is actually a party DPS loss at the cost of a long-cooldown ability that could have been more effective on a boss.
That's 100% down to FotM just like it was every expansion. It wasn't as big a deal in SB because the two new classes were both DPS save the occasional RDM who decided to LARP DRG, but that's the way it was in HW when FotM players rolled DRK and AST, and it's the way it'll be in EW when FotM players will roll SGE. SGE's design is basically setting up FotM players to fail until they figure out Kardion and shields won't keep a group up on their own, I'll say that here and now. Players will adapt, eventually, but have fun in DF until that happens.
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Not going to lie, one positive about the whole shitstorm at Blizzard has meant that chucklefuck has gone away to bother some other game.
Vote kicking a tank usually meant the group would disband since it could take 15+ mins and most people don't feel like sitting around doing nothing for that time so they'd leave and requeu since a dungeon typically took less than 15 min to complete. I could see a healer being trigger happy with kicking a tank since they knew they could leave a get in a new dungeon within a minute, but DPS usually had queue time in the 25-30 mins range so they were a lot more tolerant.
Maybe queue have really improved in recent exp so that you get a new tank near instantaneous, that I can't say.