Final Fantasy XIV: Why I Love It
So I've been working on this post off and on in my head for over a year. The funny thing about me and FF14 is that I'm really not an MMO gamer. I managed to play SMT Imagine for all of like two hours before I quit, and I loved Glitch beyond any semblance of reason (O Glitch we mourn your untimely demise), but it was so aggressively un-MMO-like. 
stargeminiz bought me EverCrack years ago and I never even managed to start it. I bought Guild Wars 2 over a year ago and although I'm really interested in the world and the story, I....I just can't with the gameplay. I die too much and jumping puzzles can just jump themselves right on into the mouth of an acid shark, one that's on fire. No thank you. (I keep logging in thinking I'll change my mind. And I keep not changing my mind. At least there's no sub fee. This is why I'm still level 20.)
But for some reason that doesn't even seem to be related to its FF-ness (or even a whole huge pile of reasons), I am absolutely head-over-heels in love with FF14, and I never meant to be. So this is my post about why I love it and why you should come play with me, I'm on Coeurl.
So when I started playing, I jumped right in and made myself an arcanist because that is what leads to Summoner, and obviously Summoner is where it's at, I will hear no arguments to the contrary. The story began and I was delighted by how absolutely flipping gorgeous the game was. As we all know, I am relatively indifferent to the power of graphics as a measure of whether I like a game, but I do appreciate the pretty. I made my girl and started running around Limsa Lominsa, the pirate city, and I was completely entranced. So much for not being an MMO gamer.
FFXIV has a lot of strengths that I really like. The learning curve is generous, and it's really accessible to people who are new to MMOs (in my opinion). The players, as a rule, are incredibly friendly and willing to help new people (which is aided and abetted by the fact that the game gives specific rewards for shepherding new players through content they haven't cleared yet, and notifies you at the start of the fight/dungeon/etc. that you have new players and a reward will be given if they clear). Last week I started a story fight that was part of the post-game content and was literally greeted with a chorus of "Newbies! Hurrah! We love you!" from at least three of the experienced players in the group, people I had never met. They took the time to explain the fight and congratulated me and the other new folks when the fight was done. It was so different from most of the stories one hears about MMOs. I've been playing off and on for about eighteen months, since launch, including endgame content, and I've only run across a couple of people who were obnoxious - which is generally met with others in the group telling them to knock it off.
The story is excellent, as one would expect from an FF game. I mean, I cried a few times at the main plot arc (and I love that there are dozens of side-story arcs and callbacks and references and all the sorts of things that one loves to hunt when one is a longtime series fan.)
One of the things I love most, though, is that the world is populated with excellent characters all over the place. FFXIV has a plethora of AWESOME LADIES doing AWESOME THINGS, including things that one would not think of as stereotypically feminine. (All three of the initial city-states are led by women, though the Sultana of Ul'dah does it through the captain of her guard; half the guilds are headed by women; there are lots of other Extremely Relevant Important Female Characters and I'm so thrilled about this I can't even.) There are canonically queer NPCs who are right out there being important and known to the world. When they added weddings for player characters, they did so with no gender restriction. It's a small thing, but it matters.
Gameplay-wise, I really love that you can play about 90% of the main story solo, and when you are required to play with other people (dungeons, usually), there's a matching mechanism that connects you across servers, so you're not even restricted to the people who are relatively local to you. I also really love that when you want to try out doing something different, you don't have to start a whole new character to do so. Each battle class has a guild, and once you hit level ten in your initial class, you can go make friends with other guilds and learn their ways.
Your secondary classes get XP bonuses based on how much lower they are than your primary classes, which both pushes you to pick one and stick with it throughout the story and encourages you to explore once you're there. (You can also use certain abilities from one class while in another, and the "advanced" form of your starting class requires you to spend some time with other classes too.) You also get bonus XP if you log out while in a safe zone - when you log back in, you'll get +50% for a while, which makes it really easy for people who play infrequently to progress quickly and catch up with their friends.
Unlike other MMOs I've played or heard about (Guild Wars 2, WoW being the main ones), your crafting and gathering classes aren't limited. You can level as many as you've the patience for. (Guess who's going to get all of hers to max eventually?) I do find that Culinarian is pretty disconnected from the other crafts (once you get up to level 15 or so in most crafts you start needing Stuff made by other classes, which you can either buy from other players or make yourself) and is the most irritating class to grind up, but there are ways around that sort of thing, and Culinarian is arguably the most useful at maxed-out levels. Oh, and if actually doing the gathering bits isn't your thing? You can get retainers who will do that for you (though their level is capped by yours, so you'll need to at least get yourself all fancied up the first time, but then Someone Else Can Do It.)
The last thing I'm going to gush about is the way you experience the story. It's possible to jump out of any cutscene with the ESC button (and in end-game dungeons, it's rather expected, because you're expected to have seen them before.) However, you can always view those later from your inn room (which does not cost to use.) I got in the habit of skipping all cutscenes and then watching them in a rush later, and I have found that to be pretty great, especially since I can go back and check on things I'm not sure I remembered correctly.
There are, of course, downsides. FFXIV is a subscription-based game with a monthly fee, though in my opinion it's not high and I more than get my money's worth out of it. It can still get annoying to have to grind your levels out, especially if you are a DPS and queue times for dungeons are long. And not everyone in the game is a delight. Some people are just jerks, which is the way of multiplayer.
But in all honesty, I love this game and have massive amounts of fun playing it basically all the time. Come join me.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1105866.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
stargeminiz bought me EverCrack years ago and I never even managed to start it. I bought Guild Wars 2 over a year ago and although I'm really interested in the world and the story, I....I just can't with the gameplay. I die too much and jumping puzzles can just jump themselves right on into the mouth of an acid shark, one that's on fire. No thank you. (I keep logging in thinking I'll change my mind. And I keep not changing my mind. At least there's no sub fee. This is why I'm still level 20.)
But for some reason that doesn't even seem to be related to its FF-ness (or even a whole huge pile of reasons), I am absolutely head-over-heels in love with FF14, and I never meant to be. So this is my post about why I love it and why you should come play with me, I'm on Coeurl.
So when I started playing, I jumped right in and made myself an arcanist because that is what leads to Summoner, and obviously Summoner is where it's at, I will hear no arguments to the contrary. The story began and I was delighted by how absolutely flipping gorgeous the game was. As we all know, I am relatively indifferent to the power of graphics as a measure of whether I like a game, but I do appreciate the pretty. I made my girl and started running around Limsa Lominsa, the pirate city, and I was completely entranced. So much for not being an MMO gamer.
FFXIV has a lot of strengths that I really like. The learning curve is generous, and it's really accessible to people who are new to MMOs (in my opinion). The players, as a rule, are incredibly friendly and willing to help new people (which is aided and abetted by the fact that the game gives specific rewards for shepherding new players through content they haven't cleared yet, and notifies you at the start of the fight/dungeon/etc. that you have new players and a reward will be given if they clear). Last week I started a story fight that was part of the post-game content and was literally greeted with a chorus of "Newbies! Hurrah! We love you!" from at least three of the experienced players in the group, people I had never met. They took the time to explain the fight and congratulated me and the other new folks when the fight was done. It was so different from most of the stories one hears about MMOs. I've been playing off and on for about eighteen months, since launch, including endgame content, and I've only run across a couple of people who were obnoxious - which is generally met with others in the group telling them to knock it off.
The story is excellent, as one would expect from an FF game. I mean, I cried a few times at the main plot arc (and I love that there are dozens of side-story arcs and callbacks and references and all the sorts of things that one loves to hunt when one is a longtime series fan.)
One of the things I love most, though, is that the world is populated with excellent characters all over the place. FFXIV has a plethora of AWESOME LADIES doing AWESOME THINGS, including things that one would not think of as stereotypically feminine. (All three of the initial city-states are led by women, though the Sultana of Ul'dah does it through the captain of her guard; half the guilds are headed by women; there are lots of other Extremely Relevant Important Female Characters and I'm so thrilled about this I can't even.) There are canonically queer NPCs who are right out there being important and known to the world. When they added weddings for player characters, they did so with no gender restriction. It's a small thing, but it matters.
Gameplay-wise, I really love that you can play about 90% of the main story solo, and when you are required to play with other people (dungeons, usually), there's a matching mechanism that connects you across servers, so you're not even restricted to the people who are relatively local to you. I also really love that when you want to try out doing something different, you don't have to start a whole new character to do so. Each battle class has a guild, and once you hit level ten in your initial class, you can go make friends with other guilds and learn their ways.
Your secondary classes get XP bonuses based on how much lower they are than your primary classes, which both pushes you to pick one and stick with it throughout the story and encourages you to explore once you're there. (You can also use certain abilities from one class while in another, and the "advanced" form of your starting class requires you to spend some time with other classes too.) You also get bonus XP if you log out while in a safe zone - when you log back in, you'll get +50% for a while, which makes it really easy for people who play infrequently to progress quickly and catch up with their friends.
Unlike other MMOs I've played or heard about (Guild Wars 2, WoW being the main ones), your crafting and gathering classes aren't limited. You can level as many as you've the patience for. (Guess who's going to get all of hers to max eventually?) I do find that Culinarian is pretty disconnected from the other crafts (once you get up to level 15 or so in most crafts you start needing Stuff made by other classes, which you can either buy from other players or make yourself) and is the most irritating class to grind up, but there are ways around that sort of thing, and Culinarian is arguably the most useful at maxed-out levels. Oh, and if actually doing the gathering bits isn't your thing? You can get retainers who will do that for you (though their level is capped by yours, so you'll need to at least get yourself all fancied up the first time, but then Someone Else Can Do It.)
The last thing I'm going to gush about is the way you experience the story. It's possible to jump out of any cutscene with the ESC button (and in end-game dungeons, it's rather expected, because you're expected to have seen them before.) However, you can always view those later from your inn room (which does not cost to use.) I got in the habit of skipping all cutscenes and then watching them in a rush later, and I have found that to be pretty great, especially since I can go back and check on things I'm not sure I remembered correctly.
There are, of course, downsides. FFXIV is a subscription-based game with a monthly fee, though in my opinion it's not high and I more than get my money's worth out of it. It can still get annoying to have to grind your levels out, especially if you are a DPS and queue times for dungeons are long. And not everyone in the game is a delight. Some people are just jerks, which is the way of multiplayer.
But in all honesty, I love this game and have massive amounts of fun playing it basically all the time. Come join me.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1105866.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.