The game systems are now seemingly feature complete. Unfortunately there are still glaring issues that don't look to ever be resolved with this game.
Each action you take has an inherent lag which prevents playing reactively. Everyone has had the experience of dying even though your corpse is in a completely safe spot. It's not an issue for XIV enjoyers because after a while your brain adjusts to the lag, but people who play both this and WoW will always notice how laggy XIV feels (not to excuse the blatant server lag WoW has suffered from since Legion).
At this point it's inexcusable that new players have to sit through a hundred hours of unlocks and cutscenes to be able to play with their friends. In 2022 we expect to hop on an online game and play with our friends right away. Shockingly few of XIV's systems are even multiplayer-enabled for a so-called MMO. The game is best enjoyed as a singleplayer JRPG experience. Now players can even use NPCs ("Trusts") to play through the majority of dungeons if they are feeling unsociable.
The RPG aspects of the game are laughably basic. Equippable items have no special effects and can be reduced to one 'ilvl' stat. If you do bother with optimal stat builds you will see little difference in results and no impact on the feel of combat. The jobs offer no customization and 90% of combat situations call for the same static rotation on every job.
The thing this game is supposed to excel at, which is storytelling, is almost all done through cutscenes with no player input (recent expansions allow you to choose between options that will determine... one line of dialogue). They quickly become repetition of three characters slowly walking into a room followed by you nodding or craning your head to the side. Buckle up because this is the majority of the 300 hours of content this game has.
Quest design is abysmal - mostly you are asked to teleport to the nearest crystal to your objective and fly the rest of the way, or collect a few objects off the floor. If you're lucky you get to fight an enemy or two. The quests in this game make WoW's notorious fetch quests look fun.
With all that said it's comfy. The music is fantastic. The cast of characters is lovely. The community is much more friendly than other online games and the GMs do a good job of maintaining that atmosphere.
Each action you take has an inherent lag which prevents playing reactively. Everyone has had the experience of dying even though your corpse is in a completely safe spot. It's not an issue for XIV enjoyers because after a while your brain adjusts to the lag, but people who play both this and WoW will always notice how laggy XIV feels (not to excuse the blatant server lag WoW has suffered from since Legion).
At this point it's inexcusable that new players have to sit through a hundred hours of unlocks and cutscenes to be able to play with their friends. In 2022 we expect to hop on an online game and play with our friends right away. Shockingly few of XIV's systems are even multiplayer-enabled for a so-called MMO. The game is best enjoyed as a singleplayer JRPG experience. Now players can even use NPCs ("Trusts") to play through the majority of dungeons if they are feeling unsociable.
The RPG aspects of the game are laughably basic. Equippable items have no special effects and can be reduced to one 'ilvl' stat. If you do bother with optimal stat builds you will see little difference in results and no impact on the feel of combat. The jobs offer no customization and 90% of combat situations call for the same static rotation on every job.
The thing this game is supposed to excel at, which is storytelling, is almost all done through cutscenes with no player input (recent expansions allow you to choose between options that will determine... one line of dialogue). They quickly become repetition of three characters slowly walking into a room followed by you nodding or craning your head to the side. Buckle up because this is the majority of the 300 hours of content this game has.
Quest design is abysmal - mostly you are asked to teleport to the nearest crystal to your objective and fly the rest of the way, or collect a few objects off the floor. If you're lucky you get to fight an enemy or two. The quests in this game make WoW's notorious fetch quests look fun.
With all that said it's comfy. The music is fantastic. The cast of characters is lovely. The community is much more friendly than other online games and the GMs do a good job of maintaining that atmosphere.