Guild Wars 2

Yes I am a traitor and have been seeing another MMO behind GW2’s back… but before I go on, I want you all to know that this is NOT a dig at GW2 and in-fact Will be singing it’s praises.

Firstly I want to explain my reasons for switching over to FF from GW2 (this is a dig at GW2 so if you don’t wanna see it, skip this paragraph). Basically put, logging into GW2, just merely thinking about opening the game had become unthinkable for me. Having played the game since BETA, I had lost all interest in the game and found it becoming more of a chore than a pleasure… So knowing what everyone’s response would be (Go play another game), I figured “why bother asking, I’ll just do it”. Being a big Final Fantasy fan, I chose to give it a go… Here is my review of the differences between FF and GW2.

UI —-
Final Fantasy: Wow, what a mess! There are different windows and tabs for pretty much everything. Armours and Items are stored in separate windows, meaning you have to switch between the 2 to see anything. There are hunting logs, crafting logs, journals, mount guides, mini guides and so on… all a real pain in the kitten to find and get your head around when starting the game.

Not to mention item comparisons, to compare 2 items you manually have to go into your “Armour Inventory” and right click the item you want to compare and select “compare Item” which then opens another window to compare the 2… A lot of hassle for such a small task.

The skill bars are too much as well, running around the world gaining more skills as you level up totally to 10 skill bars that hold 12 skills each which you scroll between, geez, shoot me now!

The compass map it hard to follow and getting to your destinations is not very clearly displayed, making it hard to find anything with it. So there is the magical “M” button, which opens up a resizable/moveable map window which is a bit easier to control and see where you are going… but all the different Icons on the map… Geez, they have markers for everything from merchants (all over the place) to insignificant buildings that can be entered… but with nothing of interest inside them! all of which are so close together the mini map looks like a mesh of markers, non of which are distinguishable until you are stood on top of them. Messy, Mess, Mess.

Guild Wars 2: What can I say? All of the above do not apply. The clean cut layout of the maps, POI’s, Vista’s and Waypoints makes for easy travel around the world, the skill bar is simple to use and doesn’t become complicated the further into the game you get. You inventory is also simple and all in one place so you don’t have to scroll around several different pages just to see what the hell you have on you…

So +1 to GW2.

Combat —-
Final Fantasy: What a joke! An MMO that is pretty much a single player game, the fact you have other people around who just leave you to it when you are fighting a creature… because the enemies are that easy to kill… especially with the insane amount of skills you have at your disposal. the only time I have ever fought alongside another player is during a “FATE” event (GW2 call it a Dynamic Event) and a Raid (Dungeon). Other than that you merely run around the world killing certain creatures that the NPC’s ask you to kill. The best part is (/sarcasm) once you hit a certain level, the enemies just leave you alone. They lose hostility towards you and leave you to go about your day, happy as Larry… erm, ok!? I won’t even get started on the targeting system… Simply put, there is no auto targetting in the game, making battles that little bit more frustrating.

GW2: “Scaling” says it all. A good system which allows players to be challenged at all/most times. Although not my personal favourite system, at least you get attacked by all enemies in the world and never “out-grow” them. GW2’s dynamic events are good and i personally feel they are a lot more varied than the FF one’s. (which are simply “Kill monsters in the area” or “Kill monsters in area and collect items for NPC”) however, having said that some Dynamic events on GW2 are a little boring and last too long, whereas FF’s FATE’s only last for a certain amount of time before they vanish. All in all the interactive gameplay with other players wins this round for me, knowing that players won’t just leave me to fight alone and will usually throw in a spell or 2 on their way past.

GW- 2 : FF- 0

Crafting —-
Final Fantasy: Oh, My, GOD… Please kill me now! it took me about an hour to figure it out, after asking my guild (Free Company) for help several times… Not only is it difficult to distinguish between character classes and crafting professions as they are all called “guilds” but then when you finally find a crafting guild to join you are then given a crafting log to use which says “cannot craft” and why? because you have to equip a certain item into your main hand to start crafting… WHAT, WHY!? oh but wait, that’s not the best part, when you equip the crafting weapon, it removes all your armour and then leaves you to craft up your own “crafting armour” which you then consequently have to unequip to put your battle gear back on after you are finished… What a fantastic pain in the kitten . The only up-side to the system is that you can craft anywhere you like, so saves you time running back and forth between crafting stations and Trading Post. I’ll get onto the “Trading Post” later on. Now on to the worst part of it all… Synthesizing… you select the item you want to craft and then, like some messed up battle system with a copper ingot. you have to press skill 1 to hammer on it, which sometimes fails, you get a certain amount of attempts to fill the crafting progress bar with eat hit… if it fails you lose the crafting materials and have to start again… WHAT THE ACTUAL “French Connection UK”

GW2: Once again steals the points, as previously stated, the up-side of FF is that crafting can be done anywhere you like, whereas guild wars has static stations. FF also allows you to use any crafting profession at any time, proving you have the equipment for it. No messing, no chance to fail, no hammering and wasting time… Simple and effective. Well done ANET!

GW – 3 : FF – 0

Travelling —-
Final Fantasy: MOUNTS – yes the one thing that fanatics all over GW2 want to see in the game… Well I will admit right now, I haven’t used a mount in FF yet, but from what I’ve seen they simply give you a bit of a speed boost and make you look a bit cooler, aside from that there are no real benefits to them. HOWEVER, I would like to point out the sheer size of the FF maps and the slow pace at which you potter along, with a single skill to “sprint” which last about 10 seconds with a recharge of 20 seconds. So mounts do help. but the waypoints… oh man I wanna die so much right now… In final fantasy they are called Aethershards which you can hope between within a single map (unless you use a large Aethercrystal to port between maps), but what it horrendously bad about these shards is the fact they don’t have names… they are simply referred to by the nearby POI’s. You can’t simply open up the map and click one to port to, you have to find an aethershard and then select from a list of random placenames that hold no relevance to where you want to be, confusing the sweet innocence out of you and leaving you saying “oh sod it, i’ll walk, rather than spend 10-minutes trying to figure out which one i need to choose.”.

As this game is heavily quest based you find yourself having to run back and forth A LOT, spending most of your time walking around, it would be more interesting if the enemies attacked you, but as i previously said… you don’t even get that. So with no mount until level 20+, Waypoints that makes no sense and walking at a snails pace… Final Fantasy needs looking at.

GW2: Simple waypoints in good locations all of which are named for ease of memorability, some classes having perma speed boosts for faster travelling, meaning Mounts are not needed. Guild Wars 2 once again wins this one for me. HOWEVER, I really do like the fact that Final Fantasy has a lot of quests, much the same way that Guild Wars 1 did. I would very much like to see them put into Guild Wars 2 so for that I’m going to award Final Fantasy 1 point, as well as Guild Wars 2.

GW – 4 : FF – 1

Mini’s —-
Final Fantasy: Well this one FF wins hands down. Mini pets in FF have a personality as such. You gain them during quests and some are obtained via special bonus events and paid upgrades. Giving them a back story of where they came from and how they came to be in your possession, like the lost Coerl Kitten, whose mother was killed and you rescued the kitten <—-(not a swear word, I actually mean a baby cat), which then wants to stay with you. The minpet then goes on to react to what is going on around it (in battle), it hisses at enemies that attack you and even pitches in with the odd attack (which does a very small amount of damage). Nice.

GW2: Sorry but your pure minipet aesthetic is pathetic in comparison (only said that because it rhymes lol), but in all seriousness, GW2 mini’s may need to be looked at.

GW – 4 : FF – 2

Professions —-
Final Fantasy: I’m on the fence with this one. FF allows you to level up in every profession to later select whichever one you want to play as. All classes are pretty well balanced and there is no bad one to use. The races are good but very similar to GW2 anyway.

GW2: No profession switching without starting a new character, balancing can always be better in GW2 (I don’t really know why, but they all seem to be sub standard). The one thing that GW2 has above FF on professions which is more of a combat mechanic, but in FF all your skill recharge at the same time, so it doesn’t matter which skill you use, all skills recharge after any one skill is used. Whereas GW2 skills recharge upon use, making battle much smoother and varied. So for that reason I’m giving the point to GW2.

GW – 5 : FF – 2

Style —-
Final Fantasy: I’m talking about character creation and changes to said character. Now although the initial setup of your character in FF is very limited in comparison to GW2, FF offers a free restyle NPC later in the game after unlocking during a quest. This guy is the campest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but he allows you to add tattoo’s and new haristyles to your character for a small fee. he can even dye your hair 2 tones.

The armour in FF is truly stunning, even the most basic armour looks great and sadly for ANET the FF skins on all armour and weapons takes a big old dump on GW2. There are also a few more trinkets and the like that FF has that GW2 does not which adds a few more stats to your character, as well as stats that increase some attributes but decrease others, giving a more varied game.

GW2: Having to pay real life money or masses of in game gold for a total makeover kit is quite unattractive to me, however the initial character creation on GW2 is very customisable and gives plenty of option to really make you look different to everyone else. Which is a lot better than FF. I would quite like to see ANET add in a free hair style service inside the game (for all default character creation styles). and also add in a home instance NPC that allows you permanent access to new and future face, hair and colour releases. ( I would pay for that).

As for GW2 armour, as i previously said, they leave a lot to be desired in comparison to FF. Also the stats are much more varied and I feel that GW2 could benefit from armours that also decrease stats and hopefully get us out of the “Zerker ONLY” rut that the game has backed itself into. Stats wise, GW2 is in real trouble.

jokke.6239:

Must admit I haven’t read your novel ^^ But, have played the FF mmo when it was on sale on steam .. For 15 min .. uninstalled .. Launched back up gw2 ^^

Lol, my novel is called “Ifrit – An Element of Nostalgia” search “Ifrittrilogy” in facebook lol (little plug there).

Coopziana.1802:

jokke.6239:

Must admit I haven’t read your novel ^^ But, have played the FF mmo when it was on sale on steam .. For 15 min .. uninstalled .. Launched back up gw2 ^^

Lol, my novel is called “Ifrit – An Element of Nostalgia” search “Ifrittrilogy” in facebook lol (little plug there).

Deleted the post, as it shouldn’t lay between ur posts ^^

Basically the long and short of it is… Guild Wars 2 is much better than Final Fantasy online. But equally Anet could learn a few things from NCSoft.

The End

jokke.6239:

Coopziana.1802:

jokke.6239:

Must admit I haven’t read your novel ^^ But, have played the FF mmo when it was on sale on steam .. For 15 min .. uninstalled .. Launched back up gw2 ^^

Lol, my novel is called “Ifrit – An Element of Nostalgia” search “Ifrittrilogy” in facebook lol (little plug there).

Deleted the post, as it shouldn’t lay between ur posts ^^

lol, yeah was a little cheeky!

Yep, I agree with pretty much everything you said. I’d also like to add, that the PvP scene in FF:XIV is also already dead. Hardly anyone does Arenas ( 4v4 forced 1 Tank, 2 DPS, 1 Healer on each team ) and Frontlines ( 24v24v24 of wtf ever classes going for 3 nodes like in Conquest ) has been on the decline since its release earlier this year.

thanks for the feedback!

i hope the moderators do not delete or lock this topic, because another game is mentioned in detailed in this, and they do not like comparison topics with other games.

this is very good comparison and feedback.

Op I found this enjoyable to read.

Coopziana, Thank you very much for your post! It is much appreciated!
+10

Yea, good post man.

It’s things like these that developers should USE to their advantage. It’s good to learn from other games.

Though for one thing, GW2 is in a very good spot: despite being out for as long as it has, it hasn’t done anything super major to the point where it can go in many directions.

Quite enjoyable to read and actually has meaning, unlike other fanboy-ish comparisons
I must note that you didn’t comment on the community and/or the game’s mechanics for allowing players and groups of players to interact with each other

+1 either way

I think you should put a diclaimer that most of what you wrote is highly subjective.
I find FFXIV to be the far superior game overall and most of what you listed as downsides are things I think are actually better done in XIV.

Interesting to see what you wrote about the differences in your opinion on GW2 and FFXIV. I also have played both for a significant amount of time, I figured I’d offer my opinion on each point you brought up.

UI – The UI is certainly more cluttered. I didn’t mind it though when I was playing FFXIV. If you want a real uncluttered UI you should check out the Elder Scrolls Online. I love it.

Combat – I love GuildWars 2 combat system feels mechanic wise, with that said, I love how Final Fantasy XIV’s combat looks. It’s just so beautiful. Everything you do in that game feels epic because it looks epic. Square Enix always bring it in the graphical department and FFXIV is no different.

With that said, I love how there is so much more character progression skill wise in FFXIV. The system in place that lets you learn abilities from other classes is very reminiscent of GW1, and this alone is a HUGE plus for me. I HATE the lack of skills in GW2, and can’t stand the fact that some professions have only two elites. It doesn’t allow for any variety in builds, at all when compared to FFXIV.

Crafting – I’m sorry you feel that way about FFXIV’s crafting system. I for one found it to be incredibly deep. When you are crafting something, you feel like each item you make was really tailored by you with all the options you have during the process of crafting it. In GuildWars 2, you buy a recipe, get the mats, hit “Craft”. Kinda boring IMO.

Also, Final Fantasy XIV has fishing

Traveling – It is really hard to go back to traveling the old fashioned way after being spoiled by Waypoints in GW2. They are just everywhere, but in FFXIV like you said there is only one per map, this is clearly to remove redundancy with having mounts too. Also, on a note about the shards not having names. I am pretty sure the last time I played (about two months ago) they fixed that, they now include in parenthesis the name of the actual zone, IIRC.

Ultimately, I did not mind FFXIV’s travel system, like I said above, Square Enix brings it in the graphics department, and it’s always nice to take in the environments while traveling. They have an amazing day/night cycle. Those sunsets, OMG.

Mini’s – I laughed when I saw you list this, I never considered mini’s to be something people considered when playing an MMO. I guess I was wrong.

Professions – Each game has their own style in terms of what they bring in terms of classes/professions to the game. HOWEVER, FFXIV has something that is dear to me that that GW2 apparently will never have: Healers. I miss healing in GW1, and when they announced no monk in GW2, it broke my heart.

Style: GW1 and FFXIV have WAY more interesting styles of armors and weapons than GW2 in it’s current state could ever dream of. That coupled with the fact that I have to pay to get my hair re-done on my toons in GW2 is a serious turn off. It is a step up from GW1 in the fact that I can trade gold for gems to buy what I need, but still in FFXIV it costs in game gold. So, I agree with mostly what you have said here.

I wanted to add a few more points that matter to me here…

Cinematics: Lots of them in FFXIV, they look good, but hardly any of them are voice acted. And, you can never tell which ones will be. It creates this 1990’s feeling when playing the game that just takes away from the experience in a large way. With so many things done right in FFXIV, how they skimped on this is just depressing.

Expression: So, GuildWars 2 has a few emotes, with some notable ones missing from GW1 (/flute /drum /guitar /paper /rock /scissors /roll etc etc)

Final Fantasy XIV owns it in this department. When I first started the game, a buddy and I spent the first hour and a half goofing around with what must of been at least 50 emotes. There are body wide expressions and even facial expressions!

You can /sit in a chair at a table (hell you can sit on boxes, crates and all sorts of kitten!) with other characters and when you type something into the /say channel your characters lips move!

You can /smile /scowl /frown and so much more! There are so many emotes there is a dedicated UI element with them all listed, and I am not joking, there is atleast 50 emotes. This is great for role-players and people who want to just have a little fun in game with friends and immerse themselves in the world that much more.

Dungeons: There are way more dungeons in FFXIV than in GW2 (that includes the multiple paths from GW2 dungeons). There are major bosses with various levels of difficulty you can select before entering. Dungeons in FFXIV are more fun to play in IMO than all the base dungeons in GW2. The new living world bosses that have ben getting released though, are fantastic and I applaud net for their improvements. It just sucks we can’t expect these improvements on existing dungeons.

LFG Tool: FFXIV’s is a legitimate LFG tool, GW2’s is….better than nothing.

Leveling: There are a variety of ways to level in GW2, between exploration, hearts, crafting, and events. I will say FFXIV offer’s what appears to be more ways to level, but ultimately it’s all the same stuff repackaged with a different name.

FATE’s are a joke, they try to be dynamic events in the weakest way possible. They are literally big number mobs that spawn in a location with little to no context. I like how in GW2, everything has context and there is a story behind it.

For example:
GW2 Dynamic Events – An NPC is walking down a path in a small down, and suddenly centaur begin to attack. The NPC runs out of said town down the path just outside of the town and starts yelling at nearby players to help, informing them of the plight of their town. Players can join the event and are automatically scalled to it’s difficulty.

FFXIV Fates – Several mobs spawn out of nowhere, and a paragraph is shown at the right side of the screen attempting to create some context, but ultimately is a kill ten rats with a weak reason why at the end. Players who join and are to high have to click a button to be scaled to the event, any participation before this is not counted.

I’ll stop there lol.

If I had to choose between the two and not play both, I would choose GW2, BUT ONLY because of the lack of voice acting. It’s that important to me. If FFXIV had this nailed down, I’d go FFXIV over GW2 easily.

I give my points to FF14, they have better story, dungeons, pve overall and good classes. But no good pvp.

Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is the best crafting system of any MMO. I’m sorry you didn’t understand it enough to actually make any informed decision about it. That game took its crafting seriously. Leveling a Chef in FFXIV is as serious as leveling an Elementalist in GW2. It is its own class. Synthizing was a mini-game meant to keep it interesting and at times tense. The reason you could fail it is how hard someone was willing to push their craft to get the most out of it.

FFXIV actually did something different and interesting with their crafting. Guild Wars 2? You press a button and watch a bar move automatically. You can tip your hat to their quality-of-live improvements, but there is nothing new or interesting with how crafting works in GW2.

Nokaru.7831:

Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is the best crafting system of any MMO. I’m sorry you didn’t understand it enough to actually make any informed decision about it. That game took its crafting seriously. Leveling a Chef in FFXIV is as serious as leveling an Elementalist in GW2. It is its own class. Synthizing was a mini-game meant to keep it interesting and at times tense. The reason you could fail it is how hard someone was willing to push their craft to get the most out of it.

FFXIV actually did something different and interesting with their crafting. Guild Wars 2? You press a button and watch a bar move automatically. You can tip your hat to their quality-of-live improvements, but there is nothing new or interesting with how crafting works in GW2.

I also like FF14’s crafting, but I dislike a lot of their other mechanics which are born of more traditional MMO styles – notably even with the “Level Sync” system . . . it’s not automatic and you MUST enable it for an event. Events which scale worse than GW2’s to large crowds . . .

. . . which happen all the more due to the Atma drop systems, from what I understand. High level quest items dropping randomly from events finished in an area, plus some of those being low level areas? Means there was often a lot of people overqualified for events rushing around.

And then there was how it locked dungeon access, and how slow the main story would progress . . . which is what locks everything in the game behind progress of that story.

after i read this theard i just had to log in to say the reason why i stoped playing ff…

but first i want to say that to some points i agree and to some i dont agree, i played FF for a month, and it was a good game , HOWEVER , it was not amazing.

and that is the point, i stopped FF because i dont pay a monthly fee for a good game, i wanted to give it a chance to see if it is an amazing game and if its deserves a monthy fee, it was not, not for me at least

summary:

payed 30€ for FF : played a month , stopped because of monthly fee
payed 50 € for GW2: played over 2 years

imo, best 50€ i ever invested in a game,
if FF would also be without monthy fee then maybe i would have played longer

ps: i´m still waiting for a MMO that is as good or better then gw2, but without monthly fee, execpt its just epic awesome amazing , then maybe i would pay each month 15€…

FYI for the OP. Only a few people want mounts. Most players seem to understand that they are not needed and resources are better utilized on other improvements.

I’ve not played FF[some roman numeral] because I know Square Enix

I’m sure FF[some roman numeral] is great or has it’s strong points…but I ain’t got time no more to be sucked into all its time-gates, time-wasters and whatever else that’d end up having me doing a good deal of waiting in the game.

I tend to stick with casual games now-a-days.

Personally I played GW2 for year. First couple months in pve heavy, leveled most classes and all craftings etc. It was fun, then got bored.
Decided to do WvW quite heavily for few months it was fun for while too.

Then at some point in my last couple months I realized dungeons became: skip skip stack, skip skip stack, dodge, skip skip stack, dodge.
Hated it.

Some point realized DEs became spam 11111111111111 to get gold, run to next DE to do same.
Hated it.

Some point realized WvW became stack, zerg, mass revive downed due someone killed someone, stack, zerg, mass revive downed.
Hated it too.

Craftings felt simple and somewhat rewarding at first, but some point it became pointless and costly due market flippers. Plus in a way it was too simple.

Then FFXIV came out, waited for month or so to see stuff about it. Been there since for over a year and never really looked back. I only come here to read grief texts and laugh at those when I’m bored. :P

FFXIV has pretty much everything I hope and expect from MMOs, nice world & story, great graphics, nice classes & races with clear differences with them.
Roles and tactics in team content. Great and working crafting system, private/guild housing, mounts.

Almost everything is possible to get by playing without massive DE grinds, guilds (free companies) actually has uses and some friendly community feel instead of “why our guilds are dying…. sobs”.
New content comes out quite stable pace, which even stays on the game. So all new dungeons and such doesn’t disappear after couple weeks.
Eventhough there is seasonal stuffs which do disappear, but appears again eventually so new players & slowpokes can do them too. But rewards usually are just cosmetics for vanity.

It isn’t most casual friendly, but can’t say that it’s overly hard either. Kinda works for most types of players. Personally i have leveled all 20 classes there and still haven’t gotten bored.

Only downside is that pvp content is quite boring there too, but at least they add things in to it every now and then. Considering it has pvp now with some variations of it, since at launch it didn’t even have it yet.

I’m somewhat poor and usually hate subscription based systems, but in my case FFXIV has been totally worth it so far. Paying 25€ for 2 months isn’t half bad, when you know that you get good game, good new content in stable pace and things do get fixed if there is something to fix and they even listen requests.

Still IMO if someone enjoys zerker zergfest then I’m not going to judge, just have fun with it. And if someone else (me) enjoys other type of game and content and is ready to pay for it every 2 months, then I should be allowed to enjoy of my choice as well.
It’s all about choices and preferences.

One thing I really liked about FF 14 is that they really listened to their community. When it was first released it was pretty bad, not going to lie. However, they listened to player feedback, and did a complete revamp with A Realm Reborn. It just goes to so you that things can improve.

Coopziana, I was in the original and reworked beta release and got a chuckle out of the first knock you have against ff xiv is the UI. When I posted on the beta forum that I thought the UI had a whole lot of issues, I was flamed, scorched, and burned by a lot of haters. The UI was very much mouse-driven when I left and never looked back. The icons were tiny requiring me to waste time trying to hit the right ones. Everything seemed to have a pop-up window that cluttered the screen. The map and pathing, or lack of it, confused me. Targeting was not up to snuff. The list was long but not as long as the list of haters. I never went back after beta.

Harbinger.8637:

One thing I really liked about FF 14 is that they really listened to their community. When it was first released it was pretty bad, not going to lie. However, they listened to player feedback, and did a complete revamp with A Realm Reborn. It just goes to so you that things can improve.

That’s one thing they have a leg up on ANet. They still listen to the community unless it’s like, “wtfruthinkinbro?no”.

OP: From what i gather from your post, you’d have been better off saying, “Hi! I’m a new GW2 player thats played a month of GW2 and a week of FFXIV and OH BOY is FFXIV BAD, because any MMO that requires intelligence to read the help tips that show up every time a new feature is shown is HARD! and online research is beyond my skill level!”

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

As for the comparison: Both games do both good and bad things, but FFXIV will always be the clear winner due to the sheer talent of the devs and A+ management of the game and it’s community. SE does a GREAT job of letting the community know whats coming up and addressing community concerns. Funny enough, they address the english speaking community’s concern’s when they are all Japanese. Fancy that!

I play both games. I play GW2 for the WvW, because thats really the only thing it has going for it and thats more because of the community, than ANet (Yes Anet, GW2 has become Mythic’s Warhammer Age of Reckoning Part 2). I play FFXIV to play a well managed and developed MMO with great content.

But the argument is illogical to begin with. GW2 is F2P game with starving devs, while FFXIV is a monthly sub with plenty of resources to craft awesome content. Its like comparing a Smart car to a Nissan 370Z. ROFL

You also can’t compare GW2 to WoW because of this. Nor, could you compare WoW to FFXIV, because WoW has had 10 years of development, and 7 years over FFXIV.

If you want a true comparison, try comparing TERA to GW2. Theres an argument that GW2 will win and it’ll make everyone happy.

Wow, slamfunction, way to start your post off by insulting someone just because they posted their opinion on a game you apparently like…

Ykfox.3825:

Wow, slamfunction, way to start your post off by insulting someone just because they posted their opinion on a game you apparently like…

Well if you have played FFXIV for a fair amount of time and read OP’s post; it most certainly feels that way. The OP sounds as if he’s more interested in winning brownie points for Anet.

Aside from the numerous difference between the two games though they are both designed to polish up their gameplay designs/choices. Not to mention FFXIV is one of the few recent MMO’s that can sustain a p2p model because it does it right. The OP is trying to hard to downplay a great game but we all have our preferences.

IcarusMelody.5312:

Ykfox.3825:

Wow, slamfunction, way to start your post off by insulting someone just because they posted their opinion on a game you apparently like…

Well if you have played FFXIV for a fair amount of time and read OP’s post; it most certainly feels that way.

I confess I haven’t played FFXIV, hence why I didn’t even try to make a comment about it. But there’s still no need to go and immediately start insulting the OP just because he was comparing the two games. After all, the OP was comparing them from his point of view.

For me the choice is simple. I only have a mac, so I can’t play FFXIV. So GW2 wins for me. Besides I’m disillusioned with the FF series as a whole, it’s a shadow of it’s former self. The last time one of those titles really hooked me was FF9. Oddly enough I find GW2 to be closer to that.

Mordeus.1234:

For me the choice is simple. I only have a mac, so I can’t play FFXIV. So GW2 wins for me.

I’m so, so sorry about that.

Besides I’m disillusioned with the FF series as a whole, it’s a shadow of it’s former self. The last time one of those titles really hooked me was FF9. Oddly enough I find GW2 to be closer to that.

FF12 was perhaps the one I enjoyed the most of the recent crop of games. However, FF4 is still the best in my mind, probably due to immense reservoirs of nostalgia.

slamfunction.7462:

OP: From what i gather from your post, you’d have been better off saying, “Hi! I’m a new GW2 player thats played a month of GW2 and a week of FFXIV and OH BOY is FFXIV BAD, because any MMO that requires intelligence to read the help tips that show up every time a new feature is shown is HARD! and online research is beyond my skill level!”

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

As for the comparison: Both games do both good and bad things, but FFXIV will always be the clear winner due to the sheer talent of the devs and A+ management of the game and it’s community. SE does a GREAT job of letting the community know whats coming up and addressing community concerns. Funny enough, they address the english speaking community’s concern’s when they are all Japanese. Fancy that!

I play both games. I play GW2 for the WvW, because thats really the only thing it has going for it and thats more because of the community, than ANet (Yes Anet, GW2 has become Mythic’s Warhammer Age of Reckoning Part 2). I play FFXIV to play a well managed and developed MMO with great content.

But the argument is illogical to begin with. GW2 is F2P game with starving devs, while FFXIV is a monthly sub with plenty of resources to craft awesome content. Its like comparing a Smart car to a Nissan 370Z. ROFL

You also can’t compare GW2 to WoW because of this. Nor, could you compare WoW to FFXIV, because WoW has had 10 years of development, and 7 years over FFXIV.

If you want a true comparison, try comparing TERA to GW2. Theres an argument that GW2 will win and it’ll make everyone happy.

I have heard TERA is actually pretty good. Final Fantasy XIV looks great. I will likely check it out. I have a nice chunk of harddrive where this game used to be.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

FF12 was perhaps the one I enjoyed the most of the recent crop of games. However, FF4 is still the best in my mind, probably due to immense reservoirs of nostalgia.

12!?@

You-…!

…somebody drag this man away. He needs help. And make sure to put a FFX or FFX-2 disc in his mouth before he’s put away

I am going to guess you didn’t play for very long at all and/or didn’t give FFXIV a fair shake at all. I will proceed to tell you why.

Coopziana.1802:

Final Fantasy: Wow, what a mess! There are different windows and tabs for pretty much everything.

There is a separate place for your weapons/armour and a separate inventory for key items. Everything else goes into your normal inventory. How is it a mess to have things sorted into easy-to-find places? Looking for your helmet in GW2? Look through your inventory. Looking for your helmet in FFXIV? Look in your helmet section.

Bear in mind that also gives you 25 slots per equipment type, so you get 25 free slots for holding weapons, offhands, helmets, chests, legs, etc. In addition to your normal inventory 100 slots. Compared to GW2’s “free” 100 slot maximum total (if you buy 20 slot bags) and you have to pay either real money or a ton of gold to unlock more space.

There are hunting logs, crafting logs, journals, mount guides, mini guides and so on… all a real pain in the kitten to find and get your head around when starting the game.

None of which you will be trying to get your head around when starting the game. For example, mounts won’t be an issue until you’re at least 20. Even then, how is this any worse than GW2’s mini collection, wardrobe, outfits, dyes, finishers…

10 skill bars that hold 12 skills each which you scroll between, geez, shoot me now!

Or you can turn on the various skill bars to be separate in the options. You… did look through the options, right?

Geez, they have markers for everything from merchants (all over the place)

In towns, yes. Just like in GW2.

all of which are so close together the mini map looks like a mesh of markers, non of which are distinguishable until you are stood on top of them. Messy, Mess, Mess.

At this point, I’m not even sure if you left the starting city or looked anywhere other than the merchant districts. Because those are the only places with lots of markers on top of each other. Since… you know, that’s where the merchants are.

An MMO that is pretty much a single player game, the fact you have other people around who just leave you to it when you are fighting a creature… because the enemies are that easy to kill… especially with the insane amount of skills you have at your disposal.

Are you serious here? Are you actually implying there’s any difficulty to solo adventuring in GW2? Because I got my map completion solo (not counting WvW), so if you think that’s hard, I guess I’m incredible.

the only time I have ever fought alongside another player is during a “FATE” event (GW2 call it a Dynamic Event) and a Raid (Dungeon).

And the only time I fight alongside people in GW2 is during specifically multi-player events too. And even then, I’m frequently soloing events.

Simply put, there is no auto targetting in the game, making battles that little bit more frustrating.

Yes there is. It’s in the options.

(which are simply “Kill monsters in the area” or “Kill monsters in area and collect items for NPC”)

Incorrect again. There are FATEs where you kill a bunch of monsters, where you kill a single hard monster, where you kill monsters or pick up items from the ground to turn them in to a NPC, where you escort a character from point A to point B, and where you defend an objective. Again, making me think you didn’t play much at all.

it took me about an hour to figure it out, after asking my guild for help several times…

It took me 10 seconds because you start out with only one ability, and they slowly introduce you to the concepts as you level, even giving you the Active Help windows to explain it for you.

because you have to equip a certain item into your main hand to start crafting… WHAT, WHY!?

Right, you need to be that class to craft. Just like how GW2 requires you to be at a crafting table.

when you equip the crafting weapon, it removes all your armour and then leaves you to craft up your own “crafting armour” which you then consequently have to unequip to put your battle gear back on after you are finished… What a fantastic pain in the kitten

Or you can use the Armour Sets that they unlock for you each time you unlock a new class which let you swap between all of your equipment for a class with a single click of a button. Which, again, they explain in Active Help.

Synthesizing… you select the item you want to craft and then, like some messed up battle system with a copper ingot. you have to press skill 1 to hammer on it, which sometimes fails, you get a certain amount of attempts to fill the crafting progress bar with eat hit… if it fails you lose the crafting materials and have to start again…

So you didn’t get far enough to unlock any of the other skills?

they simply give you a bit of a speed boost and make you look a bit cooler, aside from that there are no real benefits to them.

Partially incorrect. You can fight alongside your Chocobo mount too. Still, what do you expect from mounts?

a list of random placenames that hold no relevance to where you want to be,

Wait. Here’s an example of the shards in Limsa Lominsa. Culinarian’s Guild, Arcanist’s Guild, Fishermen’s Guild, Marauder’s Guild, Hawker’s Alley. They totally tell you exactly where you’re going.

confusing the sweet innocence out of you and leaving you saying “oh sod it, i’ll walk, rather than spend 10-minutes trying to figure out which one i need to choose.”.

Or you can spend 10 seconds opening your map and looking for the name written right on the map right near the shards.

in FF all your skill recharge at the same time, so it doesn’t matter which skill you use, all skills recharge after any one skill is used.

Also incorrect. Most skills are on a global cooldown, yes, which means you have to think about what to use rather than just spam everything as soon as it’s off cooldown. However, there are abilities which ignore global cooldown entirely and have their own cooldowns. High level play and maximizing your DPS is all about knowing your class and your weaves.

he can even dye your hair 2 tones.

If you didn’t notice, you can also give yourself highlights on character creation, as well as your eyes can be heterochromic, in other words two different eye colours.

The armour in FF is truly stunning,

Again, if you didn’t notice, even your earrings, bracers, necklace, and rings show up on your character. Obviously in some cases you can’t see them (no rings clipping through gloves, for example), but they are there.

In conclusion, I feel like you barely even touched FFXIV to begin with, didn’t look through the options at all since you complain about at least two things you can change in the options, and ignored the active help boxes that actually explain everything you need to know about everything. Further, your frequent cries of “Kill me now” or “I want to die” just makes your post sound over-dramatic and fanboyish in favour of GW2 by exaggerating how much of an issue things might be (which they’re not). Lastly, I feel that most of your complaints that aren’t simply ignorance of the system (options and such) are based out of a disinterest in having to put thought into the game (like the crafting system).

As an afterthought, I also notice you didn’t even or barely touched on the things that FFXIV has that smack down GW2. For example, content, e.g. a comprehensive story and dungeons, plus the fact that (and you may have missed this if you didn’t go into an Inn room) you can watch any cutscene you want that you’ve seen before from the inn room, from main story to side stories to dungeons. Further, you didn’t touch upon the customer service and development side, which may be because you didn’t need to experience it. As an example of why FFXIV shines here, recently there was a bug where you couldn’t acquire a certain item (a specific colour dye) from its source (sending your retainer on missions). After they fixed it, as a way of apologizing for the inconvenience, they handed out some of the dyes for free by mail as an apology for messing up. Even if you hadn’t even intended on getting it or had tried to get it, you still got included in it.

PS.

FFXIV Fates – Several mobs spawn out of nowhere, and a paragraph is shown at the right side of the screen attempting to create some context, but ultimately is a kill ten rats with a weak reason why at the end.

There’s a FATE where a young boy who’s starving wants food and you help him get it. There’s a FATE where a new soldier needs to win a fight and asks for your help (it doesn’t even start until you talk to him). There’s a FATE where a scholar needs an escort to a camp (again doesn’t start until you talk to him). There’s a FATE where a group of soldiers will meet outside of a camp to destroy the supplies therein, with the event starting only after they’ve talked a bit and go in. There’s a FATE where two people are escorting a shipment and halfway through a canyon (though they existed before getting there), they get ambushed, starting the FATE. There’s a FATE where Sahagin attack a gate to test its defences. Upon completion, they call out a strong monster (think Champion) to help on the next attack. There’s a four-part FATE chain of slavers trying to kidnap people from a bridge. Succeeding in each part goes to the next step in the chain, failure removes some NPCs from the bridge and starts a rescue effort FATE.
Just because you didn’t experience the ones with more to them than “kill a bunch of things” doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Leo G.4501:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

FF12 was perhaps the one I enjoyed the most of the recent crop of games. However, FF4 is still the best in my mind, probably due to immense reservoirs of nostalgia.

12!?@

You-…!

…somebody drag this man away. He needs help. And make sure to put a FFX or FFX-2 disc in his mouth before he’s put away

Okay, I played FFX and my impressions of that game? Good story, fun battle system, chocobos still can go right to the Farplane . . . overall a decent game. The sequel likewise decent, but only after you can claw past the first two chapters and the oppressive “Spira’s Angels” vibe.

I stand by what I said. FF12 is solid, not the least because of three characters which exist: Gabranth, Balthier, and Reddas. The translation’s twist hearkens back to how FFT and Vagrant Story got localized and I love the character it has too. Ivalice is my decided favorite world out of the Final Fantasy multiverse . . . it’s just one time when it seems a lot of effort was put into making the world work rather than just be setpieces to move from as the plot unfolds. (My negative gripe on FF4, honestly.)

Now, completely on topic?

The big difference in FF14 and GW2 is design and the theory being used to design the framework of the game. FF14 is clearly designed with the subscription model in mind, and so a lot of grind slips into everything. It’s designed with gear meaning a lot to your character and a decided division of Trinity going on. This isn’t a terrible thing, since it works . . . and since you can work up any job you wish to put time into.

GW2 on the other hand, has a few sacred vows it makes. First of all, no matter how high you get, you are never too high to go pal around with friends lower level than you. It likes to include people rather than say “oh no, you can’t partake, you’re too awesome”. Secondly, gear is incredibly pointless after you get your hands on Exotics – that’s all you really need to have for the 99% of the game which is out there. Now all you have is to chase down looks. There’s no getting stuck with an ugly robe or breastplate because the stats are too awesome. (I recall “cleric Grapemail” from EverQuest…) And, bottom line . . . it’s just built around the “buy once” idea, which means they’re mostly okay with you walking away from it for a time. There’s no fee on keeping your account active, it will still be there when you want to play. No need to pay up to jump back in.

@Tobias
The only thing you were spot on though was your issue with p2p. Those other things you mentioned? Not really an issue. The only thing GW2 had on FFXIV for a short while was transmutations and seasonal events. Transmutations were added in the first quarter of the year because people wanted it. Seasonal events GW2 is still king between the two games.

Level syncing is there and you could help a new friend through via dungeons and story encounters. One thing SE is doing though is that the endgame requires strict coordination but that doesnt exclude casuals from enjoying it.

As they add more and more content for endgame; they indirectly make the older endgame content more accessible to casual players. However they still have to learn fight mechanics.They are also given alternative means to getting better gear via 24 man raids etc. So they can still play dress up even if they are unable to tackle the hardest content in the game.

I am not sure why you would list global cooldowns in the profession comparison instead of the combat section unless you wanted to give that section to GW2 but couldn’t justify it honestly and accurately.

It would be like comparing WoW professions to GW2 professions and giving the win to WoW because they have elves.

I haven’t played FF14, the subscription fee basically scared me off from playing it, but would FF14 have the alternative option of playing it also without subscription fee, I’d definetely play it over GW2 now, while waiting on GW2 getting some real new content together with some of my gaming friends, which moved over already since the release of FF14 and sporadically come over to GW2 only, when a new Patch comes since then and don’t play GW2 so actively anymore, like I do.

But from what I know about the game and what you can see from all of their Teasers is, that there are definetely alot of things in FF14, that are done far better, than in GW2, more compelling, more like a real RPG from what you would normally expect also from a MMORPG, that basically GW2 wants to try to be, but really doesn’t feel like due to missing absolutely all those required RPG flavor tools and mechanics, that are today in a MMO for that pretty standard.

Sure, GW2 also has its advantages like:

• Better Combat System
• Better Color System for Character Individualization
• Has a Scaling System
• Has the better playable Races with the exception of the Miqo’te, but thats just personal preference (I just love Neko Races <3 and the Charr don’t appeal to me as they look like the typical race, that otherwise a WoW player would play in WoW as Tauren, just a bit morte looking like Cats)
• Better PvP/ WvW
• Better Event System

but against this stands all this, what FF14 does better or provides, what GW2 doesn’t:

• Supreme Housing (one of the nicest Housing Systems that I’ve ever seen so far)
• Mount Raising
• A way better Crafting System that isn’t just a borign click 1 Button and watch a Bar fill up-Crafting like in GW2
• A much better Character Progression
• Far more Emotes
• Far more Dungeons
• Far much more Monster Variety everywhere (you see there basically no copy pasted creatures, every place has its complete own different Monsters and creatures)
• Much better Story Telling, there you just know, that the game comes from an experienced RPG Developer that is Square Enix from the first minute on
• Much better advertising for the game with Teasers/Cinematics
• Offers also lots of visual eye candy with awesome animated Cut Scenes, what is SE’s speciality about the FF games since decades
• Offers Side Activities, like Gardening, Fishing
• Has more epic looking Bosses that aren’t boring to fight, cause of them all doing different things and can’t be so cheesy easy killed, like for example the Shatterer.
  Their big bosses all can move around and aren’t static
• A better Stat System, where not just 1 Stat Combo is everything and where the Condition System sucks under that situation, like in GW2

TL/DR

When you compare both games, one quickly can see, that both sides have their own Pros and Cons.
And simply said, it would be just the best for everybody, if the Devs would learn from each others side, so that both games could get improved with things, that the other side does better, without saying, that each other should copy the competition.
No, that would be lazy, but ANet for example could improve GW2 with so many things that other games have done, in their own way and style, that if GW2 would have all the thigns, that FF14 has or did better, that you would say that you can’t recognize GW2 after it being the same anymore, as it would be after those additions clearly alot better, than before and would feel like a complete new game with all that content more and more and better advertising all around that with the same quality, like SE does for their game since the first initial flop they had with FF14 and massively redesigned the game after that.

OP: Why U no talk about Devs?

Basically, this is a big deal, because it flows across all things you’ve said. (what good is a dev team that doesn’t fix, improve, add new ideas, or scrap bad ones – and just trots forward)
I mean, it takes guts to come out and say your game’s first iteration was pretty poor, and you’re making it from the ground up. If we put this in perspective of Anet, it’s “our game works off a heavily modified engine of GW1, so we can’t do much”.

Regardless of the studios involved, however, I also think it’s to do with the difference in culture. I don’t think I’ll ever see anyone for Anet with the same passion displayed by Yoshida.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE9G3ByXKIE)

Filaha.1678 pretty much nailed it.

Orpheal.8263:

Sure, GW2 also has its advantages like:

• Better Combat System
• Better Color System for Character Individualization
• Has a Scaling System
• Has the better playable Races with the exception of the Miqo’te, but thats just personal preference (I just love Neko Races <3 and the Charr don’t appeal to me as they look like the typical race, that otherwise a WoW player would play in WoW as Tauren, just a bit morte looking like Cats)
• Better PvP/ WvW
• Better Event System

but against this stands all this, what FF14 does better or provides, what GW2 doesn’t:

• Supreme Housing (one of the nicest Housing Systems that I’ve ever seen so far)
• Mount Raising
• A way better Crafting System that isn’t just a borign click 1 Button and watch a Bar fill up-Crafting like in GW2
• A much better Character Progression
• Far more Emotes
• Far more Dungeons
• Far much more Monster Variety everywhere (you see there basically no copy pasted creatures, every place has its complete own different Monsters and creatures)
• Much better Story Telling, there you just know, that the game comes from an experienced RPG Developer that is Square Enix from the first minute on
• Much better advertising for the game with Teasers/Cinematics
• Offers also lots of visual eye candy with awesome animated Cut Scenes, what is SE’s speciality about the FF games since decades
• Offers Side Activities, like Gardening, Fishing
• Has more epic looking Bosses that aren’t boring to fight, cause of them all doing different things and can’t be so cheesy easy killed, like for example the Shatterer.
  Their big bosses all can move around and aren’t static
• A better Stat System, where not just 1 Stat Combo is everything and where the Condition System sucks under that situation, like in GW2

TL/DR

Better Combat system – I disagree. Since it has clear differences between classes, DoTs actually works there. Only thing is mobility, some classes are rooted when using some long casting spells and such. But fighters, archers etc can move freely. Lacks dodge, but you don’t need it tbh.

Dyes and Gear Individualization – That’s true, I really missed GW2 dye system there, their feel quite limited after GW2.

Better scaling system – I don’t agree. I hated how you scaled automatically to maps lvl when you entered it. Wasn’t fun to mudwrestle 3 drunken lvl 5 rats for 5mins with lvl 80 full exotics character. While in FFXIV you one shot them with lvl cap character.
Plus it would make hunting leathers, wools etc much more annoying for craftings.
FATEs (DEs) should automatically scale though, instead of choosing it. That’s bit annoying at times but still only scaling to those is IMO the best way to do it.
Dungeon scaling is automatic, so no difference in there.

Races – I don’t really agree, but races are about personal preference so can’t argue over it.

Better PVP/WvW – I agree.

Better events – Maybe a bit, since FFXIV seasonal events are possible to do in a day or so and rewards usually are just cosmetics like new clothes etc and quests for those aren’t hard. Other wise not really.

Like slamfunction.7462 compared GW2 and FFXIV as cars.
To me FFXIV is high maintenance cost Ferrari F430, gives epic pleasure with cost.
While GW2 is common low costs “sports” car Golf Wolksvagen, which gives okay ride but better not to expect thrills of 340km/h speeds in matter of seconds.

EDIT: Yea, musics in FFXIV are by far superior, especially in boss fights, but considering epic boss musics in all FF games in the past it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.
Ty for pointing that too Crovax.

One thing I’d like to add is about music. GW2 has very good tunes by Jeremy Soule
and the new stuff from Dry Top and Silver Wastes is quite good too but XIV just blows GW2 out of the water in terms of sound design.

In cities you can hear progressively louder crowd chatter if you are around many other players. When moving you can hear cloth leather or metal rustling depending on what you are wearing and the boss music, oh the boss music!
Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZZDnlAg3Pk
then tell me it’s not one of the most epic boss themes in any MMO ever.
Same goes for Garduda, Ramuh, Shiva, Leviathan and many others. Boss themes there have real character and are epic; the make you feel like a hero while in GW2 music is just so incredibly generic.

I really hope this is something where ANet plans to step up their game.

slamfunction.7462:

But the argument is illogical to begin with. GW2 is F2P game with starving devs, while FFXIV is a monthly sub with plenty of resources to craft awesome content. Its like comparing a Smart car to a Nissan 370Z. ROFL

GW2 ss p2p. Plus they made 400-500m pure profit from selling this game (50m from gem store maybe). So if you cant make new dungeons and stuff for 400-500m well then its clearly you dont care bout future of the game and interested only in profit.

Crovax.7854:

One thing I’d like to add is about music. GW2 has very good tunes by Jeremy Soule
and the new stuff from Dry Top and Silver Wastes is quite good too but XIV just blows GW2 out of the water in terms of sound design.

In cities you can hear progressively louder crowd chatter if you are around many other players. When moving you can hear cloth leather or metal rustling depending on what you are wearing and the boss music, oh the boss music!
Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZZDnlAg3Pk
then tell me it’s not one of the most epic boss themes in any MMO ever.
Same goes for Garduda, Ramuh, Shiva, Leviathan and many others. Boss themes there have real character and are epic; the make you feel like a hero while in GW2 music is just so incredibly generic.

I really hope this is something where ANet plans to step up their game.

I’ll agree, the score by Jeremy Soule is awesome. But here’s what we’ve gotten lately as far as in-game sound enhancements from Anet:

“Boing.”
“Faster. Faster!”
“Turbo—mode—engaged!”

I don’t think they’re stepping up their game at all in this area.

endersluck.4708:

Maethril.9586:

Filaha.1678 pretty much nailed it.

Orpheal.8263:

TL/DR

Better scaling system – I don’t agree. I hated how you scaled automatically to maps lvl when you entered it. Wasn’t fun to mudwrestle 3 drunken lvl 5 rats for 5mins with lvl 80 full exotics character. While in FFXIV you one shot them with lvl cap character.

Like slamfunction.7462 compared GW2 and FFXIV as cars.
To me FFXIV is high maintenance cost Ferrari F430, gives epic pleasure with cost.
While GW2 is common low costs “sports” car Golf Wolksvagen, which gives okay ride but better not to expect thrills of 340km/h speeds in matter of seconds.

I never enjoyed the boss fights in ff14 since the bosses are pretty much stationary like in WoW. That part feels really outdated. Also the worst mapping system ever.

The scaling system helps keeps old areas still challenging and relevant. I hated how in WoW that all the awesome areas were completely deserted after an expansion. It’s not perfect, but its a step in the right direction imo.

endersluck.4708:

endersluck.4708:

Maethril.9586:

Better scaling system – I don’t agree. I hated how you scaled automatically to maps lvl when you entered it. Wasn’t fun to mudwrestle 3 drunken lvl 5 rats for 5mins with lvl 80 full exotics character. While in FFXIV you one shot them with lvl cap character.

I never enjoyed the boss fights in ff14 since the bosses are pretty much stationary like in WoW. That part feels really outdated. Also the worst mapping system ever.

The scaling system helps keeps old areas still challenging and relevant. I hated how in WoW that all the awesome areas were completely deserted after an expansion. It’s not perfect, but its a step in the right direction imo.

Stationary? Really?
There you actually need to move around and often even keep bit distance to others in case of AoEs.

GW2 bosses, find funky corner, stay there stacked spam skills and dodge towards wall so you wont get owned 1 hit kill skill and keep at it until its dead. :P
Movement in GW2 is almost zero, dodge isn’t movement if you don’t really move when “dodging”, its more like utility skill “invulnerability for 2 seconds”.
IMO Anet should fix dodge so that if you dodge away for atk range it’s dodge, if you do “empty” roll without moving at all with 1 inch distance to boss you should get hit by it.

Plus most areas Are deserted in GW2, though current supermegagigaserver system does make it feel tad more alive.
Only alive areas usually are where people can do champ trains 24/7 and there isnt many of those.

Nice read, but I think the OP didn’t play FF14 for that long.
Eitherway I prefer the Gw2 combat, in FF14 I could do most bossfights with one hand because of the tab-target system. And the myth/fate grind for relic weapon was insaneeeee. But perhaps better than obtaining a precursor in Gw2.

Getting 8 competent players together for turn 6+ was really a pain that made me give up on the game.

Maethril.9586:

endersluck.4708:

endersluck.4708:

Maethril.9586:

Better scaling system – I don’t agree. I hated how you scaled automatically to maps lvl when you entered it. Wasn’t fun to mudwrestle 3 drunken lvl 5 rats for 5mins with lvl 80 full exotics character. While in FFXIV you one shot them with lvl cap character.

I never enjoyed the boss fights in ff14 since the bosses are pretty much stationary like in WoW. That part feels really outdated. Also the worst mapping system ever.

The scaling system helps keeps old areas still challenging and relevant. I hated how in WoW that all the awesome areas were completely deserted after an expansion. It’s not perfect, but its a step in the right direction imo.

Stationary? Really?
There you actually need to move around and often even keep bit distance to others in case of AoEs.

GW2 bosses, find funky corner, stay there stacked spam skills and dodge towards wall so you wont get owned 1 hit kill skill and keep at it until its dead. :P
Movement in GW2 is almost zero, dodge isn’t movement if you don’t really move when “dodging”, its more like utility skill “invulnerability for 2 seconds”.
IMO Anet should fix dodge so that if you dodge away for atk range it’s dodge, if you do “empty” roll without moving at all with 1 inch distance to boss you should get hit by it.

Plus most areas Are deserted in GW2, though current supermegagigaserver system does make it feel tad more alive.
Only alive areas usually are where people can do champ trains 24/7 and there isnt many of those.

I meant the bosses not the players and stacking wasn’t anet’s intention.

I just did a map completion and there were ppl in every map I was on.

Looking at your sig, why exactly are you still here?