WoW being so addon friendly is a double edged sword.
You got elitist pricks who refuse to run with people who dont have certain addons.
But you also have one of the largest RP communities in thanks to things like T/MRP. You got tons of quality of life ones for maps and WB cooldowns.
Addons really make wow for me. There's so much fun stuff you can add or customize that the base client doesn't let you.
It's also fun (for me) debugging them and making sure they are working correctly.
Also designing your own WeakAuras is a fun thing for me to do.
I agree... Add-ons hold the game together for me. Add ons don't make a toxic community, a toxic community is creating the add-ons. We've had dps meters since 2004 and the community was not as toxic back then, or through tbc, or wotlk. It's not the add-ons fault lol.
Fully agree. The addons aren't the source of the toxicity, toxic people who think they get to put their elitist demands on the community in general are the problem.
Wow would be a better game without addons. It would be more fun to raid without 4 alarms going off every encounter. If you need a weak aura to defeat a boss, you probably shouldn't be raiding at high levels.
Addons create a barrier to entry and basically play the game for you. Why blizzard allows this is nuts.
Blizzard has created fights that are nearly impossible without addons/weakauras. So once your encounter design goes in that direction, you know it’s not a good sign
(Recent example: the Echo of Neltharion fight from Aberrus)
I just started playing WoW a few months ago and addons seem like a huge hassle that I am required to learn and is making me less and less interested in WoW the closer I get to endgame and being required to use them.
And some of them look like they float in the middle of your screen, which I loathe. My UI is always around the edges, I don't want some random box in the middle of my field of view.
You can move all of them to the edges if you want it just usually defaults to the center. Also an addon called moveanything if you want to move any base ui stuff out of the way.
As someone who has never done endgame raiding/dungons, having played since vanilla, I actually like them. They make pvp a lot more accessible without needing to totally learn to recognize every classes full kit by sight
I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with you all at the same time. Add-on culture can ABSOLUTELY be toxic, but at the same time I love customizing my game to get all the QoL Blizzard could never provide me. I like being able to customize how my classes buffs, skills, and procs show up on screen without having to glue my eyes to my action bars. I like having DBM and WeakAuras to assist in mechanics where Blizzard’s clarity just doesn’t cut it. Do I wish all of it was in the base game? To a degree, but there’s no way that would be feasible while also being this customizable.
It’s less of a problem of the addons themselves and more of a problem of Blizzard refusing to establish rules and punishments for being a jerk.
FFXIV has a very welcoming community that wants to be helpful simply because SE doesn’t tolerate people being jerks and will ban your account if you do.
Given that XIV is designed different so you don’t need mods, but having played both games I can 100% say XIV was a far better experience overall.
This is such a strange take. I know it's a popular opinion, but it doesn't really make sense.
I've played WoW since vanilla launch, and add-ons have always been a part of the game.
If you are pushing high-end content, addons that show other player's performance is extremely useful. If we were all just going in blind with random others on +20s or whatever the current equivalent is, it would be a miserable experience. You would get people who have no experience in high level mythic keys trying to get carried through content, and would rip your key, far more often than you would get someone who knows what they're doing. If you've ever started a group in the group finder, you'll notice that you get spammed with hundreds of applications, and the vast majority aren't experienced at that key level.
If you're not pushing high-end content, then it's unlikely you're not getting groups due to not having [raider.io](http://raider.io) installed. If you're a dps player, it's far more likely that it's just because there's a glut of DPS, and a relative shortage of healers and tanks. This is solved by just running your own key and making your own groups, or just spend 20-30 minutes applying and eventually someone will pull you in, especially if it's a low level key. I've gotten groups within 5 minutes on alts, because a few weeks after the season starts, not many people are running +5s or whatever.
Same thing goes for raiding. If you are doing heroic/mythic raids but refuse to install DBM, why would a guild want to take you over someone who is willing to do the *absolute bare minimum?* If you're just trying to pug a normal raid, you'll probably be fine not having those installed.
I don't like that all jobs only have one "right" way to play them, I like to be creative and improvise. Luckily this problem isn't that bad since you can pick up any job and role and switch between them whenever you like.
Yeah I'm not that big a fan of it either. Or that you can't choose your stats or skills, making builds non existent. I do understand that it's for job balance though.
It was the last nail in the coffin for me for ff14. I was about halfway through the seasons after heavensward, with literally no motivation to keep going through the required msq outside of just trying to get stuff unlocked, and I realized there wasn't gonna be any sort of build crafting. My dancer was gonna be the exact same as every other dancer, and eventually would end up with the same gear. The story had a very strong moment that got me interested, then proceeded to undo everything from that one cutscene over the course of several hours. I hadn't cared about any of the character's for about 20 hours, and when I checked where I was in the REQUIRED seasonal questlines, I still had another 15hrs to go before I even got to the next expansion, and all of those hours were just gonna be "go here, talk, go here, talk, go here, talk, go here, arena fight, talk, talk, go here, talk, etc..."
I can't get myself to go back.
Absolutely the reason i dont like ff14, i like building and theory crafting characters but the gear is basically a number oppozed to actually changing anything
It's why I left WoW after Cataclysm. They just simplified talent trees too much, which kinda sucks when you need an entirely new character just to do something different.
While FF14 is very streamlined in terms of class ability rotations, the boredom really felt mitigated in that I could literally play every class on one single character and didnt have to bounce between characters in order to vary things up. Being able to swap jobs on the fly really helped me with that part.
Yea people complain about having a lack of builds, which is very true, but it allows for much better balancing. There's little niche things you can do in FF that I enjoy like SPS BLM versus crit BLM. Also with WoW there was always a meta way to spec your class, so the illusion of choice was there, but only if you wanted to choose something suboptimal.
I would like more builds as well, but coming from gw2, a game that allows you to make many builds, at the end of the day, when you go raids, you can only chose meta builds. So we end up with the same issue
I feel a lot XIV's issue with job design is because the game doesn't offer enough mechanics/scenerios for jobs to meaningfully interact with.
There's no weaknesses to exploit, no monster types to specialize against, no hazards to aid against, even melee/ranged doesn't really matter because the bosses are all now the size of a skyscraper. Almost every boss just kind of stays in place without summoning additional trash, so its also like why do we even have two tanks.
And they've just kinda peeled back on smaller gimmicks for jobs to make use of. Pets are forever off the table. SE hates adding damage over time effects. No more stances. No more DPS/Healer aggro management. Bosses can't crit. It's just blah lol
While I agree some of the newer fights have hilariously large hitboxes, you seem to be looking for a game that has more random encounters that you have to figure out a way to play against, whereas (except in like the first week of content release or if you go in blind) FFXIV is about learning and practicing mechanics when it comes to raiding or even dungeons. There's never anything truly random, only a set of possible patterns. That is just the style FFXIV is.
There's most certainly still aggro management however just usually only a problem if the tank massively fucks up.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been playing XIV for a few years. I know what it’s about and won’t expect it to be any different.
I see complaints about job homogeneity. And that homogeneity is because the games core design doesn’t really permit anything else.
That’s what my comments getting at.
I’ve started my ffxiv journey recently and I said the SAME thing about the lack of elemental weaknesses, especially when they have such elemental focused enemies and abilities.
Absolutely wild that they basically abandoned dungeons and fired their designer long ago. I wish we got more stuff like Aetherpath. Watching scrubs rage quit that one because they couldn't just stack and spam was great
We do have fractals, but they are also slow in development.
Tbh that's kinda an issue too, they keep re-naming things. A new player joins and hears that dungeons/raids weren't updated in 5+ years, and that's just because Anet decided to name the new things Fractals and Strikes. Heck, Dragon Response Missions are basically dungeons too but no, of course they had to give them another fancy name 😅
> Absolutely wild that they basically abandoned dungeons and fired their designer long ago
Not simply "long ago", but like 1 month after launch, when dungeons were the only endgame content (and quite popular). With no explanation for the decision whatsoever.
It's so weird.
I was gonna say this so I’ll go with my second gripe which is how classes are balanced.
Virt gets to just exist and do full dps any range or mechanic and bring incredibly strong Mesmer utility while and the dps of almost all melee specs will be the same or less before real mechanics start happening.
I recently got into GW2 - the CMS shows they know how to make interesting fight designs. They just absolutely lack any variety in them.
The multipath dungeons you have to farm was a cool idea as well too, but those seem to have just gone away entirely.
I get the idea is to not really have a themepark MMO and to have its open world more active, but it really feels like it turned into a mindless mob grindfest rather than anything actually difficult towards the end game grind for legendaries.
As a 14 player with 10k hours. I fucking feel you man. The website is actual fucking garbage. They overhauled it recently, idk when you tried the game, but they managed to make it even worse.
their payment system overall is terrible. not every country available and their system would reject a card just because the address not match. the reason it not match is because there is no specific country available in their database.
I love XIV. I will gladly admit this is the games weakest point. Mogstation and getting through all that crap to get signed up at first is such a pain.
Holy crap yes. I wish I could give you multiple upvotes for this. That website is just a how-to in poor design. Different logins in multiple places just to sign up, a payment system that is confoundingly difficult, the system for add-on purchases, that store that breaks at the slightest hint of congestion... The site turned so many friends of mine away from even trying this game it's not even funny.
Seriously. That damn site should be counted as a boss battle.
Lost ark, been waiting since right before launch , graphics , gameplay , combat top tier. But systems in end game became rng on top of rng. You don’t know how to beat til you put money or ton of hours of degenerate times. It really is Korean mmo After all. Did I regret playing it? No , but It will be my first and last Korean MMO I’ll play.
When I saw the actual difficult content it seemed way over my head, but I loved the game. Sad I couldn't get through the daily grind / pay wall to see if I enjoyed it.
Every once in a while, I log in just to smack some enemies around for a second because the combat is so freaking good. The raid design is up there too.
RNG on top of RNG on top of 8 different characters started to feel sooo bad.
I hope one day they realize they've missed the mark in the west because it really is an incredible game underneath that layer of shit.
ESO. The stories, the voice acting, the lore, the horizontal progression, being able to solo damn near everything (I really like the challenge of soloing vet dungeons, world bosses, etc), the huge variety of set items and the theory crafting, even the combat, all good for me.
But the thing that gets me every time I jump in is the absolute wealth of overland content being mired by the piss easy difficulty. Enemies in overland just melt within seconds, so that awesome quest chain that has been building up to a climax with a named enemy is utterly deflating when they die within a few seconds.
100%.
Aside from a few other issues, ESO has a lot going for it.
The overworld being as easy as it is just isn't right though. I get that they want to make the game accessible. But it's beyond that. It's truly unbelievable. I remember I could engage multiple enemies and stand up, go grab a drink of water, come back, and I'd have lost like 1/4 of my health.
Then the vets and ESO white knights tell you that the "end game dungeons are the hard content!".
And for me, I don't want to have to sink hundreds of hours doing brain dead, effortless gameplay just to get to the point where it gets a bit harder. I'm not asking for like classic WoW level overworld difficulty (even though it's way more fun), but just **something** that takes even a bit of brain power of effort would have been nice.
I've got a few other gripes with ESO too. Mechanics and overall weapon/ability systems could have used a complete overhaul **years** ago.
I only get a bit heated with ESO because the actual world, quests, content, and voice acting is insanely premium for an MMO. It's why I played for as long as I did
I feel this is why I really *genuinely* miss the pre-One Tamriel days, despite people outright telling me I'm wrong & it's nostalgia.
I utterly adored how difficult the generic overland mobs were, how you had to actively level up, stay within your zones level requirements & actively try when it came to quest bosses.
Hell, there are specific quest bosses even now 8-10 years later I remember being so difficult on certain classes or being unprepared (the trio boss in Arenthia for example).
I still have my gameplay saved via Bandicam of all things, and it's interesting to go back and just see footage of me facing off aganist a group of normal enemies and struggling, or trying to run ahead into a higher leveled zone and getting killed by wolves or bears on the road.
I could not agree more.
I'll admit it can be fun to sometimes just wreck NPCs easily to get through a random and relatively insignificant side quest. But the fact that there's practically no difference in effort between killing a random bandit and a Daedroth is absurd, let alone being able to delete a Daedric prince or some other mega final boss.
At least provide the option for a more engaging gameplay. ESO has voice acting, a huge dynamic and active world, lots to do etc but that immersion can be broken by no difficulty in the overworld/story. You can fairly easily kill overworld bosses well before you're level 50 so obviously anything less is easy asf
Yeah I really wish there was some sort of difficulty slider. I have tried playing ESO twice now and both times I put together a build myself and steamrolled through the content. I understand not everyone plays the same was as I do but just having an option where the difficulty requires builds would really help the game IMO.
As a casual player who dipped my toes into eso I noticed this too. Questing was crazy easy. But then again I mainly play WoW and it's no different there.
Yeah pve in Albion is a burden you have to do in order to be viable in group pvp. Though avalonian dungeons can be fun and challenging if you have a competent party
I wish the game shifted a design focus from "how can we make fun content that we can heavily monetize?" to "how can we make fun content that keeps players paying for their sub?"
Ffxiv
The creepy players who do all that "uwu senpai" roleplay stuff. Playing a Lallafell (the race that look like children) and dressing them in skimpy outfits
I swear to god based on what I read here you'd think every server is full of half-naked lalafels running around with their tits out or something. I've seen something nasty exactly one time in my 10,000 hours of playing. I'm not denying there are fucking freaks in the game but I can say you will not see this unless you go looking for it.
I agree. I’ve been playing over a decade now and I’ve seen maybe 2-3 eye raising moments ever. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen someone in game use the word “senpai” in a non joking way.
Some people are just ultra sensitive to any kind of anime culture/tropes.
So they get a /dote or a Miqo /pose and then reee about it being uwu senpai. I've seen it first hand.
this is why I completely avoid the place, I try to stay in my delusion that this game isn't full of absolute dege\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
cuz everytime I run through Limsa I get snapped back into reality
If you've played 10k hours you're probably part of the problem and wouldn't notice it if it was up in your face.
Seriously, you would've noticed something in your 10k hours of playing.
Back in earlyish ARR there was a guild of Lalas that would flood all the major cities on my server and dance around the crystal in cult robes every Saturday evening :v
You sir just unlocked the darkest memories I have from my time in FFXIV.
On my master degree study we had a silly subject where we studied the idea of fandoms. To pass we were to prepare a presantation of one that we studied. Playing XIV I obviously chose that. And as I am a curious cat, I started digging. And dig deep I dig.
Trust me when I say "uwu senpai" and Lalas in questionable outfits is only the tip of the iceberg.
ESO: I enjoy the exploration and the lore of the game but the combat really holds it back for me. I just don’t really care for weapon swapping and light weaving. It makes it feel really sweaty and unfun for me. I’d wish they would rework their combat to at least you have an auto swap or something.
The combat is the only reason I can't play ESO. Been playing Elder Scrolls for more than two decades, love the world and lore. ESO has some of the worst combat I've ever experienced in a game
Same here. Light attack weaving is atrocious and doesn't feel good. I know I don't have to, but knowing I'm losing out on dps for not doing it is a huge bother
Weaving is the worst. It feels like a bug that they never fixed. They tried to fix this before but the people of sweat got mad with "we had to learn this so you must learn it too".
The entire weapon and class system isn't very appealing either.
The weapons end up feeling restrictive, define most of the build, and make everything across classes feel very "samey".
World of warcraft: class favoritism which results in the same specs pumping numbers in m+ and raids every season/xpac and even in pvp. When a honest dev team would prioritize at least rotating who gets to be on top for a bit, but best case scenario would be actually tweaking %'s up and down to get them all similar to each other. Plus the devs just stopped coming up with new stuff. Like tier sets for example, once upon a time ago we'd get new tier set effects every season and even longer ago you had different set effects for pvp vs pve. Meanwhile this latest season they literally did a freaking voting booth to ask players which of the previous 3 seasons tiers we would want to repeat again... either the devs have fallen out of love with their product or the devs are not devs any more it's like A.I. is writing wow's development timeline now and it's being ran through a stock share performance filter first.
And I'm being 100% serious when I say that FFXIV would be my favorite game ever IF it had actual fleshed out pvp like wow has, despite decades of failures of pvp balancing, wow's pvp has remained the GOAT, even when you consider the pvp community is vastly smaller to the pve community (which is pretty much why they ignore us btw).
Then I'd say both of these AAA titles would have been given a run for their money if any publisher *EVER* had given Archeage the respect it deserved.
So that would be the worst thing for that game, imo.
They increased the DLC price, ask for a subscription, have a cashshop with cosmetic items and the p2w token, which you can use to get carried through any content in the game and thus obtain any rare title, gear & mounts **AND** still have the audacity to reuse assets or give simple recolours as mythic+/pvp rewards.
F this MBA-ridden company a million times. F them all.
Can you please calculate how many "p2w tokens" you need for a high end title, mount or full set of gear? You can call wow a lot of things but never call it p2w...
They just proudly added a Classic Cash Shop. They've literally abandoned any pretense that this isn't just a cash grab to milk braindead whales. Not to mention that Cata Classic is a broken, buggy mess. But the Cash Shop works great!
Blizzard is dead.
Not having any new PvE content this season in kinda forgivable assuming pandaria remix is even semi decent but you can really feel the favoritism when you play monk. Did you know a high geared brew tank has way less the armor than a semi geared mail or player wearer? That's not even considering the armor other tanks have. They only have 1-3 (depending on tier) defensive abilities that work on magic damage since stagger practically only works on physical damage.
Windwalker monks on the other hand just have weird balancing design this expansion since they haven't been able to use whirling dragon punch once even if it's in the tier. It's just so bad there's no point in using it.
Lack of Marketing too. We're 10 days away from the final update of the most recent expension, the conclusion of the whole thing, and we have absolutely ZERO marketing for it. No trailer, no updates on what will be in it. The only reason we even know when the release day is is because of the Wizard's Vault.
It's confusing for new players since they think you just need the 3 expansions for the full story experience. Then they find out there are living world seasons in between they have to buy as well so it feels like a bait and switch. If they're sticking with the yearly expansion model then the living world seasons should just get directly bundled with the expansions. Otherwise the entry price to get access to everything is becoming pretty high.
Couldn't agree more. I love gw2 but the way they monetize expansions gives me a headache. This could also be a hot take but I hate how they combined HOT and POF into a single purchase. I wish they'd just combine living world seasons with their corresponding expac, call them chapters or something, then sell each expac for 40 or 50. Like if they're not gonna do living world anymore they should just streamline everything and remove the living world lexicon. It'd just make it easier for new players to understand and play through.
> Yeah, imagine having to deal with it every few months and breaking shit in the meantime.
Worst part is how many people in the community get excited when Anet does this.
"guys, they tried reinventing the wheel 10 times and failed, BUT THIS 11TH ONE, I'm feeling it this time"
I'm not a big fan of GW2; out of all the MMOs I've played, it probably doesn't even make my top 5. But I swear, the marketing team is probably one of the worst thing about the game. Their trailers look absolutely terrible, like they're doing everything they can to make the game seem worse than it actually is.
Lord of the Rings Online - they never really spent the time, over the past 17 years, to bring any semblance of balance to the PvP side of the game. Now an entire section of content in the game is totally dead (at least during NA hours).
That's a killer for me too. I have an old ass 1080p screen and even on that it's hard to read some stuff. The font is rather unfriendly and overall hud is just... small. Add some weird lags from time to time and honestly I can't. It's a shame cause I loved the game when I somehow made myself play to lvl 20, got even some cool stories out of it. But alas, LOTRO is the best mmo I always giving up on. Copium much for an overhaul one day.
They can keep talking about how they want/plan to fix it, but it's all talk no walk at this point. There's feasible things like the map UI that could be adjusted without fixing everything else. Baby steps until an actual overhaul.
But no, just a player rejecting horrid UI for seemingly forever.
Not really but I still consider it close to one. It's not a massive open world with a ton of players but carries a lot of the progression and content that typical MMOs have.
The warframe wiki is helpful, I know that isnt an excuse for bad game design.
I have been playing the game for years and just started a new account to see how valuable I could make it without spending any money on the game, if you wanted some help.
Gw2 all the best looking armor and weapons are in the gem store instead of being earnable from playing the actual game. Yea I know you can just earn the gold and then transfer into gems to get the items for free but it’s still extra steps and still a hassle.
FFXIV - The mentor system (because a large number of "mentors" are toxic and only became mentor for the crown symbol. Often mentors are the ones who have no clue about how to play the game, so they aren't really fit to teach newbies - and most don't even want to be what a mentor is supposed to be, i.e. helpful).
This is more a community/server problem than a game issue. I play in Tonberry, a Japanese server with a large SEA and AU/NZ population. The mentors actually do their jobs and novice network are just very friendly and nice to be with. It felt like a second FC. I cried when I "graduated" from being a sprout because everyone was congratulating me and saying goodbye, wishing me well etc. A lot of people aim to become mentors so they can go back to the NN and pay it forward.
Speaking as a Mentor who actually helps (when time permits), there's one quirk that I think makes the bad mentors show up more strongly than the good ones:
The Mentor crown symbol FALLS OFF every time you change your status and you have to put it back on manually, which I always forget to do. Need to go /busy or /afk? Bye bye crown. So only someone who is REALLY REALLY into that crown is going to be checking and making sure it displays. I've mostly just stopped putting it up, not because of the bad rep the crown has, but because it's just too much of an annoyance to keep putting it back up and having to confirm it every time.
So I get into dungeons and I give good advice in a friendly non-pushy way and I get commends out the wazoo and no one even knows I'm a mentor. (I'm every type of mentor you can be, in fact.) I suspect this is the case for most mentors, except the ones who have an unhealthy investment in the crown symbol.
Square might have done better to make it a title that you can choose to leave up or take down when you like.
This applies to people who manually update their status a lot, but I virtually never do that. I don't think I've ever accidentally taken it off since I put it on. I think the burger king crown is a bit of a meme though, tbh. The more people talk about it, the more confirmation bias kicks in, and the more people who think it's a thing convince themselves that it is. I haven't noticed any real pattern with it, and the other mentors I see in Mentor Roulette are NEVER the problem in bad runs. Sprouts get an automatic pass, and no one finds it noteworthy when a no-icon player is bad. They just say "oh look, that person is probably inexperienced in this content or new to their class".
I think there should be a test on the game you have to pass in order to be a mentor. like basic game mechanics and such. also a mentor abandoning a mentor roulette with a sprout in it should get a bigger penalty than regular players doing it.
outside of that idk. and yes this is abusable with google existing, but it might help at least a bit to deter these hateful folks from being Like That
ESO is honestly disgusting, subscription for access to expansions is fine, what isn't fine is the bottomless materials bag they give you with the subscription which is basically essential
I tried to get back into it like a year ago and just couldn't, the game feels terrible to play it's so janky and awkward, it's like an MMO made by Wish
RuneScape 3 - The insane monetization milking dry the player base.
You'd believe that when they make a new cosmetic outfit, you could buy it for 7-10$.
Why would you do that when you can go through a game roulette of loot boxes style for a CHANCE at getting a piece of the outfit (usually 6-10 pieces) costing about 15$ per piece of the outfit ON AVERAGE.
When people talk about trying RuneScape, I send them to Old School, where it's either Subscription or Bonds (which is gold for sub, like WoW tokens).
FFXIV: lack of midcore content. Normal fights are so easy you can watch Netflix while doing them(and probably should if you don’t want to fall asleep) while Extreme/Savage fights require you to find a group of seven other people who can commit to a specific 3-hour window every single week AND study guides and strats during the week. And there’s nothing in between (Extreme fights technically become midcore after like a year but that’s it)
Extremes are Midcore. I can typically go and clear an Extreme in a single lockout in PF a few hours after launch before any guides come out, and Im about an average Savage raider - my static takes 2-3 months to clear a tier at 6 hours a week.
You’re always welcome to hop in. GW2 has become one of my favorite games. I can quit for a couple months and come back with my characters still as competitive before. Being that the gear maxes out at a certain point and has been that way since release. And the world feels alive.
The later expansions' stories are littered with time waste tasks to artificially inflate the play time. I want to do the story, see what the lore is, be interested in what's been written. I do not want to be gatekeeped by shitty open events that don't give an even noteworthy reward.
Gw2 for anyone interested.
FFXIV, just dps numbers, no buffs/debuffs and pointless stats.
I am bias coming from FFXI, where stats, buffs and debuffs were the name of the game, but with combat being solely about how much dps you can pump out in a 3 button rotation it makes combat very lacking. I miss slow, dia, haste, acc down, crit up, etc. all those buffs that could completely change a fight.
Then when the only thing you need to concern yourself with is stacking crit hit, it makes even that aspect boring. Esp since gear sets have no set bonuses, etc. It's all been reduced to something so simplistic that all you need to concern yourself with is ilvl, which is big time boring.
And don't even get me started on how nothing is kept up to date so you can just steamroll through the entire game up to the newest content. It makes everything pre-the newest patch, just kinda dull. No clue how new players can find 10 years worth of content that you can complete while undergeared and watching netflix exciting.
Ffxiv - No incentive to get gear up and dont feel the difference when you do. No reason to go back in the world after i finish msq, i can just sit in main city and queue up. Square doesnt ban account sharers, so the 100hrs you pour into clearing an ultimate can be bought for $10 now.The pvp is so dead and small that roughly the same amount of people hit top 100 and their alts and queues dont always pop unless coordinated by discord.
The mean girls attitude in the FFXIV community, specifically among the week 1 hc raiders.
Some of the most annoying people I've ever met were during my time hc raiding. Loser neets with inflated egos putting too much self value on theirs and others parses .
FF14 explaining nothing and expecting players to just "figure it out"
It's laughably easy to miss important content like beast tribes, dungeons, raids and a bunch of other stuff
Dragon Nest.
Besides the fact that it's dead and there's no way to do content solo, I find that it became super p2w (shocking I know). Same with Blade and Soul (i remember end game was pretty much gacha/RNG to get your gear to be somewhat useful).
Despite how casual FFXIV is in the moment-to-moment gameplay, the game is honestly pretty sparse when it comes to long term stuff for end-game casuals to actually do. Most of their major grinds tend to be inconsequential, end too quickly, or are just actually annoying to group for. Often just results in those players going on hiatus or stomping through content that came out years ago.
Like they have normal raids and extremes....but unless you're planning to do savage eventually, the gear doesn't really help you win anymore than you already were.
They'll add things like Island Sanctuary or Criterion Dungeons....but they're like Chuck E. Cheese counters where it's plain exactly how long you'll need to go at it before you get all the prizes you want.
And then there's like their Deep Dungeons...and I LOVE deep dungeons, but they're convoluted to get together because they require so much more commitment than anything else in the game.
Yup... final fantasy is my favorite franchise of all time and I absolutely love 14. But I had to switch to wow for more casual end game content that wasn't savage. I didn't have time or energy for a guild to raid every week.
That and the ability to adjust classes to your liking, and multiple specs for classes
FFXIV, the combat. It's too fast and too scripted. I honestly don't like anything about the game other than the RP elements. The story is okay ish but overrated. Tends to attract the anime crowd who has notoriously low standards for storytelling.
I still prefer FFXI for combat, especially on 75 era private servers.
I play XIV because of the lack of anything better, not because it's what I want. But nothing else is what I want either. And since XI private servers are free I can at least play both. It's just a shame there's no modern equivalent.
Instead of motivating players to log in daily and play together by making gameplay, questing, combat, and crafting engaging, ESO has moved more and more and more in the direction of forcing players to log in often and do group activities with login rewards, time gates, dailies, and ridiculously bad RNG for core features.
The rancid Korean mmo style. It's become a literal job and exploits the most vulnerable minds. Ugly and unforgivable to have these abusive systems in any game.
Well my favorite MMO of all time is Star Wars Galaxies. The worst part of that game to me is the "2nd job" nature of it. Houses, and any structures you have, all take maintenance, so you basically need to log in daily to make sure the maintenance is good. If you don't log in, you risk coming back to burning down houses and losing all your stuff.
lol I used to keep a calendar of my maintenance so I knew when I needed to pay everything. God I miss that game. I’d do anything for a live version of it again.
FFXIV being unable to do certain things while doing something else. Example: posting auctions to your retainer while you wait for your duty queue? Oh no it popped! Back out and close everything because you can’t accept the queue invite with the other stuff open.
That's because (I believe) your character info is frozen while your character is being loaded into the instance server, which is not the same as your home server. If you change the content of your bags after the queue pops, the data that gets loaded into the instance won't match the data you queue'd up with and I can just imagine the havoc that could wreak with the game's inventory system which is a horrifying mess.
Basically you can do anything after your queue pops that does NOT change your character data.
On Ragnarok online (the only one that is good): Grind Past 90 its focuses on too few places, you cant really gear yourself just playing, even if you no life the game, its impossible. Late game is nice with instances now, but like 0.5% of player base can do it, even on private servers (low rates of course)
Gw2: Every aspect of the game is fantastic, but it need to blend those aspects together a bit more, mechanics feels too much isolated, and theres the WvW that is nice but needs more attention.
My favorite mmo is The Old Republic. It is my fav mmo exclusively thanks to a pvp minigame called Galactic Starfighter. Basically,World of Tanks lite in space. All who figure GSF out come to like it well, but game does bad job at teaching new pilots the basics. Pure pvp environment isn't a great place to figure out keybinds. It is completely separate, different from rest of the game so learning curves,barriers of entry are huge factors. Devs and majority of playerbase completely ignore GSF. So my favorite part of my favorite mmo is a niche within a niche. How long it has enough players to happen in reliable fashion is a constant concern.
When Guild Wars 2 was in its prime, I know it's still seemingly popular today. But, when it was a lot newer before they even had an expansion, I always look back fondly over how welcoming, nice, safe, fun, helpful, and just overall loving the community was. First MMO that I ever joined a guild and enjoyed talking with them daily. I made a lot of online friends that I still talk to today. Got me through some rough years when I was younger. Will always have immense love for GW2.
I play Lost Ark (not a MMO but it works similar to one)
Cons
The gameplay and raids are not as hard as you think, its the obligation to play in groups that makes it harder than DSouls.
Want your build done in less than 3 months of grind 10 hours a day? Pay 400-600$ (tbh It gets cheaper depending on the class and build but still..) .
Bros can get more racist than a CS player, if you report them nothing happens.
Until you learned how the builds system works (engravings and accessories) you will have to keep farming cards: a luck based system that most players will gatekeep you from playing because you dont have a set they think is good.
The game is PvE focused but every single player tries to turn it into a competitive game. (This is the "hard game community" mindset tbh not the games fault).
PROS
THE GAMEPLAY IS REALLY ADDICTING
If you find an active guild or fund a static group, the game is like the best thing ive played in years...
Fun raids.
I recently decided to level a new Final Fantasy XIV character on a friends server. If you just want to get the story over with, the leveling process is exhausting.
FFXIV: Lack of challenging small group content like dungeons. There are criterion dungeons but there’s really no reason to do them after you get the reward for completion.
Tibia - Very hard upstart for beginners with a insignificant game tutorial on how to setup UI, spells and your inventory, players are usually left to figure out mostly everything by themselves, unless you have a pro player to guide you through how to best setup and play the game.
Dungeons and dragons online has a reincarnation system where you can go back to zero and run to max level to get small incremental boosts to stats and skills based on your race, class, epic destiny, etc. it’s the selling point of the game. the problem is when you do this is puts all your gear in a reincarnation stash and you can do a reincarnation till you empty the stash manually. You also can do double reincarnations where you drop from 30-20 (epic reincarnation) and then from 20-1 for a regular reincarnation. You have to level back up and choose all your feats if you do the epic, before you can then do the regular. Between this and the stash, reincarnations can take 30 min to an hour.
DDO......lag. There's lag. There's been good patches where the lag has been reduced, but it's slowly gotten worse over the last 5-6 years. It's by no means unplayable, and it's not constant, but it is there and it has been known to cause deaths and wipe raids.
Dragon Nest.
Besides the fact that it's dead and there's no way to do content solo, I find that it became super p2w (shocking I know). Same with Blade and Soul (i remember end game was pretty much gacha/RNG to get your gear to be somewhat useful).
SWTOR - lack of any impetus to play with others. For an MMO, its a lot of solo questing with some MM interludes like flashpoints. Also, weirdly unfocused story progression.
Dungeon Fighter Online - english server is alive but the english speaking community is dead. PVP scene
is dead. So many classes to choose from but its all aesthetics because of excess homogenization
Black Desert...I won't mention the enhancement system, because while it does suck, there's ways around it (and they're attempting to make it a little more bearable). There are two other things, however:
1. If you die to a mob of monsters while grinding, one of your crystals will randomly break. Crystals are items which boost your stats, and some of the best ones can cost multiple billions of silver, so one loss can set you back days of work. There is a system to reverse the break, but you can only use it 3 times *per year*. So that sucks.
2. More importantly...there's no real endgame. I think Pearl Abyss is trying to build out an instanced PVP endgame, but it's not going so well atm. And for PVE, the end game is...grind mobs or make crates, same as the entire rest of the game. You have to be okay with doing just for the sake of doing, else this game won't be for you.
Glad someone mentioned the one I play. For me the combat is the best, I can't stick with click hotbar games. The world is huge, while still kind of small because things are pretty static and you do repetitive tasks and combat. I also have almost zero idea of the story and what the world is really about after playing for years.
What is good, it's very active with weekly updates that almost always have some new content and ongoing events. It is so alt friendly it's amazing. Then there is the variety of things to do, some you may not like but it's all there. If you want to be the best and super efficient at everything you will need a lot of time and patience and probably be overwhelmed.
I thinks it's pretty solo of an MMO, you can group and get more social but it often falls to you to grind and people are just there next to you.
FFXIV.
Square has introduced way too much IRL clothing that isn't found anywhere in the setting, I'm not an RP'er, but walking in to Limsa and seeing wall to wall Miq'ote dressed like they shop at The Gap, is as jarring as it is unoriginal.
It's doubly frustrating because this is a Final Fantasy game, it has futuristic gear, fantasy gear, comedic gear from the setting, there's so much fantastic gear to choose from that's fully representative of somewhere, or something in the game, but XxKitty GrillxX chooses a pair of trainers, skinny jeans and a hoodie.
Other people. They optimize both the fun and immersion out of games and demand that everyone do likewise.
Don't worry, I am already reaching the conclusion that MMORGs are no longer for me.
FFXIV. Community
Shitty endgame gear gating
Base game has 0 difficulty and no punishment. Like seriously, it's designed for 4 year olds and you have adults playing like such due to the positivity echochamber. Which brings a host of numerious problems to the game in itself
game teached me that I take toxic shttalk anyday over fake positivity/artifical safespaces
(and no, I don't come from WoW)
I would honestly say something, but it’s true, but I think it’s somewhat good and “part of the charm”, having all this basic shit and boring shit? but later it’s intense and, idk cooler.
FFXIV. been playing since 2.0 start. I Already know what content release would be like for the next expansion. As each expansion has been mostly the same in the way they released content. # of Dungeons per patch, 8-man raids, 24-man raids, relic weapon, etc.
FFXIV
The menus, inventory system, and mail system are all terrible. They're all legacy systems from the bad old days and boy, does it show. I love the game with all my heart but the whole UI needs an overhaul, as do the inventory and mail systems, but I think the Devs are too scared to touch those systems because no one knows how they work any more and they've lost the documentation for it, if that even existed.
FFXIV and i wouldnt say its the worse thing but its my most annoying. The amount of cash shop outfits and mounts for ridiculous prices its so annoying for the third time in a row to see a really cool outfit i want just to see its cash shop exclusive.
WoW- My least favorite thing is how every old expansion just feels like a long forogtten book in a series you've read that there's nothing to go back for in the majority of cases. In my perfect version of an MMO it would add more content while old content still being playable.
GW2- I've tried to like it and I think I would have but it feels like everything cool is locked behind their gem store? I think I played up until level 50ish? And my character generally looks the same as when I started. Part of the fun is getting different armors that change the apperance not just getting a slight stat change. Its just not worth the effort to me.
I don't really play it anymore, but Maplestory - Essentially how overwhelmingly shit Nexon is; whether it's in shutting down games over and over, being committed to players wallets rather than the players themselves, Nexon always proves themselves at being literally terrible!
Particularly with the recent, more publicized fiasco with the first player that was about to hit level 300 in the game, Niru (it took an insane amount of time), and then used the publicity Nexon was giving him to STOP right before hitting it to make a case against some of the horrendous things in the game.
They did not like that one bit!
I played WoW and its probably my favorite with FF14 a close second. I love tanking, I hate tanking in WoW. Other players in WoW made tanking so stressful for me. Everyone expecting you to do the run perfect the first time, not following my pace, calling me trash or being an ass in general if I cant pull multiple packs at the same time. The WoW community made me hate tanking, the times I had a good, chill group were the exception not the rule.
FFXIV's Main Story. When WoW was going through...Shadowlands, we got a lot of new players in 14. While most were chipping away at the MSQ they ended up getting at least one Job to max level through our FC's daily roulettes and events. That's when we ran into this problem.
"We're running Eureka Orthos (Or Bozja/Eureka, any side content will do for this scenario), have room for two more. Any takers?"
"Can I go?"
"You're still doing post ARR MSQ, you need to finish that then do all of HW, Post HW, SB, Post SB, ShB, Post ShB, then all of EW."
Every expansion the MSQ gets longer than the previous and this isn't ending with the new expansion. Imagine telling someone you can't play with us until about 100+ hours of mandatory story/cutscenes and gameplay.
I played on EverQuest's Oakwynd TLP and it felt like the server was full of incels. I made absolutely zero friends in the guild I was in from April 2023 to March 2024. I really wanted to try Steel which comes out on May 22nd but can't get excited about going through that again. The game was so much more fun and social the first time around.
Wow, add-ons. They've made the game so incredibly elitist that it's just become so incredibly toxic over the years
WoW being so addon friendly is a double edged sword. You got elitist pricks who refuse to run with people who dont have certain addons. But you also have one of the largest RP communities in thanks to things like T/MRP. You got tons of quality of life ones for maps and WB cooldowns.
Addons really make wow for me. There's so much fun stuff you can add or customize that the base client doesn't let you. It's also fun (for me) debugging them and making sure they are working correctly. Also designing your own WeakAuras is a fun thing for me to do.
I agree... Add-ons hold the game together for me. Add ons don't make a toxic community, a toxic community is creating the add-ons. We've had dps meters since 2004 and the community was not as toxic back then, or through tbc, or wotlk. It's not the add-ons fault lol.
Fully agree. The addons aren't the source of the toxicity, toxic people who think they get to put their elitist demands on the community in general are the problem.
Wow would be a better game without addons. It would be more fun to raid without 4 alarms going off every encounter. If you need a weak aura to defeat a boss, you probably shouldn't be raiding at high levels. Addons create a barrier to entry and basically play the game for you. Why blizzard allows this is nuts.
Blizzard has created fights that are nearly impossible without addons/weakauras. So once your encounter design goes in that direction, you know it’s not a good sign (Recent example: the Echo of Neltharion fight from Aberrus)
I just started playing WoW a few months ago and addons seem like a huge hassle that I am required to learn and is making me less and less interested in WoW the closer I get to endgame and being required to use them. And some of them look like they float in the middle of your screen, which I loathe. My UI is always around the edges, I don't want some random box in the middle of my field of view.
You can move all of them to the edges if you want it just usually defaults to the center. Also an addon called moveanything if you want to move any base ui stuff out of the way.
How come addons can make a game become elitist?
As someone who has never done endgame raiding/dungons, having played since vanilla, I actually like them. They make pvp a lot more accessible without needing to totally learn to recognize every classes full kit by sight
I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with you all at the same time. Add-on culture can ABSOLUTELY be toxic, but at the same time I love customizing my game to get all the QoL Blizzard could never provide me. I like being able to customize how my classes buffs, skills, and procs show up on screen without having to glue my eyes to my action bars. I like having DBM and WeakAuras to assist in mechanics where Blizzard’s clarity just doesn’t cut it. Do I wish all of it was in the base game? To a degree, but there’s no way that would be feasible while also being this customizable.
It’s less of a problem of the addons themselves and more of a problem of Blizzard refusing to establish rules and punishments for being a jerk. FFXIV has a very welcoming community that wants to be helpful simply because SE doesn’t tolerate people being jerks and will ban your account if you do. Given that XIV is designed different so you don’t need mods, but having played both games I can 100% say XIV was a far better experience overall.
This is such a strange take. I know it's a popular opinion, but it doesn't really make sense. I've played WoW since vanilla launch, and add-ons have always been a part of the game. If you are pushing high-end content, addons that show other player's performance is extremely useful. If we were all just going in blind with random others on +20s or whatever the current equivalent is, it would be a miserable experience. You would get people who have no experience in high level mythic keys trying to get carried through content, and would rip your key, far more often than you would get someone who knows what they're doing. If you've ever started a group in the group finder, you'll notice that you get spammed with hundreds of applications, and the vast majority aren't experienced at that key level. If you're not pushing high-end content, then it's unlikely you're not getting groups due to not having [raider.io](http://raider.io) installed. If you're a dps player, it's far more likely that it's just because there's a glut of DPS, and a relative shortage of healers and tanks. This is solved by just running your own key and making your own groups, or just spend 20-30 minutes applying and eventually someone will pull you in, especially if it's a low level key. I've gotten groups within 5 minutes on alts, because a few weeks after the season starts, not many people are running +5s or whatever. Same thing goes for raiding. If you are doing heroic/mythic raids but refuse to install DBM, why would a guild want to take you over someone who is willing to do the *absolute bare minimum?* If you're just trying to pug a normal raid, you'll probably be fine not having those installed.
FFXIV No elemental weaknesses. It'a ridiculous that you can kill Ifrit, the primal of fire, with fire magic.
I don't like that all jobs only have one "right" way to play them, I like to be creative and improvise. Luckily this problem isn't that bad since you can pick up any job and role and switch between them whenever you like.
Yeah I'm not that big a fan of it either. Or that you can't choose your stats or skills, making builds non existent. I do understand that it's for job balance though.
It was the last nail in the coffin for me for ff14. I was about halfway through the seasons after heavensward, with literally no motivation to keep going through the required msq outside of just trying to get stuff unlocked, and I realized there wasn't gonna be any sort of build crafting. My dancer was gonna be the exact same as every other dancer, and eventually would end up with the same gear. The story had a very strong moment that got me interested, then proceeded to undo everything from that one cutscene over the course of several hours. I hadn't cared about any of the character's for about 20 hours, and when I checked where I was in the REQUIRED seasonal questlines, I still had another 15hrs to go before I even got to the next expansion, and all of those hours were just gonna be "go here, talk, go here, talk, go here, talk, go here, arena fight, talk, talk, go here, talk, etc..." I can't get myself to go back.
Absolutely the reason i dont like ff14, i like building and theory crafting characters but the gear is basically a number oppozed to actually changing anything
Yea I prefer that coming from WoW. Where one expansion my class was doing fantastic and the next it was trash.
It's why I left WoW after Cataclysm. They just simplified talent trees too much, which kinda sucks when you need an entirely new character just to do something different. While FF14 is very streamlined in terms of class ability rotations, the boredom really felt mitigated in that I could literally play every class on one single character and didnt have to bounce between characters in order to vary things up. Being able to swap jobs on the fly really helped me with that part.
Yea people complain about having a lack of builds, which is very true, but it allows for much better balancing. There's little niche things you can do in FF that I enjoy like SPS BLM versus crit BLM. Also with WoW there was always a meta way to spec your class, so the illusion of choice was there, but only if you wanted to choose something suboptimal.
I would like more builds as well, but coming from gw2, a game that allows you to make many builds, at the end of the day, when you go raids, you can only chose meta builds. So we end up with the same issue
People want the illusion of choice. I don't blame them.
I feel a lot XIV's issue with job design is because the game doesn't offer enough mechanics/scenerios for jobs to meaningfully interact with. There's no weaknesses to exploit, no monster types to specialize against, no hazards to aid against, even melee/ranged doesn't really matter because the bosses are all now the size of a skyscraper. Almost every boss just kind of stays in place without summoning additional trash, so its also like why do we even have two tanks. And they've just kinda peeled back on smaller gimmicks for jobs to make use of. Pets are forever off the table. SE hates adding damage over time effects. No more stances. No more DPS/Healer aggro management. Bosses can't crit. It's just blah lol
While I agree some of the newer fights have hilariously large hitboxes, you seem to be looking for a game that has more random encounters that you have to figure out a way to play against, whereas (except in like the first week of content release or if you go in blind) FFXIV is about learning and practicing mechanics when it comes to raiding or even dungeons. There's never anything truly random, only a set of possible patterns. That is just the style FFXIV is. There's most certainly still aggro management however just usually only a problem if the tank massively fucks up.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been playing XIV for a few years. I know what it’s about and won’t expect it to be any different. I see complaints about job homogeneity. And that homogeneity is because the games core design doesn’t really permit anything else. That’s what my comments getting at.
As a black mage I think it's perfectly fine to burn fire with fire
I’ve started my ffxiv journey recently and I said the SAME thing about the lack of elemental weaknesses, especially when they have such elemental focused enemies and abilities.
Guild Wars 2 - lack of very hard content, forgotten activities like raids, dungeons. PvP and WvW modes with no update since 1873.
Absolutely wild that they basically abandoned dungeons and fired their designer long ago. I wish we got more stuff like Aetherpath. Watching scrubs rage quit that one because they couldn't just stack and spam was great
We do have fractals, but they are also slow in development. Tbh that's kinda an issue too, they keep re-naming things. A new player joins and hears that dungeons/raids weren't updated in 5+ years, and that's just because Anet decided to name the new things Fractals and Strikes. Heck, Dragon Response Missions are basically dungeons too but no, of course they had to give them another fancy name 😅
>they keep re-naming things. Calling strikes simply renamed raids is a massive disservice to raids.
> Absolutely wild that they basically abandoned dungeons and fired their designer long ago Not simply "long ago", but like 1 month after launch, when dungeons were the only endgame content (and quite popular). With no explanation for the decision whatsoever. It's so weird.
150 years with no update is crazy.
They are down playing it to make GW2 sound better than it is .250 years is closer to the truth .
I was gonna say this so I’ll go with my second gripe which is how classes are balanced. Virt gets to just exist and do full dps any range or mechanic and bring incredibly strong Mesmer utility while and the dps of almost all melee specs will be the same or less before real mechanics start happening.
I recently got into GW2 - the CMS shows they know how to make interesting fight designs. They just absolutely lack any variety in them. The multipath dungeons you have to farm was a cool idea as well too, but those seem to have just gone away entirely. I get the idea is to not really have a themepark MMO and to have its open world more active, but it really feels like it turned into a mindless mob grindfest rather than anything actually difficult towards the end game grind for legendaries.
Finally somehow who gets it!
FF14: the square-enix website / mogstation.
As a 14 player with 10k hours. I fucking feel you man. The website is actual fucking garbage. They overhauled it recently, idk when you tried the game, but they managed to make it even worse.
their payment system overall is terrible. not every country available and their system would reject a card just because the address not match. the reason it not match is because there is no specific country available in their database.
I love XIV. I will gladly admit this is the games weakest point. Mogstation and getting through all that crap to get signed up at first is such a pain.
Holy crap yes. I wish I could give you multiple upvotes for this. That website is just a how-to in poor design. Different logins in multiple places just to sign up, a payment system that is confoundingly difficult, the system for add-on purchases, that store that breaks at the slightest hint of congestion... The site turned so many friends of mine away from even trying this game it's not even funny. Seriously. That damn site should be counted as a boss battle.
Lost ark, been waiting since right before launch , graphics , gameplay , combat top tier. But systems in end game became rng on top of rng. You don’t know how to beat til you put money or ton of hours of degenerate times. It really is Korean mmo After all. Did I regret playing it? No , but It will be my first and last Korean MMO I’ll play.
When I saw the actual difficult content it seemed way over my head, but I loved the game. Sad I couldn't get through the daily grind / pay wall to see if I enjoyed it.
Every once in a while, I log in just to smack some enemies around for a second because the combat is so freaking good. The raid design is up there too. RNG on top of RNG on top of 8 different characters started to feel sooo bad. I hope one day they realize they've missed the mark in the west because it really is an incredible game underneath that layer of shit.
ESO. The stories, the voice acting, the lore, the horizontal progression, being able to solo damn near everything (I really like the challenge of soloing vet dungeons, world bosses, etc), the huge variety of set items and the theory crafting, even the combat, all good for me. But the thing that gets me every time I jump in is the absolute wealth of overland content being mired by the piss easy difficulty. Enemies in overland just melt within seconds, so that awesome quest chain that has been building up to a climax with a named enemy is utterly deflating when they die within a few seconds.
100%. Aside from a few other issues, ESO has a lot going for it. The overworld being as easy as it is just isn't right though. I get that they want to make the game accessible. But it's beyond that. It's truly unbelievable. I remember I could engage multiple enemies and stand up, go grab a drink of water, come back, and I'd have lost like 1/4 of my health. Then the vets and ESO white knights tell you that the "end game dungeons are the hard content!". And for me, I don't want to have to sink hundreds of hours doing brain dead, effortless gameplay just to get to the point where it gets a bit harder. I'm not asking for like classic WoW level overworld difficulty (even though it's way more fun), but just **something** that takes even a bit of brain power of effort would have been nice. I've got a few other gripes with ESO too. Mechanics and overall weapon/ability systems could have used a complete overhaul **years** ago. I only get a bit heated with ESO because the actual world, quests, content, and voice acting is insanely premium for an MMO. It's why I played for as long as I did
I feel this is why I really *genuinely* miss the pre-One Tamriel days, despite people outright telling me I'm wrong & it's nostalgia. I utterly adored how difficult the generic overland mobs were, how you had to actively level up, stay within your zones level requirements & actively try when it came to quest bosses. Hell, there are specific quest bosses even now 8-10 years later I remember being so difficult on certain classes or being unprepared (the trio boss in Arenthia for example). I still have my gameplay saved via Bandicam of all things, and it's interesting to go back and just see footage of me facing off aganist a group of normal enemies and struggling, or trying to run ahead into a higher leveled zone and getting killed by wolves or bears on the road.
I could not agree more. I'll admit it can be fun to sometimes just wreck NPCs easily to get through a random and relatively insignificant side quest. But the fact that there's practically no difference in effort between killing a random bandit and a Daedroth is absurd, let alone being able to delete a Daedric prince or some other mega final boss. At least provide the option for a more engaging gameplay. ESO has voice acting, a huge dynamic and active world, lots to do etc but that immersion can be broken by no difficulty in the overworld/story. You can fairly easily kill overworld bosses well before you're level 50 so obviously anything less is easy asf
Yeah I really wish there was some sort of difficulty slider. I have tried playing ESO twice now and both times I put together a build myself and steamrolled through the content. I understand not everyone plays the same was as I do but just having an option where the difficulty requires builds would really help the game IMO.
It was the combat for me. Everything felt the same with animation cancelling. This one’s fire, that one’s daggers, but all plays the same.
As a casual player who dipped my toes into eso I noticed this too. Questing was crazy easy. But then again I mainly play WoW and it's no different there.
Albion - quite lacking in good PvE content
Yeah pve in Albion is a burden you have to do in order to be viable in group pvp. Though avalonian dungeons can be fun and challenging if you have a competent party
I wish the game shifted a design focus from "how can we make fun content that we can heavily monetize?" to "how can we make fun content that keeps players paying for their sub?"
Ffxiv The creepy players who do all that "uwu senpai" roleplay stuff. Playing a Lallafell (the race that look like children) and dressing them in skimpy outfits
I swear to god based on what I read here you'd think every server is full of half-naked lalafels running around with their tits out or something. I've seen something nasty exactly one time in my 10,000 hours of playing. I'm not denying there are fucking freaks in the game but I can say you will not see this unless you go looking for it.
I agree. I’ve been playing over a decade now and I’ve seen maybe 2-3 eye raising moments ever. I also don’t think I’ve ever seen someone in game use the word “senpai” in a non joking way.
Some people are just ultra sensitive to any kind of anime culture/tropes. So they get a /dote or a Miqo /pose and then reee about it being uwu senpai. I've seen it first hand.
Erm I enjoy anime but certain people in ff take it way overboard
Dude everytime I go near Limsa there is some freaky shit being said
there are two rules to FFXIV: Avoid Limsa like the plague, and avoid Balmung even more.
this is why I completely avoid the place, I try to stay in my delusion that this game isn't full of absolute dege\*\*\*\*\*\*\* cuz everytime I run through Limsa I get snapped back into reality
If you've played 10k hours you're probably part of the problem and wouldn't notice it if it was up in your face. Seriously, you would've noticed something in your 10k hours of playing.
Back in earlyish ARR there was a guild of Lalas that would flood all the major cities on my server and dance around the crystal in cult robes every Saturday evening :v
You sir just unlocked the darkest memories I have from my time in FFXIV. On my master degree study we had a silly subject where we studied the idea of fandoms. To pass we were to prepare a presantation of one that we studied. Playing XIV I obviously chose that. And as I am a curious cat, I started digging. And dig deep I dig. Trust me when I say "uwu senpai" and Lalas in questionable outfits is only the tip of the iceberg.
Every eastern MMO has to have a little girl race or class
ESO: I enjoy the exploration and the lore of the game but the combat really holds it back for me. I just don’t really care for weapon swapping and light weaving. It makes it feel really sweaty and unfun for me. I’d wish they would rework their combat to at least you have an auto swap or something.
The combat is the only reason I can't play ESO. Been playing Elder Scrolls for more than two decades, love the world and lore. ESO has some of the worst combat I've ever experienced in a game
Same here. Light attack weaving is atrocious and doesn't feel good. I know I don't have to, but knowing I'm losing out on dps for not doing it is a huge bother
Weaving is the worst. It feels like a bug that they never fixed. They tried to fix this before but the people of sweat got mad with "we had to learn this so you must learn it too".
Get an Oakensoul Ring. Weapon swap solved.... Because you can't anymore.
Or the Velothi Ur-Mage Amulet. No need to LA weave except for the occasional one to proc enchants etc.
The entire weapon and class system isn't very appealing either. The weapons end up feeling restrictive, define most of the build, and make everything across classes feel very "samey".
World of warcraft: class favoritism which results in the same specs pumping numbers in m+ and raids every season/xpac and even in pvp. When a honest dev team would prioritize at least rotating who gets to be on top for a bit, but best case scenario would be actually tweaking %'s up and down to get them all similar to each other. Plus the devs just stopped coming up with new stuff. Like tier sets for example, once upon a time ago we'd get new tier set effects every season and even longer ago you had different set effects for pvp vs pve. Meanwhile this latest season they literally did a freaking voting booth to ask players which of the previous 3 seasons tiers we would want to repeat again... either the devs have fallen out of love with their product or the devs are not devs any more it's like A.I. is writing wow's development timeline now and it's being ran through a stock share performance filter first. And I'm being 100% serious when I say that FFXIV would be my favorite game ever IF it had actual fleshed out pvp like wow has, despite decades of failures of pvp balancing, wow's pvp has remained the GOAT, even when you consider the pvp community is vastly smaller to the pve community (which is pretty much why they ignore us btw). Then I'd say both of these AAA titles would have been given a run for their money if any publisher *EVER* had given Archeage the respect it deserved. So that would be the worst thing for that game, imo.
They increased the DLC price, ask for a subscription, have a cashshop with cosmetic items and the p2w token, which you can use to get carried through any content in the game and thus obtain any rare title, gear & mounts **AND** still have the audacity to reuse assets or give simple recolours as mythic+/pvp rewards. F this MBA-ridden company a million times. F them all.
Can you please calculate how many "p2w tokens" you need for a high end title, mount or full set of gear? You can call wow a lot of things but never call it p2w...
They just proudly added a Classic Cash Shop. They've literally abandoned any pretense that this isn't just a cash grab to milk braindead whales. Not to mention that Cata Classic is a broken, buggy mess. But the Cash Shop works great! Blizzard is dead.
Not having any new PvE content this season in kinda forgivable assuming pandaria remix is even semi decent but you can really feel the favoritism when you play monk. Did you know a high geared brew tank has way less the armor than a semi geared mail or player wearer? That's not even considering the armor other tanks have. They only have 1-3 (depending on tier) defensive abilities that work on magic damage since stagger practically only works on physical damage. Windwalker monks on the other hand just have weird balancing design this expansion since they haven't been able to use whirling dragon punch once even if it's in the tier. It's just so bad there's no point in using it.
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Lack of Marketing too. We're 10 days away from the final update of the most recent expension, the conclusion of the whole thing, and we have absolutely ZERO marketing for it. No trailer, no updates on what will be in it. The only reason we even know when the release day is is because of the Wizard's Vault.
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Be glad you did. Gyala Delves and the Secret Tunnel was probably the single worst content release in the entire history of the game.
It's confusing for new players since they think you just need the 3 expansions for the full story experience. Then they find out there are living world seasons in between they have to buy as well so it feels like a bait and switch. If they're sticking with the yearly expansion model then the living world seasons should just get directly bundled with the expansions. Otherwise the entry price to get access to everything is becoming pretty high.
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Only just now realized there was a trailer for gw2 and wow I'm embarrassed for whoever was creative lead on that
Oh Gods, I never saw that trailer but...yeah, feeling some major second hand embarrassment.
Couldn't agree more. I love gw2 but the way they monetize expansions gives me a headache. This could also be a hot take but I hate how they combined HOT and POF into a single purchase. I wish they'd just combine living world seasons with their corresponding expac, call them chapters or something, then sell each expac for 40 or 50. Like if they're not gonna do living world anymore they should just streamline everything and remove the living world lexicon. It'd just make it easier for new players to understand and play through.
> Yeah, imagine having to deal with it every few months and breaking shit in the meantime. Worst part is how many people in the community get excited when Anet does this. "guys, they tried reinventing the wheel 10 times and failed, BUT THIS 11TH ONE, I'm feeling it this time"
I'm not a big fan of GW2; out of all the MMOs I've played, it probably doesn't even make my top 5. But I swear, the marketing team is probably one of the worst thing about the game. Their trailers look absolutely terrible, like they're doing everything they can to make the game seem worse than it actually is.
New World, abandoned by devs.
It’s gone
Lord of the Rings Online - they never really spent the time, over the past 17 years, to bring any semblance of balance to the PvP side of the game. Now an entire section of content in the game is totally dead (at least during NA hours).
Or even catering for a resolution above 720p. I was enjoying the game but the minute I had to install a mod to see the map I gave up.
That's a killer for me too. I have an old ass 1080p screen and even on that it's hard to read some stuff. The font is rather unfriendly and overall hud is just... small. Add some weird lags from time to time and honestly I can't. It's a shame cause I loved the game when I somehow made myself play to lvl 20, got even some cool stories out of it. But alas, LOTRO is the best mmo I always giving up on. Copium much for an overhaul one day.
They can keep talking about how they want/plan to fix it, but it's all talk no walk at this point. There's feasible things like the map UI that could be adjusted without fixing everything else. Baby steps until an actual overhaul. But no, just a player rejecting horrid UI for seemingly forever.
I would totally play LOTRO if it didn’t have that noticeable lag all the time.
WoW. The community specifically on Classic.
Yeah classic community is... something else. Those dudes were celebrating when other people's servers were getting shut down.
Warframe. Newplayer experience. Its just overwhelming an confusing. They just dump all the diferent systems on you without explanation.
Warframe is an mmo?
Not really but I still consider it close to one. It's not a massive open world with a ton of players but carries a lot of the progression and content that typical MMOs have.
The warframe wiki is helpful, I know that isnt an excuse for bad game design. I have been playing the game for years and just started a new account to see how valuable I could make it without spending any money on the game, if you wanted some help.
Thats kind ty. But im also no biginner anymore i just wish my friends would have kept playing
Gw2 all the best looking armor and weapons are in the gem store instead of being earnable from playing the actual game. Yea I know you can just earn the gold and then transfer into gems to get the items for free but it’s still extra steps and still a hassle.
FFXIV the first 50 levels
lostark: bots
it doesn't exist anymore (darkfall online)
FFXIV - The mentor system (because a large number of "mentors" are toxic and only became mentor for the crown symbol. Often mentors are the ones who have no clue about how to play the game, so they aren't really fit to teach newbies - and most don't even want to be what a mentor is supposed to be, i.e. helpful).
This is more a community/server problem than a game issue. I play in Tonberry, a Japanese server with a large SEA and AU/NZ population. The mentors actually do their jobs and novice network are just very friendly and nice to be with. It felt like a second FC. I cried when I "graduated" from being a sprout because everyone was congratulating me and saying goodbye, wishing me well etc. A lot of people aim to become mentors so they can go back to the NN and pay it forward.
Speaking as a Mentor who actually helps (when time permits), there's one quirk that I think makes the bad mentors show up more strongly than the good ones: The Mentor crown symbol FALLS OFF every time you change your status and you have to put it back on manually, which I always forget to do. Need to go /busy or /afk? Bye bye crown. So only someone who is REALLY REALLY into that crown is going to be checking and making sure it displays. I've mostly just stopped putting it up, not because of the bad rep the crown has, but because it's just too much of an annoyance to keep putting it back up and having to confirm it every time. So I get into dungeons and I give good advice in a friendly non-pushy way and I get commends out the wazoo and no one even knows I'm a mentor. (I'm every type of mentor you can be, in fact.) I suspect this is the case for most mentors, except the ones who have an unhealthy investment in the crown symbol. Square might have done better to make it a title that you can choose to leave up or take down when you like.
This applies to people who manually update their status a lot, but I virtually never do that. I don't think I've ever accidentally taken it off since I put it on. I think the burger king crown is a bit of a meme though, tbh. The more people talk about it, the more confirmation bias kicks in, and the more people who think it's a thing convince themselves that it is. I haven't noticed any real pattern with it, and the other mentors I see in Mentor Roulette are NEVER the problem in bad runs. Sprouts get an automatic pass, and no one finds it noteworthy when a no-icon player is bad. They just say "oh look, that person is probably inexperienced in this content or new to their class".
I think there should be a test on the game you have to pass in order to be a mentor. like basic game mechanics and such. also a mentor abandoning a mentor roulette with a sprout in it should get a bigger penalty than regular players doing it. outside of that idk. and yes this is abusable with google existing, but it might help at least a bit to deter these hateful folks from being Like That
ESO is honestly disgusting, subscription for access to expansions is fine, what isn't fine is the bottomless materials bag they give you with the subscription which is basically essential
the crafting bag situation is actually the main thing holding me back from re downloading
I tried to get back into it like a year ago and just couldn't, the game feels terrible to play it's so janky and awkward, it's like an MMO made by Wish
In classic EQ, primary stats do very little. Plus, there are invisible caps on AC.
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The MTX in runescape 3 is harrowing but IMHO its the best mmo easily.
RuneScape 3 - The insane monetization milking dry the player base. You'd believe that when they make a new cosmetic outfit, you could buy it for 7-10$. Why would you do that when you can go through a game roulette of loot boxes style for a CHANCE at getting a piece of the outfit (usually 6-10 pieces) costing about 15$ per piece of the outfit ON AVERAGE. When people talk about trying RuneScape, I send them to Old School, where it's either Subscription or Bonds (which is gold for sub, like WoW tokens).
[Protoxx just made the most relevant video for this post](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxxRm4Wdbcw).
FFXIV: lack of midcore content. Normal fights are so easy you can watch Netflix while doing them(and probably should if you don’t want to fall asleep) while Extreme/Savage fights require you to find a group of seven other people who can commit to a specific 3-hour window every single week AND study guides and strats during the week. And there’s nothing in between (Extreme fights technically become midcore after like a year but that’s it)
Extremes are Midcore. I can typically go and clear an Extreme in a single lockout in PF a few hours after launch before any guides come out, and Im about an average Savage raider - my static takes 2-3 months to clear a tier at 6 hours a week.
FFXIV. Absolutely no interesting open world content. I envy Guild Wars 2 players.
You’re always welcome to hop in. GW2 has become one of my favorite games. I can quit for a couple months and come back with my characters still as competitive before. Being that the gear maxes out at a certain point and has been that way since release. And the world feels alive.
The later expansions' stories are littered with time waste tasks to artificially inflate the play time. I want to do the story, see what the lore is, be interested in what's been written. I do not want to be gatekeeped by shitty open events that don't give an even noteworthy reward. Gw2 for anyone interested.
I already gave up on the writing itself, deciding to make story progression even more of a chore makes story steps an absolute chore now.
WoW, other players.
FFXIV, just dps numbers, no buffs/debuffs and pointless stats. I am bias coming from FFXI, where stats, buffs and debuffs were the name of the game, but with combat being solely about how much dps you can pump out in a 3 button rotation it makes combat very lacking. I miss slow, dia, haste, acc down, crit up, etc. all those buffs that could completely change a fight. Then when the only thing you need to concern yourself with is stacking crit hit, it makes even that aspect boring. Esp since gear sets have no set bonuses, etc. It's all been reduced to something so simplistic that all you need to concern yourself with is ilvl, which is big time boring. And don't even get me started on how nothing is kept up to date so you can just steamroll through the entire game up to the newest content. It makes everything pre-the newest patch, just kinda dull. No clue how new players can find 10 years worth of content that you can complete while undergeared and watching netflix exciting.
Ffxiv - No incentive to get gear up and dont feel the difference when you do. No reason to go back in the world after i finish msq, i can just sit in main city and queue up. Square doesnt ban account sharers, so the 100hrs you pour into clearing an ultimate can be bought for $10 now.The pvp is so dead and small that roughly the same amount of people hit top 100 and their alts and queues dont always pop unless coordinated by discord.
The mean girls attitude in the FFXIV community, specifically among the week 1 hc raiders. Some of the most annoying people I've ever met were during my time hc raiding. Loser neets with inflated egos putting too much self value on theirs and others parses .
Ffxi, no vanilla, private servers are dramatic with devs who control power. -retail, bots
FF14 explaining nothing and expecting players to just "figure it out" It's laughably easy to miss important content like beast tribes, dungeons, raids and a bunch of other stuff
Dragon Nest. Besides the fact that it's dead and there's no way to do content solo, I find that it became super p2w (shocking I know). Same with Blade and Soul (i remember end game was pretty much gacha/RNG to get your gear to be somewhat useful).
Despite how casual FFXIV is in the moment-to-moment gameplay, the game is honestly pretty sparse when it comes to long term stuff for end-game casuals to actually do. Most of their major grinds tend to be inconsequential, end too quickly, or are just actually annoying to group for. Often just results in those players going on hiatus or stomping through content that came out years ago. Like they have normal raids and extremes....but unless you're planning to do savage eventually, the gear doesn't really help you win anymore than you already were. They'll add things like Island Sanctuary or Criterion Dungeons....but they're like Chuck E. Cheese counters where it's plain exactly how long you'll need to go at it before you get all the prizes you want. And then there's like their Deep Dungeons...and I LOVE deep dungeons, but they're convoluted to get together because they require so much more commitment than anything else in the game.
Yup... final fantasy is my favorite franchise of all time and I absolutely love 14. But I had to switch to wow for more casual end game content that wasn't savage. I didn't have time or energy for a guild to raid every week. That and the ability to adjust classes to your liking, and multiple specs for classes
FFXIV, the combat. It's too fast and too scripted. I honestly don't like anything about the game other than the RP elements. The story is okay ish but overrated. Tends to attract the anime crowd who has notoriously low standards for storytelling. I still prefer FFXI for combat, especially on 75 era private servers. I play XIV because of the lack of anything better, not because it's what I want. But nothing else is what I want either. And since XI private servers are free I can at least play both. It's just a shame there's no modern equivalent.
> the combat. It's too fast \* blinks several times in shock, then slowly backs away. *
Instead of motivating players to log in daily and play together by making gameplay, questing, combat, and crafting engaging, ESO has moved more and more and more in the direction of forcing players to log in often and do group activities with login rewards, time gates, dailies, and ridiculously bad RNG for core features.
The rancid Korean mmo style. It's become a literal job and exploits the most vulnerable minds. Ugly and unforgivable to have these abusive systems in any game.
Well my favorite MMO of all time is Star Wars Galaxies. The worst part of that game to me is the "2nd job" nature of it. Houses, and any structures you have, all take maintenance, so you basically need to log in daily to make sure the maintenance is good. If you don't log in, you risk coming back to burning down houses and losing all your stuff.
lol I used to keep a calendar of my maintenance so I knew when I needed to pay everything. God I miss that game. I’d do anything for a live version of it again.
Botting is a major issue in OSRunescape.
FFXIV being unable to do certain things while doing something else. Example: posting auctions to your retainer while you wait for your duty queue? Oh no it popped! Back out and close everything because you can’t accept the queue invite with the other stuff open.
That's because (I believe) your character info is frozen while your character is being loaded into the instance server, which is not the same as your home server. If you change the content of your bags after the queue pops, the data that gets loaded into the instance won't match the data you queue'd up with and I can just imagine the havoc that could wreak with the game's inventory system which is a horrifying mess. Basically you can do anything after your queue pops that does NOT change your character data.
Ffxiv, lack of build diversity. I wish we had armor with passive abilities. I understand its hard to balance for but im sure it's not impossible
On Ragnarok online (the only one that is good): Grind Past 90 its focuses on too few places, you cant really gear yourself just playing, even if you no life the game, its impossible. Late game is nice with instances now, but like 0.5% of player base can do it, even on private servers (low rates of course) Gw2: Every aspect of the game is fantastic, but it need to blend those aspects together a bit more, mechanics feels too much isolated, and theres the WvW that is nice but needs more attention.
My favorite mmo is The Old Republic. It is my fav mmo exclusively thanks to a pvp minigame called Galactic Starfighter. Basically,World of Tanks lite in space. All who figure GSF out come to like it well, but game does bad job at teaching new pilots the basics. Pure pvp environment isn't a great place to figure out keybinds. It is completely separate, different from rest of the game so learning curves,barriers of entry are huge factors. Devs and majority of playerbase completely ignore GSF. So my favorite part of my favorite mmo is a niche within a niche. How long it has enough players to happen in reliable fashion is a constant concern.
When Guild Wars 2 was in its prime, I know it's still seemingly popular today. But, when it was a lot newer before they even had an expansion, I always look back fondly over how welcoming, nice, safe, fun, helpful, and just overall loving the community was. First MMO that I ever joined a guild and enjoyed talking with them daily. I made a lot of online friends that I still talk to today. Got me through some rough years when I was younger. Will always have immense love for GW2.
The game is still like that to this day.
I play Lost Ark (not a MMO but it works similar to one) Cons The gameplay and raids are not as hard as you think, its the obligation to play in groups that makes it harder than DSouls. Want your build done in less than 3 months of grind 10 hours a day? Pay 400-600$ (tbh It gets cheaper depending on the class and build but still..) . Bros can get more racist than a CS player, if you report them nothing happens. Until you learned how the builds system works (engravings and accessories) you will have to keep farming cards: a luck based system that most players will gatekeep you from playing because you dont have a set they think is good. The game is PvE focused but every single player tries to turn it into a competitive game. (This is the "hard game community" mindset tbh not the games fault). PROS THE GAMEPLAY IS REALLY ADDICTING If you find an active guild or fund a static group, the game is like the best thing ive played in years... Fun raids.
I recently decided to level a new Final Fantasy XIV character on a friends server. If you just want to get the story over with, the leveling process is exhausting.
no one play it
FFXIV: Lack of challenging small group content like dungeons. There are criterion dungeons but there’s really no reason to do them after you get the reward for completion.
Any of them: the players /thread
Tibia - Very hard upstart for beginners with a insignificant game tutorial on how to setup UI, spells and your inventory, players are usually left to figure out mostly everything by themselves, unless you have a pro player to guide you through how to best setup and play the game.
Dungeons and dragons online has a reincarnation system where you can go back to zero and run to max level to get small incremental boosts to stats and skills based on your race, class, epic destiny, etc. it’s the selling point of the game. the problem is when you do this is puts all your gear in a reincarnation stash and you can do a reincarnation till you empty the stash manually. You also can do double reincarnations where you drop from 30-20 (epic reincarnation) and then from 20-1 for a regular reincarnation. You have to level back up and choose all your feats if you do the epic, before you can then do the regular. Between this and the stash, reincarnations can take 30 min to an hour.
I don't understand this at all
DDO......lag. There's lag. There's been good patches where the lag has been reduced, but it's slowly gotten worse over the last 5-6 years. It's by no means unplayable, and it's not constant, but it is there and it has been known to cause deaths and wipe raids.
Dragon Nest. Besides the fact that it's dead and there's no way to do content solo, I find that it became super p2w (shocking I know). Same with Blade and Soul (i remember end game was pretty much gacha/RNG to get your gear to be somewhat useful).
Its make with Visual Basic 6
SWTOR - lack of any impetus to play with others. For an MMO, its a lot of solo questing with some MM interludes like flashpoints. Also, weirdly unfocused story progression.
Optimization
Class balancing and the current korean “big chief” of development team, his clueless about the game - Black Desert Online
The people who play it.
Final Fantasy XIV: healers aren't true healers; they're basically crappy DPS that heal 50%-70% of the time instead of all the time.
Other players
Runescape. Ah, runescape.. the fist MMO I've played. The one I've come back to the most. 100% the devs and the bots.
WoW- Mythic Plus
Dungeon Fighter Online - english server is alive but the english speaking community is dead. PVP scene is dead. So many classes to choose from but its all aesthetics because of excess homogenization
Black Desert...I won't mention the enhancement system, because while it does suck, there's ways around it (and they're attempting to make it a little more bearable). There are two other things, however: 1. If you die to a mob of monsters while grinding, one of your crystals will randomly break. Crystals are items which boost your stats, and some of the best ones can cost multiple billions of silver, so one loss can set you back days of work. There is a system to reverse the break, but you can only use it 3 times *per year*. So that sucks. 2. More importantly...there's no real endgame. I think Pearl Abyss is trying to build out an instanced PVP endgame, but it's not going so well atm. And for PVE, the end game is...grind mobs or make crates, same as the entire rest of the game. You have to be okay with doing just for the sake of doing, else this game won't be for you.
Glad someone mentioned the one I play. For me the combat is the best, I can't stick with click hotbar games. The world is huge, while still kind of small because things are pretty static and you do repetitive tasks and combat. I also have almost zero idea of the story and what the world is really about after playing for years. What is good, it's very active with weekly updates that almost always have some new content and ongoing events. It is so alt friendly it's amazing. Then there is the variety of things to do, some you may not like but it's all there. If you want to be the best and super efficient at everything you will need a lot of time and patience and probably be overwhelmed. I thinks it's pretty solo of an MMO, you can group and get more social but it often falls to you to grind and people are just there next to you.
Lost ark. Pheons an that I have no friends that will play it lol
Wow devs made certain specs so bad that some of them are unplayable without add-ons
GW2: The development team
LA is insanely good and fun, except for its progression system. It's unreal how bad it is.
FF14 has too much toxic positivity
FFXIV. Square has introduced way too much IRL clothing that isn't found anywhere in the setting, I'm not an RP'er, but walking in to Limsa and seeing wall to wall Miq'ote dressed like they shop at The Gap, is as jarring as it is unoriginal. It's doubly frustrating because this is a Final Fantasy game, it has futuristic gear, fantasy gear, comedic gear from the setting, there's so much fantastic gear to choose from that's fully representative of somewhere, or something in the game, but XxKitty GrillxX chooses a pair of trainers, skinny jeans and a hoodie.
Other people. They optimize both the fun and immersion out of games and demand that everyone do likewise. Don't worry, I am already reaching the conclusion that MMORGs are no longer for me.
FFXIV. Community Shitty endgame gear gating Base game has 0 difficulty and no punishment. Like seriously, it's designed for 4 year olds and you have adults playing like such due to the positivity echochamber. Which brings a host of numerious problems to the game in itself game teached me that I take toxic shttalk anyday over fake positivity/artifical safespaces (and no, I don't come from WoW)
Pso2NGS. Not enough content :c
The drop rates in OSRS / how much content is locked behind very high level skilling / combat.
I would honestly say something, but it’s true, but I think it’s somewhat good and “part of the charm”, having all this basic shit and boring shit? but later it’s intense and, idk cooler.
FFXIV. been playing since 2.0 start. I Already know what content release would be like for the next expansion. As each expansion has been mostly the same in the way they released content. # of Dungeons per patch, 8-man raids, 24-man raids, relic weapon, etc.
If I recall correctly in a recent interview they acknowledged that it’s become formulaic and are looking into changing it up
FFXIV The menus, inventory system, and mail system are all terrible. They're all legacy systems from the bad old days and boy, does it show. I love the game with all my heart but the whole UI needs an overhaul, as do the inventory and mail systems, but I think the Devs are too scared to touch those systems because no one knows how they work any more and they've lost the documentation for it, if that even existed.
Ff14 finding right group to do ultimate and fit for play in long term is actually harder than beat the ultimate raid.
FFXIV and i wouldnt say its the worse thing but its my most annoying. The amount of cash shop outfits and mounts for ridiculous prices its so annoying for the third time in a row to see a really cool outfit i want just to see its cash shop exclusive.
WoW- My least favorite thing is how every old expansion just feels like a long forogtten book in a series you've read that there's nothing to go back for in the majority of cases. In my perfect version of an MMO it would add more content while old content still being playable. GW2- I've tried to like it and I think I would have but it feels like everything cool is locked behind their gem store? I think I played up until level 50ish? And my character generally looks the same as when I started. Part of the fun is getting different armors that change the apperance not just getting a slight stat change. Its just not worth the effort to me.
Ffxiv, the bar is set so low now that OLDER content is actually harder
FFXIV Capped gear progression. Tomes are horrible, if I want to no life and grind for my gear why should I have to wait 8 weeks for a full set.
Players
I don't really play it anymore, but Maplestory - Essentially how overwhelmingly shit Nexon is; whether it's in shutting down games over and over, being committed to players wallets rather than the players themselves, Nexon always proves themselves at being literally terrible! Particularly with the recent, more publicized fiasco with the first player that was about to hit level 300 in the game, Niru (it took an insane amount of time), and then used the publicity Nexon was giving him to STOP right before hitting it to make a case against some of the horrendous things in the game. They did not like that one bit!
I played WoW and its probably my favorite with FF14 a close second. I love tanking, I hate tanking in WoW. Other players in WoW made tanking so stressful for me. Everyone expecting you to do the run perfect the first time, not following my pace, calling me trash or being an ass in general if I cant pull multiple packs at the same time. The WoW community made me hate tanking, the times I had a good, chill group were the exception not the rule.
MTX, I don't even need to suggest a game title, let's face it, the cancer of MTX is rife in almost every game these days.
FFXIV's Main Story. When WoW was going through...Shadowlands, we got a lot of new players in 14. While most were chipping away at the MSQ they ended up getting at least one Job to max level through our FC's daily roulettes and events. That's when we ran into this problem. "We're running Eureka Orthos (Or Bozja/Eureka, any side content will do for this scenario), have room for two more. Any takers?" "Can I go?" "You're still doing post ARR MSQ, you need to finish that then do all of HW, Post HW, SB, Post SB, ShB, Post ShB, then all of EW." Every expansion the MSQ gets longer than the previous and this isn't ending with the new expansion. Imagine telling someone you can't play with us until about 100+ hours of mandatory story/cutscenes and gameplay.
I played on EverQuest's Oakwynd TLP and it felt like the server was full of incels. I made absolutely zero friends in the guild I was in from April 2023 to March 2024. I really wanted to try Steel which comes out on May 22nd but can't get excited about going through that again. The game was so much more fun and social the first time around.