FFXIV: ARR vs. Guild Wars 2

[Paragon Fury]

So I've finally broken free of WoW (and Blizzard as a whole) and I've been looking at other MMOs; specifically FFXIV: ARR and Guild Wars 2, as they're currently the two biggest (that aren't also ass - looking at you ESO and SWTOR).

I'm familiar with GW2 some as I played the SHIT out of GW1 and I played GW2 until just before Heart of Thorns launched. I liked it, but got sucked back into WoW unfortunately.

FFXIV has always looked interesting since the reboot, but I heard it didn't get good until Heavensward came out, and that it takes a really long time to get going.

FFXIV just had a content patch in Sept., while Season 3 of GW2's Living World is currently going on. I kind of like GW2's new more action-orientated combat, but something about the classic trinity and gameplay in something like FF is really appealing too.

NOTE: The subscription fee isn't an issue in FFXIV for me.

 

[meiam]

Well, FF is much closer to wow than GW2 (with raid and such).

You play GW2 for leveling and PvP, you play FF14 for raid and really annoying crafting.

I dunno how much it changed since launch, but leveling in FF14 was sloooooooooow and boring, there weren't enough quest so you had to do these random area wide quest that would pop up from time, except they gave shit exp (and then they nerved them) so you had to do them over and over and over and over (x20) again, so you'd just group up with a bunch of random people and would rotate around all the quest in the same order while the giant ass group of 100+ people cleared them in a minute.

FF14 combat is also much slower since the global cool down is 2.5 sec compare to wow 1.5 sec and most class took awhile to get interesting rotation (might have changed since then) kid you not, the class I started playing with had a rotation of 4-5-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 (rinse and repeat, and again 2.5 sec between every action) until most of the way to max level, so I switch to another class, except I found I could do the entire rotation almost to perfection by macroing ability into two buttons.

GW2, I never understood tbh, leveling is the most boring part of mmo for me, I play mmo for the mm part and GW2 just wasn't interested in that.

But tbh I'm thinking about going back to FF14, apparently the raid are pretty good, and they have a randomly generated raid which I always wanted to try out since that seems a lot more interesting than redoing the same raid over and over again.

 

[Silvanus]

The only reason I'm not playing the Final Fantasy MMOs is their subscription fee.

Well, FF is much closer to wow than GW2 (with raid and such).

GW2 has a raid now, with three wings.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

you play FF14 for raid and really annoying crafting.

Just want to chime in and say the crafting part isn't annoying, and leveling it from 1-50 is really somewhat quick. It's the 51-60 slog that I found tedious. Even then, with the moogle beast tribe daily crafting quests, they help you level the last 10 levels with relative ease. Gathering can be fun (I like it and the fishing aspect has kinda hooked me, pun definitely intended) but it's all in what you put into it.

I dunno how much it changed since launch, but leveling in FF14 was sloooooooooow and boring

That got changed almost right after Heavensward. The leveling in ARR got changed radically, to the point where newbies are entering Heavensward right around the level 54 mark. It is no longer slow to get to level you need to be in order to enter dungeons for story purposes.

Rotations, however, he's pretty much spot on - and that's something Heavensward didn't change. They added more skills, but some classes feel more complex now than others. DPS rotations are pretty much the same, with healers and tanks having different set-ups and abilities for what comes around. Now, with the upcoming expansion Stormblood, there has been much discussion and feedback from the guys developing FF14 surrounding streamlining the combat system, which is something I'm hyped about seeing as how it's been HEAVILY hinted that Dancer and Red Mage are going to be the next playable classes.

As for raids, I can't say much because I don't raid, but the stories behind the raid encounters and the music within will blow you out of the water. Needless to say, facing the likes of Bahamut and Alexander has never felt so epic, let alone intimidating; and, if that wasn't enough for you and you're as much of a Final Fantasy fan as I am...

Spoiler: Stormblood's next raid boss appears to be shaping up to be

Omega, if the pic doesn't give it away

 

[MerlinCross]

Dungeons are at least possible in FF14, where as they are next to impossible in GW2. This is due to the rewards not being worth it when world bosses are a thing.

Both games suffer from dead over world content. The rush to end game for FF14 and again the world bosses for GW2 are the causes.

There's no way to make you stand out in FF14. Are you Bard? Then every other Bard will play like you with the same stats. GW2 has more builds and no trinity but suffers from "You don't use this build get out". Last I checked it is expected that you dump all your points into the Power tree.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

As Paragon Fury, you should really be asking which one has the biggest anime boobs. Now, I have a pretty low tolerance for anime and GW is about as animu as I can stomach. So although I've never played FFXIV, or indeed any other FF, barring a few hours of VII, I'm going to guess that a FF game is going to be repulsively animu, and will therefore contain the biggest anime boobs. There, your choice is made. You can thank me later.

Slightly more seriously, I didn't really find the HoT content particularly great. Probably personal preference but the new worlds they created I didn't find so compelling to explore as the main game and the prestige levels or whatever the fuck they were called felt rather grindy and slow to achieve. While it did coincide with one of my "WTF am I doing with my life?" moments, I did end up deleting 3 level 80's and another that was very close to that, uninstalling and have never played again.

 

[Paragon Fury]

As Paragon Fury, you should really be asking which one has the biggest anime boobs. Now, I have a pretty low tolerance for anime and GW is about as animu as I can stomach. So although I've never played FFXIV, or indeed any other FF, barring a few hours of VII, I'm going to guess that a FF game is going to be repulsively animu, and will therefore contain the biggest anime boobs. There, your choice is made. You can thank me later.

Slightly more seriously, I didn't really find the HoT content particularly great. Probably personal preference but the new worlds they created I didn't find so compelling to explore as the main game and the prestige levels or whatever the fuck they were called felt rather grindy and slow to achieve. While it did coincide with one of my "WTF am I doing with my life?" moments, I did end up deleting 3 level 80's and another that was very close to that, uninstalling and have never played again.

If I was going for pure anime boobage, I'd go for TERA again, but TERA doesn't have the population for me to make it worthwhile again, especially with that K-RPG grind they love so.

 

[Baffle]

If I were to play an MMO, and I'm not going to, I'd want one in which the crafting noise wasn't like someone rubbing two semi-smooth surfaces together. Also, no crafting delay/progress bar - it's just pointless and annoying.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

If I was going for pure anime boobage, I'd go for TERA again, but TERA doesn't have the population for me to make it worthwhile again, especially with that K-RPG grind they love so.

Funny that. If GW2 had the same kind of action gameplay as TERA, I'd still be playing it.

Eh, I dunno. I can only speak about GW2, but IMO if you have had your fill of GW2 before HoT then I don't really think HoT will reinvigorate your desire to play it. On that basis I'd probably recommend trying something new instead and if you think FF appeals to you then I guess that's the one to go for.

 

[Paragon Fury]

If I was going for pure anime boobage, I'd go for TERA again, but TERA doesn't have the population for me to make it worthwhile again, especially with that K-RPG grind they love so.

Funny that. If GW2 had the same kind of action gameplay as TERA, I'd still be playing it.

Eh, I dunno. I can only speak about GW2, but IMO if you have had your fill of GW2 before HoT then I don't really think HoT will reinvigorate your desire to play it. On that basis I'd probably recommend trying something new instead and if you think FF appeals to you then I guess that's the one to go for.

TERA's gameplay is actually pretty great, but the lack of endgame content and poor endgame balance at launch combined with it being a sub game when WoW was still at it's peak killed it. But it WAS great - I still have my original Founders title, achievement and mount to prove it.

 

[Final7111]

If I was going for pure anime boobage, I'd go for TERA again, but TERA doesn't have the population for me to make it worthwhile again, especially with that K-RPG grind they love so.

Funny that. If GW2 had the same kind of action gameplay as TERA, I'd still be playing it.

Eh, I dunno. I can only speak about GW2, but IMO if you have had your fill of GW2 before HoT then I don't really think HoT will reinvigorate your desire to play it. On that basis I'd probably recommend trying something new instead and if you think FF appeals to you then I guess that's the one to go for.

TERA's gameplay is actually pretty great, but the lack of endgame content and poor endgame balance at launch combined with it being a sub game when WoW was still at it's peak killed it. But it WAS great - I still have my original Founders title, achievement and mount to prove it.

I'm with ya man on Tera. The combat is completely different then every other MMO I've played and I loved it. Now that it?s T2P it?s still good, however it?s in game store for skins and stuff is completely over priced. GW2 was fun when it first came out however I haven?t played it sense (I had a max level necromancer before the Xpack come out). FF:ARR is really fun in my opinion and its sub is a blessing and a curse. The game doesn?t try to nickel and dime you so much, however for people like me I don?t really play it anymore because I?m not going to pay $15 a month for a game I wouldn?t play all that much right now. Heavensword was a great Xpack, and changed a lot of stuff up, however the game does still feel slow to me (max level black-mage).

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well if you liked GW2 before, you might like HoT. Before they continued to pump out new zones, I would have told you the expansion was not worth the price, but now I'd say it is. Also, there is a raid now if that's your thing. The nice thing about it not paying a subscription is that if you have your fill of a content update, you can just come back in a couple months when they release another new map.

As for Heart of Thorns itself, it's definitely harder than the main game, but the meta events are known so well at this point that if you get in a map with lots of players, you'll probably never fail. The maps are also a lot bigger and more intricate than the base game's. Gliding around these huge, multilevel maps is pretty great. The story is utter garbage though. I honestly can't remember the last RPG I played with this bad of a story. Living World 3's story is the best stuff they've done yet though, so there's that (if that's even saying all that much).

 

[Weresquirrel]

I quite liked GW2. Took me a while to get into it, but it has a lot to offer. But it doesn't quite get the carrot-on-a-stick feeling you have with other MMOs. This is both good and bad. Good in that stuff isn't constantly being made obsolete, but bad in that there's less of a feeling of progression and improvement. But there's also the fact there's no subscription fee. Very nice and means you can come and go as you please. You don't feel the need to keep playing to justify the expenditure.

FF14 on the other hand never really clicked for me. I suppose it didn't help that I only had one friend who played it, and he was in it for waaaaay longer than me, so when I started he was level capped already. The game itself is very pretty to be fair, and even with that level of graphics it ran surprisingly well. But my biggest grievance with the game was that it was mechanically very clunky, and grind-tastic. Its not enough to level one class really. You have to level several if you want to get the best out of them, or branch into the other classes. Unless it's changed recently, you can only get plot mission experience one your first time through, and if you want to level other classes, you have to just grind on monsters and world events.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

As a former GW2 player, (and maybe a current one in the future since I'm probably going to go back to it) it is my opinion that the one thing GW2 really needs right now is just more skills.

But the thing is, where GW1 went for a more "horizontal" approach (massive amount of options but little depth to them) GW2 goes for a more "vertical" approach, not relying on builds so much as your actual skill in the game. I played some of the PvP too and it was actually pretty fun even for a total noob like me so there's that as well. In GW1 you just stood there for the most part but GW2's combat feels much more fluid and fast and mobile.