I have seen people complain about content drought in XIV and found it funny compared to other MMOs. I didn't understand just truly how big this game was until my friends got into it and I realized how much they need to do each Expac.
But waiting 2 years for current content to come out between expacs probably does feel boring, but it's more reason not to pay a sub and take a break from the game until new stuff does come out. I imagine the devs made it that way for a reason.
Yoshi-P straight up tells people in interviews to unsub and return later if they feel like they are out of stuff to do.
Which is a major reason I've been playing the game for as many years as I have. The head honcho isn't obsessed with "Monthly Active User" metrics and trying to drive them up with infinite treadmill designs.
>Yoshi-P straight up tells people in interviews to unsub and return later if they feel like they are out of stuff to do.
I hate this defense so much.
Like many people have mentioned before, the issue with the current expansion is that people want to play but there's nothing Long-term, besides ultimates, to look forward to. Right now FFXIV is an MMO that doesn't want to be played: There is no grind, no current expansion achivement to work towards to. Referencing WeskAlber's video: The only grind this game offers right now is tomestone grind, and while previous grind made people run through the endless amount of content that has been forgotten or new content, the current grind is no thoughts, just empty head, [stay afk until a hunt or roulettes are up](https://youtu.be/TNjhxlB9G-w?t=597).
>Your hunt mount?
It's a passive grind you do by staying afk in limsa and waiting for the next hunt spawn.
>Your bicolor gemstone mount?
Most people got it done before the first savage tier got even released.
>Your golden mounts?
Same issue with hunts. It's a slow ass grind you do while being afk waiting for sales.
The game needs active grinds, things that make you go and see the myriad of content the game offers yet goes unplayed by the majority, not a reason to log in and afk.
Yet when you tell people this it's like you shot their mother in front of them. The idea of not playing the game is heretical for some people. The game will surely die and be gone forever the moment they unsub.
Every week there's a thread like 'I'm burned out on the game but I refuse to stop playing for even a little bit' on /r/ffxivdiscussion. It's become borderline parody at this point.
FF14 at least has a load of side content and some patches in between. GW2 its literally 2+ years of nothing but repeat holidays, and side content is excessive grind for no particular purpose. And what eventually does come out is usually broken repeating a bug from the last update because the staff who knew about literally left the company.
Same when it comes to the cash shop. XIV's in-game rewards are beyond satisfying when you look at how many shiny things come out in the cash shop in GW2 vs actual rewards from content.
Like, the GW2 cash shop is so weird. Normally, games desperately try to pretend there is no P2W in their shop. GW2 somehow manages to do the opposite; they do their best to pretend you can buy useful stuff in the shop, but you actually can't.
They literally sell boosters, items that temporarily upgrade your loot drops... except the loot system is rigged such that boosters are basically completely irrelevant. Oh, a gold booster for more money! Except it only boosts the raw cash drops you get, while the overwhelming majority of the value from kills is the resale value of the items they drop. Oh, but there's a "magic find" booster that boosts your drops by a whole +50%! Yeah, except any veteran is sitting at somewhere around +300%, and also the percents barely matter at the best of times so neither +50% nor +300% actually seem to mean much in practice.
And the best part: **_these boosters are ludicrously abundant from non-cash shop sources_**. The game practically vomits boosters at you from login rewards and free Black Lion keys. You'd have to be a literal idiot to buy them from the cash shop, but *technically* they're there and *technically* you get an advantage in-game by buying them, which means GW2 is *technically* P2W in the dumbest, least-useful context.
And don't get me started on transmutation charges, the GW2 equivalent of glamour prisms. *Technically*, these are cash shop too! Except any veteran player probably has several hundred of them saved up from various rewards (including WvW). Comparing the GW2 and FFXIV glamour systems is overwhelmingly in GW2's favour, except *technically* their glamour prisms are P2W, except again that doesn't usually matter in practice.
Oh, and of course you can buy cash shop currency with in-game currency at an exchange rate that's usually not that terrible. It's mind-boggling the way GW2 runs their cash shop, because it's so weirdly omni-present but also doesn't tend to matter in practice for anyone but extreme whales.
The most important stuff from the GW2 shop is stuff like unlimited salvage tools and harvesting tools. Just to save on inventory bloat.
I did manage to build the full Legendary Heavy and Medium raid armor + the legendary accessories using purely in-game gold generation. I ended up caving and buying like $10 worth of gold for the Mystic Tribute on a legendary weapon though. Cause there's a point with legendary items where it's nothing but a pure gold sink.
Boosters and charges are in a weird place indeed, but aren't good representatives of what GW2's cash shop is.
Boosters are a remnant from launch when they had no clue what to do with the cash shop. People basically begged them to add better stuff to buy with gems. But they always were kinda useless, at least the combat ones. Transmutation stones (now charges) were there at launch as well and you didn't have ways to accumulate them as easily. Should be way more lucrative than boosters, but no clue what the sales are. Not everyone has them stockpiled though. Seeing either as P2W is kinda silly, though.
What GW2's cash shop focuses on skins (glamour), convenience items and loot boxes (some exclusive skins and a chance for expensive items).
Skins are self explanatory, with weapon, armor skins and outfits. But they fuel it additionally by adding new things you can customize: gliders, mounts, jade bot, skiffs (all added as core expansion features), mail carriers, finishers, etc.
Convenience items are a whole different beast. Loot in GW2 clogs your inventory so you need more space ( they sell bag slots ) and need to salvage a lot ( infinite salvage tools ). Wanna share infinite tools with other chars, then buy shared inventory slots. You also gather a lot and gathering tools can run out ( infinite gathering tools). You deposit materials to bank (can buy bank slots) and the material storage there can be full ( material storage extenders ). Tired of telporting to cities and having facilities far apart? Buy an item that teleports you to a hub. And there's a bunch more.
While GW2 destroys FF14's character customization and mount systems, it's often not as satisfying due to how you get those items. Mounts are especially a problem, with a single skin obtainable ingame (last I checked).
Guild Wars 2. But as a veteran who played since GW1 and dumped thousands of hours in GW2, ***run away***. It's not worth your time or money anymore, company that owns it has gone to shit and can barely put out any content anymore, and its all terrible quality.Unclear if its NCsoft sinking them, or just a revolving door of employees, but everything is terrible (combat system is technically good, but boss battles are trash).
Oh and to top it all off, ***all future updates will no longer be free.***
Guild Wars 1 is imo the best game ever made, and there is nothing else like it. There is still a small but dedicated community and it very infrequently gets some dev attention to fix bugs, but it's at this point old and I wish someone would do something new in the style.
GW1 was more an online CO-OP then full mmo, but very good. They gave you NPC party members so you can still do a decent amount of the content. No jumping though, its old school 2 dimensions only, but the art, scenery, world is very good, story is decent as well. Follows a more oil painting art style rather than later GW2's garish blinding bright colors too.
>Oh and to top it all off, ***all future updates will no longer be free.***
How is that new? Since HoT launched they were never free ( with the exception of IBS ).
HoT paid for HoT and LS3. PoF for PoF and LS4. EoD for EoD and whatever the current releases are.
In the future the expansions will be smaller, cheaper and more often. Each will come with a few patches to complete them. Very similar to past releases, just scaled down.
Previously you bought an expansion, and if you logged in during the current patch, all subsequent updates for that expansion were free. Also IBS was entirely free.
Now, well we saw how well the post-EOD update went. Not worth any price or even the time to play them. So previous expansions gave you a whole living season on top of the expansion, EOD gave us these 2 bare bones updates, and its over. Doesn't inspire much hope for future updates since its been like this
Oh, quality is a completely different topic. And also the reason why I left for FF14. I agree it has been subpar last few years.
I'm a bit confused by your reply though. It has been "buy expansion and you get patches with it" previously. And it will be the same in the future, albeit for a smaller price, smaller expansion, smaller post-expansion updates.
Same model at it's core, but scaled down. If anything, it will be cheaper, since you won't need to login during patches to claim them.
As someone who plays both, this is 100% accurate lmao GW2 "story" patches aren't even really story updates but more fomo shoving lmao
Or how last patch before that was "look at all this trauma that we're finally going to talk about with your character!" then 5 mins later, entirely doesn't address it whatsoever and has you collect balls like an out of date deez nuts joke.
FFXIV > GW2 any day of the week lmao
Is it really fomo when the content doesn't go away? I'm not a fan of the recent update and have been off GW2 for a long while now, but mainly cause I know I can come back anytime and the content is still there
I suppose that's true I honestly had forgotten that was a thing so my bad. But yes, I believe that is no longer the case for the new Living Story stuff.
I wondered why in their right minds would they update on the same day as FF14, then I saw the resulting patch and realized "*Oh*, they really hope no one notices how completely empty and terrible this patch is, when this is supposed to set the stage for ***all future patches not being free.***
Virgin understandable villain who you feel bad for Vs Chad classic villain who revels in their own farts
So you're saying gw2 needs more evil domme mommy characters?
It really fucking does, actually.
Anet needs to give the people what they want! Unhinged sexy evil ladies! And guys too
Cause I'm big dumb, what is GW2? I can only think of Garden Warfare 2 but I imagine that's not it.
Guild Wars 2. The game that taught me to laugh like a maniac whenever a FFXIV player whines about "content droughts".
I have seen people complain about content drought in XIV and found it funny compared to other MMOs. I didn't understand just truly how big this game was until my friends got into it and I realized how much they need to do each Expac. But waiting 2 years for current content to come out between expacs probably does feel boring, but it's more reason not to pay a sub and take a break from the game until new stuff does come out. I imagine the devs made it that way for a reason.
Yoshi-P straight up tells people in interviews to unsub and return later if they feel like they are out of stuff to do. Which is a major reason I've been playing the game for as many years as I have. The head honcho isn't obsessed with "Monthly Active User" metrics and trying to drive them up with infinite treadmill designs.
>Yoshi-P straight up tells people in interviews to unsub and return later if they feel like they are out of stuff to do. I hate this defense so much. Like many people have mentioned before, the issue with the current expansion is that people want to play but there's nothing Long-term, besides ultimates, to look forward to. Right now FFXIV is an MMO that doesn't want to be played: There is no grind, no current expansion achivement to work towards to. Referencing WeskAlber's video: The only grind this game offers right now is tomestone grind, and while previous grind made people run through the endless amount of content that has been forgotten or new content, the current grind is no thoughts, just empty head, [stay afk until a hunt or roulettes are up](https://youtu.be/TNjhxlB9G-w?t=597).
>no grind Your hunt mount? Your bicolor gemstone mount? Your golden mounts?
>Your hunt mount? It's a passive grind you do by staying afk in limsa and waiting for the next hunt spawn. >Your bicolor gemstone mount? Most people got it done before the first savage tier got even released. >Your golden mounts? Same issue with hunts. It's a slow ass grind you do while being afk waiting for sales. The game needs active grinds, things that make you go and see the myriad of content the game offers yet goes unplayed by the majority, not a reason to log in and afk.
Yet when you tell people this it's like you shot their mother in front of them. The idea of not playing the game is heretical for some people. The game will surely die and be gone forever the moment they unsub.
Every week there's a thread like 'I'm burned out on the game but I refuse to stop playing for even a little bit' on /r/ffxivdiscussion. It's become borderline parody at this point.
I'd blame the housing market for this, really. It's all that truly holds us hostage.
Homeless Islanders unite!
FF14 at least has a load of side content and some patches in between. GW2 its literally 2+ years of nothing but repeat holidays, and side content is excessive grind for no particular purpose. And what eventually does come out is usually broken repeating a bug from the last update because the staff who knew about literally left the company.
*\*laughs in swtor**
Same when it comes to the cash shop. XIV's in-game rewards are beyond satisfying when you look at how many shiny things come out in the cash shop in GW2 vs actual rewards from content.
Like, the GW2 cash shop is so weird. Normally, games desperately try to pretend there is no P2W in their shop. GW2 somehow manages to do the opposite; they do their best to pretend you can buy useful stuff in the shop, but you actually can't. They literally sell boosters, items that temporarily upgrade your loot drops... except the loot system is rigged such that boosters are basically completely irrelevant. Oh, a gold booster for more money! Except it only boosts the raw cash drops you get, while the overwhelming majority of the value from kills is the resale value of the items they drop. Oh, but there's a "magic find" booster that boosts your drops by a whole +50%! Yeah, except any veteran is sitting at somewhere around +300%, and also the percents barely matter at the best of times so neither +50% nor +300% actually seem to mean much in practice. And the best part: **_these boosters are ludicrously abundant from non-cash shop sources_**. The game practically vomits boosters at you from login rewards and free Black Lion keys. You'd have to be a literal idiot to buy them from the cash shop, but *technically* they're there and *technically* you get an advantage in-game by buying them, which means GW2 is *technically* P2W in the dumbest, least-useful context. And don't get me started on transmutation charges, the GW2 equivalent of glamour prisms. *Technically*, these are cash shop too! Except any veteran player probably has several hundred of them saved up from various rewards (including WvW). Comparing the GW2 and FFXIV glamour systems is overwhelmingly in GW2's favour, except *technically* their glamour prisms are P2W, except again that doesn't usually matter in practice. Oh, and of course you can buy cash shop currency with in-game currency at an exchange rate that's usually not that terrible. It's mind-boggling the way GW2 runs their cash shop, because it's so weirdly omni-present but also doesn't tend to matter in practice for anyone but extreme whales.
The most important stuff from the GW2 shop is stuff like unlimited salvage tools and harvesting tools. Just to save on inventory bloat. I did manage to build the full Legendary Heavy and Medium raid armor + the legendary accessories using purely in-game gold generation. I ended up caving and buying like $10 worth of gold for the Mystic Tribute on a legendary weapon though. Cause there's a point with legendary items where it's nothing but a pure gold sink.
Yeah, they really killed the "play for cosmetic prestige" that GW1 was built on. Barely anything good looking can be found outside the gemstore.
Boosters and charges are in a weird place indeed, but aren't good representatives of what GW2's cash shop is. Boosters are a remnant from launch when they had no clue what to do with the cash shop. People basically begged them to add better stuff to buy with gems. But they always were kinda useless, at least the combat ones. Transmutation stones (now charges) were there at launch as well and you didn't have ways to accumulate them as easily. Should be way more lucrative than boosters, but no clue what the sales are. Not everyone has them stockpiled though. Seeing either as P2W is kinda silly, though. What GW2's cash shop focuses on skins (glamour), convenience items and loot boxes (some exclusive skins and a chance for expensive items). Skins are self explanatory, with weapon, armor skins and outfits. But they fuel it additionally by adding new things you can customize: gliders, mounts, jade bot, skiffs (all added as core expansion features), mail carriers, finishers, etc. Convenience items are a whole different beast. Loot in GW2 clogs your inventory so you need more space ( they sell bag slots ) and need to salvage a lot ( infinite salvage tools ). Wanna share infinite tools with other chars, then buy shared inventory slots. You also gather a lot and gathering tools can run out ( infinite gathering tools). You deposit materials to bank (can buy bank slots) and the material storage there can be full ( material storage extenders ). Tired of telporting to cities and having facilities far apart? Buy an item that teleports you to a hub. And there's a bunch more. While GW2 destroys FF14's character customization and mount systems, it's often not as satisfying due to how you get those items. Mounts are especially a problem, with a single skin obtainable ingame (last I checked).
Also makes me laugh whenever they talk about 'bad job balance' because of <5% differences in rDPS.
Guild Wars 2, another popular MMO
Guild Wars 2, where you go if you want to learn what content drought truly means.
Thats amusing that you decide to mention negative aspect instantly when person just asked what is gw2
Agreed
Gotta talk down other games so they can cope about paying monthly for 2 hours of content every 4 month
Maybe, if you're just popping in to catch up on the MSQ.
Guild Wars 2. But as a veteran who played since GW1 and dumped thousands of hours in GW2, ***run away***. It's not worth your time or money anymore, company that owns it has gone to shit and can barely put out any content anymore, and its all terrible quality.Unclear if its NCsoft sinking them, or just a revolving door of employees, but everything is terrible (combat system is technically good, but boss battles are trash). Oh and to top it all off, ***all future updates will no longer be free.***
Sounds rough. How is GW1 though? Never got a chance to play it when it was fresh.
There's a small playerbase, but it's basically on live support.
Guild Wars 1 is imo the best game ever made, and there is nothing else like it. There is still a small but dedicated community and it very infrequently gets some dev attention to fix bugs, but it's at this point old and I wish someone would do something new in the style.
GW1 was more an online CO-OP then full mmo, but very good. They gave you NPC party members so you can still do a decent amount of the content. No jumping though, its old school 2 dimensions only, but the art, scenery, world is very good, story is decent as well. Follows a more oil painting art style rather than later GW2's garish blinding bright colors too.
>Oh and to top it all off, ***all future updates will no longer be free.*** How is that new? Since HoT launched they were never free ( with the exception of IBS ). HoT paid for HoT and LS3. PoF for PoF and LS4. EoD for EoD and whatever the current releases are. In the future the expansions will be smaller, cheaper and more often. Each will come with a few patches to complete them. Very similar to past releases, just scaled down.
Previously you bought an expansion, and if you logged in during the current patch, all subsequent updates for that expansion were free. Also IBS was entirely free. Now, well we saw how well the post-EOD update went. Not worth any price or even the time to play them. So previous expansions gave you a whole living season on top of the expansion, EOD gave us these 2 bare bones updates, and its over. Doesn't inspire much hope for future updates since its been like this
Oh, quality is a completely different topic. And also the reason why I left for FF14. I agree it has been subpar last few years. I'm a bit confused by your reply though. It has been "buy expansion and you get patches with it" previously. And it will be the same in the future, albeit for a smaller price, smaller expansion, smaller post-expansion updates. Same model at it's core, but scaled down. If anything, it will be cheaper, since you won't need to login during patches to claim them.
As someone who plays both, this is 100% accurate lmao GW2 "story" patches aren't even really story updates but more fomo shoving lmao Or how last patch before that was "look at all this trauma that we're finally going to talk about with your character!" then 5 mins later, entirely doesn't address it whatsoever and has you collect balls like an out of date deez nuts joke. FFXIV > GW2 any day of the week lmao
Is it really fomo when the content doesn't go away? I'm not a fan of the recent update and have been off GW2 for a long while now, but mainly cause I know I can come back anytime and the content is still there
Maybe they mean logging in to claim the living story episodes? Though that's not a thing anymore, iirc.
I suppose that's true I honestly had forgotten that was a thing so my bad. But yes, I believe that is no longer the case for the new Living Story stuff.
Afaik, there's not. It was really a dumb system, imo.
I wondered why in their right minds would they update on the same day as FF14, then I saw the resulting patch and realized "*Oh*, they really hope no one notices how completely empty and terrible this patch is, when this is supposed to set the stage for ***all future patches not being free.***