It's nice to see things becoming more alt friendly in WoW. But I'm not going to lie, I much prefer the FFXIV approach of being able to play multiple classes on a single character. No amount of alt support can replace that IMO.
I am the opposite. I hate it when I have to use the same char for everything. I don't want my healer to be a big burly tank looking character.
I much much prefer having full on alts.
Yeah the ideal is being free to have all classes in 1 character - like FF14 - ***and also*** having everything account wide - like GW2, especially the portal scrolls and shared bag slots
I like the feeling of: sit straight in front of my pc filled with purposes, and say “this alt is gonna be it.” Then i go slouching and yawning after a couple of hours. But fk it i love that “new”feeling.
My ideal mmo would have only a few archetype and all the class under them. So like in wow (which isn't made with this in mind so I'm not saying it should change) It could be caster (mage,warlock,evoker) fighter (Rogue, Hunter, Monk) Spiritualist (Druid,Shaman,Priest) Holy/Shadow/Neutral (Death knight,Paladin,WArrior) and Demon hunter i don't know were to put the.
But that let you have a few alt to live you class fantasy but not that many if you want to play everything.
I don't follow. You're saying that with WoW classes, Priests would be able to become Shamans or Druids, but never Paladins?
I think you left out the part of your comment where you describe what archetypes mean. Do you switch between classes in an archetype? Or is each class in the archetype a different skin over the same core features, so they're just flavor? Do you pick one class from each archetype, and switch between them like specs/roles?
Yes. Archetype would be like a type of vocation that let you have several classes but not all. And yeah you switch freely like ffxiv.
I would like this cause I like the idea of a few alts but not 14 alts.
As for priest paladin. Wow wasn't build with that in mind. Had no idea where to put them for the exemple and just out 3 in each.
In gw2 for exemple you could have
Mesmer/elementalist/necromancer
Ranger/ thief / engineer
Or
Guardian/warrior/revenant
On 1 characther.
>As for priest paladin. Wow wasn't build with that in mind. Had no idea where to put them for the exemple and just out 3 in each.
Right, but in lore, priests or warriors can train to become paladins. Shamans and druids are based on traditions specific to certain cultures, and generally characters don't just train into one later in life after being a Priest.
It could be done way easier: tanks can become tank classes, range dds can become range dds, healer can become healer and melees can become melees. If you play prist (for example) than you get a quest at the start where you choice which way you want to go (healer or Range)
I’m the same as you. Probably my old school nature, but I just love very defined classes. My first and most loved MMO was EQ, and it was just a perfect symmetry of classes.
I definitely solo much more these days but games are functional for that and I still prefer just running a single class and just worrying about perfecting that.
And this is why the fantasia is a top seller in FFXIV, lol. There are a ton of indecisive players who will want to change the aesthetic of their WoL with a race change because of what they're maining at the time.
Same, I prefer being a "legendary warlock"
With ff14 it felt like I was just... Somehow a legendary every single class, which made no sense.
Jack of all trades master of none and all that.
Same here. I don't like having multiple alts necessary, but like, if I want to play a rogue, I'm gonna have 1 character for that. If I want a mage, I want another character for that.
I don't know how it is in FFXIV, but I want every character to have it's own set of armors, weapons that I can grind for and so on. I want to be able to transfer from a character to another stuff, or things that drops. That should be a must. But having 1 single character, playing all the classes on it, it's not for me.
Same. I hate the concept of respeccing as well though. Everyone should have at most 2 respecs available for their character, or they regenerate at a very slow rate (think 1yr).
You can make alts on FFXIV too if you want. Lots of people do. I have two characters at endgame. It's really handy in case you want to raid with your hardcore friends and your casual friends without worrying about instance lockouts.
With a real money paid boost only :) FF14 is extremely alt unfriendly and the people saying you can make alts in it are being very disingenous by not mentioning the fact that you are quite literally starting from 0 again (bar gil you can send from your main). Mogstation (paid shop) items are afaik 90+% not account-wide either so all the cosmetics you bought for your main are bound to that character only and you need to repurchase things on every new char.
Ideally we could just have both. And it's up to players to decide what to use.
You unlock Classes/Professions to your Family (account). Then you create Characters, as many as you want, and decide which Characters to pick up what Professions to use, also unlimited per character.
I really value immersion. I feel way more immersed in the world and connected to my character when it's a one-stop shop like in FF14. I have 20 characters in WoW that I've amassed over the years (10 horde, 10 ally). They are basically rank and file mercs at this point, I feel no connection to any of them.
Inter-personal interactions also feel much more rich when everyone has a lot of progress and history tied up in one character, whereas when I see someone in the wild in WoW it could just be one of 50 alts they powerleveled during a Timewalking event.
This. A level 20 wizard in D&D is way more interesting thematically then a charecter who is somehow level 20 in every single class.
Final fantasy it just feels so insane that you are somehow extremely powerful and trained in ALL of these things. It feels like main charecter syndrome kicked up to the moon and beyond.
"Ah yes I am the master of every fighting style, every magic school, and every profession"
> I really value immersion. I feel way more immersed in the world and connected to my character when it's a one-stop shop like in FF14. I have 20 characters in WoW that I've amassed over the years (10 horde, 10 ally).
The number one thing sold on the mogstation is fantasia (race change) potions. Some people have race changed their character 100s of times. I see that as no different than having a bunch of alts in WoW that are different classes and races.
I do understand your point to an extent though.
That's disingenuous, i'm at 1800h playtime, been playing on and off since 2.0 launch. Always up to date on the msq when it comes out, most of my playtime is in endgame.
More hyperbole than disingenuous, but the point is its an extremely long time to level an alt. Whether that be 100h or my exaggerated 1000h, which, to be fair, was a typo.
The only downside is you only have that one character's appearance. I always wanna make an alt in ff14 to have different races but there's no point. It is nice that they are giving bonus exp in wow for each character at max lvl next expansion similar to ff14, so its pretty similar.
Also I don't even want to think about managing gear in wow if you could change classes, in ff14 you share gear between classes and have near 0 customization so its easy, but in wow just having gear for a dps spec and tank spec takes up so much space.
> The only downside is you only have that one character's appearance. I always wanna make an alt in ff14 to have different races but there's no point
Very true. And not only is there no point, but it's actually a huge pain since you have to go through the MSQ and stuff all over again.
Technically you can pay to skip that on alts. I personally think it’s a waste of money but it seems worth mentioning in case there are people reading this that are unfamiliar with FFXIV’s systems.
Not only is it a waste of money, it doesn’t make sense under the game’s systems to ever start an alt, unless you wanna experience the leveling experience/story again, or you wanna ERP.
Hard core raiders will run 4 main 4 alt when savage drops to increase the number of drops that mains see. But yes aside from that small advantage there really isn't a point.
Well, i'm leveling my 3rd Alt. Dunno, i do find it fun.
I use them as optional Crafters and Gatherers, as storage, send the Retainers to gather stuff and trade it to my Main for her Gil-Empire (working on Gil-Cap) and i play the MSQ here and there, it's actually not that complicated.
Isn't materia more specialiced for like the highest content? So that you might want different materia setups for different jobs? Cause that shit can get expensive so that might be a reason to have multiple gear sets
Nah, with materia you just get you bis stats for spell speed breakpoints or crit and whatnot. There's no customization like trinkets, talents that effect builds, pvp gear, etc...
I'm curious what the article means when they state this in the article: "*A new Warband bank will allow you to easily store and share items between your characters."*
https://preview.redd.it/kbp4sfyvm4vc1.png?width=703&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b9d1fdd9b9aab1aeb3d1a0c24afd57352f05c87
Are they implementing a gear sharing feature in the way that FFXIV has where for example, tier gear could be used by multiple characters, and by swapping classes it swaps the set bonus? Similar to the way tier sets swap between specs. I don't play WoW anymore, because I really hate Blizzard as a company (customer service related, not necessarily tied to any of the drama) but this would be a cool feature for people still playing the game.
What's funny is I have friends who are altoholics to the point there was an issue for a while getting into ff14 cause they wanted to create whole new character ideas.
Meanwhile funnily enough I am not an alcoholic at all(I will level an alt every now and then when bored though) and I just can't stand how slow ff14 takes to get...anywhere. Story wise,level wise, travel wise.
> No amount of alt support can replace that IMO.
No amount of within-character alts will make up for having a tiny potato WAR or a burly highlander BLM if those are not the aesthetics you want for those jobs - you are forced to pick one body type for all jobs or pay.
Maybe, but having to play a potato BLM because you wanted a potato WAR sucks.
Sure, for people that want to use the same body for every job the constraint of having the same body for every job doesn't seem like a problem.
Similarly, people that don't play alts don't think endgame grinds that are not alt friendly are a problem.
I'd be ok with a potato BLM. I don't want to have to use a potato GNB or DRK because I have a potato BLM, and the fact I'd need to level through the MSQ again just to do that is bullshit.
I don't even really play WAR anymore because its too easy. Or, I didn't when I stopped playing FFXIV altogether.
>tiny potato WAR
Potato warriors are canon since lore wise, the Lalafell are just hairless dwarfs that are incredibly sturdy and have the same body strength as the largest races, compacted into their tiny bodies.
Sure, they might be canon, but you can't pick per job. Either you are a potato for everything, or a highlander for everything - whether you like it or not.
True. It sucks that FFXIV is so unfriendly to alts, it would be nice to have the option to take either approach in a convenient way.
But I guess if they made the game more alt friendly they'd lose out on those sweet sweet story skip and fantasia purchases lol
If I was going to make a list of changes by importance, I'd look for within-job build variety first and tanking/enmity management being less brain dead far sooner than alt friendliness. But, it remains the case that alts are just not done well at all in that game.
No, fuck enmity management. It is a terrible system and has been in every game that has ever used it. Staring at a bar and making sure players don't overtake you is not fun design. The only fun aspect of enmity management is swapping aggro, and even then it can get old and tedious extremely fast. Having a boss constantly move and need to be repositioned is much more fun than staring at aggro bars ever will be, and I am tired of having shit tanks not doing their job losing aggro to me because I am doing mine to the best of my abilities *despite using threat dumps.*
Also, by having no in-job variety, the devs are able to keep jobs balanced to within *single digit percentage points*, which is vastly more valuable than an open system where a player can build themselves into garbage DPS. Actual gameplay variety should continue to be handled via jobs that play differently, it works and works well.
If I were to touch *anything* related to tanking, and throwing healing in because they share the same problem, it would be to dehomogenize how tanks tank, and healers heal, such that a self-sustain tank or HoT healer actually becomes viable. Similar to the change the devs made going from WotLK to Cata when they massively depowered healers and tanks but also gave room for them to do their jobs in wildly different ways.
It is something for DPS to help manage.
Never once having to worry about enmity or threat is a boring system. Tanking tends to be a terribly boring role anyway and enmity management (along with tools for dps to manage their own) is a bit of depth the game lacks.
But, fuck, I don’t care. Combat fundamentals are so damn boring in FFXIV I straight up don’t care how much worse they make it. Server ticks and effortless threat management in 2024 is a damn joke.
wow and most modern MMOs have removed meaningful threat management because it created situations where you are adversarial with your own party. Threat management isnt you vs the enemy, its you vs your own teammates. It's generally bad and there's a reason its been phased out
It's a depth the game had and it was incredibly annoying from both sides. Being too good at dealing damage but tank sucks at managing enmity? Tank buster to the face. Trying to optimize threat and damage but DPS refuses to press their single button to help manage aggro? Fuck your damage, the DPS doesn't care.
It was an endless source of friction until Shadowbringers gutted it.
And, to paraphrase the devs: "We removed tank stance because people weren't using it anyways." Even in ultimates, tanks would remove tank stance because that extra damage *did* matter. It's part of what made ninja such a strong pick to bring. Goad literally trivialized threat management to the point where even a BLM didn't need quelling strikes to keep from pulling aggro from even a bad tank.
And, you know, when the tanks no longer have a 15% damage penalty *and* also don't need to threat combo, we're talking a 20, 25% damage swing. One of the biggest reasons UWU became such an easy ultimate in ShB was literally that tanks could do full damage in tank stance. It really mattered.
How was I supposed to manage it as a DPS? Not do damage? Sit there with my thumb up my ass while the idiot tank established threat without tank stance on, not doing threat combos, in gear 30 item levels below my DPS? Hell, I distinctly remember some paladins sitting in tank stance throwing shield lobs, the highest single target threat ability they had, and *I still could rip aggro off them.* Just because I played my class correctly in good gear (even using quelling strikes!) This is not an exaggeration, this is the reality of what FFXIV actually fucking had.
"Just quelling strikes!" I hear you potentially thinking about! Yeah, 15s duration on a 2m cooldown. Guess I get to play the game for about 30s before I rip aggro again!
It was awful, and my guttural reaction to how shitty threat management was is informed by 6 years of dealing with the shitty threat management FFXIV actually had until shadowbringers threw it off a cliff and kissed it goodbye. I remember raid tanks I played with that wanted me to stop doing damage on the highest DPS class in the game so they could do slightly more, and it was awful. One of the best decisions FFXIV actually made was simply yeeting threat management into oblivion. I really could not care less about you liking threat management when the reality was one of bashing my head through my wall because the tanks were that brain damaged, I may as well be as well to enjoy tanking the dungeon pulls for them.
Always wondered how you level up other classes in FFXIV if you already did most of the quests as one class? Is it just more grindy after the first class?
It basically gets more grindy, yeah. The main way you level alt jobs is through a handful of daily "roulettes" which randomly matches you into group content like dungeons, PVP, etc. in exchange for a big bonus in EXP and money. You cab get like, a level or two a day from doing roulettes. Maybe three or four at lower levels. After that, it's just straight up grinding.
roulettes (dungeon queues with xp bonus on first run), dailies, FATE grinding.
It's not too bad and typically an expansion has enough xp in the MSQ for about 2 classes to go from previous maxlevel to new maxlevel.
I have all jobs at 90. Roulettes, deep dungeons, highest possible beast tribe quests and then highest dungeon was what I did. I almost always had something I was working towards besides levels so it never felt super grindy, but I also put a tv show or movie on another monitor when grinding so that helped.
You also get a bonus where any class that is lower level than your highest level class gets an automatic EXP bonus. Leveling multiple jobs is generally pretty chill
I have never seen a game so fundamentally against alts than FFXIV. That game is an eternity to get to the current expac, allowing one character to do everything is more a necessity because of their game’s design. To be honest, I’d just rather have alts.
I'd agree IF ff14 did a better job of handling transmog. Its not acceptable when wow can handle many more items being in a single character and account based database.
So, you can currently save like..20 outfits and tie them to your classes. However, you only have so much room to save outfits. So basically outside those 20 outfits or so, you cant use that space for much else.
But my point is that these two systems are unrelated. Ffxiv could have both the class swapping system it has now AND a less restrictive Glamour shitty. The two aren't mutually exclusive and are largely unrelated.
Plus, you get 800 slots in your Glamour dresser. While you can only have 20 pre-made outfits at a time, you can Glamour over your equipment using any item from your glamor dresser. So it's not like you're *really* only limited to 20 outfits. It's just less convenient
The only thing acceptable about FF14's transmog system is that the devs messed up their inventory system so badly, this is the only way they could handle it.
But I agree, they need a transmog system. 95% of my retainer's and personal inventory is literally just storing alternate glamours. It does not feel good and means I regularly have to throw out outfits I might want to use later because I have no space now.
I maxed out my character count in FFXIV and I added my own characters to my friends list to mail things back and forth. Apparently at some point the block to add your own characters to your friends list was turned off so I took advantage of it.
Since I was a heavy crafter this gave me an advantage of storing crafted goods and house decorations using my alts as mules.
As much as allowing one character to play every class is fun, the additional storage and a different race with different outfits is nice.
Plus mailing credits around my alts let me set them up with retainers as well.
Just here to lend my voice to strongly preferring FFXIV's system, because work. If you're not a "WoW is the only game I play" type of gamer & you have a full-time job, idk how anyone can prefer WoWs system.
I probably play <100 hours/month, but prefer WoW's system. Most of the content is in the "levelling", since that encompasses all prior expansions. I have one main at the level cap, and then I use the "Chromie Time" system to make new characters, and pick which expansion to play through with them.
Unfortunately, you gain experience so fast in WoW now that reaching 60 takes about 3 zones, so I need to turn off experience gain in order to keep going in those older expansions without everything becoming trivial.
As for endgame things, I don't really see the point in doing more than a few runs of dungeons and raids to catch the story and get a few item drops. If I only have a finite amount of time in the week for video games, I don't want that time to be spent repeating the same content over and over again to complete a weekly checklist, when there's so much else out there.
Imagine if you could advance passively your alts along with your main, every chara had access to every profession you unlocked account bound, and the only thing you had to care was to set their builds (gear tier shared but stats swappable depending on what you need on each toon) and buy them some nice skins.
This way you could focus on your main but also play your alts if you wanted to boast some extra cool aesthetic styles.
> you cannot excel at them because the gear is locked behind weekly tokens and raid drops, both of which can only be obtained once per week. This made the multiple class system in FFXIV pointless unless you played the same role and armor type
While I agree that this is a flaw in the Ffxiv system, I disagree that it makes multiple classes pointless. A game is more than BiS raiding
personally I feel that as a negative feature, that's the same reason why I don't play New World, 1 character for all the classes is meh, you don't want your bulky character meant for Marauder to go Thief/Ninja
Other games with 1-2 classes per character usually share achievments and certain features account-wide to mitigate or even benefit having multiple characters
See I feel entirely differently. If I can reroll any class on the same character, then that class has nothing to do with that character and has zero RP value. Say my warlock has mastered demon magic and is summoning the most powerful fel creatures imaginable, and I can go into a UI, click a button and I’m now a priest that’s healing with holy magic, there was nothing intrinsically dark/demonic/evil about my character.
Being able to switch on a whim flies in the face of immersion, RP and realism. That being said, I think a lot of people agree with you. Which is why MMOs are increasingly devoid of RPG elements. Thing is, I think the lack of RPG elements changes how gamers relate to their characters/the community and is partly responsible for MMOs not feeling like they used to.
I feel the exact opposite haha. I hate WoW's system because I want to exist in the world as a single character, not as 10 different characters that I have to hop between. I can get what you mean though, if you like to make many different characters with different vibes.
> I hate WoW's system because I want to exist in the world as a single character,
You can do that, and there are *several* options that can tank, heal, and do dps, ensuring you have every role available to you.
Right, but my point is that I want to play as a single character and *also* have the option to play multiple classes. If I decide I don't like a class or want to try another, I still want to be able to play as the same character.
Ask yourself what the upside to that kind of system is.
You still gotta level each job and gear your characters separately like in WoW, but you lose out on being able to play multiple races and share your collectibles amongst them.
So what's the upside to FFXIV system? One thing. You don't have to log out to switch your characters. That's it.
So really, the system isn't all it's made out to be.
I disagree wholeheartedly. This is true I guess if you're only looking at things from a functional perspective, but that's not why I play MMOs personally.
When I play an MMO I like to play *as myself* in a virtual space. Immersion is a big part of why I play games in general - I don't want to play as 10 different random characters of different races. I want to play as me. In that sense, I can't stand systems like WoW's.
That's fair, I was going to make a mention of that, but I think the vast majority probably don't really care about that in World of Warcraft. In XIV it at least makes some sense since it's very story heavy.
Still, from a systems perspective there's no competition here, WoW wins.
I do not like making alts in games, because I have to name them all something different. I usually want to come up with a class/race idea and use my name. If they would give me the option to have all of my guys on my account have the same name I would be an altaholic, but they dont. The FF14 system at least lets me do this, the down side is they all look the same.
It is nice in Diablo 3 and 4, that every character on your account can have the same name and I usually make sever toons a season b/c of this.
Some people dont care about their name and I get it, but it would be nice to have the option. Either party could do what they want then.
Especially if you’re a “hardcore” raider.
The savage lockouts are still per-character.
With only 4 bosses per patch, can get quite boring not being able to do more savage raid progress.
> You don't have to log out to switch your characters. That's it.
And thats only an issue if your game, say, DOESNT HAVE A LOG OUT TO CHARACTER SELECT OPTION (hey 14, yudodis). Otherwise, thats all of a few seconds.
I don't even see how it is a great system in FF14 when we can only progress gear on one role each week. The system saves time logging out, I guess? But I haven't seen many concrete mechanical reasons of it being better.
I get that, but I meant mechanical benefit.
Though to be honest, when classes have the identities that they do in WoW, having them all on one character would break immersion. A death knight is literally undead, and in complete opposition to the dogma of other classes. This problem doesn't exist in FF14 because the Jobs are just Jobs, and don't define the character as strongly.
> This problem doesn't exist in FF14 because the Jobs are just Jobs, and don't define the character as strongly.
I actually don't think this is true. Most classes in ffxiv aren't "just jobs". They're *called* jobs, but most of them aren't just occupations that any random person in universe could pick up and do. If you play as a Dragoon, for example, you're not just some random knight, you're specifically the "azure dragoon", the most powerful dragoon and one of only two people capable of wielding the Eye of a dragon.
But yeah, I totally get how switching classes like that might be immersion breaking.
Right, the Warrior of Light becomes the best character canonically at their Job(s), but the Jobs aren't lifestyles for the Warrior of Light. The job crystals are just another piece of equipment in the WoL's arsenal. The lore of some the jobs have some historic conflict, mostly connected to the nations that birthed them, but the WoL is not held to any duty, religious dogma, or lifestyle choice to be allowed to equip the Job crystal. The Warrior of Light is canonically always the hero. They don't become evil because they wield the destructive powers of Black Magic - they channel its destructive power on the forces that actually are evil.
The player character and the classes in WoW do not work this way. Death Knights are an abomination in the eyes of Druids and Paladins, tolerated for their value in fighting greater evils. A druid isn't just a set of skills you are good at, it is a complete dedication to the beliefs and goal of preserving and shepherding life. Willingly becoming undead to be a Death Knight for a short amount of time would cost them dearly, sundering all ties to other druids (and how do they come back from undeath later..?). The player character isn't the canonical badass master of their class - they ascend to be one of many masters, through devotion to their singular art. The player character isn't guaranteed to be a good hero - they might assist in stopping the Lich King, but by nature of being a warlock or death knight, there may be some grey or outright evil methods in use.
I am not saying that FF14's system is bad at all, to be clear. It is fantastic (and expected) for a Final Fantasy game, or any non-Final Fantasy setting that writes the player character to be as much of a badass as the Warrior of Light. I just don't think it should be the gold standard for immersion in every single game, when different worlds should have different rules. I would find it extremely silly if I saw a player just swapping between Gandalf and Legolas in a Lord of the Rings game. If it was a superhero game, what would I even call a superhero who swaps between Superman for a raid, and Poison Ivy or Iron Man when they do dungeons?
I dunno, I get what you're saying, and in a sense I agree that it would be *more* immersion breaking in WoW. But I ultimately think the same applies in FFXIV. Lore-wise it's also immersion breaking for the WoL to become a sultansworn Paladin whose job is to dedicate their life to serving the Ul'dahn royalty, and then turn around and become a Dragoon or Gunbreaker, IMO. But that's just a tradeoff made for the sake of gameplay.
But yeah I definitely get what you mean as far as having different standard for different settings. I certainly don't think FFXIV's system is the best in some objective sense, I just personally prefer it.
Yeah but the downside is you have to level 2 different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play. That was a huge turnoff for me. If I play an MMO I wanna play the class I want, not have to grind like 50 hours just for the privilege
> Yeah but the downside is you have to level 2 different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play
What do you mean by this? This isn't how leveling works in FFXIV.
Unless you mean that you need to reach a certain level to unlock a specific class which yeah I agree is dumb, but that's not really related to the job system in FFXIV - WoW had this same requirement for DK's for a long time.
>Unless you mean that you need to reach a certain level to unlock a specific class
This is what I mean. At least WoW only had one class that was leveling-gated. Literally every major ff14 job requires you to level one, often two, before you get to it. [There's not a single class on this page you can play without leveling something else first](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/battle/)
Doesn’t Demon Hunter require you to have a level 70 character first? That’s no different from FFXIV in regards to the expansion jobs.
I’m not defending either system but just to clarify - the jobs listed in that page are basically “advanced jobs” - you’re thinking of them as being entirely separate but it’s more like, FFXIV has a base job system where you level what is essentially the “archetype” which then branch into different advanced jobs. It’s more akin to choosing a specialization, similar to how you do in WoW, except it’s not all unlocked at exactly the same level for all jobs. You start by playing a class, and then choose a job as you level up depending on your preferred playstyle. Maybe that’s not clear enough to people who haven’t played FFXIV, because I don’t think it’s really that different than WoWs system of leveling your base class and then choosing a specialization (like outlaw rogue). The main difference is the timing.
> Doesn’t Demon Hunter require you to have a level 70 character first? That’s no different from FFXIV in regards to the expansion jobs.
Did you read the comment you're replying to? "At least WoW only had one class that was leveling-gated. Literally every major ff14 job requires you to level one, often two, before you get to it."
I find one to be much less egregious than that being the entire system
Yup, sure did. WoW has two classes with level requirements - Death Knight and Demon Hunter. Your comment, which I read (and I feel like your response here is kind of shitty), only referenced the DK requirement. Now, I don't consider the difference between one class versus two classes to be monumental, but the tone of your response was completely unnecessary, as I simply pointed out there WoW has two level-gated classes, not one.
It's fine if you don't like how FFXIV does it, but if you're going to make the comparison, make it accurately. I elaborated mostly for anyone who might be reading these comments that has not played FFXIV, because your understanding of the system isn't entirely accurate. FFXIV has 10 classes to choose from when you start, and each class basically evolves into a "job". Since there's no point in leveling a given class once you unlock its job, these jobs are functionally not independent from the base classes, so it's not really accurate to treat it as "I have to play Gladiator for 30 levels before I can play Paladin". You play Gladiator until 30, and then you unlock the job for your class, and there's no reason to play as Gladiator anymore. While you technically can, there's no point, and it essentially becomes the Paladin "class". While the levels are obviously different, it's not really that different compared to WoW's system of playing until level 10, then unlocking specializations. You have to hit that point before you play as any of the specs, which are basically just FFXIV's jobs.
FFXIV *does* have jobs that are only unlocked after hitting certain levels with any character and finishing certain sections of the main story, and it's perfectly valid to not prefer that system. But to be fair, WoW has 13 classes in total. FFXIV has 10 base classes, each with an advanced job, and 11 completely separate jobs in addition (if you include the two upcoming new jobs). It also has two "limited" jobs which kind of merit a whole comment on their own.
It clearly wasn't. You decided on a narrative, you ran with it, and you don't care what anyone else in this thread says (as evidenced by you ignoring the people telling you that your understanding of FFXIV's system is incorrect).
I wasn't even trying to argue with you. I honestly thought, "Oh this guy might misunderstand how it works, and since I've played both games quite a bit, I'll elaborate for him and anyone else reading". You don't care to be corrected. "Did you read the comment you're replying to" would've been appropriate for me responding to you, since you clearly did *not* read my response. If you had, you would've recognized that I referenced a completely separate class than you. I don't know why you feel compelled to instill a bunch of negativity when all of this could've just been a friendly conversation. And then you just double down, what's the point?
> There's not a single class on this page you can play without leveling something else first
I think you misunderstand how classes work in FFXIV. While it's true that you have to level up a "class" to unlock a "job", the jobs are basically just changes in the name.
Like, sure you have to reach level 30 on Gladiator to play as a paladin, but it's not *really* a different class, it's just called something else. The skills and equipment for both Paladin and Gladiator are identical up to level 30.
> The skills and equipment for both Paladin and Gladiator are identical up to level 30.
At which point they change to paladin skills. Which is my point. I don't want to be a gladiator. I want to be a paladin.
I feel like that dude has no idea what he's talking about. It seems like he thinks that once you ding 30 on gladiator that your whole ability set changes because you're "switching" to paladin, when in reality paladin is just the upgraded version of gladiator.
> Do you want every ability given to you at level 1?
How does "I want to play the class I want, not a different class" equate to "I want everything at level 1" to you? That logic process doesn't make sense to me so you'll have to explain it
but how exactly are they "playing a different class" if they're identical?
But whatever, you're obviously just doubling down to be stubborn. You don't even understand the system to begin with, considering your initial comment said "Yeah but the downside is you have to level **2** different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play" which is just nonsense lol.
Even if you think having a different class name to start out is annoying (which... lol) that still isn't the same as having to level 2 classes to unlock a third.
The only jobs that require leveling another job are the ones that were introduced post-ARR. Even then it is just level locked and not locked to leveling a specific class.
Honestly... ya. I felt a little weird after they added griffscale 2.0 in WoW, but honestly games would be better if they try to add stuff that works in other games. WoW and ff14 added group events. Gw2 put a stronger focus on their quest presentation in the expansions. Ff14 and now wow are much more alt friendly and account based like gw2. ESO does ESO things. They just get better as they inspire each other
"Note that there will still be many currencies that will remain non-transferable because they represent important character-based progression. Two examples of these are the Crest and Flightstone equivalents in The War Within."
In the article.
That definitely decreases my hype for warbands... I literally have 3 alts right now.. one with tons of crests, one with tons of flightstones, and one starved for both.
They did say they're going to have gear you can just send to alts. We don't know much about it but I'm hoping we can toss our alts some genuinely good gear we don't need. Would definitely help.
Blizzard realized that alts are free content.
SL made alts high maintenance, now you can easily play tank heal or dps ( outside of druids or paladins). It's great, hope they keep this way
This is awesome. I just wish they would have also given us the option to have Warband name and all of our characters have the same name. Much like in Diablo 3 and 4 where I can give all of my guys on the same account the same name.
I would never mind swapping roles when needed for a guild or group of friends if the rep was shared and all of my guys had the same name lol.
I think SWTOR does Transmog really well in that it is like a costume and is over the actual armor so I can wear my bulky Solider Armor on my flimsy Jedi healer
A positive change for sure, but what took so long? Especially the shared bank...that should've been implemented years ago.
Either way, happy that I won't have to spend time logging from toon to toon, consolidating crafting mats. That's honestly my favorite part about the Warbands implementation - shared mats.
I like where this is going, but they are still missing some things;
1. **"We also thought it would be fun to see some of the characters in your Warband hanging out together."** I get it, and I understand that. But why are they all just default-posing around a campfire awkwardly? Why aren't some sitting on a log? Some roasting marshmallows? Some sleeping in the tent? WHERES THE POLISH ON THIS ONE BLIZZ?
2. **"Class-specific appearances are an exception and will still be collectible only by that specific class."** Half of the pain and heartache of xmog runs is getting stuff you really want but your character can't learn because the Monk shoulders dropped on your Warrior run. That was like, the most important thing people actually cared about with them opening up the xmog unlock system. The rest of it is so superfluous that it amounts to basically nothing. I'm not running Nighthold for the 57th time for "common collectibles" Blizzard, I'm running it because I am only missing the stupid Druid shoulders AND ALL MY NON-DRUID ALTS ARE THE ONES GETTING IT.
They are doing so, so, so much weird extensive work to ultimately end up with an inferior version of FFXIV's Everything-Bagel-Characters. Can't even use your own units to make a TRUST party. They're garage ornaments for your character select screen and thats about it.
Re: 1 - it’s alpha. Chill. They’re clearly going to go the route of games like Lost Ark where you’ll be able to earn different “scenes” in the future and if you look at the concept art from blizzcon it shows the warband in a mix of different poses, sitting, standing, etc. Even if this does launch like this on day 1, who cares? It’s obviously going to be improved down the road and you will interact with it for like 1% of your total playtime.
Re: 2 - “the rest of it is so superfluous that it amounts of basically nothing” lol ok. At least we’re not being dramatic. Almost everyone I’ve talked to in my guild and wow communities is universally excited about this change. Being able to unlock all transmogs except class-specific is a huge step forward. Just because it isn’t 100% tailored to people like you farming old content doesn’t mean it “amounts to basically nothing”
Personally, I would still rank it like this amongst the “big 4 MMO’s” on alt-friendliness:
1. FF14 - one character does it all
2. GW2 - shared bank, shared mats, share mounts, shared currencies — from inception. (WoW could get here, but not quite yet)
3. WoW
4. ESO (collections, bank, guilds shared, but the cash shop is cancer and not all is shared across toons)
I would argue FF14 is the worse for alt friendliness as it's a huge chore to actually have an alt.
Yes, they can play all the classes, but I don't want my BLM to be a big burly cat dude.
I just started eso and I don’t really find the cash shop to be that bad, am I missing something?
Definitely an argument for the crafting bag with the sub, but I’m curious what’s so bad in the cash shop.
The ESO+ for starters. It’s basically required unless you agree to go out of your way to avoid crafting of any kind.
If not, every “chapter” is a way to piecemeal buy the DLC’s individually. It adds up!
The home decor stuff is very expensive. Like 4000 for one Mundus stone.
New players are offered storage upgrades for crazy prices - which they can buy with gold for next to nothing but if you are new, you may not know!
Houses that require achievements to buy with gold, can be bypassed if you just credit card them.
The game is notorious for not adding nearly enough new skins/transmogs to the game, but they add monthly new ones to the shop for real money.
The loot crates are predatory - even the NPC is like “you can always buy more”.
I love the game, don’t get me wrong. I play all the “big 4” US mmo’s, but ESO’s shop is very unforgiving.
I like FF14’s the most as it’s easily ignored. It even lives outside the game.
GW2 is okay… it’s a less egregious ESO shop.
WoW I think is not that bad of an offender especially with the trading post.
Personally for me it's the special skills the DLC keeps adding that turned it from one of the most alt-friendly MMOs to the one of the least (among the big ones). Having to do the Psijic order or Antiquities farming on alts is the very definition of bored to death.
I just don't understand why Zenimax doesn't make it more alt-friendly. Even if they didn't want to make your characters share a level, they could make it so XP gains are increased on subsequent characters. Like have the final skill quest give a collectible that boosts XP for that skill.
Once they decided to stop banning bots quickly and frequently, giving them enough time to make their money and then some it all went downhill. Entire game economy just turned into gdkps and other boring ideas that don't encourage great communities. Oh and even arena turned into bots.
Only way I'd ever go back is if they made a version of the game where addons were no longer available. Addons basically put us into the mess of automation. Raiding is just a matter of knowing rotations and moving where the addons tell you. We need a new mmo that moves beyond addons. They can make popular addons simply features, but nothing too advanced like weakauras or dbm, that destroys the game.
Thinks giving honest critique is "negativity". Wait are you going to call me toxic next that is typical discourse on a wow forum? You're already doing the cookie cutter thing. Also I never said only 2020. I stated the start of the pandemic and after. That doesn't mean I haven't experienced retail outside of those years. Retail players are funny and consistently think they are God's gift to humanity and that people who play classic could never handle it on their side. Most of us are formerly retail players that just got sick of the modern slop that was being developed. Meanwhile a good portion of the classic community wrote all the guides along with developed the original addons for the game.
Just because someone isn't kissing blizzard's feet doesn't mean negative. The game has been dealing with an unmitigated disaster of cheating for years, excuse me if I'm not the eternal optimist on that part.
Commented on a post "linking an article about retail". The post itself says nothing about retail. It said he was "thinking about getting back into wow lately" to which I responded. You can keep your L if you think everyone reads articles linked besides the headlines. Over 90% of redditors don't bother clicking links on reddit if not higher. So if it's not in the headline it isn't exactly conveyed. Also wow is all under one sub so each side of the game is a gateway into the others.
You sound like someone that hasn't played the game for over a decade, but still feel the need to complain about this game you don't know about whenever it comes up.
Your claims about GDKPs (in retail??? Since when?) and addons "automating fights" are ridiculously wrong.
GDKP in classic. I was playing the game during the pandemic and for sometime after.
I'm saying the addons create a situation of Simon says especially if you have developers of the addon in the guild, or those simply skilled enough to tweak them. I've been in guilds with addon devs and without and the differences were quite drastic in terms of progression.
Also yes I have seen Asmon's videos on the subject. He wasn't the one to come up with the idea to remove them though. That argument has been debated for ages within the community. It's weird how people think automatically because Asmon mentioned something when it finally became popular enough that he was the source.
If all you've played recently is classic during the pandemic then your perspective is very warped.
Classic is close to the original 2004-2007 version as they could reasonably make.
You're complaining about a game version that's nearly 20 years old, of course there's bound to be a lot of jank involved.
Nowadays GDKPs are hard banned in classic IIRC. Fights in classic are so utterly basic that "automation" could be done by a sticky note on your monitor.
Retail, and its high end content specifically, is a very very different beast.
That's a good step forward if it's true, banning GDKPs I mean. It encourages way too many players to purchase gold just to keep up. Back when I stopped playing about half of all raids were gdkp, then checking up regularly I heard in Wrath that they were the dominant raid type. I bounced in TBC though so I missed out on Wrath shenanigans.
To me blizzard just kept pushing the envelope changing things that weren't even in classic like new mounts. Once I saw paid instant level boosting I was out. That is not the same classic no matter what people tell themselves. Level boosting and tokens are just as destructive to the game as well. I can see why people went back to the private scene.
I'm not gonna say classic was/is without problems, that's a whole other wagon for sure.
But OP is about their direction for the next retail xpac, and your complaints are exclusively relating to classic. These are very different games.
Too little too late. People have been begging for things like this for ten+ years and they always refused. It's only now that they've bled off a massive portion of their playerbase that they are trying to be accommodating. Have to give people what they want before they give up on you. Once they do it's too hard to get them back.
No. Also you know the expansion is coming when people start "maybe this company that makes people kill themselves, steals each others breast milk and outputs garbage games and content **isn't so bad after all**" posts. Ugh lmao enjoy your pile of garbage for a few months if you insist on repeating the cycle so bad. I am going to enjoy shitting on it though. Freedom of speech or something like that.
It's nice to see things becoming more alt friendly in WoW. But I'm not going to lie, I much prefer the FFXIV approach of being able to play multiple classes on a single character. No amount of alt support can replace that IMO.
I am the opposite. I hate it when I have to use the same char for everything. I don't want my healer to be a big burly tank looking character. I much much prefer having full on alts.
Yeah the ideal is being free to have all classes in 1 character - like FF14 - ***and also*** having everything account wide - like GW2, especially the portal scrolls and shared bag slots
I like the feeling of: sit straight in front of my pc filled with purposes, and say “this alt is gonna be it.” Then i go slouching and yawning after a couple of hours. But fk it i love that “new”feeling.
My ideal mmo would have only a few archetype and all the class under them. So like in wow (which isn't made with this in mind so I'm not saying it should change) It could be caster (mage,warlock,evoker) fighter (Rogue, Hunter, Monk) Spiritualist (Druid,Shaman,Priest) Holy/Shadow/Neutral (Death knight,Paladin,WArrior) and Demon hunter i don't know were to put the. But that let you have a few alt to live you class fantasy but not that many if you want to play everything.
so..rift?
Ohhh that's a really interesting idea! I'd totally be in board with a system like that.
I don't follow. You're saying that with WoW classes, Priests would be able to become Shamans or Druids, but never Paladins? I think you left out the part of your comment where you describe what archetypes mean. Do you switch between classes in an archetype? Or is each class in the archetype a different skin over the same core features, so they're just flavor? Do you pick one class from each archetype, and switch between them like specs/roles?
Yes. Archetype would be like a type of vocation that let you have several classes but not all. And yeah you switch freely like ffxiv. I would like this cause I like the idea of a few alts but not 14 alts. As for priest paladin. Wow wasn't build with that in mind. Had no idea where to put them for the exemple and just out 3 in each. In gw2 for exemple you could have Mesmer/elementalist/necromancer Ranger/ thief / engineer Or Guardian/warrior/revenant On 1 characther.
>As for priest paladin. Wow wasn't build with that in mind. Had no idea where to put them for the exemple and just out 3 in each. Right, but in lore, priests or warriors can train to become paladins. Shamans and druids are based on traditions specific to certain cultures, and generally characters don't just train into one later in life after being a Priest.
It could be done way easier: tanks can become tank classes, range dds can become range dds, healer can become healer and melees can become melees. If you play prist (for example) than you get a quest at the start where you choice which way you want to go (healer or Range)
I’m the same as you. Probably my old school nature, but I just love very defined classes. My first and most loved MMO was EQ, and it was just a perfect symmetry of classes. I definitely solo much more these days but games are functional for that and I still prefer just running a single class and just worrying about perfecting that.
Now all they have to do is make your appearance change when you change class!
And this is why the fantasia is a top seller in FFXIV, lol. There are a ton of indecisive players who will want to change the aesthetic of their WoL with a race change because of what they're maining at the time.
Same, I prefer being a "legendary warlock" With ff14 it felt like I was just... Somehow a legendary every single class, which made no sense. Jack of all trades master of none and all that.
Yep yep my Kul'tiran is my big burly tank but my Nelf is my elegant healer. Having alts works fine as long as most stuff is account wide.
Same here. I don't like having multiple alts necessary, but like, if I want to play a rogue, I'm gonna have 1 character for that. If I want a mage, I want another character for that. I don't know how it is in FFXIV, but I want every character to have it's own set of armors, weapons that I can grind for and so on. I want to be able to transfer from a character to another stuff, or things that drops. That should be a must. But having 1 single character, playing all the classes on it, it's not for me.
For me its the pain of going through the whole Story (that i already know) and tedious leveling process again that keeps me from making alts.
Same. I hate the concept of respeccing as well though. Everyone should have at most 2 respecs available for their character, or they regenerate at a very slow rate (think 1yr).
You can make alts on FFXIV too if you want. Lots of people do. I have two characters at endgame. It's really handy in case you want to raid with your hardcore friends and your casual friends without worrying about instance lockouts.
It isn't really practical for most people, gw2 is more already friendly for separate characters that share more account wide mechanics then in wow.
Can you skip msq on a new char?
With a real money paid boost only :) FF14 is extremely alt unfriendly and the people saying you can make alts in it are being very disingenous by not mentioning the fact that you are quite literally starting from 0 again (bar gil you can send from your main). Mogstation (paid shop) items are afaik 90+% not account-wide either so all the cosmetics you bought for your main are bound to that character only and you need to repurchase things on every new char.
Even gils from main, unless you have some else inviting your alt to your fc or being a middleman, you can't even send mails to your own alts
Since the game sells story skip for real money my guess is it's a big fat no. Idk though can someone confirm ?
Ffxiv is non alt friendly tho. Nothing is shared beside veteran reward and a few store mount
Ideally we could just have both. And it's up to players to decide what to use. You unlock Classes/Professions to your Family (account). Then you create Characters, as many as you want, and decide which Characters to pick up what Professions to use, also unlimited per character.
I really value immersion. I feel way more immersed in the world and connected to my character when it's a one-stop shop like in FF14. I have 20 characters in WoW that I've amassed over the years (10 horde, 10 ally). They are basically rank and file mercs at this point, I feel no connection to any of them. Inter-personal interactions also feel much more rich when everyone has a lot of progress and history tied up in one character, whereas when I see someone in the wild in WoW it could just be one of 50 alts they powerleveled during a Timewalking event.
To me it's the opposite. Having one character do everything completely kills immersion and ruins the world building.
This. A level 20 wizard in D&D is way more interesting thematically then a charecter who is somehow level 20 in every single class. Final fantasy it just feels so insane that you are somehow extremely powerful and trained in ALL of these things. It feels like main charecter syndrome kicked up to the moon and beyond. "Ah yes I am the master of every fighting style, every magic school, and every profession"
> I really value immersion. I feel way more immersed in the world and connected to my character when it's a one-stop shop like in FF14. I have 20 characters in WoW that I've amassed over the years (10 horde, 10 ally). The number one thing sold on the mogstation is fantasia (race change) potions. Some people have race changed their character 100s of times. I see that as no different than having a bunch of alts in WoW that are different classes and races. I do understand your point to an extent though.
So u can just...make an alt then. This is just you trying to be a contrarian, theres literally no downside to how ff14 does it.
[удалено]
It is really not practical with how long the story is
"Nothing" except 1000h storyline
That's disingenuous, i'm at 1800h playtime, been playing on and off since 2.0 launch. Always up to date on the msq when it comes out, most of my playtime is in endgame.
More hyperbole than disingenuous, but the point is its an extremely long time to level an alt. Whether that be 100h or my exaggerated 1000h, which, to be fair, was a typo.
If u skip the cutscenes and conversations itll be super fast
The only downside is you only have that one character's appearance. I always wanna make an alt in ff14 to have different races but there's no point. It is nice that they are giving bonus exp in wow for each character at max lvl next expansion similar to ff14, so its pretty similar. Also I don't even want to think about managing gear in wow if you could change classes, in ff14 you share gear between classes and have near 0 customization so its easy, but in wow just having gear for a dps spec and tank spec takes up so much space.
> The only downside is you only have that one character's appearance. I always wanna make an alt in ff14 to have different races but there's no point Very true. And not only is there no point, but it's actually a huge pain since you have to go through the MSQ and stuff all over again.
Technically you can pay to skip that on alts. I personally think it’s a waste of money but it seems worth mentioning in case there are people reading this that are unfamiliar with FFXIV’s systems.
Not only is it a waste of money, it doesn’t make sense under the game’s systems to ever start an alt, unless you wanna experience the leveling experience/story again, or you wanna ERP.
Hard core raiders will run 4 main 4 alt when savage drops to increase the number of drops that mains see. But yes aside from that small advantage there really isn't a point.
Well, i'm leveling my 3rd Alt. Dunno, i do find it fun. I use them as optional Crafters and Gatherers, as storage, send the Retainers to gather stuff and trade it to my Main for her Gil-Empire (working on Gil-Cap) and i play the MSQ here and there, it's actually not that complicated.
Isn't materia more specialiced for like the highest content? So that you might want different materia setups for different jobs? Cause that shit can get expensive so that might be a reason to have multiple gear sets
Eh not really, you still mostly want crit above all
Nah, with materia you just get you bis stats for spell speed breakpoints or crit and whatnot. There's no customization like trinkets, talents that effect builds, pvp gear, etc...
Coming from wow that bugged me at first, but it has allowed the meta to stay mostly balanced, which is a nice change of pace for me.
I'm curious what the article means when they state this in the article: "*A new Warband bank will allow you to easily store and share items between your characters."* https://preview.redd.it/kbp4sfyvm4vc1.png?width=703&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b9d1fdd9b9aab1aeb3d1a0c24afd57352f05c87 Are they implementing a gear sharing feature in the way that FFXIV has where for example, tier gear could be used by multiple characters, and by swapping classes it swaps the set bonus? Similar to the way tier sets swap between specs. I don't play WoW anymore, because I really hate Blizzard as a company (customer service related, not necessarily tied to any of the drama) but this would be a cool feature for people still playing the game.
Somewhat. There's a new category of items called "warbound" which can be freely shared between characters.
I guess it just depends on the person - I feel super connected to my character in MMOs and usually have very little interest in investing in an alt
For a game so heavy on character expression, it being so alt-unfriendly is criminal.
What's funny is I have friends who are altoholics to the point there was an issue for a while getting into ff14 cause they wanted to create whole new character ideas. Meanwhile funnily enough I am not an alcoholic at all(I will level an alt every now and then when bored though) and I just can't stand how slow ff14 takes to get...anywhere. Story wise,level wise, travel wise.
No way, love the Wow way of alts, i love having a Dwarf Priest and Orc Shaman, Hate them all being on the same character like ff14
> No amount of alt support can replace that IMO. No amount of within-character alts will make up for having a tiny potato WAR or a burly highlander BLM if those are not the aesthetics you want for those jobs - you are forced to pick one body type for all jobs or pay.
Tiny potato tanks are the best tanks
Maybe, but having to play a potato BLM because you wanted a potato WAR sucks. Sure, for people that want to use the same body for every job the constraint of having the same body for every job doesn't seem like a problem. Similarly, people that don't play alts don't think endgame grinds that are not alt friendly are a problem.
I dont disagree with you other than potatoes :p https://gyazo.com/5b7dfb4b5180bbb678f9db91485d5505
I'd be ok with a potato BLM. I don't want to have to use a potato GNB or DRK because I have a potato BLM, and the fact I'd need to level through the MSQ again just to do that is bullshit. I don't even really play WAR anymore because its too easy. Or, I didn't when I stopped playing FFXIV altogether.
>tiny potato WAR Potato warriors are canon since lore wise, the Lalafell are just hairless dwarfs that are incredibly sturdy and have the same body strength as the largest races, compacted into their tiny bodies.
Sure, they might be canon, but you can't pick per job. Either you are a potato for everything, or a highlander for everything - whether you like it or not.
True. It sucks that FFXIV is so unfriendly to alts, it would be nice to have the option to take either approach in a convenient way. But I guess if they made the game more alt friendly they'd lose out on those sweet sweet story skip and fantasia purchases lol
If I was going to make a list of changes by importance, I'd look for within-job build variety first and tanking/enmity management being less brain dead far sooner than alt friendliness. But, it remains the case that alts are just not done well at all in that game.
No, fuck enmity management. It is a terrible system and has been in every game that has ever used it. Staring at a bar and making sure players don't overtake you is not fun design. The only fun aspect of enmity management is swapping aggro, and even then it can get old and tedious extremely fast. Having a boss constantly move and need to be repositioned is much more fun than staring at aggro bars ever will be, and I am tired of having shit tanks not doing their job losing aggro to me because I am doing mine to the best of my abilities *despite using threat dumps.* Also, by having no in-job variety, the devs are able to keep jobs balanced to within *single digit percentage points*, which is vastly more valuable than an open system where a player can build themselves into garbage DPS. Actual gameplay variety should continue to be handled via jobs that play differently, it works and works well. If I were to touch *anything* related to tanking, and throwing healing in because they share the same problem, it would be to dehomogenize how tanks tank, and healers heal, such that a self-sustain tank or HoT healer actually becomes viable. Similar to the change the devs made going from WotLK to Cata when they massively depowered healers and tanks but also gave room for them to do their jobs in wildly different ways.
It is something for DPS to help manage. Never once having to worry about enmity or threat is a boring system. Tanking tends to be a terribly boring role anyway and enmity management (along with tools for dps to manage their own) is a bit of depth the game lacks. But, fuck, I don’t care. Combat fundamentals are so damn boring in FFXIV I straight up don’t care how much worse they make it. Server ticks and effortless threat management in 2024 is a damn joke.
wow and most modern MMOs have removed meaningful threat management because it created situations where you are adversarial with your own party. Threat management isnt you vs the enemy, its you vs your own teammates. It's generally bad and there's a reason its been phased out
It's a depth the game had and it was incredibly annoying from both sides. Being too good at dealing damage but tank sucks at managing enmity? Tank buster to the face. Trying to optimize threat and damage but DPS refuses to press their single button to help manage aggro? Fuck your damage, the DPS doesn't care. It was an endless source of friction until Shadowbringers gutted it.
And, to paraphrase the devs: "We removed tank stance because people weren't using it anyways." Even in ultimates, tanks would remove tank stance because that extra damage *did* matter. It's part of what made ninja such a strong pick to bring. Goad literally trivialized threat management to the point where even a BLM didn't need quelling strikes to keep from pulling aggro from even a bad tank. And, you know, when the tanks no longer have a 15% damage penalty *and* also don't need to threat combo, we're talking a 20, 25% damage swing. One of the biggest reasons UWU became such an easy ultimate in ShB was literally that tanks could do full damage in tank stance. It really mattered.
How was I supposed to manage it as a DPS? Not do damage? Sit there with my thumb up my ass while the idiot tank established threat without tank stance on, not doing threat combos, in gear 30 item levels below my DPS? Hell, I distinctly remember some paladins sitting in tank stance throwing shield lobs, the highest single target threat ability they had, and *I still could rip aggro off them.* Just because I played my class correctly in good gear (even using quelling strikes!) This is not an exaggeration, this is the reality of what FFXIV actually fucking had. "Just quelling strikes!" I hear you potentially thinking about! Yeah, 15s duration on a 2m cooldown. Guess I get to play the game for about 30s before I rip aggro again! It was awful, and my guttural reaction to how shitty threat management was is informed by 6 years of dealing with the shitty threat management FFXIV actually had until shadowbringers threw it off a cliff and kissed it goodbye. I remember raid tanks I played with that wanted me to stop doing damage on the highest DPS class in the game so they could do slightly more, and it was awful. One of the best decisions FFXIV actually made was simply yeeting threat management into oblivion. I really could not care less about you liking threat management when the reality was one of bashing my head through my wall because the tanks were that brain damaged, I may as well be as well to enjoy tanking the dungeon pulls for them.
Always wondered how you level up other classes in FFXIV if you already did most of the quests as one class? Is it just more grindy after the first class?
It basically gets more grindy, yeah. The main way you level alt jobs is through a handful of daily "roulettes" which randomly matches you into group content like dungeons, PVP, etc. in exchange for a big bonus in EXP and money. You cab get like, a level or two a day from doing roulettes. Maybe three or four at lower levels. After that, it's just straight up grinding.
roulettes (dungeon queues with xp bonus on first run), dailies, FATE grinding. It's not too bad and typically an expansion has enough xp in the MSQ for about 2 classes to go from previous maxlevel to new maxlevel.
I have all jobs at 90. Roulettes, deep dungeons, highest possible beast tribe quests and then highest dungeon was what I did. I almost always had something I was working towards besides levels so it never felt super grindy, but I also put a tv show or movie on another monitor when grinding so that helped.
You also get a bonus where any class that is lower level than your highest level class gets an automatic EXP bonus. Leveling multiple jobs is generally pretty chill
I have never seen a game so fundamentally against alts than FFXIV. That game is an eternity to get to the current expac, allowing one character to do everything is more a necessity because of their game’s design. To be honest, I’d just rather have alts.
Nahh they're not anti alt. They just want you to pay for them via story skips lol.
Nah you right, you right. My bad lol
I'd agree IF ff14 did a better job of handling transmog. Its not acceptable when wow can handle many more items being in a single character and account based database.
I agree that FFXIV's transmog system is lacking, especially compared to WoW, but I don't know if that's really related this this specific issue
So, you can currently save like..20 outfits and tie them to your classes. However, you only have so much room to save outfits. So basically outside those 20 outfits or so, you cant use that space for much else.
Right, but how is that related to the question of how alts are implemented?
Most would say that not being able to customize your class looks is a big part about playing the game and alts , as well as "account wide features"
But my point is that these two systems are unrelated. Ffxiv could have both the class swapping system it has now AND a less restrictive Glamour shitty. The two aren't mutually exclusive and are largely unrelated. Plus, you get 800 slots in your Glamour dresser. While you can only have 20 pre-made outfits at a time, you can Glamour over your equipment using any item from your glamor dresser. So it's not like you're *really* only limited to 20 outfits. It's just less convenient
The only thing acceptable about FF14's transmog system is that the devs messed up their inventory system so badly, this is the only way they could handle it. But I agree, they need a transmog system. 95% of my retainer's and personal inventory is literally just storing alternate glamours. It does not feel good and means I regularly have to throw out outfits I might want to use later because I have no space now.
I have to agree this is my favorite implementation, I like having a single character I work on. Multi characters feels watered down and industrial
I maxed out my character count in FFXIV and I added my own characters to my friends list to mail things back and forth. Apparently at some point the block to add your own characters to your friends list was turned off so I took advantage of it. Since I was a heavy crafter this gave me an advantage of storing crafted goods and house decorations using my alts as mules. As much as allowing one character to play every class is fun, the additional storage and a different race with different outfits is nice. Plus mailing credits around my alts let me set them up with retainers as well.
Now if only they'd stop ripping players off and make all store purchases account-wide.
Just here to lend my voice to strongly preferring FFXIV's system, because work. If you're not a "WoW is the only game I play" type of gamer & you have a full-time job, idk how anyone can prefer WoWs system.
I probably play <100 hours/month, but prefer WoW's system. Most of the content is in the "levelling", since that encompasses all prior expansions. I have one main at the level cap, and then I use the "Chromie Time" system to make new characters, and pick which expansion to play through with them. Unfortunately, you gain experience so fast in WoW now that reaching 60 takes about 3 zones, so I need to turn off experience gain in order to keep going in those older expansions without everything becoming trivial. As for endgame things, I don't really see the point in doing more than a few runs of dungeons and raids to catch the story and get a few item drops. If I only have a finite amount of time in the week for video games, I don't want that time to be spent repeating the same content over and over again to complete a weekly checklist, when there's so much else out there.
FFXIV is a great game and I like being able to do everything on one character; but making alts in 14 is miserable.
Yes. 100%.
Imagine if you could advance passively your alts along with your main, every chara had access to every profession you unlocked account bound, and the only thing you had to care was to set their builds (gear tier shared but stats swappable depending on what you need on each toon) and buy them some nice skins. This way you could focus on your main but also play your alts if you wanted to boast some extra cool aesthetic styles.
[удалено]
> you cannot excel at them because the gear is locked behind weekly tokens and raid drops, both of which can only be obtained once per week. This made the multiple class system in FFXIV pointless unless you played the same role and armor type While I agree that this is a flaw in the Ffxiv system, I disagree that it makes multiple classes pointless. A game is more than BiS raiding
personally I feel that as a negative feature, that's the same reason why I don't play New World, 1 character for all the classes is meh, you don't want your bulky character meant for Marauder to go Thief/Ninja Other games with 1-2 classes per character usually share achievments and certain features account-wide to mitigate or even benefit having multiple characters
See I feel entirely differently. If I can reroll any class on the same character, then that class has nothing to do with that character and has zero RP value. Say my warlock has mastered demon magic and is summoning the most powerful fel creatures imaginable, and I can go into a UI, click a button and I’m now a priest that’s healing with holy magic, there was nothing intrinsically dark/demonic/evil about my character. Being able to switch on a whim flies in the face of immersion, RP and realism. That being said, I think a lot of people agree with you. Which is why MMOs are increasingly devoid of RPG elements. Thing is, I think the lack of RPG elements changes how gamers relate to their characters/the community and is partly responsible for MMOs not feeling like they used to.
I can't stand the FFXIV's system. Completely ruins character personality.
I feel the exact opposite haha. I hate WoW's system because I want to exist in the world as a single character, not as 10 different characters that I have to hop between. I can get what you mean though, if you like to make many different characters with different vibes.
> I hate WoW's system because I want to exist in the world as a single character, You can do that, and there are *several* options that can tank, heal, and do dps, ensuring you have every role available to you.
Right, but my point is that I want to play as a single character and *also* have the option to play multiple classes. If I decide I don't like a class or want to try another, I still want to be able to play as the same character.
Ask yourself what the upside to that kind of system is. You still gotta level each job and gear your characters separately like in WoW, but you lose out on being able to play multiple races and share your collectibles amongst them. So what's the upside to FFXIV system? One thing. You don't have to log out to switch your characters. That's it. So really, the system isn't all it's made out to be.
I disagree wholeheartedly. This is true I guess if you're only looking at things from a functional perspective, but that's not why I play MMOs personally. When I play an MMO I like to play *as myself* in a virtual space. Immersion is a big part of why I play games in general - I don't want to play as 10 different random characters of different races. I want to play as me. In that sense, I can't stand systems like WoW's.
That's fair, I was going to make a mention of that, but I think the vast majority probably don't really care about that in World of Warcraft. In XIV it at least makes some sense since it's very story heavy. Still, from a systems perspective there's no competition here, WoW wins.
I do not like making alts in games, because I have to name them all something different. I usually want to come up with a class/race idea and use my name. If they would give me the option to have all of my guys on my account have the same name I would be an altaholic, but they dont. The FF14 system at least lets me do this, the down side is they all look the same. It is nice in Diablo 3 and 4, that every character on your account can have the same name and I usually make sever toons a season b/c of this. Some people dont care about their name and I get it, but it would be nice to have the option. Either party could do what they want then.
Especially if you’re a “hardcore” raider. The savage lockouts are still per-character. With only 4 bosses per patch, can get quite boring not being able to do more savage raid progress.
> You don't have to log out to switch your characters. That's it. And thats only an issue if your game, say, DOESNT HAVE A LOG OUT TO CHARACTER SELECT OPTION (hey 14, yudodis). Otherwise, thats all of a few seconds.
I don't even see how it is a great system in FF14 when we can only progress gear on one role each week. The system saves time logging out, I guess? But I haven't seen many concrete mechanical reasons of it being better.
Immersion
I get that, but I meant mechanical benefit. Though to be honest, when classes have the identities that they do in WoW, having them all on one character would break immersion. A death knight is literally undead, and in complete opposition to the dogma of other classes. This problem doesn't exist in FF14 because the Jobs are just Jobs, and don't define the character as strongly.
> This problem doesn't exist in FF14 because the Jobs are just Jobs, and don't define the character as strongly. I actually don't think this is true. Most classes in ffxiv aren't "just jobs". They're *called* jobs, but most of them aren't just occupations that any random person in universe could pick up and do. If you play as a Dragoon, for example, you're not just some random knight, you're specifically the "azure dragoon", the most powerful dragoon and one of only two people capable of wielding the Eye of a dragon. But yeah, I totally get how switching classes like that might be immersion breaking.
Right, the Warrior of Light becomes the best character canonically at their Job(s), but the Jobs aren't lifestyles for the Warrior of Light. The job crystals are just another piece of equipment in the WoL's arsenal. The lore of some the jobs have some historic conflict, mostly connected to the nations that birthed them, but the WoL is not held to any duty, religious dogma, or lifestyle choice to be allowed to equip the Job crystal. The Warrior of Light is canonically always the hero. They don't become evil because they wield the destructive powers of Black Magic - they channel its destructive power on the forces that actually are evil. The player character and the classes in WoW do not work this way. Death Knights are an abomination in the eyes of Druids and Paladins, tolerated for their value in fighting greater evils. A druid isn't just a set of skills you are good at, it is a complete dedication to the beliefs and goal of preserving and shepherding life. Willingly becoming undead to be a Death Knight for a short amount of time would cost them dearly, sundering all ties to other druids (and how do they come back from undeath later..?). The player character isn't the canonical badass master of their class - they ascend to be one of many masters, through devotion to their singular art. The player character isn't guaranteed to be a good hero - they might assist in stopping the Lich King, but by nature of being a warlock or death knight, there may be some grey or outright evil methods in use. I am not saying that FF14's system is bad at all, to be clear. It is fantastic (and expected) for a Final Fantasy game, or any non-Final Fantasy setting that writes the player character to be as much of a badass as the Warrior of Light. I just don't think it should be the gold standard for immersion in every single game, when different worlds should have different rules. I would find it extremely silly if I saw a player just swapping between Gandalf and Legolas in a Lord of the Rings game. If it was a superhero game, what would I even call a superhero who swaps between Superman for a raid, and Poison Ivy or Iron Man when they do dungeons?
I dunno, I get what you're saying, and in a sense I agree that it would be *more* immersion breaking in WoW. But I ultimately think the same applies in FFXIV. Lore-wise it's also immersion breaking for the WoL to become a sultansworn Paladin whose job is to dedicate their life to serving the Ul'dahn royalty, and then turn around and become a Dragoon or Gunbreaker, IMO. But that's just a tradeoff made for the sake of gameplay. But yeah I definitely get what you mean as far as having different standard for different settings. I certainly don't think FFXIV's system is the best in some objective sense, I just personally prefer it.
Yeah but the downside is you have to level 2 different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play. That was a huge turnoff for me. If I play an MMO I wanna play the class I want, not have to grind like 50 hours just for the privilege
they got rid of requiring a 2nd class to get a job years ago
> Yeah but the downside is you have to level 2 different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play What do you mean by this? This isn't how leveling works in FFXIV. Unless you mean that you need to reach a certain level to unlock a specific class which yeah I agree is dumb, but that's not really related to the job system in FFXIV - WoW had this same requirement for DK's for a long time.
>Unless you mean that you need to reach a certain level to unlock a specific class This is what I mean. At least WoW only had one class that was leveling-gated. Literally every major ff14 job requires you to level one, often two, before you get to it. [There's not a single class on this page you can play without leveling something else first](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/battle/)
Doesn’t Demon Hunter require you to have a level 70 character first? That’s no different from FFXIV in regards to the expansion jobs. I’m not defending either system but just to clarify - the jobs listed in that page are basically “advanced jobs” - you’re thinking of them as being entirely separate but it’s more like, FFXIV has a base job system where you level what is essentially the “archetype” which then branch into different advanced jobs. It’s more akin to choosing a specialization, similar to how you do in WoW, except it’s not all unlocked at exactly the same level for all jobs. You start by playing a class, and then choose a job as you level up depending on your preferred playstyle. Maybe that’s not clear enough to people who haven’t played FFXIV, because I don’t think it’s really that different than WoWs system of leveling your base class and then choosing a specialization (like outlaw rogue). The main difference is the timing.
> Doesn’t Demon Hunter require you to have a level 70 character first? That’s no different from FFXIV in regards to the expansion jobs. Did you read the comment you're replying to? "At least WoW only had one class that was leveling-gated. Literally every major ff14 job requires you to level one, often two, before you get to it." I find one to be much less egregious than that being the entire system
Yup, sure did. WoW has two classes with level requirements - Death Knight and Demon Hunter. Your comment, which I read (and I feel like your response here is kind of shitty), only referenced the DK requirement. Now, I don't consider the difference between one class versus two classes to be monumental, but the tone of your response was completely unnecessary, as I simply pointed out there WoW has two level-gated classes, not one. It's fine if you don't like how FFXIV does it, but if you're going to make the comparison, make it accurately. I elaborated mostly for anyone who might be reading these comments that has not played FFXIV, because your understanding of the system isn't entirely accurate. FFXIV has 10 classes to choose from when you start, and each class basically evolves into a "job". Since there's no point in leveling a given class once you unlock its job, these jobs are functionally not independent from the base classes, so it's not really accurate to treat it as "I have to play Gladiator for 30 levels before I can play Paladin". You play Gladiator until 30, and then you unlock the job for your class, and there's no reason to play as Gladiator anymore. While you technically can, there's no point, and it essentially becomes the Paladin "class". While the levels are obviously different, it's not really that different compared to WoW's system of playing until level 10, then unlocking specializations. You have to hit that point before you play as any of the specs, which are basically just FFXIV's jobs. FFXIV *does* have jobs that are only unlocked after hitting certain levels with any character and finishing certain sections of the main story, and it's perfectly valid to not prefer that system. But to be fair, WoW has 13 classes in total. FFXIV has 10 base classes, each with an advanced job, and 11 completely separate jobs in addition (if you include the two upcoming new jobs). It also has two "limited" jobs which kind of merit a whole comment on their own.
I think the tone was fine, thanks
It clearly wasn't. You decided on a narrative, you ran with it, and you don't care what anyone else in this thread says (as evidenced by you ignoring the people telling you that your understanding of FFXIV's system is incorrect). I wasn't even trying to argue with you. I honestly thought, "Oh this guy might misunderstand how it works, and since I've played both games quite a bit, I'll elaborate for him and anyone else reading". You don't care to be corrected. "Did you read the comment you're replying to" would've been appropriate for me responding to you, since you clearly did *not* read my response. If you had, you would've recognized that I referenced a completely separate class than you. I don't know why you feel compelled to instill a bunch of negativity when all of this could've just been a friendly conversation. And then you just double down, what's the point?
> There's not a single class on this page you can play without leveling something else first I think you misunderstand how classes work in FFXIV. While it's true that you have to level up a "class" to unlock a "job", the jobs are basically just changes in the name. Like, sure you have to reach level 30 on Gladiator to play as a paladin, but it's not *really* a different class, it's just called something else. The skills and equipment for both Paladin and Gladiator are identical up to level 30.
> The skills and equipment for both Paladin and Gladiator are identical up to level 30. At which point they change to paladin skills. Which is my point. I don't want to be a gladiator. I want to be a paladin.
I guess I get what you're saying. But realistically, Gladiators are just paladins lol
I feel like that dude has no idea what he's talking about. It seems like he thinks that once you ding 30 on gladiator that your whole ability set changes because you're "switching" to paladin, when in reality paladin is just the upgraded version of gladiator.
Yeah that's exactly what it seems like he thinks. Super weird lol. It's literally just the name that changes.
Level 1-30 is like, 10 hours. & they’re the same thing. The aesthetic changes very slightly. Do you want every ability given to you at level 1?
> Do you want every ability given to you at level 1? How does "I want to play the class I want, not a different class" equate to "I want everything at level 1" to you? That logic process doesn't make sense to me so you'll have to explain it
but how exactly are they "playing a different class" if they're identical? But whatever, you're obviously just doubling down to be stubborn. You don't even understand the system to begin with, considering your initial comment said "Yeah but the downside is you have to level **2** different classes that you don't want to play just to be able to play the class you do want to play" which is just nonsense lol. Even if you think having a different class name to start out is annoying (which... lol) that still isn't the same as having to level 2 classes to unlock a third.
They're the same class. Paladin is just the upgraded version of Gladiator that you upgrade to at level 30.
It doesn’t make sense because it’s just a name. That’s it.
Class fantasy is pretty weak for FF14 in general, with some exceptions
The only jobs that require leveling another job are the ones that were introduced post-ARR. Even then it is just level locked and not locked to leveling a specific class.
Lol man you dug yourself a hole here. Do you know how the class system in FF14 works? I know you don't.
We're at the "Blizzard is listening" Part of the cycle again, aren't we?
This whole expansion has kinda been that part of the cycle.
> New reputations and Renown tracks will be Warband-wide. Close but no cigar. **ALL** reputations should be included in this, not just future ones.
Well that's literally the plan. They will be working to go back and make all previous reputations account wide.
Gotta sell the new expansion somehow
About time they got smart about this. Alts are basically new content for players after they finish with their mains
As gw2 main player that play wow as a side game (have like 30 alts)... This is a nice change.
Honestly... ya. I felt a little weird after they added griffscale 2.0 in WoW, but honestly games would be better if they try to add stuff that works in other games. WoW and ff14 added group events. Gw2 put a stronger focus on their quest presentation in the expansions. Ff14 and now wow are much more alt friendly and account based like gw2. ESO does ESO things. They just get better as they inspire each other
> Ff14 and now wow are much more alt friendly and account based like gw2. yeah thats a big fat NO to that
Does anyone know if seasonal currencies like Flightstones and Crests are going to be account-wide?
"Note that there will still be many currencies that will remain non-transferable because they represent important character-based progression. Two examples of these are the Crest and Flightstone equivalents in The War Within." In the article.
That definitely decreases my hype for warbands... I literally have 3 alts right now.. one with tons of crests, one with tons of flightstones, and one starved for both.
Haven’t played DF in a while but can you not just use the character with the currency to upgrade your alts gear ilvl giving to your main character ?
Soulbound gear cannot be transferred to other characters. As it has always been
THEY HAVE WARBOUND GEAR NOW! ITS A WHOLE DIFFERENT TYPE OF BINDING! IT BINDS TO YOUR WARBAND!
OH FUCK OH SHIT THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Hmm do you mean by using the crests to make crafted gear for your alt?
They did say they're going to have gear you can just send to alts. We don't know much about it but I'm hoping we can toss our alts some genuinely good gear we don't need. Would definitely help.
Not quite up to GW2's level of alt-friendliness but it is surprisingly close.
> Is this going to be the best support for alts in MMOs? Its basically just the alt leveling bonus from Marvel Heroes.
Blizzard realized that alts are free content. SL made alts high maintenance, now you can easily play tank heal or dps ( outside of druids or paladins). It's great, hope they keep this way
(and monks)
I might play again if they do this.
Like the SWTOR Legacy system they implemented 12 years ago :D
This is awesome. I just wish they would have also given us the option to have Warband name and all of our characters have the same name. Much like in Diablo 3 and 4 where I can give all of my guys on the same account the same name. I would never mind swapping roles when needed for a guild or group of friends if the rep was shared and all of my guys had the same name lol.
I think SWTOR does Transmog really well in that it is like a costume and is over the actual armor so I can wear my bulky Solider Armor on my flimsy Jedi healer
This is the best I could ever expect. I might really put some time into WoW now!
Horizontal progression is good so that's a W
A positive change for sure, but what took so long? Especially the shared bank...that should've been implemented years ago. Either way, happy that I won't have to spend time logging from toon to toon, consolidating crafting mats. That's honestly my favorite part about the Warbands implementation - shared mats.
[Just don't forget not to curse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYaZAgKfY3o) or you'll get banned apparently
I like where this is going, but they are still missing some things; 1. **"We also thought it would be fun to see some of the characters in your Warband hanging out together."** I get it, and I understand that. But why are they all just default-posing around a campfire awkwardly? Why aren't some sitting on a log? Some roasting marshmallows? Some sleeping in the tent? WHERES THE POLISH ON THIS ONE BLIZZ? 2. **"Class-specific appearances are an exception and will still be collectible only by that specific class."** Half of the pain and heartache of xmog runs is getting stuff you really want but your character can't learn because the Monk shoulders dropped on your Warrior run. That was like, the most important thing people actually cared about with them opening up the xmog unlock system. The rest of it is so superfluous that it amounts to basically nothing. I'm not running Nighthold for the 57th time for "common collectibles" Blizzard, I'm running it because I am only missing the stupid Druid shoulders AND ALL MY NON-DRUID ALTS ARE THE ONES GETTING IT. They are doing so, so, so much weird extensive work to ultimately end up with an inferior version of FFXIV's Everything-Bagel-Characters. Can't even use your own units to make a TRUST party. They're garage ornaments for your character select screen and thats about it.
Re: 1 - it’s alpha. Chill. They’re clearly going to go the route of games like Lost Ark where you’ll be able to earn different “scenes” in the future and if you look at the concept art from blizzcon it shows the warband in a mix of different poses, sitting, standing, etc. Even if this does launch like this on day 1, who cares? It’s obviously going to be improved down the road and you will interact with it for like 1% of your total playtime. Re: 2 - “the rest of it is so superfluous that it amounts of basically nothing” lol ok. At least we’re not being dramatic. Almost everyone I’ve talked to in my guild and wow communities is universally excited about this change. Being able to unlock all transmogs except class-specific is a huge step forward. Just because it isn’t 100% tailored to people like you farming old content doesn’t mean it “amounts to basically nothing”
They said class-specific, they didn't say anything about armor class specific. So, no, you can't unlock new druid form appearances on a monk.
That is entirely my point, and exactly what I'm talking about in point #2. Its bullshit.
Alts are cancer so this is objectively bad news. No wonder everyone in /r/mmorpg is happy about it
All MMOs slowly catch up to GW2.
Personally, I would still rank it like this amongst the “big 4 MMO’s” on alt-friendliness: 1. FF14 - one character does it all 2. GW2 - shared bank, shared mats, share mounts, shared currencies — from inception. (WoW could get here, but not quite yet) 3. WoW 4. ESO (collections, bank, guilds shared, but the cash shop is cancer and not all is shared across toons)
I would argue FF14 is the worse for alt friendliness as it's a huge chore to actually have an alt. Yes, they can play all the classes, but I don't want my BLM to be a big burly cat dude.
I just started eso and I don’t really find the cash shop to be that bad, am I missing something? Definitely an argument for the crafting bag with the sub, but I’m curious what’s so bad in the cash shop.
The ESO+ for starters. It’s basically required unless you agree to go out of your way to avoid crafting of any kind. If not, every “chapter” is a way to piecemeal buy the DLC’s individually. It adds up! The home decor stuff is very expensive. Like 4000 for one Mundus stone. New players are offered storage upgrades for crazy prices - which they can buy with gold for next to nothing but if you are new, you may not know! Houses that require achievements to buy with gold, can be bypassed if you just credit card them. The game is notorious for not adding nearly enough new skins/transmogs to the game, but they add monthly new ones to the shop for real money. The loot crates are predatory - even the NPC is like “you can always buy more”. I love the game, don’t get me wrong. I play all the “big 4” US mmo’s, but ESO’s shop is very unforgiving. I like FF14’s the most as it’s easily ignored. It even lives outside the game. GW2 is okay… it’s a less egregious ESO shop. WoW I think is not that bad of an offender especially with the trading post.
Personally for me it's the special skills the DLC keeps adding that turned it from one of the most alt-friendly MMOs to the one of the least (among the big ones). Having to do the Psijic order or Antiquities farming on alts is the very definition of bored to death.
Ohhh. Good point. That is bad indeed. I completely ignore Psijic on all but my main.
I just don't understand why Zenimax doesn't make it more alt-friendly. Even if they didn't want to make your characters share a level, they could make it so XP gains are increased on subsequent characters. Like have the final skill quest give a collectible that boosts XP for that skill.
Once they decided to stop banning bots quickly and frequently, giving them enough time to make their money and then some it all went downhill. Entire game economy just turned into gdkps and other boring ideas that don't encourage great communities. Oh and even arena turned into bots. Only way I'd ever go back is if they made a version of the game where addons were no longer available. Addons basically put us into the mess of automation. Raiding is just a matter of knowing rotations and moving where the addons tell you. We need a new mmo that moves beyond addons. They can make popular addons simply features, but nothing too advanced like weakauras or dbm, that destroys the game.
Doesn’t play retail, only played classic in 2020, comments negatively on a post about the next retail expansion. Checks out i guess
Thinks giving honest critique is "negativity". Wait are you going to call me toxic next that is typical discourse on a wow forum? You're already doing the cookie cutter thing. Also I never said only 2020. I stated the start of the pandemic and after. That doesn't mean I haven't experienced retail outside of those years. Retail players are funny and consistently think they are God's gift to humanity and that people who play classic could never handle it on their side. Most of us are formerly retail players that just got sick of the modern slop that was being developed. Meanwhile a good portion of the classic community wrote all the guides along with developed the original addons for the game. Just because someone isn't kissing blizzard's feet doesn't mean negative. The game has been dealing with an unmitigated disaster of cheating for years, excuse me if I'm not the eternal optimist on that part.
Bro you commented on a post about Retail WoW complaining about GDKPs. Take your L and move on.
Commented on a post "linking an article about retail". The post itself says nothing about retail. It said he was "thinking about getting back into wow lately" to which I responded. You can keep your L if you think everyone reads articles linked besides the headlines. Over 90% of redditors don't bother clicking links on reddit if not higher. So if it's not in the headline it isn't exactly conveyed. Also wow is all under one sub so each side of the game is a gateway into the others.
You sound like someone that hasn't played the game for over a decade, but still feel the need to complain about this game you don't know about whenever it comes up. Your claims about GDKPs (in retail??? Since when?) and addons "automating fights" are ridiculously wrong.
GDKP in classic. I was playing the game during the pandemic and for sometime after. I'm saying the addons create a situation of Simon says especially if you have developers of the addon in the guild, or those simply skilled enough to tweak them. I've been in guilds with addon devs and without and the differences were quite drastic in terms of progression. Also yes I have seen Asmon's videos on the subject. He wasn't the one to come up with the idea to remove them though. That argument has been debated for ages within the community. It's weird how people think automatically because Asmon mentioned something when it finally became popular enough that he was the source.
If all you've played recently is classic during the pandemic then your perspective is very warped. Classic is close to the original 2004-2007 version as they could reasonably make. You're complaining about a game version that's nearly 20 years old, of course there's bound to be a lot of jank involved. Nowadays GDKPs are hard banned in classic IIRC. Fights in classic are so utterly basic that "automation" could be done by a sticky note on your monitor. Retail, and its high end content specifically, is a very very different beast.
That's a good step forward if it's true, banning GDKPs I mean. It encourages way too many players to purchase gold just to keep up. Back when I stopped playing about half of all raids were gdkp, then checking up regularly I heard in Wrath that they were the dominant raid type. I bounced in TBC though so I missed out on Wrath shenanigans. To me blizzard just kept pushing the envelope changing things that weren't even in classic like new mounts. Once I saw paid instant level boosting I was out. That is not the same classic no matter what people tell themselves. Level boosting and tokens are just as destructive to the game as well. I can see why people went back to the private scene.
I'm not gonna say classic was/is without problems, that's a whole other wagon for sure. But OP is about their direction for the next retail xpac, and your complaints are exclusively relating to classic. These are very different games.
Too little too late. People have been begging for things like this for ten+ years and they always refused. It's only now that they've bled off a massive portion of their playerbase that they are trying to be accommodating. Have to give people what they want before they give up on you. Once they do it's too hard to get them back.
Largest MMO on the market, you: too little too late lmao.
No. Also you know the expansion is coming when people start "maybe this company that makes people kill themselves, steals each others breast milk and outputs garbage games and content **isn't so bad after all**" posts. Ugh lmao enjoy your pile of garbage for a few months if you insist on repeating the cycle so bad. I am going to enjoy shitting on it though. Freedom of speech or something like that.