this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Sheesh. I heard FFXIV is really good later in the game. But you first have to get over a 60 hour bump or something?
I did try it out and barely lasted a few hours. So many boring cutscenes, so much running from NPC to NPC. And barely any combat, the quests were like "Run 3 minutes over there, kill 3 enemies, then run 3 minutes back to the NPC". It was tough :-/
It does start really slow but once you get to the end of A Realm Reborn and the beginning of the first expansion it really takes off.
Google says that's roughly 120 hours, oof.
I've been playing video games for the last 27 years or so. If a game isn't starting to be fun in the first few hours it's usually not worth sticking with it. For example anyone saying "The game starts at max level!" totally missed the point in my opinion, if everything before that is shit, why have it at all?
Btw. if you do slog it through ARR, what happens if you make a new character to play a different class? Do you have to go through it again?
It’s not that ARR is bad, just that Heavensward was such a jump in the quality of both writing and voice acting that it makes ARR look bad in hindsight. And the slog was actually the post-ARR section (ie patch content). It was awful. Largely cleaned up now though. Still long.
If you ever do play, the biggest mistake you can make is to rush to endgame. You’ll burn out. Take it slow, read the dialog, watch the cutscenes, and you’ll have a much better time. It is Final Fantasy after all.
You don’t need to make an alt to play a different class. The game encourages multiclassing and there is an ingame server transfer system so need to make one for other servers either. But yeah if you do make an alt you need to go through it all again.
The good news is that you don’t have to make a new character to play different classes or jobs—you can play every job on one character, so if you don’t have any intentions of starting an alt, you only have to put up with that ARR slog once.
Imo, the worst part of ARR is a particular quest you have to do about halfway through. It just kills the momentum of the storyline. But it does pick up a lot by the end. If you ever do decide to give the game a try, you can play up to lv60 for free (with some limitations), which covers the base game and first expansion (Heavensward).
I’d highly recommend ignoring all side quests and focusing on the main story to get ARR out of the way ASAP. After that, the game really opens up and Heavensward improves dramatically in terms of pacing. But yeah, I totally hear you about not wanting to stick around with a game that starts off slow. I literally quit FFXIV for years because of ARR until I got the whim to get back into it last year lol.
I’m usually not into games that “start at max level” either, but to me, going through the boring parts of ARR was worth it to get to the amazing expansions. I wouldn’t even say ARR is bad. It’s pretty standard MMO content for the most part. It’s just that the expansions are so good that ARR looks bad by comparison.
As for leveling classes, you’re free to switch classes pretty much whenever you want. No need to make another character to play another class. You mainly just play lower level content to level other classes but it goes much faster since you don’t have to replay the story.
They’ve been working on redoing and slimming down some of the base game to cut some of the fat. You’re not wrong about the structure. The story itself especially in the expansions 3/4 of them could stand on proud amongst the best of final fantasy stories. MMOs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, though, I get it.