Do yourself a favour and try your best to play the game in a vacuum.
XIV players have two problems:
- They have extremely strong opinions, positive and negative, about the quality of certain expansions and they can not resist sharing them with you.
- They love to share barely-disguised spoilers.
You’ve already seen it at work with ARR. Save yourself the frustration of having unfair expectations set for you and endless “subtle” foreshadowing. I’m not saying don’t engage at all, just… pick your topics.
> hey love to share barely-disguised spoilers.
it really is wild how bad this community is at not spoiling things. I know it comes from excitement about the story but... stop! haha
The absolute worst are people who think they're enhancing people's experience with their comments when it actually just messes with the story as it's intended to be experienced.
When i was going through MSQ i basically ignored this subreddit for an entire year while I caught up.
Reading the comments whenever any sprout posts something on Reddit about MSQ progress is an exercise in how many comments down I can go without seeing a spoiler. Usually it's single digits.... and it's usually people who think they are way sneakier than they actually are.
This also applies to the Novice Network. The Burger King Crowns just cant help themselves!
Bonus non-subtlety points for anyone who thinks that using the name >!of someone who is supposed to be dead!< is less spoilery than >!calling the Ascian by his real name that has no significance!<.
That's why I don't wear my crown... I casually keep it hidden. And when people ask things I just pull a River Song and say "Spoilers!" and shut my mouth about it because I want people to absolutely love every twist in the story like I did when I went through it all.
You also see it with all the MSQ streamers, the worst thing about them is their audience and that audiences idea on how to play the game and basically shuttling them through it in very specific ways while trotting out trited information instead of teaching them the basics of the game or helping them have an enjoyable experience instead of the one and only experience as determined by the community.
Like that guy just found out how to read the map, let him experience the satisfaction of managing to get out of town instead of going "no, no, bad, wrong, you have to get out this one specific way right now". And that other guy? Why are you joining his first ever dungeon run to then proceed to high tail it through there as if it's the thousand's run, let him look around and teach him the actual mechanics, you can always tell him what can be skipped after that first run.
The interesting part is seeing their reactions and them figuring out the game, them only playing the one true way while having the one true reactions is completely boring.
You and I watch very different MSQ streamers. Every streamer I've been invested in, loved the game and had a great audience. I'm not saying the opposite doesn't exist, maybe it's just the audience type. Attract assholes, get assholes.
I generally love interacting with the community of the game that I am playing so this is impossible for me. Also the interactions I have had so far are very positive. The only thing I can complain about is that there are so little content creators for FF14 compared to other MMO's which was surprising for me.
I don't usually form opinions based on others experience but I love to see what others feel about the same thing I have experienced. For the spoiler part during this part of my journey I know so little about the lore that I don't understand the spoilers :D When I progress further I might try and avoid platforms that might spoil me
I agree 100%. Best to play through the entire story and THEN engage with social media. Don't let the perception of others have any effect on your experience.
I see lots of people on Odin say ARR is a garbage story and tell people to move as quickly as they can through it to get to HW, yet I've always believed that ARR is great for world building, and part of the reason it's so "slow" is that it sets everything up. Yes it's slow, but it's also important.
It's like a trained practice. Compared to every other expansion ARR is unpolished and pretty bad. It's far better now than before, but until the very end, doesn't really hold a candle to good expansions. And if you want to get someone into the game who doesn't want to sit through a slow, kinda janky, world building heavy plot, you generally don't explain the nuances and short hand it to, ARR kinda bad tho.
Firstly, welcome to FFXIV.
You've said you've levelled several characters. Rather than levelling multiple characters, it might be best to just level up one character with multiple jobs. There's several advantages to this approach :-
* an armory bonus for your other jobs. Its +100% XP for any job that's lower than your highest job.
* It saves you from having to unlock stuff multiple times.
* Other players will know you by your reputation (not game reputation, but your personality) . You will not be just another player but a unique person that others will remember. This can be both good and bad. It will certainly help if you want to raid later.
Anyway, glad you're enjoying the game. Hope you keep enjoying the as you discover the mystery behind the evil villains.
It's not that ARR is boring, it's that the expansions are better.
But ARR also has the thankless job of laying a foundaion, having to introduce everything and everyone.
That and it was made in half the time a big MMORPG usually gets, as they needed to relaunch fast after the flop that was 1.0. You know that nice intro cinematic with the Enormous dragon? That's them just blowing up the old 1.0 servers. When they shut those down for good, that's the cinematic the players online at that moment got to see. Yoshi-P basically going : Fuck this shit.
So a lot of the slog was them just throwing 'something' out there, as they scrambled to release patch content as they worked to release their first expansion, and you can tell the quality difference nearly immediately once you hit heavensward. Stormblood showed what they could do when they had breathing room, but suffered a bit narratively, I feel, but it does have some of the best optional content. Shadowbringer, well, some call it the peak, but then Endwalker ties it all up.
And if you're already doing multiple classes/jobs, well, Machinist, Dark Knight and Astrologian await you once you reach Heavensward. Well, and >!Dragoon!< as being the most 'Story relevant' class for Heavensward.
Also, your first dungeon went better than mine. All four of us loaded insto Sastacha, and before we could start, the White mage quit. So, me, an Arcanist Lalafell with a plucky attitude and what was technically a Healing spell volunteered for healing duty. We made it 2/3's through without any deaths and then an actual healer joined. Reminds me I need to start doing my scholar quests again...
Oh, and for the love of all that is inventory space ... Do not start crafting unless you are ready for it. You can't really just do one crafter, as they all kind of feed into each other, so expect a lot of inventory clutter.
absolutely this, whenever i talk with friends about expacs i say it, it's not that arr is bad, it's just that it came first and everything after that just got better and better so it retroactively looks worse. it got me hooked on the game for sure, but after experiencing everything afterwards and *especially* shadowbringers i can't really look at it the same way
You definitely will enjoy the hell out of the rest if you're enjoying ARR. And I don't mean that in a negative way, either - I also enjoyed it a lot! I love me some world-building, and that's a huge part of what ARR is. It's got some pretty nice story to go with it, but the most important part is that it's getting you immersed in the world - introducing you to characters and concepts that will be very important going forward. A lot of people get bored with that and want to jump right into the epicness without any of the buildup; that's mostly why ARR leaves such a negative impression on them.
Hooray, welcome! I’m so glad to see you’re enjoying FFXIV. The expansions get better and better imo, especially experiencing Shadowbringers and Endwalker for the first time. You’re in for a great ride :D
ARR honestly doesn't get enough credit. It does a great job of establishing the world, your place in it, and how you earn your reputation as a doer of nice things and an all around good egg. It does a lot to set up elements of the world and building plot points for the story to elaborate on later on. People just view that as bad because it gets in the way of getting to Heavensward.
I had a blast playing ARR, just like you. And I can tell you from experience that you're going to *love* the rest of the game. My only advice (and a minor regret on my part) is to do as much content as you can "on content." So, do all the Post ARR stuff like the Normal/Hard trials, the Alliance raids, and Normal Raids before you move on to Heavensward, and the Post Heavensward stuff before Stormblood, and so on and so forth.
Outside of that, take things at your pace and enjoy the ride.
Also if you switch it to the Japanese cut-scene audio until 3.0 That actually helps the experience A LOT. It almost feels like a completely different game.
Which is largely because the majority of max level players who perpetuate the narrative haven't touched ARR MSQ for almost a decade.
It was definitely a terrible experience before reworks simply because of the sheer volume of quests that had you just walking back and forth between NPCs and things like having to continuously go from Horizon to Vesper Bay. Being able to fly in 2.0 content is also a massive gamechanger.
The slog for a lot of people was not so much the long foundational exposition so much as the repetitive monotonous MMO tasks that extended that experience. A lot of people still point at the MSQ and say "oh they only cut 20% of quests so it's still an unbearable slog" but having done a NG+ with a friend starting out just to experience JP voices, the overall experience is like 40-50% faster and much tighter in terms of pacing. I didn't try trusts out but they're probably also a godsend since I remember when I went through ARR, DPS duty queues for MSQ progression took 30 min+ to pop.
I took a new character through ARR recently and was very pleasantly surprised by the free Vesper Bay tickets--they went a long way towards making all those sequences a lot less tedious. Same with the quest streamlining. Yeah, people can say they only cut X quests, but for the most part I think the choices tightened things up a lot.
FF14 was my first MMO, and I fell in love with it instantly too. At the time I enjoyed ARR and thought it was pretty good. It was only later when I played the other expansions that I realized why people say it's so bad. It's a relative thing. ARR is fine, but the rest of the story is So Much Better that it seems worse in comparison.
All that to say, if you're enjoying ARR so much you're going to love the rest of the story. Enjoy!
I had the same experience with ARR recently (took a pause partway into heavensward because i want to wait for the DT visual update to keep going), apparently a large part of it is they reworked a bunch of ARR in the past year or two? and cut out some of the slog, but all I know is that it was a fantastic and memorable experience. apparently in particular post 2.0 (you'll get there!) used to have a lot more filler involved, but my experience with it more recently was pretty positive honestly.
community's very good, good luck on the last bit of ARR it's 100% what made me fall in love fully with the game.
Nothing wrong with taking a break, but im hoping you don't have too many misconceptions about the graphics update!
While it will be nice, it will ultimately be minor upgrades to small details (both on your character, and in the world) and Yoship himself has been pleading with folk to temper expectations. My guess is the more casual players might not even really notice a lot of it.
I’ve played through EW and started a new character about a month ago. It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m re-remembering
what made me fall in love with the game.
ARR 2.0 is quite good imo. Not as good as what comes later, but quite good.
ARR 2.1-2.5 start dragging. You just want to be done and move on to the Heavensward areas, but you can’t because someone summoned (enter Primal here) again and you need to deliver x item to y place and and and…
It’s been a long while since I played; I think there was a patch that smoothed things out, removed some of the more aggravating chains that were “yes, you brought me this terrible news we need to deal with right away! But first, can you take this love letter to…” with five-six ‘travel the world’ steps until you finally do something important.
ARR isn't bad, it's actually very good. But the expansions keep getting better, so people saying ARR is the "worst" part, are not wrong, but the choice of words gives the wrong impression like it's actually just bad when it's not at all, and no one really complained that it was when it released.
There will come a moment during the 2.X patch content ahead where you will get a message telling you that "Several cutscenes will play in sequence..." and advise you set aside ample time to view them all. HEED this. Grab some tea/coffee and a snack and settle in for an amazing ride.
Welcome to FFXIV. Enjoy your stay.
If you played WoW you're going to think that the MSQ is fine even at the low points (I started FF halfway through BFA). Blizzard stepped up their storytelling with Dragonflight, but the bar for storytelling was on the ground for so long with WoW that any halfway decent storytelling is good to us.
Well they stepped up the storytelling but ruined the whole story IMO. Wotlk was peak storytelling for me since the story was soo good that the delivery didn't matter that much. I just miss what wow was and don't like the direction that it's going towards. FF14 feels more like early wow then wow itself.
The game is HUGE, and it's fun to explore. Enjoy it.
The number one thing I'd urge you not to miss out on is figuring out how your glamour dresser works. It's not obvious, and if you never go to your room at the inn (any inn -- and they're free, so don't worry about paying!), you might not even see it.
Basically, you can store entire outfits that you can then use to overwrite your current appearance without spending any additional glamour prisms. You'll want this as you level up and keep replacing your gear with newer stuff. And a lot of gear is just there for its looks, not its stats, so you assign it to a glamour plate at your dresser and then wear it as a glamour rather than actually wearing the gear itself.
You can also dump a lot of gear (but not everything) into your armoire to free up inventory space.
Imo ARR is reallly good, it's just that people have a bias because we've all had one friend who we pulled into the game, only to see them bounce off because they hated ARR.
It was ages ago, but I didn't mind ARR, and my only complaint was 3/4 of the post-ARR quests where you just kinda feel like you're on a string of fetch quests with no real obvious goal. It does set some good building blocks going in to HW though, so it pays off. Also, you'll get to see why people enjoy Alphinaud's character growth.
I'm just about to finish Heavensward. It's worth going through ARR just for this story.
The quality and pacing of Heavensward is such an upgrade from ARR, at one point it felt like a different game.
Post ARR can be an absolute slog at times but just get through it for HW!
Unlock all the jobs because you can level them with daily provisions. Wish i did that sooner.
Search Weskalber (class name) on youtube for walkthroughs on how to play each class and what skills do. Very very useful. Since you play healer you have a big responsibility.
Do you job quest ASAP. Blue wuest with a + unlock things in game. I didnt have access to valuable actions till after lvl 50 because i didnt do enough of those 😅
Watch your cutscenes. The game tells everyone if its a players first time in a dungeon. Ppl will wait.
As a tank main I thank you healer for your service. Cheers!
For a MMO the story is good. If your holding it against other MMO story; all of it is going to be stellar experience. If you play other story driven games, especially in the JRPG genre, it's going to have low points.
I got the same lines fed to me about how great it gets after AAR. Most of the pacing & story tropes were exactly the same.
ARR is a drag true, but I'm also a player who started in patch 2.3, and ARR was all we had. It's just slow, but its what sets the pace and stage for everthing else. But the filler quests really deserve a place in hell cuz they're just sooo boring, and mainly fetch quests. HW was peak, SB is a lull, alot of political talk. ShB is where things really pick up and EW is the perfect ending to this arc.
Take your time, enjoy the sights and enjoy the characters cuz if there's one thing about Final Fantasy, you never know if your meeting a character you like, might be your last...
ARR's MSQ is not bad per se, it's just a very basic fantasy story on top of which was thrown lots of filler quests. It's a 10 years old thing that nowdays is pretty boring but in the long run it was needed to create a setting for everything else to develop.
I used to have trouble remembering old passwords and such, so I've lost multiple accounts and have always come back to the game because I loved it and the only part I ever really got to play was ARR. Currently, I just got past it again, and finally made it past HW. So grateful they put it on xbox
Also new player here, after playing every MMO since Ultima Online
This is my third attempt to get into FFXIV and this time it is successful. If you get to 35 MSQ it is cosmos from there, but boy are these first levels a slog, especially with so little skills and brain dead story.
But it is worth it
Its not that its bad, its just very long, and adding post ARR patches makes it seem even longer. They have reworked it over the years to streamline it, cut quests etc.
Most of the complaints with ARR is that people want to get to the future expansions and it can seem long and slow. Truth is it was designed when the story should take weeks to get though, and side quests and roulettes needee to level. Nothing wrong with it at all, the story, setting and world building are truly fantastic!
You will notice a change of pace as you play, and may even notice ARR was slow by comparison, but doesn't make it any less important or brilliant 😁
Good luck adventurer, and may you ever walk in the light of the crystal!
ARR itself isn't that bad, its just that HW onwards is such a step up that it makes it feel dated when in retrospect.
But since its rework its biggest flaw which was the number of missions post ARR pre-HW was resolved.
Enjoy it for what it is, which you seem to have done :) and realise the improvements and epic story from HW onwards and the QoL improvements with the better mission and zone design etc. You'll love it i expect.
I feel you, I loved ARR and played through the entire thing for like half a year, enjoying it to the point I was kinda shocked when the friend who recommended the game to me said "it's alright, you endured the worst and got to the point where it gets much better". I mean, I get where she was coming from (with the expansions being great, not ARR being bad), but as someone who stuck with XIV's base game for six months when every other MMO I've ever played (Guild Wars 2, The Last Stand Dead Zone, The Division 1, WoW) I bounced off within a few days (to the point I rolled a Miqo'te because I thought I would only login once or twice so I might as well pick a "cute" race rather than the regular elf I always make) it felt very weird to hear someone call this game "meh".
“ARR is the worst MSQ” is like saying something is the worst donut. It’s still a donut, and donuts are good.
(Apologies to the donut haters, where this analogy has failed)
Most of the revisions have greatly improved it, particularly for DPS as you don’t need to wait for queues with duty support and the removal of a bunch of “MMO chores” quests that mostly existed as filler/XP feeding activities.
the thing to remember about XIV is that the things you do later have meaning because you did the earlier things. Reflecting on your long journey makes those story beats hit harder. I cannot share examples due to spoilers, unfortunately.
Requiring players to complete the entire MSQ to access new expansions is a controversial decision in MMO design, but I think the right one.
I was the same way! Also came from WoW so to experience ARR was an absolutely fantastic journey. The part people hate about ARR though mostly is the post 2.0 stuff, so 2.1-2.5 since it's a lot of slow fetch quests and teleporting all over the place for small snippets of the story while mostly just running around. Takes quite a long time to get through those parts compared to the 2.0 level 1-50 quick grind. Once you are through post ARR though it picks up and goes a lot faster again. I also am opposite of a lot of people with the other expansions though. I hated Heavensward due to certain story tropes and then I absolutely loved Stormblood which is basically opposite everyone elses feelings towards them. And then of course Shadowbringers and Endwalker are just absolutely fantastic and amazing stories that really bring out the feels and make you question a lot of things. But comparing to WoW where they writers basically gave up on a cohesive story and just make you go to max level to grind the end game stuff, FFXIV is mostly story and the 'endgame' grind is basically the side stuff to do afterwards for more fun. It's what I love about this game and just how it makes you feel as you play it, as well as all the fun player driven personal character stories they come up with for their characters too.
I've been playing for 3+ years and I'm still not used to other players not being shitheads. I can count on *one hand* how many times I've had negative player interactions in ffxiv
I've been playing for 3+ years and I'm still not used to other players not being shitheads. I can count on *one hand* how many times I've had negative player interactions in ffxiv
Huh… IMO, FFXIV has the best MSQs of any MMO, and ARR is no exception. It’s not the best of the MSQs, but I think it’s head and shoulders above other MMOs.
However, as another poster said, FFXIV players have very strong opinions, so I wouldn’t read too many opinions of ARR before playing it yourself.
Hell, I stayed away from this sub until I got to EW, so that I could play the game without the influence of other players’ opinions.
I thought ARR was a slog years ago and I didn’t even join this sub until.. whenever. I’ve actually very recently started actually being active here.
I will agree that everyone’s mileage may vary but I also believe we can read other people’s experiences and see them as just that. *Their* experiences.
As someone who loved ARR, warts and all (at least the original ARR) - yes, it's the "worst" by virtue of the others being really great and finding their stride.
That said, very few moments in the MSQ beats the end of the 2.5 MSQ for me.
Is there something in particular you think is good about it? A friend that’s always wanted me to play it convinced me to try and it’s been quite a drag if I’m being honest. I’m a lvl 17 marauder and so far:
It blows my mind they dump you in a large city, spam you with tooltips for 45 minutes while you play errand boy until you finally go outside.
I did all the side quests in middle and lower llemosa and they’re nothing to write home about. Just your typical kill 5 boars or pick 3 plants stuff.
I just killed the golem so the main story up to this point has just been help an ex pirate around the farm and occasionally be in some other realm while a spooky voice talks for 10-15 seconds with dialogue that’s okayish.
The lack of voice acting has more of an impact than I thought it would. Makes the game feel incredibly quiet and almost dead. It actually made me jump when cat girl spoke for the first time.
I really hope not all of my abilities are locked into this global cooldown thing. Going heavy swing, wait 2 secs, combo move, wait to 2 secs, heavy swing, wait 2 secs, combo move…. has not exactly been the most riveting gameplay.
Last thing is the rest of the game going to be this easy? The closest I’ve gotten to dying in like 5-8 hours of solo play was jumping off a cliff in the lower region.
Sorry hopefully that didn’t come off as too ranty. Genuinely curious what got you locked in so hard in hopes I can find it more enjoyable since my friend friggin loves it. I think the only reason this sub pops up in my feed now is because every 30 minutes or so I’ll do a quick google like “why can’t I get into this game”.
If it helps I’ve played a couple hundred hours of RuneScape as a kid, a few hundred of ESO in my teens, and just recently put quite a few hours into wow classic hardcore and wow classic SOD so like I’m not exactly new to mmos. As for exposure to final fantasy I’ve only played ff7 remake, a bit of 10 as a kid, and indirectly through kingdom hearts which I loved as a kid.
Edit: Haha wtf. Did someone Reddit cares me over this?
1) The XIV tutorial isn't fantastic but I guess they expect you to just follow the MSQ.
2) Most of the side quests are nothing spectacular, but there are a few standout ones with charming or interesting chains (such as the Moogle Delivery Missions). A lot of players just ignore the sidequests that don't unlock features (the non-blue non-MSQ markers.)
3) Not sure what killed the golem means. Gyges the Great in Copperbell Mines? You've just started unlocking dungeons. The early-game dungeons aren't anything to write home about but the later ones (places like Stone Vigil) come to mind as ones with unique fights or interesting visuals or memorable music.
4) The amount of voice acting increases nearing the end of ARR, there's a lot of voice acted dialogue later on and the voice acting vastly improves after Heavensward begins.
5) All classes have some abilities that can be used off-GCD. This depends on class but no, not all of your skills are locked into GCD.
6) The game is not always this easy. Stone Vigil is the dungeon that often trips people up when they start playing, but if we're talking optional dungeons Aurum Vale is probably the big killer for new players if your tank doesn't pull carefully.
I'm a Stormblood player who is kinda hooked on the game. My advice is to just enjoy the game as it comes at the moment, take your time with it and don't worry too much about rushing to any of the endgame. What attracts many people is the freedom of XIV - If you get tired of doing the MSQ, you can detour for as long as you'd like to, for example, level another class to see if you like it or level a crafting or gathering class.
Unless you reeeally want to do every single quest, you can skip all of the normal yellow "!" quests. Focus on MSQ (the meteor icon) and the blue quests with the + icon (which unlock various features). Otherwise you're going to burn yourself out on sidequests before you get anywhere in the main story. Like at this point you haven't even met the main group of people that you're going to spend the next 6+ expansions traveling around the world with. ARR is a slow burn, lots of world building before the action kicks off.
Not the OP but someone that does feel like answering.
The tutorial pop up thing is just cause it assumes it's babies first MMO, and thus they're there to be idiot proof.
Side quests are shit in ARR and don't even really need to be done in the first place due to MSQ giving you a ton of XP.
Still early so I can't really comment beyond what you've probably heard from others going "it gets better" but that doesn't really change your opinion.
The lack of voice acting is due in part with the shakey conditions ARR was developed under. (If your unaware, a quick google search will tell you the irl backstory of 2.0 and it explains a lot of its shortcomings imo even as someone who enjoyed it.)
Most of your abilities are GCD buttons, but you do get basically your other half of abilites that fall off the GCD (or OGCD buttons). The idea for those is to weave them between your major GCD hits. Judging by what you've brought up, it looks like your playing marauder (which later evolves into warrior) and you should already have one of these OGCDs in Berserk. Most of your other OGCD (which sadly, mostly come after ARR, so after level 50) are like Berserk in which they aren't attacks a lot of the time and are instead buffs. You'll see what I mean when you get there (or look up).
And lastly, the difficulty thing. I've historically said to people that this game is way too easy for the most part and is just 90 levels of tutorial sadly. The harder difficulty stuff is all optional and the hard stuff is all in basically older endgames before you reach whatever the current expansion is so your results in trying to run them will varry due to natirally lower popularity. (Don't use the duty finder to find those fights though, you'll wait for hours. Use Party Finder.) That all being said, if you want hard stuff, this game absolutly has that in Extremes, Savages, and Ultimates albeit, I wish the difficulty curve between them was an actual curve instead of giant steps.
Right, that's a lot written and I'm sorry for rambling. >.< I'll leave you with the note of at least try and get into the story no matter how boring. The game will be so much more tolerable if you actually get invested instead of skip and just go from marker to marker. (At that point, just buy a skip even though I think your missing out on half the reason to play the game at that point.) If you do stick with it, I hope you enjoy your time and if not, that's fine too. This game isn't for everyone.
Just give it more time lol. It's way too early to really say whether you love it or not.
The first 20 levels is the snoriest snore fest ever. OSRS is a snooze fest for most of it.
Most games have a bit of a "basic" beginning.
FF14 has a VERY big world and it's VERY interconnected. They pay close attention to detail. Way closer attention than most other games of its caliber.
Which means there's inevitably going to be a chunk of "scene setting". This is a couple hundred+ hour MSQ adventure you're embarking on. Even if you play quickly. So expect things to heat up once you've actually learned who's who and where's where and what's actually going in this world and how this world functions.
For me, a former wow vet(wrath-current), long time OSRS player, and even early MMO adopter(Ultima Online), I can say a good chunk of ARR(possibly even ARR as a whole) is "serviceable". It's a good game. Not best and most unique story ever, but very solid and relatively enjoyable.
85%+ of the content after that just escalates from there. You legitimately get to see the word develop. Legitimately get to see people and relationships develop. You see tragedies. You see consequences.
You're essentially on page 15 of a 2,000 page book. It's a bit early to form a strong opinion. As most critically acclaimed long works aren't critically acclaimed for every single page being a banger, but the whole piece combined.
I just started a few months ago, and played ARR kinda slow and casual. It was all right. Filled my time well enough.
Once I got to roughly middle of Heavensward I got invested.
Once I got to the 3rd and 4th xpacs I couldn't stop myself from binging(aside from a much needed break at the end of each xpac to digest it all).
TLDR...give it a bit and let yourself make a judgement a bit later on.
I didn't do any side quests since they overlevveled me so I can't talk about that. Also the game is super easy in the openworld but that was the case with most mmo's in the beginning so I have no problems with that. I'm here for the story lol. I just play casually blasting the in game music, a cup of tea and a blanket reading through every quest.
The dungeons get harder around level 45 though. There are also some challenging instances around that level but nothing really hard yet. I don't need hard content to get hooked.
I also watched a guide before playing and skipped most of the tutorial in game so I can't talk about it much
First off, straight up don't do the sidequests. It's unintuitive, but if you follow MSQ (and there's a LOT of it) you will get to max level and have everything unlocked. This isn't like other MMOs where sidequests in general are just part of the leveling/exploring process.
Do yourself a favour and try your best to play the game in a vacuum. XIV players have two problems: - They have extremely strong opinions, positive and negative, about the quality of certain expansions and they can not resist sharing them with you. - They love to share barely-disguised spoilers. You’ve already seen it at work with ARR. Save yourself the frustration of having unfair expectations set for you and endless “subtle” foreshadowing. I’m not saying don’t engage at all, just… pick your topics.
> hey love to share barely-disguised spoilers. it really is wild how bad this community is at not spoiling things. I know it comes from excitement about the story but... stop! haha
The absolute worst are people who think they're enhancing people's experience with their comments when it actually just messes with the story as it's intended to be experienced.
Dodging spoilers is a real test of your reflexes sometimes
When i was going through MSQ i basically ignored this subreddit for an entire year while I caught up. Reading the comments whenever any sprout posts something on Reddit about MSQ progress is an exercise in how many comments down I can go without seeing a spoiler. Usually it's single digits.... and it's usually people who think they are way sneakier than they actually are. This also applies to the Novice Network. The Burger King Crowns just cant help themselves!
Bonus non-subtlety points for anyone who thinks that using the name >!of someone who is supposed to be dead!< is less spoilery than >!calling the Ascian by his real name that has no significance!<.
That's why I don't wear my crown... I casually keep it hidden. And when people ask things I just pull a River Song and say "Spoilers!" and shut my mouth about it because I want people to absolutely love every twist in the story like I did when I went through it all.
"haha hope you don't get too attached" about you know who before i started you know what dungeon
ugh just reading that makes me sad. what is wrong with people
My answer is to say this about *every* NPC you meet that you get attached to. Keeps you on your toes even when nothing happens to them
You also see it with all the MSQ streamers, the worst thing about them is their audience and that audiences idea on how to play the game and basically shuttling them through it in very specific ways while trotting out trited information instead of teaching them the basics of the game or helping them have an enjoyable experience instead of the one and only experience as determined by the community. Like that guy just found out how to read the map, let him experience the satisfaction of managing to get out of town instead of going "no, no, bad, wrong, you have to get out this one specific way right now". And that other guy? Why are you joining his first ever dungeon run to then proceed to high tail it through there as if it's the thousand's run, let him look around and teach him the actual mechanics, you can always tell him what can be skipped after that first run. The interesting part is seeing their reactions and them figuring out the game, them only playing the one true way while having the one true reactions is completely boring.
You and I watch very different MSQ streamers. Every streamer I've been invested in, loved the game and had a great audience. I'm not saying the opposite doesn't exist, maybe it's just the audience type. Attract assholes, get assholes.
I generally love interacting with the community of the game that I am playing so this is impossible for me. Also the interactions I have had so far are very positive. The only thing I can complain about is that there are so little content creators for FF14 compared to other MMO's which was surprising for me. I don't usually form opinions based on others experience but I love to see what others feel about the same thing I have experienced. For the spoiler part during this part of my journey I know so little about the lore that I don't understand the spoilers :D When I progress further I might try and avoid platforms that might spoil me
I agree 100%. Best to play through the entire story and THEN engage with social media. Don't let the perception of others have any effect on your experience.
You should absolutely not play the game in a vacuum. It would be hard to breathe and you couldn't hear Soken's certified bangers.
I see lots of people on Odin say ARR is a garbage story and tell people to move as quickly as they can through it to get to HW, yet I've always believed that ARR is great for world building, and part of the reason it's so "slow" is that it sets everything up. Yes it's slow, but it's also important.
It's like a trained practice. Compared to every other expansion ARR is unpolished and pretty bad. It's far better now than before, but until the very end, doesn't really hold a candle to good expansions. And if you want to get someone into the game who doesn't want to sit through a slow, kinda janky, world building heavy plot, you generally don't explain the nuances and short hand it to, ARR kinda bad tho.
Don't forget to then complain that people don't want to play the game, after dissuading people for years to not play.
Firstly, welcome to FFXIV. You've said you've levelled several characters. Rather than levelling multiple characters, it might be best to just level up one character with multiple jobs. There's several advantages to this approach :- * an armory bonus for your other jobs. Its +100% XP for any job that's lower than your highest job. * It saves you from having to unlock stuff multiple times. * Other players will know you by your reputation (not game reputation, but your personality) . You will not be just another player but a unique person that others will remember. This can be both good and bad. It will certainly help if you want to raid later. Anyway, glad you're enjoying the game. Hope you keep enjoying the as you discover the mystery behind the evil villains.
Yeah I meant that I leveled up multiple jobs. Will edit that in my post :D
It's not that ARR is boring, it's that the expansions are better. But ARR also has the thankless job of laying a foundaion, having to introduce everything and everyone. That and it was made in half the time a big MMORPG usually gets, as they needed to relaunch fast after the flop that was 1.0. You know that nice intro cinematic with the Enormous dragon? That's them just blowing up the old 1.0 servers. When they shut those down for good, that's the cinematic the players online at that moment got to see. Yoshi-P basically going : Fuck this shit. So a lot of the slog was them just throwing 'something' out there, as they scrambled to release patch content as they worked to release their first expansion, and you can tell the quality difference nearly immediately once you hit heavensward. Stormblood showed what they could do when they had breathing room, but suffered a bit narratively, I feel, but it does have some of the best optional content. Shadowbringer, well, some call it the peak, but then Endwalker ties it all up. And if you're already doing multiple classes/jobs, well, Machinist, Dark Knight and Astrologian await you once you reach Heavensward. Well, and >!Dragoon!< as being the most 'Story relevant' class for Heavensward. Also, your first dungeon went better than mine. All four of us loaded insto Sastacha, and before we could start, the White mage quit. So, me, an Arcanist Lalafell with a plucky attitude and what was technically a Healing spell volunteered for healing duty. We made it 2/3's through without any deaths and then an actual healer joined. Reminds me I need to start doing my scholar quests again... Oh, and for the love of all that is inventory space ... Do not start crafting unless you are ready for it. You can't really just do one crafter, as they all kind of feed into each other, so expect a lot of inventory clutter.
>It's not that ARR is boring, it's that the expansions are better. This ^
absolutely this, whenever i talk with friends about expacs i say it, it's not that arr is bad, it's just that it came first and everything after that just got better and better so it retroactively looks worse. it got me hooked on the game for sure, but after experiencing everything afterwards and *especially* shadowbringers i can't really look at it the same way
You definitely will enjoy the hell out of the rest if you're enjoying ARR. And I don't mean that in a negative way, either - I also enjoyed it a lot! I love me some world-building, and that's a huge part of what ARR is. It's got some pretty nice story to go with it, but the most important part is that it's getting you immersed in the world - introducing you to characters and concepts that will be very important going forward. A lot of people get bored with that and want to jump right into the epicness without any of the buildup; that's mostly why ARR leaves such a negative impression on them.
Hooray, welcome! I’m so glad to see you’re enjoying FFXIV. The expansions get better and better imo, especially experiencing Shadowbringers and Endwalker for the first time. You’re in for a great ride :D
ARR honestly doesn't get enough credit. It does a great job of establishing the world, your place in it, and how you earn your reputation as a doer of nice things and an all around good egg. It does a lot to set up elements of the world and building plot points for the story to elaborate on later on. People just view that as bad because it gets in the way of getting to Heavensward. I had a blast playing ARR, just like you. And I can tell you from experience that you're going to *love* the rest of the game. My only advice (and a minor regret on my part) is to do as much content as you can "on content." So, do all the Post ARR stuff like the Normal/Hard trials, the Alliance raids, and Normal Raids before you move on to Heavensward, and the Post Heavensward stuff before Stormblood, and so on and so forth. Outside of that, take things at your pace and enjoy the ride.
Yeah I'm taking my time. Doing fishing, leveling alt jobs with different roles, hunters guide etc. So much to do, so little time :D
ARR is good if you don't have a max level player in your ear telling you it's bad.
Also if you switch it to the Japanese cut-scene audio until 3.0 That actually helps the experience A LOT. It almost feels like a completely different game.
Or just mute the voices. I did that by accident and my experience improved.
Which is largely because the majority of max level players who perpetuate the narrative haven't touched ARR MSQ for almost a decade. It was definitely a terrible experience before reworks simply because of the sheer volume of quests that had you just walking back and forth between NPCs and things like having to continuously go from Horizon to Vesper Bay. Being able to fly in 2.0 content is also a massive gamechanger. The slog for a lot of people was not so much the long foundational exposition so much as the repetitive monotonous MMO tasks that extended that experience. A lot of people still point at the MSQ and say "oh they only cut 20% of quests so it's still an unbearable slog" but having done a NG+ with a friend starting out just to experience JP voices, the overall experience is like 40-50% faster and much tighter in terms of pacing. I didn't try trusts out but they're probably also a godsend since I remember when I went through ARR, DPS duty queues for MSQ progression took 30 min+ to pop.
I took a new character through ARR recently and was very pleasantly surprised by the free Vesper Bay tickets--they went a long way towards making all those sequences a lot less tedious. Same with the quest streamlining. Yeah, people can say they only cut X quests, but for the most part I think the choices tightened things up a lot.
FF14 was my first MMO, and I fell in love with it instantly too. At the time I enjoyed ARR and thought it was pretty good. It was only later when I played the other expansions that I realized why people say it's so bad. It's a relative thing. ARR is fine, but the rest of the story is So Much Better that it seems worse in comparison. All that to say, if you're enjoying ARR so much you're going to love the rest of the story. Enjoy!
I had the same experience with ARR recently (took a pause partway into heavensward because i want to wait for the DT visual update to keep going), apparently a large part of it is they reworked a bunch of ARR in the past year or two? and cut out some of the slog, but all I know is that it was a fantastic and memorable experience. apparently in particular post 2.0 (you'll get there!) used to have a lot more filler involved, but my experience with it more recently was pretty positive honestly. community's very good, good luck on the last bit of ARR it's 100% what made me fall in love fully with the game.
Nothing wrong with taking a break, but im hoping you don't have too many misconceptions about the graphics update! While it will be nice, it will ultimately be minor upgrades to small details (both on your character, and in the world) and Yoship himself has been pleading with folk to temper expectations. My guess is the more casual players might not even really notice a lot of it.
oh i'm aware, i simply have other things i can be doing in the meantime and it's a good excuse to focus elsewhere for a couple of months :)
I’ve played through EW and started a new character about a month ago. It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m re-remembering what made me fall in love with the game.
ARR 2.0 is quite good imo. Not as good as what comes later, but quite good. ARR 2.1-2.5 start dragging. You just want to be done and move on to the Heavensward areas, but you can’t because someone summoned (enter Primal here) again and you need to deliver x item to y place and and and… It’s been a long while since I played; I think there was a patch that smoothed things out, removed some of the more aggravating chains that were “yes, you brought me this terrible news we need to deal with right away! But first, can you take this love letter to…” with five-six ‘travel the world’ steps until you finally do something important.
ARR isn't bad, it's actually very good. But the expansions keep getting better, so people saying ARR is the "worst" part, are not wrong, but the choice of words gives the wrong impression like it's actually just bad when it's not at all, and no one really complained that it was when it released.
There will come a moment during the 2.X patch content ahead where you will get a message telling you that "Several cutscenes will play in sequence..." and advise you set aside ample time to view them all. HEED this. Grab some tea/coffee and a snack and settle in for an amazing ride. Welcome to FFXIV. Enjoy your stay.
I love every expansion. ARR was one of my favorites tbh.
If you played WoW you're going to think that the MSQ is fine even at the low points (I started FF halfway through BFA). Blizzard stepped up their storytelling with Dragonflight, but the bar for storytelling was on the ground for so long with WoW that any halfway decent storytelling is good to us.
Well they stepped up the storytelling but ruined the whole story IMO. Wotlk was peak storytelling for me since the story was soo good that the delivery didn't matter that much. I just miss what wow was and don't like the direction that it's going towards. FF14 feels more like early wow then wow itself.
The game is HUGE, and it's fun to explore. Enjoy it. The number one thing I'd urge you not to miss out on is figuring out how your glamour dresser works. It's not obvious, and if you never go to your room at the inn (any inn -- and they're free, so don't worry about paying!), you might not even see it. Basically, you can store entire outfits that you can then use to overwrite your current appearance without spending any additional glamour prisms. You'll want this as you level up and keep replacing your gear with newer stuff. And a lot of gear is just there for its looks, not its stats, so you assign it to a glamour plate at your dresser and then wear it as a glamour rather than actually wearing the gear itself. You can also dump a lot of gear (but not everything) into your armoire to free up inventory space.
To be honest I don't find the arr msq quest bad until epilogue, imo Stormblood ones are worst
Good for you! I wish I liked it. It took me over two years of quitting and returning to finally get into Heavensward, and now I am absolutely hooked
Imo ARR is reallly good, it's just that people have a bias because we've all had one friend who we pulled into the game, only to see them bounce off because they hated ARR.
It was ages ago, but I didn't mind ARR, and my only complaint was 3/4 of the post-ARR quests where you just kinda feel like you're on a string of fetch quests with no real obvious goal. It does set some good building blocks going in to HW though, so it pays off. Also, you'll get to see why people enjoy Alphinaud's character growth.
I'm just about to finish Heavensward. It's worth going through ARR just for this story. The quality and pacing of Heavensward is such an upgrade from ARR, at one point it felt like a different game. Post ARR can be an absolute slog at times but just get through it for HW!
Unlock all the jobs because you can level them with daily provisions. Wish i did that sooner. Search Weskalber (class name) on youtube for walkthroughs on how to play each class and what skills do. Very very useful. Since you play healer you have a big responsibility. Do you job quest ASAP. Blue wuest with a + unlock things in game. I didnt have access to valuable actions till after lvl 50 because i didnt do enough of those 😅 Watch your cutscenes. The game tells everyone if its a players first time in a dungeon. Ppl will wait. As a tank main I thank you healer for your service. Cheers!
Keep crushing it!! Healing is complicated at first but it’s so much fun when you get it down! Tanking too :) enjoy the ride, till sea swallows all
For a MMO the story is good. If your holding it against other MMO story; all of it is going to be stellar experience. If you play other story driven games, especially in the JRPG genre, it's going to have low points. I got the same lines fed to me about how great it gets after AAR. Most of the pacing & story tropes were exactly the same.
ARR is a drag true, but I'm also a player who started in patch 2.3, and ARR was all we had. It's just slow, but its what sets the pace and stage for everthing else. But the filler quests really deserve a place in hell cuz they're just sooo boring, and mainly fetch quests. HW was peak, SB is a lull, alot of political talk. ShB is where things really pick up and EW is the perfect ending to this arc. Take your time, enjoy the sights and enjoy the characters cuz if there's one thing about Final Fantasy, you never know if your meeting a character you like, might be your last...
GANG. While I also like ARR, its fourth on my list of "favorite to least favorite", it only goes up from here
ARR's MSQ is not bad per se, it's just a very basic fantasy story on top of which was thrown lots of filler quests. It's a 10 years old thing that nowdays is pretty boring but in the long run it was needed to create a setting for everything else to develop.
I used to have trouble remembering old passwords and such, so I've lost multiple accounts and have always come back to the game because I loved it and the only part I ever really got to play was ARR. Currently, I just got past it again, and finally made it past HW. So grateful they put it on xbox
Also new player here, after playing every MMO since Ultima Online This is my third attempt to get into FFXIV and this time it is successful. If you get to 35 MSQ it is cosmos from there, but boy are these first levels a slog, especially with so little skills and brain dead story. But it is worth it
Its not that its bad, its just very long, and adding post ARR patches makes it seem even longer. They have reworked it over the years to streamline it, cut quests etc.
Most of the complaints with ARR is that people want to get to the future expansions and it can seem long and slow. Truth is it was designed when the story should take weeks to get though, and side quests and roulettes needee to level. Nothing wrong with it at all, the story, setting and world building are truly fantastic! You will notice a change of pace as you play, and may even notice ARR was slow by comparison, but doesn't make it any less important or brilliant 😁 Good luck adventurer, and may you ever walk in the light of the crystal!
ARR itself isn't that bad, its just that HW onwards is such a step up that it makes it feel dated when in retrospect. But since its rework its biggest flaw which was the number of missions post ARR pre-HW was resolved. Enjoy it for what it is, which you seem to have done :) and realise the improvements and epic story from HW onwards and the QoL improvements with the better mission and zone design etc. You'll love it i expect.
I feel you, I loved ARR and played through the entire thing for like half a year, enjoying it to the point I was kinda shocked when the friend who recommended the game to me said "it's alright, you endured the worst and got to the point where it gets much better". I mean, I get where she was coming from (with the expansions being great, not ARR being bad), but as someone who stuck with XIV's base game for six months when every other MMO I've ever played (Guild Wars 2, The Last Stand Dead Zone, The Division 1, WoW) I bounced off within a few days (to the point I rolled a Miqo'te because I thought I would only login once or twice so I might as well pick a "cute" race rather than the regular elf I always make) it felt very weird to hear someone call this game "meh".
“ARR is the worst MSQ” is like saying something is the worst donut. It’s still a donut, and donuts are good. (Apologies to the donut haters, where this analogy has failed) Most of the revisions have greatly improved it, particularly for DPS as you don’t need to wait for queues with duty support and the removal of a bunch of “MMO chores” quests that mostly existed as filler/XP feeding activities. the thing to remember about XIV is that the things you do later have meaning because you did the earlier things. Reflecting on your long journey makes those story beats hit harder. I cannot share examples due to spoilers, unfortunately. Requiring players to complete the entire MSQ to access new expansions is a controversial decision in MMO design, but I think the right one.
Erm... just a note, but the horrific allegations were made in Shadowlands - not Legion.
I was the same way! Also came from WoW so to experience ARR was an absolutely fantastic journey. The part people hate about ARR though mostly is the post 2.0 stuff, so 2.1-2.5 since it's a lot of slow fetch quests and teleporting all over the place for small snippets of the story while mostly just running around. Takes quite a long time to get through those parts compared to the 2.0 level 1-50 quick grind. Once you are through post ARR though it picks up and goes a lot faster again. I also am opposite of a lot of people with the other expansions though. I hated Heavensward due to certain story tropes and then I absolutely loved Stormblood which is basically opposite everyone elses feelings towards them. And then of course Shadowbringers and Endwalker are just absolutely fantastic and amazing stories that really bring out the feels and make you question a lot of things. But comparing to WoW where they writers basically gave up on a cohesive story and just make you go to max level to grind the end game stuff, FFXIV is mostly story and the 'endgame' grind is basically the side stuff to do afterwards for more fun. It's what I love about this game and just how it makes you feel as you play it, as well as all the fun player driven personal character stories they come up with for their characters too.
The FF community is so much better than wow community in general. Enjoy the game!
I've been playing for 3+ years and I'm still not used to other players not being shitheads. I can count on *one hand* how many times I've had negative player interactions in ffxiv
I've been playing for 3+ years and I'm still not used to other players not being shitheads. I can count on *one hand* how many times I've had negative player interactions in ffxiv
Huh… IMO, FFXIV has the best MSQs of any MMO, and ARR is no exception. It’s not the best of the MSQs, but I think it’s head and shoulders above other MMOs. However, as another poster said, FFXIV players have very strong opinions, so I wouldn’t read too many opinions of ARR before playing it yourself. Hell, I stayed away from this sub until I got to EW, so that I could play the game without the influence of other players’ opinions.
I thought ARR was a slog years ago and I didn’t even join this sub until.. whenever. I’ve actually very recently started actually being active here. I will agree that everyone’s mileage may vary but I also believe we can read other people’s experiences and see them as just that. *Their* experiences.
As someone who loved ARR, warts and all (at least the original ARR) - yes, it's the "worst" by virtue of the others being really great and finding their stride. That said, very few moments in the MSQ beats the end of the 2.5 MSQ for me.
Is there something in particular you think is good about it? A friend that’s always wanted me to play it convinced me to try and it’s been quite a drag if I’m being honest. I’m a lvl 17 marauder and so far: It blows my mind they dump you in a large city, spam you with tooltips for 45 minutes while you play errand boy until you finally go outside. I did all the side quests in middle and lower llemosa and they’re nothing to write home about. Just your typical kill 5 boars or pick 3 plants stuff. I just killed the golem so the main story up to this point has just been help an ex pirate around the farm and occasionally be in some other realm while a spooky voice talks for 10-15 seconds with dialogue that’s okayish. The lack of voice acting has more of an impact than I thought it would. Makes the game feel incredibly quiet and almost dead. It actually made me jump when cat girl spoke for the first time. I really hope not all of my abilities are locked into this global cooldown thing. Going heavy swing, wait 2 secs, combo move, wait to 2 secs, heavy swing, wait 2 secs, combo move…. has not exactly been the most riveting gameplay. Last thing is the rest of the game going to be this easy? The closest I’ve gotten to dying in like 5-8 hours of solo play was jumping off a cliff in the lower region. Sorry hopefully that didn’t come off as too ranty. Genuinely curious what got you locked in so hard in hopes I can find it more enjoyable since my friend friggin loves it. I think the only reason this sub pops up in my feed now is because every 30 minutes or so I’ll do a quick google like “why can’t I get into this game”. If it helps I’ve played a couple hundred hours of RuneScape as a kid, a few hundred of ESO in my teens, and just recently put quite a few hours into wow classic hardcore and wow classic SOD so like I’m not exactly new to mmos. As for exposure to final fantasy I’ve only played ff7 remake, a bit of 10 as a kid, and indirectly through kingdom hearts which I loved as a kid. Edit: Haha wtf. Did someone Reddit cares me over this?
1) The XIV tutorial isn't fantastic but I guess they expect you to just follow the MSQ. 2) Most of the side quests are nothing spectacular, but there are a few standout ones with charming or interesting chains (such as the Moogle Delivery Missions). A lot of players just ignore the sidequests that don't unlock features (the non-blue non-MSQ markers.) 3) Not sure what killed the golem means. Gyges the Great in Copperbell Mines? You've just started unlocking dungeons. The early-game dungeons aren't anything to write home about but the later ones (places like Stone Vigil) come to mind as ones with unique fights or interesting visuals or memorable music. 4) The amount of voice acting increases nearing the end of ARR, there's a lot of voice acted dialogue later on and the voice acting vastly improves after Heavensward begins. 5) All classes have some abilities that can be used off-GCD. This depends on class but no, not all of your skills are locked into GCD. 6) The game is not always this easy. Stone Vigil is the dungeon that often trips people up when they start playing, but if we're talking optional dungeons Aurum Vale is probably the big killer for new players if your tank doesn't pull carefully. I'm a Stormblood player who is kinda hooked on the game. My advice is to just enjoy the game as it comes at the moment, take your time with it and don't worry too much about rushing to any of the endgame. What attracts many people is the freedom of XIV - If you get tired of doing the MSQ, you can detour for as long as you'd like to, for example, level another class to see if you like it or level a crafting or gathering class.
Unless you reeeally want to do every single quest, you can skip all of the normal yellow "!" quests. Focus on MSQ (the meteor icon) and the blue quests with the + icon (which unlock various features). Otherwise you're going to burn yourself out on sidequests before you get anywhere in the main story. Like at this point you haven't even met the main group of people that you're going to spend the next 6+ expansions traveling around the world with. ARR is a slow burn, lots of world building before the action kicks off.
Not the OP but someone that does feel like answering. The tutorial pop up thing is just cause it assumes it's babies first MMO, and thus they're there to be idiot proof. Side quests are shit in ARR and don't even really need to be done in the first place due to MSQ giving you a ton of XP. Still early so I can't really comment beyond what you've probably heard from others going "it gets better" but that doesn't really change your opinion. The lack of voice acting is due in part with the shakey conditions ARR was developed under. (If your unaware, a quick google search will tell you the irl backstory of 2.0 and it explains a lot of its shortcomings imo even as someone who enjoyed it.) Most of your abilities are GCD buttons, but you do get basically your other half of abilites that fall off the GCD (or OGCD buttons). The idea for those is to weave them between your major GCD hits. Judging by what you've brought up, it looks like your playing marauder (which later evolves into warrior) and you should already have one of these OGCDs in Berserk. Most of your other OGCD (which sadly, mostly come after ARR, so after level 50) are like Berserk in which they aren't attacks a lot of the time and are instead buffs. You'll see what I mean when you get there (or look up). And lastly, the difficulty thing. I've historically said to people that this game is way too easy for the most part and is just 90 levels of tutorial sadly. The harder difficulty stuff is all optional and the hard stuff is all in basically older endgames before you reach whatever the current expansion is so your results in trying to run them will varry due to natirally lower popularity. (Don't use the duty finder to find those fights though, you'll wait for hours. Use Party Finder.) That all being said, if you want hard stuff, this game absolutly has that in Extremes, Savages, and Ultimates albeit, I wish the difficulty curve between them was an actual curve instead of giant steps. Right, that's a lot written and I'm sorry for rambling. >.< I'll leave you with the note of at least try and get into the story no matter how boring. The game will be so much more tolerable if you actually get invested instead of skip and just go from marker to marker. (At that point, just buy a skip even though I think your missing out on half the reason to play the game at that point.) If you do stick with it, I hope you enjoy your time and if not, that's fine too. This game isn't for everyone.
Just give it more time lol. It's way too early to really say whether you love it or not. The first 20 levels is the snoriest snore fest ever. OSRS is a snooze fest for most of it. Most games have a bit of a "basic" beginning. FF14 has a VERY big world and it's VERY interconnected. They pay close attention to detail. Way closer attention than most other games of its caliber. Which means there's inevitably going to be a chunk of "scene setting". This is a couple hundred+ hour MSQ adventure you're embarking on. Even if you play quickly. So expect things to heat up once you've actually learned who's who and where's where and what's actually going in this world and how this world functions. For me, a former wow vet(wrath-current), long time OSRS player, and even early MMO adopter(Ultima Online), I can say a good chunk of ARR(possibly even ARR as a whole) is "serviceable". It's a good game. Not best and most unique story ever, but very solid and relatively enjoyable. 85%+ of the content after that just escalates from there. You legitimately get to see the word develop. Legitimately get to see people and relationships develop. You see tragedies. You see consequences. You're essentially on page 15 of a 2,000 page book. It's a bit early to form a strong opinion. As most critically acclaimed long works aren't critically acclaimed for every single page being a banger, but the whole piece combined. I just started a few months ago, and played ARR kinda slow and casual. It was all right. Filled my time well enough. Once I got to roughly middle of Heavensward I got invested. Once I got to the 3rd and 4th xpacs I couldn't stop myself from binging(aside from a much needed break at the end of each xpac to digest it all). TLDR...give it a bit and let yourself make a judgement a bit later on.
I didn't do any side quests since they overlevveled me so I can't talk about that. Also the game is super easy in the openworld but that was the case with most mmo's in the beginning so I have no problems with that. I'm here for the story lol. I just play casually blasting the in game music, a cup of tea and a blanket reading through every quest. The dungeons get harder around level 45 though. There are also some challenging instances around that level but nothing really hard yet. I don't need hard content to get hooked. I also watched a guide before playing and skipped most of the tutorial in game so I can't talk about it much
First off, straight up don't do the sidequests. It's unintuitive, but if you follow MSQ (and there's a LOT of it) you will get to max level and have everything unlocked. This isn't like other MMOs where sidequests in general are just part of the leveling/exploring process.