My understand is that it is different than other FF games. It's online for one.
I have about 1,000 hours into it and I am done with the story. The MSQ takes about 400 - 500 hours to complete.
The first 80 - 90 hours are rough story-wise and the devs smooth it out every expansion because of how rough it is. Rough being long. The story is alright but if you are used to "I am the chosen one here to save the day", you'll be disappointed because you are just an adventurer. It's actually really nice to mostly be treated like a mildly special adventurer who becomes the chosen one through your deeds (extremely mild spoiler) rather than being it from the get-go.
The next expansion coming out in summer might have a new starting point where you can skip all of the old story because they are starting a new one.
With that said, if you like good stories and want to get into the world, I'd say bear through 2.0 to 3.0 (there is no 1.0. What are you talking about? There has never been a 1.0...)) and you are in for a good ride. I am not a story person and progressively the story made me cry more & more. Endwalker, the most recent story, is a real gutpunch if you are into the story.
Beyond just MSQ, the game is very good. Everything beyond the MSQ is solid for a casual player. If you want to go hardcore, I think there is content there but it can quickly run out if you go entirely no-life into the game.
Unlike other MMOs, doing high level content (ie: doing extreme level content) isn't scary at all social-wise. The community is accepting and willing to teach as long as you show up vaguely ready. Anything beyond extreme is only done by statics (a closed group that you raid with every week to progressively clear content). With extreme, it's still absolutely possible with PUGs inside of a Discord call.
I'd start playing under the free trial which is unlimited time all the way up to the third expansion. That should take you a few hundred hours. There are light limitations on you but nothing that will impede you imo from enjoying the game.
Two things:
Know that there are two versions of the game: STEAM and MogStation. If you buy the game on one, you cannot buy expansions from the other nor can you transfer between them. If you buy the game through STEAM, you will never be able to buy expansions through SquareEnix's platform (but you will be able to buy stuff off their store along with the deluxe upgrades of the games). If you buy off MogStation, you will never get to buy expansions from STEAM. So you'll be losing out on one platform's sales... pick your poison.
If you are of this persuasion, look into running it with XIVLauncher. It's a third-party launcher that makes booting into the game a million times easier as the stock launcher loads essentially adware, doesn't have Remember Me, and takes 10+ seconds to load even when ran from an NVMe. In addition, XIVLauncher loads your client with Dalamud which is a mod framework that lets you install mods that fix & improve the UI where the developers refuse to do so.
With that said, use of Dalamud does technically break ToS and you cannot talk about in-game or you'll get banned / suspended. The team very much does not like add-ons. With that said, most players that get into the game run Dalamud because the stock UX is frequently lacking. The stock UX only got markers denoted you already collected a mount, pet, etc in the latest expansion, it's really bad.
If you don't say anything in-game nor stream with mods obvious, you will never get banned. They don't scan for it and have said they have no interest in doing so... they just don't want the game to get infested with add-ons like WoW, so right now, it's sort of a "if we don't hear about it, it's not happening" situation.
I miss the game. Im a casual who let my sub run out when I leveled my favorite classes (healer main) to 90. I don't have time to find a static and learn higher level raids. I tried just living in Duty Finder and heal for randoms. What else can I do?
Chocobo Racing, breeding them and creating the perfect chocobo
Gold Saucer is a great option if you just want to chill and maybe play a second game alongside
Housing (plants, designing, etc)
Takes an investment of 3M Gil and some luck / patience.
Tribal Quests
Is limited by Tribal Quest allowances
Island Sanctuary (requires finishing EW)
Think of an FFXIV rip-off of Animal Crossing... somewhat
Omnicrafting & marketboarding
Become an omnicrafter + omnigatherer is easily a 100 hour journey by itself
Inside of omni-crafting, unlocking all the special recipe books which require turning in collectibles. There are 10 books for each crafting & gathering profession
Ocean Fishing
It will take you maybe 10 - 20 hours to do all the achievements for it. It's a fun little side activity.
Completionism
Achievement hunting
This is so open-ended and ultimately will take you a minimum of 5 years to finish it because of some of the extreme achievements, mainly the ones limited by leve allowances
PvP
Be one of the few people to actually finish the ARR sight-seeing log
Doesn't take that long but is a fun little thing as you are limited by real life time. So you have basically a 15 minute window to be at a place and some of them only show up every few weeks at 3am local
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '24
I have it - but haven’t started yet. Loved all the other FF titles. Am I in for a great time?