Hey guys and girls. Are there any interesting MMOs coming to ps4 this year? I'm really scratching for one at the moment, having recently been watching a load of EverQuest progression server vids on YouTube.

I'm on the fence about jumping back into FF14. I played on ps3 for 2 month a little over a year ago, got to level 50, did a few primal battles but then stopped. I'm debating getting back in, but I feel a little intimidated that I'll have forgotten how to play (and even control the game with a gamepad). It was bad enough going through dungeons and such for the first time and being unsure of all the mechanics, never mind a level 50 character going in and not knowing what he's doing lol.

If anybody does play on ps4, do you use keyboard and mouse? Hoe is it? Prefer it over the controller?

I generally prefer KBM whether I'm playing on PC or PS4, but I've used the controller and it's still totally fine, especially once you get well-adjusted to it. You just need to put some careful thought into how you set up your hotbars so that you still have access to certain abilities even when your thumb is on the left stick for movement, etc. And maybe set up some macros for certain things; I'm sure there are all sorts of guides out there to give you ideas since controller players are very common.

If your main worry with FF14 is being too high level then know that you can load into the lvl10 group content with your current high level character and work your way back through the content as you feel comfortable. Its a neat system since you will only have the skills, and the expectations, of the appropriate level of the content. In regards to KB&M versus Controller I find, at least in FF14, its mostly preference since both are very capable and are better in certain instances so dont worry that your "missing out" without a keyboard.

Sadly console MMO's still aren't quite a thing. To my knowledge FF14 and DC Universe Online (which I cant personally recommended but might be worth looking into) are the only PS3/4 MMO's in English.

FF14 has added new stuff since you quit, including a little tutorial thing that you can go through called the Hall of Novice that will teach you the basics of your role. I'm sure by the end of that you'll have remembered how to play.

Thanks for the replys. I mained a White Mage, and using the controller wasn't too bad, but when I tried playing a tank I remember struggling with some of the targeting stuff. I guess it's all about practice. I don't think I had my hot bars set up as effectively as I could have.

Pazy, that's a very good point about the lower level dungeons, and something I had considered also.

How is the general state of the game at the moment? As I said earlier, I was a level 50 healer, had finished the main game story and was working through the 2.5 (I think). Is there plenty of things to do for a fairly casual player that mostly enjoyed the 4 man dungeons, but didn't mind the 8 man stuff and the primals?

If you haven't done the expansion content at all, definitely give that a shot, it's largely very good IMO. Can't comment on any of the endgame stuff in 3.1+, but I thoroughly enjoyed the initial 3.0 4- and 8-man content.

DC Universe Online is better suited for a controller by leaps and bounds than FF14, which I felt is designed more towards KB/M. I played DCUO on the PC and nearly gave myself carpal tunnel with all the combo clicking I had to do with KB/M. I don't know if you'll find a lot of people to play with on console, though. Game seemed pretty dead PC-side two years ago. Still, I had fun. It's basically a third person fighter with all the trappings of a traditional MMO.

Star Trek Online is apparently coming to consoles and that would work well with a controller, incidentally, too. F2P grind is pretty terribad though.

Hi again, here I am thinking of jumping back into FFIV (again). I just really have the urge for this type of mmo style game, and only having a ps4 my options are limited. I quit last time because I became disheartened by some of the more difficult trials and primal that require you to do research beforehand or else risk the wrath of your group members. I'm just thinking of perhaps jumping in and casually playing through the dungeons at my leasure and as I feel content to. I had a 50 something (2?) White mage and had barely touched the heavensward stuff, think I was still in the first main zone. I guess I'm just looking for somebody to convince me one way or the other if it's worthwhile to jump back in.

Isn't the next xpension right around the corner? I spent the majority of the last decade playing WOW (literally probably upwards of 50% of all my playtime during those 10 years) but think I am finally done with it - looked surface level at FFXIV and am a bit uncertain if I should try it out. I read a lot of praise from people but am not sure if the more....deliberate combat mechanics would work for me. Then again that seems to be one of the aspects they change in the coming update, so maybe I will finally try it out then!

Yes, Stormblood is due out shortly I belive. It's part of the reason my interest was again raised.

Well, that's kinda gonna happen in any MMO, regardless of game. Even if you'd been playing the game nonstop this whole time, you'd still need to know the mechanics of the endgame fights before going in (unless you don't care about people yelling at you or about being the reason that a group wipes).

If you're just looking to scratch an MMO itch on your PS4, you could try Neverwinter. It has the same 'dodge red circles' mechanics that FF14 does, but it plays more like GW2 (no tab targeting, limited skill slots), and it's free to play (i.e. they sell you shit like bag space and cosmetics/rerolls). The overall zone and quest structure of Neverwinter is much closer to something like LoTRO or SWTOR than GW2's, though (this is a positive for me, but might be a negative for you).

@ajamafalous: thanks for the reply, but that doesn't happen in every mmo. I like to learn through playing the game, no going to some Web page or YouTube and spending 30 minutes figuring a fight out. I have looked at neverwinter but I don't think it's quite what I'm looking for (more of that old school mmo style I'm after)

Out of curiosity, which MMOs would you say that that doesn't happen in?

@ajamafalous: everquest, WoW (vanilla), guild wars, everquest 2.

My biggest complaint with FFXIV was being absolutely required to research and study any remotely challenging content, more-or-less perfecting your play before even setting foot in a zone.

I want to figure things out either by myself or with the help of my team, FFXIV says "read up exactly what to do and do exactly that". Learn the zone's required flowchart and don't fuck it up...

fun...

well if you are in a good free company in the game you can of course run things blind and learn them by playing instead of reading guides. there are plenty of opportunities for that, the game doesn't force you to do anything.

dropping into complicated content that everybody else understands and asking them to explain it all to you seems an unreasonable demand on other people's time, though.

Having your team tell you what to do is hardly running it blind, either you study it before hand or you take time at the start to have someone walk you through every important step. If you don't do either of those things on any content resembling a challenge you will lose, that's as much the game forcing you into something as anything could be.

The way content is recycled in this game you're never in a position where your team wont expect one of those two things. FFXIV is built around players familiar with content making sure everyone else knows the answers to the upcoming test questions before ever engaging with it.

Gone are the days of meeting strangers online and figuring this shit out together, you either do what you're told to do or research online before hand.

@lv4monk: this is exactly what I'm taking about. You either know what to do before a fight or you lose. There's no reacting to things. Which wouldn't be as bad if everybody else hadn't already done it and expects everybody else to know exactly what to do and when somebody doesn't their time is being wasted. I guess joining a good free company could be there answer. That or just stick to the very most casual content the game has such as 4 man dungeons but even those require some fore knowledge or risk the wrath. Deep down I know FFXIV isn't the game I'm after but unfortunately without a PC I'm stuck with the options I have available. It's certainly not without merit.

@lv4monk:

you can run content completely blind, just set up a party finder for other players who haven't done it so you can all learn it together. you've already found someone in this thread in the same boat as you with the same wish to learn by doing, and trust me there are plenty more in the game who prefer to do things that way.

If you want to run group content with other people who also have never done it, either use the in game functions to find those other players, or stay up to date and play stuff as it's released.

that's how I've figured out the mechanics of almost every dungeon and primal that's come out for the past 2 years with friends in my FC, which is exactly what you're talking about being impossible in ffxiv.

I understand where you're coming from - the game is designed around scripted fights rather than dynamic ones for the most part, with very tight choreography. so I get that it isn't for everybody.

you need to learn what to do somehow, and the tight scripting means you can do it either by practice or by preparation. but if you don't like the idea of learning fights as a baseline, then I guess you're always going to have trouble.

The very best case scenario of fighting against all the forces at play that turn this game into homework is that I'm left with a set of "challenges" where losing to something inherently presents the solution. There is no "figuring shit out" so much as "step on a trap and remember it's there next time". I have to push against every factor funneling me into homework sessions just so I can play a game of trial and error.

Paying that much money and spending that much time keeping up to date so there are people still new at the game with which I can play games of trial and error is asking far too much of the average player for far too little.

Modern MMOs have to assume everyone is fully capable and willing to look up guides online, this games solution is to build the challenge around memorizing these guides and executing the required steps quickly and efficiently. I wish they'd have cut out the middle man and removed that now pointless and time consuming element of challenge if they weren't going to bother with less linear solutions. Creative solutions don't matter when the question has one answer that is discovered either by letting the game tell you or searching for it online.

@lv4monk: Out of interest, what would you consider to be a game that doesn't do this?

@lv4monk: You said yourself in the previous sentence that part two of the equation is 'executing the required steps quickly and effeciently;' how is that not a type of measurement of skill? If endgame encounters were as easy as simply reading a guide and then following the steps, it wouldn't take guilds weeks or months to make it through tiers of content.

I totally, completely understand people not liking the genre for a multitude of reasons (huge time/knowledge investment, repetitive nature, social component, etc.), but how is 'this genre should change because I want it to be a different thing' interesting?

@ajamafalous: it's not even always not liking the genre. For myself I love the genre I just don't like some of the things some of them do. Even playing ff14 at the low levels I was always dreading the dungeons because if you don't know what to do for a specific boss encounter odds are your going to cause a wipe for your team and they (in my experience at least) won't take it too kindly. Even after I'd done the dungeons and was doing daily roulette i was hoping the one that popped was one I could remember how the fights go.

It's not exactly how I like my mmo. I like something a little more free flowing, ala everquest. Even things such as just instancing into a dungeon without having to go there and fight your way to a good hunting spot, I miss stuff like that. I get the reasoning behind most games not going that way for the convenience of the players though. I'm still torn weather I want to jump back into ff14 however, because it is a super fun and robust game,there is plenty to do even without worrying about the dungeons and raids and what not.

@gerrid: Modern MMO? I don't play very many, let alone theme parks so I wouldn't really know. Sandboxes obviously don't have this issue since you don't HAVE to do anything and older mmos relied heavily on meeting random people wandering around a given challenge they're clearly unfamiliar with. The only other examples I can think of are just easier mmos, not requiring such study sessions because they're easy enough to wing it, though that's not a super useful answer it's better than the alternative.

I didn't say executing the required steps wasn't a skill, or that FFXIV didn't have other things going for it, just that it had this massively annoying time waster of a barrier to entry. The way FFXIV demands you spend so much time having answers given to you is maddening and doesn't enrich the experience in any way.

The easiest, though probably not best, improvement is to just straight up show you what's going to happen (all Mega Man Egoraptor vid style) and then asking you to do it more quickly and with more accuracy. More-or-less the same effect minus a bunch of wasted time looking shit up. As it stands now I end up with far too many "I didn't know XDEATHLASERBEAM NUMBER 3 was where I absolutely needed to interrupt and not XDEATHLASERBEAM 1 or 2" situations.

Did you really feel it was so much time to learn the little quirks of a trial/dungeon? Or is any time spent doing that too much?

I've definitely had that experience where I either decide to figure it out as I go by watching other people or decide to read up on the encounter (typically while waiting in queue or while actually playing it), but it's never felt like a huge time investment or burden. Typically you could skim a wiki article that breaks down phases and whatnot in just a couple minutes. A bit longer for dungeons but even then it's mostly just a matter of knowing boss stuff, so not that much longer to skim through.

Nothing I can say if you find any time spent on that stuff massively annoying though, other than a lot of the content was just fine winging it through and the times it wasn't I didn't mind learning via trial and error. I dunno how else you'd think to learn about stuff like particular conditions or special attacks the first time through without actually witnessing their effects though. Isn't that how you inevitably go about "figuring shit out" in games with combat? When are your learning options not "read a walkthrough" or "trial and error?" Or is it specifically the hard wipes in FFXIV that bother you? That I can get. The "damnit Fisher I'm pullin you out" type of stuff that don't allow any room for error.

As for the OP's controller thing, I started playing this on PS4 in January and after a few weeks was super into using a controller. There's a pretty steep learning curve (a few weeks I'd say) before I felt I had a handle on targetting and switching between skillbars. If you've already played it for 2 months you might be surprised by how much you remember though.

Like others have said, running through a few guildhests or low level dungeous should get you back into things pretty quick. The game's really good at slowly dolling out your class' skills too, so the low level stuff'll disable your later skills and let you reacclimate to whatever rotation you'd be working with, in addition to just getting back to the odd control scheme. Otherwise a keyboard n mouse'll probably be fine. The only upside I'd say of having a mouse is the targetin'd obviously be a lot easier. With a controller it's all cycling through, which is fine once you get used to it but nowhere near as efficient IMO as being able to just fuckin click on shit.

Just started playing the PS4 free trial on Ragnarok, EU. Seems pretty cool.

I had a legacy account from 1.0, but I lost the account details and my one time login, during a move.

First thing that immediately struck me, was that the combination of FFXIV launcher and is not much of an improvement over 1.0's.

And Ul'dah seems quieter than I remembered it to be, (where everyone used to go to sell their wares, back in the good old days) and seeing all the lvl 60's running around is a little daunting (though expected ofc).

Gonna try to level to 35 over the weekend and then make a decision.

I may start on pc soon-ish. Is the GB guild still going and what server is that on?

@alick: GB guild is on Ultros

@lv4monk: @frodobaggins:

In the game's defense I'll say that the dev team has streamlined a lot of the common mechanics over the previous expansion. Gaze attacks (where you need to turn around to avoid) are always marked with a giant eye icon before the cast, AoE's that need damage to be spread throughout the team always have the pointy-arrow marker, attacks that need to be moved away from the team are marked with the glowy crystal, etc.

I don't know when you played @lv4monk but I remember earlier in the game's life a lot of these attacks had unique icons/markers, so it was sometimes difficult to tell what to do during encounters, which lead to a lot of "How did I die?" moments. Nowadays for all content that isn't Savage difficulty I've been able to run it completely blind and learn it as I go. I think once someone gets over that initial learning curve they shouldn't have too much trouble.

Most of the harder content is just an abundance of simultaneous mechanics, with fights occasionally throwing in one or two new things to learn while doing a dozen other things you've done before. Thordan's Reign EX is a great example. It was essentially a combination of mechanics that you'd experienced throughout the expansion (each Knight of the Round doing one or two things they'd done in their own solo fights), only this time you had to deal with multiple knights + Thordan in quick succession. I did that fight with friends completely blind (all of us) and we had a ton of fun learning it over the course of a weekend.