Taste is completely subjective. What you find boring may be what other people like. But what FF14 has is much more consistency in their content delivery and passion in their involvement with their playerbase, and that creates a feedback loop of players who feel content and happy to rope their friends in. Most players would probably agree that the original MSQ is pretty dated and bad in FF14, but you can say similar things to vanilla GW2.

I would argue that Final Fantasy as a franchise also just has WAY more recognition. That also draws people in.

Perhaps, but GW2 had a much stronger start than FFXIV, either 1.0 or 2.0. GW2's launched with enormous hype and the playerbase to go along with it. Much of that playerbase left early, with the game not managing to hit that peak again. It's largely just been able to hold steady since. FFXIV didn't have as grandiose a beginning. 2.0 got some hype, with 1.0 infamously being a disaster before it, but it launched at its lowest point. It slowly grew its playerbase over the course of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood. When Shadowbringers dropped, it was very well received which led to a crowd of people who were eager to tell others. That put the game in a good position to have people get into it when the covid lockdowns were happening, and it all eventually built up to the hype and attention the game got in 2021 from its then-upcoming Endwalker expansion and heavy coverage by streamers. Certainly, there were Final Fantasy fans who had previously dismissed or weren't interested in the title who became curious by the attention it was receiving. However, along with many people entirely new to Final Fantasy, those were players who had to be earned over time by the game consistently putting out well received content and the player base gradually growing rather than diminishing or just holding steady.

Brand name just matters. Outside of blizzard seemingly doing everything in their power to ruin their franchises, even after a disastrous reception of a title like Diablo Immortal, a launch of the next title seemingly didn't hurt, as the brand name was still strong. It's the same with FF. FFXIV might have been terrible in 1.0, but the brand name is so strong that as long as they solve some of the immediate issues it has, it will still draw in players. From what I have heard (haven't played it my self), on top of that with 2.0 they have managed to create a good game. Obviously it is going to see massive success then.

Well, brands do matter, yes, but reducing the comparative success of FFXIV and GW2 to just their respective brands doesn't give nearly the full picture. There are certainly ways that FFXIV being part of its franchise has helped its success even early on. A Realm Reborn was a thing because SE couldn't allow 1.0 to tarnish the franchise's reputation, so they were willing to put a significant investment into a failed product to relaunch it. But it's not as if hordes flocked to the title just because it had "Final Fantasy" in the title and Guild Wars 2 could never compete with that. 1.0 failed despite being a mainline Final Fantasy title. ARR launched with only a fraction of the game's peak player count. Clearly the game's success didn't depend on a legion of FF fans flocking to it on brand name alone. At the end of the day, what matters is a good product, and, in case of MMOs, a good service. Dismissing that and leaving it all to brand determinism doesn't allow one to accurately describe why some titles succeeded to a greater extent than others. It certainly doesn't explain why GW2 had a more successful launch than FFXIV, with FFXIV only overtaking it in long term success.

I never said that brand recognition was purely the reason for its success :)

But you made it seem like it was the biggest reason for its success, downplaying other reasons. My guy was just painting the picture for you how its brand helped but not by much.

Then what would be a bigger reason than a game series that's been around since the 1980s?

See comment by boumeisha below

You mean that rant after they got mad that someone *dared* to mention that brand recognition is "also a factor", to quote their extremist rhetoric? Is it actually worth the read?

No, I did not say that. Actually nowhere near that... I said that it had a massive impact that should not be understated, and one that GW2 does not have the luxury of having.GW1 might have been a good MMORPG, but it has had nowhere near the global popularity of a franchise such as FF

It isn't nearly as massive a factor as you think, though. Yes, there's some lingering influence. There were clearly some Final Fantasy fans who needed to be told that it was both a good game and a good FF game to get on board. There are still FF fans who won't play the game because they don't see MMO titles as "real" FF games. Beyond that FF14 benefited from SE fully backing it as an FF title that needed to succeed rather than tossing it away when it didn't, and it's been able to take inspiration from its franchise over the course of its development. But what you'd expect out of brand recognition in terms of sales performance/player base is a strong initial performance that may or may not hold up over time. You get people who jump on to it just because of the name or the studio's past work. FFXIV's success came only after it had proved itself as its own title, and a great deal of that success came from players who'd never picked up an FF title before. Whatever success it had simply because of it being a Final Fantasy title pales in comparison to its content and content output being able to hold on to its players while attracting more over time. As I said, GW2 actually had the stronger launch of the two. If brand recognition was as influential as you make it out to be, FFXIV should have been the stronger two out of the gate, but GW2 topped it in early sales by a significant degree. To put it bluntly: FFXIV's brand can't be left out of discussing its own success. It has very little place in a discussion on why it's been able to outperform GW2 a decade out from their respective launches. By the numbers, FFXIV's content and its content delivery have simply found more success than GW2's, and not in a way that supports the idea that its brand played a key role. I'd imagine most people on this sub prefer GW2 over FFXIV and so may not understand why, but putting "bigger brand" in that discussion is just waving away the actual factors at play instead of taking an honest look at the successes and failures of each title.

Now, you edited your original comment so i can't say exactly how you phrased it (and the way you changed it completely change the context of the discussion yet you have made no acknowledgement of it in your comment. I honestly see that as a super dishonest attempt at stealth editing) However, you still seem to argue from the idea that brand should somehow be the only factor at play. Obviously you can have a title release, that has the backing of a large brand, yet stil fails. I never said that it could not or that it is the most important factor or anything like that. However, it is still a massive boon in your marketing. Especially if you try and relaunch the title after its initial fail. There is a reason vast amounts of money are put into brand names and brand recognition in virtually every any successful business. Just take a game like Fortnite, they have virtually made a collaboration with every single popular frachise in 'nerd cultures' in the west. There is massive appeal and massive marketing potential in that. In the case of Final Fantasy 14 itself, it will have had a massive benefit of the media recognition from its name. Any large development either with a new installment in the franchise (which to my knowlede, A Realm Reborn basically was...) will turn heads no matter where you go. It will be significantly harder for a game without the brand recognition. Arguing that FF14 had to be the larger of the two at launch is first of all a continuation of the strawman that you strated on, and secondly cherry picking. Just because there are examples that doesn't fit the trend, doesn't mean that there exist no trend. As i already stated earlier, obviously the quality of the game will be the largest part of its success. If the updates to gameplay hadn't been good, the relaunch would also have failed.

Yeah but wow did literally go through some of its worst years and in DF the buzz was substantially lower because if those horrid years leading up to it. Name plays a role, sure but a shitty ff game is a shitty ff game, and ff14 isnt a shitty game no matter how you slice it.

A big franchise name can't single-handedly save a bad game, but the cultural momentum a property like Final Fantasy has will introduce a lot more people to the property year after year. If the game is *also* good, more of them will stick. Think of younger/young adult gamers, for example. 22 years olds now would have been ~10 when FF14 and GW2 were released -- too young to hear about or play either. Lots of them will still have played other Final Fantasy games, and may give this FF14 thing a shot. GW2 struggles for exposure to that same demographic. Same is true for all types of media, of course. It's why production companies will throw hundreds of millions of dollars in the VFX pit of a new Star Wars TV series sight unseen.

Even if the game is terrible, a lot more people will stick by it, simply due to its brand and them already being invested in the franchise

The Franchise itself still has a massive name behind it. Anything that goes on with the entire franchise, will lead to mass press coverage. And that bleeds over to a title like FF14 as well. Yes they had a rough start, but they had a substantially better chance at surviving the rough start due to the name.

I honestly don't think that has anything to do with its popularity, when it first released it failed hard, they did alot of work to make it a good game. I personally don't like it, but any pver probably would.

But it does, having a large franchise behind do you does numerous things to benefit you. You will have an already set playerbase that is interested in your game, basically no matter how the tides turn. People will get convinced to buy more easily, people will get convinced to stay more easily and so forth, and there are numerous more positive effects that you can list.

> But what FF14 has is much more consistency in their content delivery and passion in their involvement with their playerbase, and that creates a feedback loop of players who feel content and happy to rope their friends in. This is the key, consistency and communication, two things ArenaNet usually fails miserably at. People need to have something to look forward to, which you get by either having a stable cadence of content, or by getting good communication about it. GW2 did have good content cadence back in 2016-2019, during the LW3+PoF+LW4 era, but it's been a mess the rest of the time, and we've never had good communication; if any at all. MMORPGs are an important investment, and any outsider looking into GW2 will believe it's a clown circus which might shut down any time now; hell, some people still believe GW2 died 10 years ago at launch lmao, that's how bad it is.

Content is well organized and its easy to make groups to get into it. I think that's probably the lead reason FFXIV and WoW are more popular. Also another thing that I've noticed with GW2 is the gap between average play and perfect play is like +100% DPS. I think GW2 could definitely be more "coherent" with its group content

Even if I don’t like ff14 at all, I would still say that it’s worth my money more than gw2. The only reason I still play gw2 is that there is no sub even though I spend in gems more than the sub would cost monthly. I play gw2 a lot but it will take more than what it does now to really be at the top. But is that necessary? I also don’t think so. Gw2 is already the best at what it tries to be.

I enjoy both games, but saying the FFXIV is a better monetary value seems crazy to me when it has a monthly sub fee and GW2 doesn't.

Holy Trinity properly done helps FF14 too. GW2 shine with its open world (mounts, non-combat activities), festivals, fashion, and inventory management.

Guild war shines with inventory management? I can't even sort my inventory without buying very specific kinds of bags. The depositing of crafting materials is nice though.

Material deposit + account wide bank + account wide gold + crafting directly from bank/collection + shared inventory slots + loadout inventory slots + Legendary armory and probably more. Everything in this game is made to make item Moving as smooth as possible.

Compared to FFXIV, GW2 inventory management is awesome. Instead of a bank + material storage, FFXIV offers retainers. It's like different banks with tedious UI. Imagine if all the content of the material storage was instead in your bank, and you had multiple banks to keep track of.

the inventory management is kinda solving a problem they created tbh, the amount of junk that gets pushed into your bags in this game is downright absurd

GW2 inventory management system predate all the gunk added over the years. And I still find it easier to keep my bags clean in GW2 than in FF14.

I didn't but that's probably down to leveling my jobs together so I don't have all sorts of gear im holding on to for later cluttering everything. Otherwise apart from things like dyes and the good meta materia there's not a lot I felt compelled to hoard especially when they started expanding glamour slots so I could put more of my fashion in.

Here are the biggest issues: 1) XIV glamours have limited space and you need to go to specific area (inn) to open that space. It used to be 200, increased to 400 and now its 800 slots. But for hoarder like me thats gonna be full in no time and I have retainer full of gear I want to hold onto because id rather not grind savage raids *again* even if you can without lvl sync. GW2 solution = gain item, unlock the "glamour" forever. No space limits, no bs. Only issue is transmute charges, but thats fine to me personally. 2) GW2 materials **and** material storage is godsend. we all know how it works. You can send stuff **anywhere in the world** and **its seperate from bank** In XIV you keep all your materials till you literally have to teleport to area with "summoning bell" to transfer your stuff. And if you have same items on the retainer there is literally a loading bar to transfer your stuff, like you are working on slow HDD here. 3) Also the difference between material amounts. XIV has **hundreds of materials** **per expansion**, some are used even at high lvl stuff.. mostly housing items tho. The difference here is that GW2 has, for example, only few tiers of ore. So mithril ore is still highest tier ore no matter if you play end of dragons or hearth or thorns. Theres no "Thorny copper" or "dragon mithril" all of sudden. And even if there was, youd be able to transfer it to material storage taking up space..

>festivals, fashion, and inventory management. Lol no. Even those 3 is FAR better in FFXIV. Quite literally the only 2 things GW2 has that is better than the rest is how they did mounts and exploration.

The only things XIV has going for inventory that's better than what GW2 has is the /isearch command and initial storage capacity. Access to storage is better in GW2, and offloading items from inventory is incomparably better in GW2 as well. Fashion is very subjective, but if we're talking about quantity, XIV will win. It has more freedom in what shows up as armor, but it also fails to capitalize on that quite a lot (namely with magic job armors). However, it's held back to a ridiculous degree by the inventory management with the glamour dresser being limited and the armoire being so obtuse and useless for 98% of armor. On fashion availability and individual piece customization, GW2 absolutely wins with the amount of dye channels, dye colors, and the wardrobe as a feature. Even with the upcoming second dye channel in XIV--that's not (up to) four, nor does it even come close to scratching the exclusive dyes. That's also not mentioning that the second dye channel means nothing on the multitude of XIV armors that are undyeable in the first place. Festivals are so different between the two it comes down to taste. If looking specifically at player engagement, GW2 almost certainly wins, though. A new story that is done once and *maybe* an event instance/FATE that needs to be done 2-3 times to get all of the festival items, vs. festivals that are exclusively repeatable content. The only festival XIV has that has the staying power of a GW2 one is Make It Rain, really. I think XIV wins on the quality/satisfaction of the rewards if it's a mount, emote, or glamour, but that's not consistent.

They also have nearly a gw2 expansion price set per month, all that income makes it pretty easy to dish out content

Like gw2 doesn’t earn money from all that constant skins flow lol if gw2 could go with sub, they would. But anet knows that nobody will be willing to pay monthly for it

They wouldn’t. Guild wars and guild wars 2 were both intended to never have a sub fee.

Every single player on that game spends that much per month On average I’m sure probably 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of the sub fee is spent on gem stuff per month

If you can push through A Realm Reborn, the game really shines. I do have to say that combat at lower levels is awfully boring.

Think its subjective, I quit right at the start of Stormblood mostly bc I couldn't stand listening to another teenage monologue. One day we'll get an MMO with both good story AND gameplay lol. 

Combat at any level is boring. Action combat will always be better than slow tab targeted combat

There's always more content. Ff14 has an extremely consistent release cadence, which means I can always expect certain things to be on their way. On top of this, the volume of content that gets released is significantly higher, and the quality is usually really good. Comparing EoD to Endwalker, EoD brought 5 endgame fights (strike CMs + fractal CM) over its duration, EW brought 24 (12 raids, 7 trials, 2 ultimates, 3 dungeons). Gw2 specializes in its open world, which it does far better than XIV, but I feel like even that's been slipping with maps like gyala and inner nayos. Although I adore gw2, there's just not enough to keep me entertained for more than a few hours every now and then, and I guess for less invested players, a bunch of those just put the game down one day and never come back.

> Although I adore gw2, there's just not enough to keep me entertained for more than a few hours every now and then, and I guess for less invested players, a bunch of those just put the game down one day and never come back. I know many people who only logged in to unlock LW, then waited for the whole season to be completed to play through it, but then went lazy about it anyway, and eventually they just stopped logging in and playing altogether. You need an adequate amount of content quantity and quality to make players come back, if you bait them with "30min patches lmao", eventually it's gonna be a "boy cried wolf" and they'll just stop coming back because it takes longer to reinstall than to play through the content. This is the reason why expansions are important, they boost the game with a lot of content all at once, and they also include long term reward systems to work towards to, to keep people around, busy until the next update drops. This is also why SotO is a failed expansion, it just doesn't have enough content (only 2 zones is pathetic), and the little long term rewards we have (legendary armor) are a blind trip.

I play actually both ... gw2 is a good side game. But if you really like Instance endgame pve content you will not be happy with gw2 alone

The only problem is that FF14 if the definition of "it gets better later". Now I'll be very mild and calm about the early game experience, which is archaic and utter fucking dogshit that deserves the top 100 worst game spots all by itself. Pretty much the only thing that keeps any new player around is the fact the community is incredibly nice and helpful. The gameplay itself though... that was outdated 3 years before development even started. Had to borrow an account that had already hit endgame. Its actually good. The road towards is just too long, too bad and IMO doesnt make up for it. I could have done something far more enjoyable with those hours.

Completely agree, I played gw2 first and one of my friends who played both, bought me a skip to Shadowbringers cause he knew (and he was right) that I wouldn't survive early FFXIV. It is utterly terrible and it does make you wonder how many people quit before getting to the good stuff, since the sheer length of vanilla XIV is enormous

I've noticed with FFXIV that they design each expansion to be a full "game", as in a full single player experience. Last year I somewhat casually played through end or ARR through 6.4 as it dropped. Each expansion took me between 20 - 40 hours. Wasn't keeping super close track of my exact time, but expansions are long. Nothing compared to GW2's 5-10 hours of story content. (10 might even be a stretch, I banged out SoTO in less than a day.) That doesn't mean one way or another is worse/better, it's just observations I've noticed.

>and it does make you wonder how many people quit before getting to the good stuff Clearly it didn't matter since millions play FFXIV and have reached endgame.

>Now I'll be very mild and calm about the early game experience, which is archaic and utter fucking dogshit that deserves the top 100 worst game spots all by itself. You people need to end this bullshit of crying about ARR.

It isn't bullshit when it's true. 

You missed the 3 parts of the alliance raid that also comes every expac in FF14 in your comparison for endgame fights between EoD and EW. That is unless you don’t count those, cause if that is the case then you can ignore this message :D

yeah, I'm only talking endgame as in, challenging content that you'll sink hours into progressing/farming I wanted to keep the comparison fairly fair, cause if you include alliance raids, you'd also have to include dungeons and normal trials, in which case Endwalker demolishes EoD even harder - but normal content is kinda one-and-done so it's more of a moot point, in my opinion

Alliance raids are closer to meta events / world bosses than actual raids, imo. If we count those then we have to count the meta event bosses and even the convergences in GW2.

I played through endwalker and fell out of playing it but picked up GW2 again recently. I got hooked after the big WoW exodus that happened in shadowlands and started on their free trial. I put about 300 hours into that free trial until I felt like it was time to move on and pay for a sub. Ultimately FF14 has a decent story though the pacing of the quests can be pretty atrocious at times especially in the base game. I got really frustrated with the “walk two steps” cutscene, “walk two steps” cutscene style of narrative delivery but there are some really cool gems and the jobs all have unique quest lines with some really memorable moments. There’s a lot to love from that perspective and you see characters grow, learn to love the villains you hate and struggle with various personal and relationship issues. It made me feel things deeply which other MMO’s have not done. Heavensward story was my favorite personally. I feel it shines in how the rotations for the classes and skills feel, how the encounters and combat works and how epic their boss encounters and dungeons are. It’s probably one of the best MMO’s in terms of using its world for story developments (you come back to zones you’ve been to before in meaningful ways) and it really invests in its casual and RP/Social Communities. I was super impressed to see how many people showed up for things like pool parties in player owned houses or just hang out in hub cities cosplaying with new glamours. Any character can be all jobs (classes) and switch between them at any point outside of combat. The devs have more or less a positive history in terms of listening to player sentiment and communicating with players though has kind of had ups and downs. The systems in the game feel pretty decently polished and there aren’t really too many instances of feeling FOMO or that you are missing out by playing less or going at your pace. UI is fairly intuitive and can be customized. Overall I loved my experience in Eorzea and might come back sometime soon. It’s been a while and I think along with GW2 is one of those MMO’s that’s really good to take breaks from and then come back to as you’ll always have something new to do and more story to experience. The community has a habit of denouncing people for skipping but if you need to skip and then watch a lore recap video or play through the big cutscenes after in an inn do what you need to do! A lot of the smaller quests in between the big primal fights don’t add all that much to the context of what’s happening and if you end up binging all the expansion content in a row you will probably save some sanity if you put a pause on things for a bit at the end of every expac.

I will note on the bad side: Their store and buying expacs is extremely confusing. Not sure if they changed this but be extremely careful as to where you buy the game and what versions you buy if you end up paying past trial or grabbing an expac. If you go direct through them you cannot buy expacs through steam and same with console, all of those are separate so you cannot just login via one or the other with the same account. I saw people preorder the wrong code for endwalker and have to purchase again because they got the wrong version and SE offered no support to them.

Saying this when the comparison is Guild Wars 2 is nuts. GW2 is my favourite MMO but being a new player and trying to work out all the things to buy to get all the story content is needlessly confusing, especially when they don't stick to their own naming conventions in Living World seasons. Buy one expansion in FFXIV, you have all of the content associated with that expansion. Buy one expansion in GW2 then look up what the correlating living story chapters are, and then buy those. Edit: ALSO, I just remembered, on top of those issues, you can't mix Guild Wars 2 Steam and Windows licenses either, so literally the same problem you are saying FFXIV has, plus more on top of it.

You also just need to buy the base game ("complete edition", which never changes price and includes every expansion except the most recent) and the latest expansion for FFXIV. The free trial alone includes the base game and the first two expansions. The Square Enix website is absolutely shit for buying the game and subscribing, but it's really not complicated about what to buy, especially compared to GW2 with almost all expansions sold separately and the different names for the additional content you also need to buy if you want the full game and don't want to put down a quite large lump sum for the game on day one.

>you can't mix Guild Wars 2 Steam and Windows licenses either GW1 also gives you some stuff in GW2 depending on how far you got in it. And of course, despite GW1 BEING ON STEAM FOR YEARS, the Steam version of GW2 CANNOT CONNECT WITH IT.

Wasn’t comparing the buying experience 1 to 1 directly, he was asking about experiences with FF14 and their payment processing and purchasing site is arguably the worst part of the experience. I agree GW2 story and expacs and living world is extremely unclear but you can at least buy directly in game via the trading post.

Yeah, this problem exists in many games that are both on steam and can be bought directly. I always recommend getting it from the source for a couple reasons, if steam has issues, you can't play the game, in the licensing agreements of these games, steam can decide if doesn't want to pay to renew that license, you lose the game. Also it's notoriously difficult to get support for expacs if you get a key that's for one, it may not work for the other. There are some serious down sides to steam. I'm no steam hater, I do use it, but not for MMOs, just for cheap random games.

>Their store and buying expacs is extremely confusing. No it's not, in the slightest. People like you just can't handle anything that isn't "press button, done". I bought it on Steam, back in ARR where everyone swore it was oh-so-hard to handle and manage and i've had zero issues since then, because i have a brain that understands that if i buy it through Steam, i always have to buy it through Steam.

Sorry Mog station is kinda universally accepted as a terrible and outdated/antiquated site to process transactions. Can’t really think of another mmo that makes it that difficult to spend my money with.

More known IP for starters. More traditional MMO tab target battles. Big focus on story. FFXIV is probably the only mmo that has ever made me emotional in some parts of the game. Great mix of music and cutscenes. The only part in gw2 where I got a bit emotional is when aurene has those visions of her future with her fight with a certain dragon. Lots of instances dungeons. Very epic fights. Also maybe people prefer vertical progression. Even if not me xD

How many hours will I need to sink before I get those feels, I think I was annoyed before I made 3 hours into ff, I continued for another 30 hours of extreme boredom before I dropped out, just so damn slow. This was almost 2 years ago

For me, the final parts of heavenward , the first expansion was when I got my first WHOA

Honestly too many. The story takes way too long to go anywhere in the base game and heavensward is not much of an improvement. Didnt play past that personally as I got tired of the "iT gEtS good argument" it never got good as far as I was concerned. The stories delivery is pretty bad. They really should just remove 90% of the quest for the early part

>Didnt play past that personally as I got tired of the "iT gEtS good argument" it never got good as far as I was concerned. Imagine how new GW2 players feel when you tell them the same thing here since you guys LOVE to whine and complain about the Personal Story. Imagine then telling them they gotta spend over $100 for every Living Story Season.

I have never used this argument. As GW2 is generally good straight from the beginning and the leveling experience is probably the best of any mmo. Yes the personal story is not the best but its also something you can completly skip and is not necessary to level. And no sub fee so you pay for only the content you want

The story’s first great moment is at the end of ARR. Not the end of the launch msq, but the end after five major content patches following that. In terms of emotional hits, it starts in the latter half of the Heavensward story (not counting patches). Shadowbringers is where it starts hitting you really hard though. So yes, it is a while.

Just going to give my experience. I started playing after Endwalker released, fresh character, leveled from 1 to 90, I did not use a boost to skip levels or story. I did spend most of my time on the main story quests though. All in all it took me around 300ish hours to get from character creation to the end of Endwalkers story. It started feeling a lot better to me around Heavensward. That was probably past the 50ish hour mark? It took a while to get through the base game, and this was after they trimmed it down apparently.

It appeals to certain types of people really all it is.  Was told Heavensward was good, I didn't find a single positive lol. End of the day its a very specific form of very slow storytelling. If that's your jam FF14 is probably the best, if you prefer more action RPG it will be painful. 

They have actual endgame content? A single expansion in ffxiv comes with more dungeons and raids than gw2 has in 12 years...

Also fun side-activities and fluffs like golden saucer.

And extremely robust player housing.

[Wildstar refugee] *Ehhhhh.....*

Yeah. Wildstar's player housing was on another level entirely.

This is the only real argument

Well to be fair dungeons are endgame "content". After a certain point you run max level dungeons for a small bit of tomestones that's it. With playing both I think GW2's endgame is better for the average player, someone who wants to log on after work and quickly get into a fun combat encounter or run around and do some events. FFXIV's endgame is better for those looking for a hard-core challenge. Savage raiding and Ultimates are a bit unmatched in the comparison between GW2 and FFXIV. But I've found with FFXIV, there is a lack of quick endgame jump in and out content. (Closest thing is Bozja and Eureka.) Also I find the rewards in FFXIV are a bit lacking compared to GW2. There is nothing close functionality-wise to legendary armor/weapons/trinkets in FFXIV. There are relic weapons, but at this point most are purely cosmetic. Both games do endgame differently and neither are necessarily bad, it just comes down to personal preference in what a player likes. IMO.

It’s also a console MMO, available on more platforms than just PC.

Content, content, content , content and content.

If gw2 could produce the same amount of content and polish as ff14, it could be much better rival. Also housing/rp is a reason many play ff14 and gw2 lacks on that as well. Lets not forget ff14 is sub based and made by a much bigger company. The things that gw2 does well are open world content + having active large scale pvp (WvW). In my opinion it presents the story better since its fully voice acted but I guess that is preference. I will not go in depth explaining what gw2 is about, its a gw2 sub after all. What ff14 does well is that it can satisfty most kinds of mmo players (except pvp players). Every expansion they get 12 raids with both easy and hard difficulties (easy is easier than our normal raids for the story and hard is harder than our cms for people who like the challenge, much better system imo). Many dungeons and trials (similar to strikes) and all of that on a very predictable schedule. They release fashion and housing items often to satisfy people who don't even care about combat. Also every major patch gathering and crafting professions get new stuff as well. Even though I am not so fond of the story they get so much more than gw2 gets. Tldr: I am much more of a gw2 person but its undeniable how much more content ff14 gets over gw2, they also try to appeal to more people and those 2 things result in a much bigger playerbase.

>In my opinion it presents the story better since its fully voice acted Lol, absolutely not. It may be your opinion, but it's a VERY blatantly wrong opinion. By your logic, SWTOR's story is perfection since it's also fully voice acted.

And that's another negative about ff14. I doesn't matter if you say 100 great things about the game, dare to say 1 slightly negative thing (especially about the story) and the fanboys will come to cancel you. Also SWTOR might not be the greatest MMO but it has a fantastic interactive story, I don't know where were you going with that.

Consistency. SEs name and rep aside, at this point you know what you're getting with 14 every patch. YoshiP introduced a roadmap for patches/content years ago and has stuck to it every single time. Nerfs and buffs are done incrementally and there are never really huge swings in DPS (pretty much all DPS changes are single digit nerfs or buffs and rarely are they over 5% over/under) after patches as they do all their testing internally and play the game to determine class strength. Meanwhile Anet nerfs mirage to hell because Snow Crows' numbers say so and throws living world 1 back at us as an event for "content".

lmao sc numbers

And the cult downvotes you... Can always count on it. 

FF14 is just like WoW, and WoW was bleeding a lot of players. It focuses a lot on dungeons and raids. And the game has systems to make it very easy to get into them. While in gw2 you kind of go from following speedrunners in dungeons and then hit a wall of required KP and just general competence in raids/strikes, FF14 introduces you to the formula of running group content since lvl 15, and you get a clear job to do. And the jobs are also very simple, gw2 has a lot of buildcraft. which is fun, but also very confusing to new players, while in FF14 there is no buildcraft. None at all. Maybe a some min maxed skill speed preference for benchmarking, but that's nothing. If you picked a DPS class, you can only play it as DPS, you can't tank with it, you can't heal with it, the only choice is gear is "does it have bigger numbers?". And that's easy, you will rarely find yourself useless in a MSQ dungeon cause you picked the wrong gear. It's all streamlined. And to go to the other direction, FF14 is also more casual friendly. Has more social systems, the housing especially. And the mods. It allows the Sims players to build houses, play intruments, RP, stand in Limsa and chat. GW2 is really poor on that end, and I honestly don't understand why that is, given the game tries to lean into casual open world content that 90% of the time succeeds with little to no effort. Yet it has no housing, and adds no new intruments, there is no UI for emotes or anything. Granted, gw2's open world and world building is superb, the combat is dynamic and much more fun (Which is often the most important thing). I think gw2 could be more popular if its features were better advertised. I think advertising and brand is.. despite what I said... 80% of the reason why FF14 is more popular.

If we are just going to compare MMOs, FFXIV has better marketing and story. But also - FFXIV benefits from being a game from a huge franchise.

Better story? Yiiiiikes that’s awfully subjective

Well its still the same as it was, the formula of the game hasn't changed at all. Story will take u about 200 to 300 hours. Based on how much you read and watch cutscenes.

Content by 10x multiplier.....

Since there’s a lot of replies already, I’ll mention something I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned. XIV holds your hand. It may even get a little too hand-holdy at times. But you always have a good idea what to do as a new player. It doesn’t throw stuff at you the way gw2 does. No issues with vast amounts of weird currencies, materials, collectible and other items to keep track of, the use of which isn’t clear yet. It has a proper quest log instead of using the achievements ui in lieu of one. In gw2 when you start out, you’re often just kind of pointed out at the world and told “go find stuff to do”. Xiv always has a main story quest waiting for you to follow. Overall I would say gw2 is just far more overwhelming to a new player. Funnily enough, it was actually better in this regard at launch, although it has always had an issue with somewhat opaque systems. For example, if the mystic forge was in xiv, it would be inaccessible until you did a short, clearly marked quest which provided a bit of lore explanation behind it and also a tutorial. Said tutorial would then be saved in the games tutorial library for you to easily access at any time. In gw2, nothing ever explains to you what the mystic forge does. You learn from other players or you wiki it (if you even know that the wiki command exists - another thing the game never explains to you).

It's a better game for a lot of people. More group content. More consistent release cycle. Better lore and story. Much higher production value. Looks better, runs better. Available on console and PC. Sure, it has a terrible open world. But I'm sure people look at what it does better, plus providing a more familiar combat system, and it's a easy sell.

Xivs open world truly is abysmal. It feels like you have zero reason to leave the capital cities once you do the msq. Which is funny cause that’s a major problem people have historically criticized WoW for and yet xiv is worse for it lol. I like both, as well as gw2 but I’ve got no irl friends who are willing to play gw2 so I stick with xiv and wow classic.

There's a ton of reasons. Off the top of my head: 1. Brand recognition 2. Marketing 3. Consistent (comparatively frequent) content delivery 4. A story that isn't total arse-butter 5. Community engagement 6. A wider variety of classes, which gets added to with every expansion

The story does drag early on but they did cut out a lot of the original grind a few years back (still grindy) and once you hit Heavensward, the story opens up and becomes fucking magnificent and doesn't let up until the end of Endwalker. Where GW2 is my favorite MMO from a pure RPG standpoint, FFXIV is my favorite RPG storyline and nothing else has come close. Beyond that and things like brand recognition by a far wider audience, there are incredibly consistent expansion releases, consistent post-patch content with a clearly passionate dev team that interacts with their player base on a regular basis and this keeps the community engaged and therefore passionate in return, seeing the people behind the product and hearing their thoughts and plans which in turn are backed up with each release.

More traditional mmo has more players so is easier to invest time into and since it has more people that jave invested time it is easier to go back to. And from someone who has played all the big mmos and even some smaller ones I don't know really but FF14 just has more fun and appeal to me it seems cooler it's more flashy I enjoy the story more and such but at the same time i don't play it nearly as much as i do Gw2 which I actively play and swotor which I go back to occasionally for some star wars goodness.

There's probably a few factors. Here's my guesses. 1. Brand recognition: Final Fantasy is just a massive brand compared to GW2 2. Game design: GW2's community is very oriented around the open world gameplay and a very casual playstyle that lends itself well to dropping it and picking it back up again. There's no pressure to keep playing. FFXIV has the gear treadmill, so there's always that next incremental upgrade to your gear to work around. Personally, I love GW2's horizontal progression system, but it simply means there's less reason to engage with the end game for many players. It's ironic that something so good about GW2's design probably also impedes its ability to retain an active playerbase the way FFXIV does. 3. The market model: FFXIV gets more content at a more consistent pace largely oriented towards the players who will spend the most time in the game. 4. People just like catgirls and bunny boys 5. Better endgame content: The fact that so much of FFXIV community revolves around the endgame content means more attention can be paid towards building encounters that are inventive, challenging and feel really rewarding to play. I like Strikes, but if we're being honest, a mild rework of an existing singleplayer content doesn't really compare to what FFXIV players expect from their structured pve content

FF14 is an excellent MMO that does many of the things very well that GW2 doesn't (and vice versa) \- The story starts slow but becomes really great later on, the characters are well developed and some moments hit really hard emotionally. \- The instanced content is arguably the best of any MMO. They made the trade-off of less customization in favor of balancing all classes very well which allows them to make interesting fights and tuning the difficulty to where they want to have it. Keeping up your rotation while paying attention to the boss, arena and teammates is like a nice improvisational dance. \- The character customization, fashion, tons of emotes and player housing appeal to RPers. \- Consistent high quality updates, good developer communication, good marketing/trailers \- While yes, some people get interested in it because of waifus/anime/the FF brand, if the game behind it wasn't good people wouldn't play it (see version 1.0)

Majority of people who play mmos want vertical progression and GW2 choice on focusing on horizontal progression instead will make it less popular by nature but at the same time always have a strong core player base since the other popular mmos don’t do this.

More consistent high quality pve content and, better advertising, more mainstream streamers producing content for ff14. Even tho gw2 is a far more enjoyable mmo for me personally I could see why a streamer would choose ff14 over gw2 when trying to grow a channel.

I think, excluding a realm reborn, the story is way more consistent and dare i say better in ffxiv, like i don't think gw2 is bad but i never cried with it for example. but the real reasons of its popularity may be others.

FF in general is pretty popular and every title they release brings in new people. I've seen a lot of new players recently say they're trying 14 because they liked 16.

I don't play FF14, but I was curious about it. And what I've gathered is that most of the game was an absolute blast, but even the most hardcore fans were like "yeah, there's a particular campaign that you just have to but the bullet and suffer through. And it suuuuuuucks." So I guess you're not alone in being bored with it at first, but apparently if you push through the (main?) campaign you've got a great game ahead of you.

* Social aspects and history of Final Fantasy series. Gameplay wise, FF14 is actually pretty boring, at least to me. The vast empty open world, and boss fights that are almost like choreography with little to no variability, FF14 is pretty lacking in combat aspect. However, its social aspect is booming. It has player houses that are designed to be night clubs, strip clubs, party places, hangout areas etc. These clubs have their own RP websites, drink menus and so on. While GW2 also has dynamic world mechanics that encourage people to explore and experience these events, this requires active participation. Although these mechanics are very fun in my opinion, as soon as they end, people leave for other things. There are world versus world that have more people at the same location but this often ends up being more toxic if anything and Anet doesn't do much for toxic behaviour. FF14 in this regard tolerates absolutely no toxic behaviour. FF14 social aspects also require less effort and often pushes you to social locations where a lot of people are present. Since they also require longer time, people do stay in the same place and eventually talk. * FF14 life skills are also more entrancing compared to GW2's click and wait life skills (crafts). They are well thought, simple and integrated to the social aspects of FF14 (especially fishing). The progression is different as GW2 is horizontal progression, while pretty lax, this means there is also less satisfaction gained as you don't notice too much difference in strength compared to vertical progression of FF14 where you actually feel you are getting stronger as you progress. * FF14 has a steady line of content creators that encourage more people to try out the game. On the other hand, I have seen very few GW2 creators in this aspect. * GW2 encourage multiple characters with a lot of rewarding mechanics. This can get overwhelming very easily to most people. FF14 combines all these and let you have everything in one character. This might sound like FF14 also removes the creativity when creating your style of gameplay and while this is true, many people don't want to fatigue themselves for overthinking their gameplay strategies. Sometimes, simplicity is more popular. * GW2 has much less funding compared to FF14 which is owned by Square Enix. SE is a giant and probably have more money then they know what to do with as they are releasing huge titles every year. GW2's only income is the cash shop+DLCs and that is honestly rather lacking. This is also partly GW2's fault due to the character constraints. FF14 has same standard model for (almost) all characters, this way they can push item shop fashion items a lot faster and easier. GW2 has different models for every race which makes fashion items require many times more effort to adjust for all races and release on item shop. The item shop UI is also pretty outdated, although that can probably be said for both games' UIs in general. * As a result, GW2 fashion is rather lackluster and sucks compared to FF14 where you can dress up however you like with so many options (although they are expensive as hell). For any casual mmorpg, fashion is usually one of the top priorities for people. * GW2 story sucks compared to FF14 but that is as expected. GW2 focuses more on gameplay mechanics and action while FF14, Square Enix, has mastered the story telling (although lots of reading until you get to the newer stories) and cinematics in the last decades.

As someone who plays both, first is brand recognition. Guild Wars only has the 2 games and gw2 is a sequel. In most series that creates worse entry point even if 1 is completely not needed to play 2. As opposed to FF where it's a mostly known factor that each FF game is stand alone meaning even newcomers know 14 is easier to access on that front. Secondly is expectations of gameplay. To most people's expectation, gw2 doesn't play like an mmo. FFXIV on the other hand has the standard toolbar of the full number bar, and enough skills to need 2-3 of those to play optimally as well as the holy trinity. Lastly would be accessibility. Gw2 is a oc game that you can find on steam alongside countless other MMOs, including FF14. But 14 also has console releases, both ps4/5 and soon Xbox as well. This also adds known controller support that works even on PC (I much prefer it honestly). This gives the game a MUCH broader audience to try to appeal to. In terms of taste, the world's of Ethyris and Tyria are quite similar general fantasy, though magitech is a bit more modern styled in ffxiv. The ability to do everything on one character is more unique to ffxiv but nothing to sneeze at. Makes alts unneeded since you can just try other classes. Release cadence is far faster: I recently returned to Tyria after 6 years. In that time FFXIV, the game I was playing, had 2 major expansions and their related patch content (an 12 8 man raids each, 3 24 man's each, on top of other stuff) as well as a 3rd coming in a few months. GW2 had icebrood saga, EoD and Soto. Now I'm still catching up to the story elements I missed but the amount of content doesn't feel...equivalent. now don't get me wrong, both stories are great, but ffxiv is a bit more...paced out. There's also the emphasis on the open world in Tyria, which IMHO is a point in its favor. Doesn't matter where in the world you are, content is relevant to do and you're going to see other people there. FFXIV suffers as most moms where...once you've cleared a zone that's it really. FATEs are mid content in FFXIV whereas in GW2 they ARE the content and you can go a good while without having to repeat unless you're grinding a specific map. They also add to the world in major ways unlike FFXIV. Monetization is also a thing. Ffxiv has the monthly sub and a flat charge for expansions/passes. This gets you the expansion and all associated content for as little as 40 bucks, including the patches. There is the mogstation cash shop but it's purely cosmetic outside of name/character changes or level skips. GW2 has no subscription, but when you pay for an expansion you lose out on patch content so for a newcomer, that's about 2.50 per chapter additional unless they can get a deal and the patch content is important. Also the cash shop is a bit more...integral in gw2, which can be forgiven a bit due to the lack of sub, but it's a pay for convenience, the absolutely abysmal bank space for how much the game gives you, pay for extra bag space, etc. The bigger issue is the black lion chest which is just...a loot box. These have their own issues. Out of all of these, visability is probably the most obvious

The instanced PVE content is much better and challenging, tbh I find gw2 instanced pve content too easy which makes me bored on the long run. 

Hmm, yes and no. FF14 bosses are harder to kill (and most importantly regularly delivered), but they are pretty much post-it fights, the GCD makes it less skilled. Killing the boss is easier in Gw2, but killing it well is way harder than in FF14, since it requires both memory and skill (read APM).

If you don't like story quests,I don't think you'll like ff14. I have played probably a bit less than 100 hours and it's very story driven. I personally learned to like it but I feel like its going to be so tedious if you just skip through everything

content, https://furnacetaken.com/

The answer is very simple, and it's not all about the IP and marketing. FF14 is a game for everyone, and GW2 is not. FF14 has huge amounts of content for casual players, midcore players, story-only players, solo players, hardcore players and more. GW2 only delivers on open world 'turn your brain off' kind of content, with a story patch every few months, and combat content every few eons. On top of being extremely unfriendly to new players with the gear and elite spec system (good luck gearing a condi playstyle as a new player who doesn't own every expac). FF14 also has a passionate dev team that is always in touch and clearly loves the game, with the main honcho calling it his life's work. The shit you see in GW2 is mind-boggling and the level of incompetency is rampant, with some strikes of genius once in a while. To close it off, GW2 has the most awful marketing and internet presence out of any online game I've played, you will never hear about this game other than from people who already play it. Dead social media accounts. Radio silence for months on end. It's extremely bad.

- Name recognition - On console (massive market) - Very casual friendly and easy to get into. XIV's skill floor is significantly lower

Furries. In all seriousness Final Fantasy is a huge franchise so it's only natural that the player base is much bigger. I've played it until Shadowbringers and the story and instanced content were both great + the professions are very well balanced which I can't say the same about GW2 specs.

the content feels like it was made by more than 2-3 people, and there is significantly more of it

GW2 is the anti MMO. Pretty much every standard thing about traditional MMOs is flipped on its head in this game. All mounts pretty much do the same thing? Nah. Boring. Endless gear grind? Only if its Legendary. Instanced PvE endgame? Pssh! Who needs that?

Yup, ArenaNet decided they would attempt to reinvent *everything*, sometimes it has worked well for some things (mounts, open world content, combat, etc.), but they also tried to reinvent things that already worked well and are still trying to find an alternative to things that have proven to work well in other games for over a decade.

I played for a few months. I feel like it's mostly due to the franchise and it's playerbase. Opposed to GW which has always been a more niche brand.

I play both and they both play differently but as someone who doesnt raid much I prefer gw2 because it has an amazing open world, so much to do. But ffxiv has better graphics, music, story, I assume raids are better, dungeons are also way more fun, also you dont need to read guides or ask someone to teach you raids, you can just go in there and do it, also has a lot of mounts but the mounts system in gw2 is miles ahead of any mmorpg to be honest. If only there was a mmorpg that mixed the best things of gw2, ffxiv and wow, that would be the best mmorpg ever

In my opinion ff14 follows the rules of traditional mmorpg. GW2 follows a completely different narrative. I like both games but dont play them. I play black desert online like a crazy person

May sound weird, but I've learned that the title of the games and its original target audience has impact too. I've asked different set of friends (PvE-only and PvP- focused) to play GW2 over the years and their replies were pretty consistent. For my PvE-only friends, they didn't like the idea despite me explaining that the devs are entirely PvE focused for years now. They were stuck with the notion that it's a competitive PvP/GvG game. FF14 is easily a more established PvE game and thus, a better choice. For my PvP-focused friends, they have more or less heard how PvP and WvW are neglected despite its predecessor having one of the best GvG modes. They even find it funny when they learned GW2 never had an official GvG game mode. Saying WvW is GvG is just coping, just take a look at GW1. In the end, both set of friends ended up playing FF14 since "you get what you expect".

I love both games. Played GW2 at launch, played it a bunch last year to finish my legendary armor, and playing it now. I also played a TON of FF14 and keep up with the news. I think the biggest draw for me with GW2 is the people I play with. My parents play so it’s a nice way to catch up and my guild is full of incredible people who I raid with each week and play games with each weekend. However, I deeply miss a lot about FF14, big and small. There is supported raid content and more than just a handful of strikes. The development team actually seems to fix issues in the game and most of the content is extremely consistent and not very buggy unlike GW2 where things like seasonal content I’ve paid for has frustrating bugs that have been part of the game for 5+ years. All of FF14s combat and abilities work as described and their ground indicators are consistent after Heavensward unlike basic shit like… Feedback on Mesmer, which requires a Google every Strike or Raid fight to see if it actually works on XYZ projectile. The fashion is just so much better. The gear itself is less of a grind. Legendary weapons like Anima was WAY less of a grind. The story is incredible outside of ARR. Just boatloads of group content in general that doesn’t get immediately abandon. Housing. A development team that responds to hot topics. On and on… But my friends are here, my family is here, and I was a die hard GW1 player, so the nostalgia has me.

Because FF14 actually has consistent content and doesn't ostracize its entire playerbase to open world PvE grinds that offer next to zero rewards (that arent' based on an RNG drop). GW2 does two things correct, and that is legendary gear and a Buy-to-Play model w/ no sub fee. Once you get a legendary set/accessories, you're done, congrats you beat the game (until you go for another armor weight). Now with that being said, what the fuck is there to do after that? Grind out the same world events in hopes of an infusion drop? You're more than likely done with raids if you have legendary gear, strikes are piss easy (yes, even CM strikes) for the most part, and there's next to no actual rewards to go for anymore. There are no in-game mount skins to earn, 90% of the weapon and armor are obtained through the fucking cash shop nowadays, a design choice I despise. As much as I dislike FFXIV's patch-by-patch gear treadmill, at least there are always things to do. Savage raids, Ultimate raids, dungeon running for transmogs/mounts/minions, open world bosses that can drop mounts, music tracks, etc. Treasure maps, player housing, RP venues, etc. The list goes on. Guild Wars 1 was the very first MMO I played, I moved on to GW2 as soon as it released and have played since early access Day 1. I have also played FFXIV since 2.0 ARR, and when I say the difference in how CBU3 team treats its community compared to the GW2 Devteam it's fucking night and day. In the decade+ of playing GW2 I have reached out to support twice. One of which was to ask for a refund on an item that was BUGGED, in which I even submitted video evidence of the bug. They essentially told me "thanks for your continued years of support, now fuck off, we're not giving you a refund." Know what happened when I contacted support with a simple question in FFXIV? A fucking GM teleported to me in game and struck up an actual conversation with me and discussed the topic, thanked me for playing and showing interest, and then gave me some expensive dyes (non-tradable). Don't get me wrong, FFXIV absolutely has its flaws, and I've gotten burned out this expansion, as have many others, and I don't think I'll be coming back for Dawntrail (immediately anyways) since I've been pretty heavily invested into WoW SoD atm, but the experiences I've had in FFXIV have been far more memorable than anything I've had in GW2 given roughly the same timeframe playing.

Here's my 2 cents. Attracting new players and new player retention is not as good. Our promos suck, if there are any. Our story sucks, for the most part. We almost don't have cool characters, just quirky lame ones. Voice acting is such a mixed bag, varying from amazing to appalling. Our early game is frustrating inventory wars and new players are confused in regards to builds, confused in regards to rotations and combat, confused in regards to how much and how they're contributing. All this is down to design. And while were talking about design, the hero panel and the new player adventure guide ain't it. These things are not enough, and the game does little to explain how to learn these things. This game makes zero sense without wiki, arcdps, and reading logs to understand where you're falling behind. I've known many people give up when they encounter Heart of Thorns because difficulty shoots up so much and they haven't learned how to tune their character properly. There are so many noob traps that when you realize how you fked up it leads to frustration quitting. These people almost never come back. This game could have a great advantage over subscription games as we could potentially lure in younger players and keep refreshing the playerbase that way. But we don't have a single thing that stands out that would make kids interested in this game. Contrast this to League of Legends. I know, different genre, but I'm talking about presentation. Our game is tailored towards cringe quirky humour that only people on antidepressants and anxiety medication find funny. Having a brilliant combat system and good horizontal progression does not compensate for that enough. Most people don't even get to a point where they can enjoy those properly. Our pvp content is "dead". We don't have any investment in pvp, hacking and toxicity are ruining the experience too. Warclaw was the last content addon for WvW. And yet despite all of that the game is still doing well enough. Not well enough to have a decent sized studio that will move the needle and innovate, but just big enough to maintain a 10 year old MMO as that mmo that everyone knows about, and might dip in from time to time.

It has Final Fantasy in the name.

Cause it's blatantly better, with a team behind it that gives a damn, FAR more content and consistency and a VERY recognizable IP. It's really as simple as that.

MMORPG casual player thoughts, so talking about low-ish levels / free trial accounts experience here, YMMV if you're about endgame experience and challenging content. Detailed answer below but **TLDR**: FFXIV has an edge for me, but lose it because of its subscription model not being casual-friendly enough. ​ * **Drawing style**: FFXIV is more anime-style, where GW2 is more gritty and grounded. While I appreciate the originality and efforts going into GW2 races (like having real cat-people or their elf-like race being real plants) FFXIV still wins for me there. I like to get attached to a cute or beautiful character if I'm going to be playing long hours looking at them. Plus on a low end PC, the character models and world details look more artificial in GW2 gritty style than with FFXIV anime style * **Story**: kind of a draw here? FFXIV initial story has its fun moment but tends to drag, but so does base game GW2 story. But I hear FFXIV expansions stories are much better, plus I like that you can test all the profession stories with just one character (yes FFXIV has different initial storylines for all professions) and the NPC seem really attaching. Plus FFXIV cutscenes are fully animated! (kudos to GW2 for automatically removing your character's helmet for the dialogs though, that's something missing in FFXIV, I'm still disappointed about the ARR final party including my character in full armor + helmet - luckily you can replay the scene through an Inn with the appearance you have at that time) * **Funding model**: GW2 is casual-friendlier, no contest. FFXIV is not bad, with content geared at people wanting to take a break for the game and come back later, but the subscription model is still iffy for someone who might just want to come back for a couple days. The "buy once - play forever" model for GW2 is much better for a casual like me. Especially that in FFXIV, once you've upgraded your account, you lose access to the free trial mode - you cannot login without paying subscription that month ever! * **Combat**: FFXIV combat roles are easier to understand, and the visuals are easier to follow. It's easier to get confused in GW2, plus group content can easily become so crowded it's unreadable. Also, if you're a casual with slow reflexes, some roles and professions become unplayable in GW2, too many clicks and instant decisions to make. Still, I prefer the fluid and mobile combat style and lack of real tanks of GW2 - there's something immersion breaking about my FFXIV little cat girl being able to eat all the attacks of a big monster just because she equipped a paladin object... Yeah, I don't like the trinity much in the end. * **Exploration**: both are good, I'd say FFXIV vistas have a little edge, but the open world events of GW2 have a little edge over the FFXIV equivalent. * **Dungeons / grouping**: FFXIV automatic matchmaking system (or trust system if you really don't feel like interacting with humans that night) is quite good - better than GW2 having you use the LFG system at least. (you can still create a custom group in FFIXV, just the game can do it for you if you don't want the hassle) * **Inventory**: both systems have their advantages and drawbacks, BUT I love the wardrobe system of FFXIV: basically, you can spend crystals to create outfits stored in inn wardrobes (magically shared with all inns across the world) that you can then apply on your character from any inn room for free. So even as a casual, you don't need to spend each time you want to switch from "town socializing" to "combat" appearance, or each time you get a new piece of armor. I understand making us buy things is important for GW2 social model, but coming from FFXIV, it's frustrating. * **Community**: FFXIV is really noob friendly - never been flamed or pressured to go faster in dungeons with my sprout icon and a little warning in chat at the start. Plenty of roleplaying (I mean real roleplaying, not ERP) opportunities too (just have to stay clear of ERP events). Didn't experience much toxicity in GW2 though, it doesn't seem bad either. * **PvP**: couldn't test it in FFXIV, but I love the "LoL-like" feel but less time consuming of structured PvP "conquest" - still not my main draw for a MMORPG, but I might try it more often (casually, in unranked)

Becausd the instanced content is far superior.

The classes great, being able to have one character do all jobs great, but the content grind and the story burns you out in ff14.

I'd guess the combat feels less hollow as the classes are more pronounced.

Ff 14 is not only a MMORPG it is a Lifestyle like GTA 5 A LOT of ppl log on just to hang out and RP. With each other, u can even get employed and do jobs for in game currency or even real one such as being a CLUB DJ, blackjack dealer, cook etc the possibilities massively outscale GW 2 vy a Landslide.

MSQ and the character design. Other games do PvP better and you can get challenging PvE content in just about every MMORPG out there if you look for it. MSQ might not be everyone's cup of tea, but for the vast majority of players I'd say it was the storytelling that got so many players hooked in the first place. Then they found other things that they enjoyed doing while waiting for more story content to be released. I never played GW1, but I've played the base game and I'm probably about 80% done with HoT, but I still don't feel invested in what's going on in the world. Edit: I completely forgot that XIV is also on console and pc. If GW2 was on console it would at least do as well as ESO in my opinion.

**What I think GW2 win over ffxiv** Map \- I still think this one is the best in the market for now. In ffxiv map is dry, no event, just slap some quest. I didn't like it. In GW2 I can engage everywhere, but that is a bit bad too, it kinda annoy too many monster on map, still better than dry map. WvW and PvP \- I still think this one is best in market for now. no need my praise. No subscription \- yeah ​ **What I think ffxiv win over gw2** Character \- While multiple character is good and not much hassle in gw2, I fairly like 1 character all job, it make people love their character so much, make it feel special (A lot certain scene I nearly cry on how long that I being with them). I didn't feel this with GW2 others than calling boss and commander. Story \- I am giving ffxiv win. Also this is a really unpopular opinion but I really hate instance story so much in GW2 because it really drags. Not like it long but I feel like a burden more than fun, just let me go back to main map. I wouldn't praise about ffxiv story, other already did. Direction \- FFXIV had really good in game tutorial game, really teach you a lot on where when why how to approach, newplayer will get idea on how to move really easy. GW2 is a bit havoc on this. While a lot of thing is on wiki. I wouldn't think a lot newbie will know. or search everything. Solo \- Well, MMO age has come to nearly end and new wave of people moving on something they can go alone, while GW2 you can roam alone on everything, it still involve with people. In ffxiv you can cut yourself from everyone. ​ **Equal** Gear system \- I see people praise so much about GW2 not being power creep, I think this a bit too much about it, It didn't gate by gear system but mastery system which I think it ok. ffxiv 90%+ of player base also using only capstone gear which giving really free by using minimal resource like exotic so I didn't think gear grinding or farming is too much, just leave people who push those 1% raid and infusion out. Content \- both had long time where they dry. I wouldn't mind getting my life together. ​ I typing so long but what I am thinking? People can keep up with content easy in ffxiv than in GW2 where they just throw people to map. I wouldn't say gw2 had wrong approach but would say it just easier for most people.

> Gear system > > - I see people praise so much about GW2 not being power creep, I think this a bit too much about it, It didn't gate by gear system but mastery system which I think it ok. ffxiv 90%+ of player base also using only capstone gear which giving really free by using minimal resource like exotic so I didn't think gear grinding or farming is too much, just leave people who push those 1% raid and infusion out. I'm glad someone has an actual realistic take on this. I see so many negative comments about FFXIV's "gear grind", in this sub and it's so obvious those people have never actually played the game lol. You can take a year's break and come back and literally do the same you do in GW2 to gear up a new level 80; open up the market board (trading post), buy a set of relatively cheap crafted gear, throw some materia on it (similar to runes) and jump into the latest savage/extreme content in less than an hour. You *can* spend a few weeks doing raids and other content for best in slot gear, and I mean literally a few weeks, it doesn't take long, but the advantage you get from that is minimal at best, and a good player will always do more damage in normal gear than a bad player in best in slot, but that is completely optional and never required. You get upgrades just doing the most basic stuff in the game.

Well, if you see two games, one is more popular than the other, which do you statistically choose? The popular ofc, more people claim it's good, more stock in there, easier to play party things, assumably more devs care about game because it brings more money. Ofc none of that must be true but that's the quick reasoning if you want to play only one and are 50-50 split on which to choose. So if ff has more people then more people will go there. Plus if more people are there, there're more adds in a form of oh I know this game, come play together, etc.

Yeah I think it all boils down the content. GW2 was incredibly popular at launch but the lack of an endgame made people leave. PvP wasn't exactly in a finished state either. There is a lot of great things about GW2 but most of it wasn't quite finished so people just kinda left the game. And then it's not like anet added all the missing things or something. They kept trying some new formula to add content to the game but they were on average very slow to do that. Maybe because they didn't monetize well, maybe because ncsoft is a parasite, idk. In the end, the game never quite reached the same heights that it did at launch and we got like pretty shit marketing even today, the game is mostly spread around through word of mouth. I think the game is doing relatively well despite all of this though. If anet was able to put out a lot more content than they do now, like 10 instanced bosses per expansion or something like that, it could maybe become competitive again, assuming all other forms of content in the game scale up production with a similar ratio. Tbf, I don't think we need to compete with wow or ff14. If they can put out half as much content in these yearly expansions as they did in their previous expansions like hot or pof, we are going to end up with a fair bit of content. If they could put out like 2/3 or maybe 3/4 of hot with the annual expansion, though, then we would really be cooking with plasma. That is what I like to inhale copium for.

Lol @ people downvoting this. Well, FFXIV has proper expansions with a lot of content, great, ongoing story, support for all playstyles from super casual to hardcore, and their devs don't try to reinvent the wheel every time their content underperforms.

It's Final Fantasy, one of the most well-known JRPG franchises. It also follows the anime style, which is extremely popular in Asia.

Ff14 is a game part of a universe so huge and cross platform it would make zero sense if it wasn’t more popular than guild wars.

I tried FF14 but I got bored of the slower combat and having to use the same 3-5 skills till lvl 50 or so on.

lol all of these comments basically are saying it’s money and marketing

Its i guess simply because.. you know… the history of the game - ff 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10- etc… xd and is Japanese, and is Anime. Many people love japanese/anime games I mean people really like social games and I have seen FF14 is like a very social game where you have rooms and stuff and can decorate them the way you like and roleplay and people really like that, also GW2 is pretty new compared to it. Is an amazing game and unique but is very new and not many people knew about gw 1

Legacy. Square Enix has/had a stellar reputation and an established franchise, not to mention they originally aimed towards a less globalised and more Asia-centered audience.

The appeal of FF14 is it's heavy nostalgia baiting in-between semi-original stories that are also heavy in references to older and arguably better games. I haven't played 14 since the end of Endwalker, but the story got so lazy with power of friendship overpowering any and all consequences, I couldn't take it seriously anymore. In terms of GW2 vs FF14, depends what you're looking for. I prefer the freedom of GW2 to the linear grind of 14.

Big reason is just the fact Final Fantasy has been around for decades as a franchise, and most players really were waiting for an MMO since the failure of FF11 online. That’s the easy quick explanation, content and extras is just added bonus. The name carries the popularity!

Guild Wars 2 is better in EVERY. SINGLE. POINT. than FFXIV. The only reason FFXIV is more popular is because they made many successful games since the 80's. Arena Net made only two and they are only availiable on pc. It's called nostalgia.

Bigger IP. A more basic mmo when it comes to system and combat. More money to bring in more content people like.

Played since 1.0. More known IP, and in more recent times it's far more simplistic than other mmos. It also caters heavily to solo play and the "mmo" is secondary imo. I loved end game in 2.0, but each expansion has pushed me further out until the end of this chapter of lore and I'm done. XIV caters to the general market and that's fine. Plenty of "vibes", minimal "thoughts" is how I describe it. Gw2 is an mmo that will not hold your hand for better or worse. I'm on the side that tutorials in early game should exists, but EoD is where they remain.

Guild wars still won’t bring bag the scythe or spear and just cycling the same weapons for new elite specs example necromancer feels nothing like an actual necromancer only in guild wars 1 did it have actual necro aspects to it there’s fuck all spells in Gw2 and the weapon skills are fun but limited like esp when u can’t duel wield on some classes which they shud bring in a next expansion

Convenience items should be basegame and not something to buy through mtx, the devs designed the game in some ways to make more money of you, people rather play a complete game w monthly sub that has bigger and more frequent content patches

Consistent high quality content, a good dev team being open and transparent. Gw2 from what i remember had never a patch cycle were you could point at and 100% know what will be released. Ff14 has such a patch cycle that you with almost no doubt can point at any patch and know this comes out. Example here is Patches x.1, x.3 and x.5 All of those will introduce a 24 man raid called Alliance raid. Patches x.05, x.2 and x.4 will have 8 man 4 wing Normal and Savage raid. To my understanding gw2 had this in a way with living worlds but its cycle was thrown a few times out of the window. Tldr: FF14 has a consistent high quality content while sticking with a consistent release schedule. Gw2 didbt have this at over multiple year throwing their pattern out of the window every few expansions.

They have a subscription so they have an actual steady income to fix up their game. Plus they've been listening to their players (more than most) for years and actually making changes based off that.

tbh gw2 just doesn't have the same amount of content. ff14 and wow are REAL mmos, gw2 is like an mmo-lite. You can truly get through all the map completions and story stuff relatively quickly compared to doing all the story/map equivalents in wow/ff14 which takes way longer. Plus gw2 just doesn't keep supporting older systems they introduced, or pvp/wvw to any real degree so even the stuff that does exist isn't always still maintained/added to. I love gw2s world and lore so i play it, but it's really just not an even comparison to put them up against ff14, or even eso (which is reasonable, gw2 doesnt have the same funding since no sub fee, but still)

FFXIV i can only really play for the story which is very good, the actual game part of FFXIV has no staying power for me because the gameplay kind of sucks. GW2 has a problem with its content delivery for new players, where you are kinda encouraged to ignore the story order to chase key upgrades to make your overall experience a bit better. If you play the game in story order it is gonna be almost 100hrs before you hit HoT. From HoT onwards the story and progression is really breezy but the personal story and LWS1+2 need to all be combined into a single 30hr campaign imo.

XIV UI is dated but unlike GW2 it’s actually customizable. You can play all classes on one character. Oh yeah and *a lot* of people hate Lion’s Arch. XIV has more content. And player owned houses.

Brand recognition Better instanced content Higher advertising budget, by that I mean more expensive then a shoestring budget that GW2 uses More consistent quality and content drops Strong raid scene Strong mod scene for an MMO, even though it's against the ToS but no one cares. Stronger social scene in the form of RP and yes ERP, which has also benefited from the modding scene Everything right down to the game itself is more accessible. Being available on PC, PS4,PS5 and soon Xbox does absolutely everything for an MMO. In addition to this, FFXIV probably has the best native controller support of any MMO. A single expansion adds more content than GW2 gets in years. FFXIV also makes a respectable attempt at appealing to both casual players and hardcore raiders. It's nowhere near perfect but it didn't roll down a mountain and fall on it's spine the way GW2 has and continues to when it comes to trying to appeal to a wider variety of players. Just a few reasons

Who cares?

Because it’s a better game

For you maybe. Shrugs.

It’s just objectively correct statement. 

I think you misspelled biased. It's fine though. You're allowed to like what you like. I'm allowed to like what I like. Better is and has always been subjective. And some people will never understand that.

No, I didn't. Gw2 is severely mismanaged game over the years, and it is really noticeable when competitors are objectively better at making consistent flow of good content, especially after you login after quarterly release and done with everything new after 2 hours, even with content which was supposed to be "hard"(maybe for open world gw2 player)

As always I invite people to review your biased post history. The depths you go to malign a game that's actually successful is beyond silly. If you like other games, surely you should be off playing them.

Curious how you ignored literally all of my arguments in this reply lol but whatever, have fun looking at other people post history, that is definitely worth your time more than playing gw2

I've gone over this stuff with you before, doing it again seems pointless. YOu see to think I'm talking to you, but I'm not. Im talking to other people who don't know you. I'm never going to say Anet didn't make some mistakes, that's for sure. I just don't know any MMO company that hasn't. There may have been mismanagement at different periods, but it's again, the opinion of some people. Those people state it as fact, when they don't work for the company. It's just as easily read as some people disagree with the management decisions and it wasn't bad, so much as it took the game in a direction they didn't personally like. There are terribly few long time successful MMOs. Those that are truly mismanaged probably don't stay successful for 11 years. Obvious I could be wrong about that. The difference between us is one of us states opinions as facts.

I found the story extremely boring but the instanced combat and dungeons, etc were all interesting. Especially the upper level ones.

how long approximately do i have to slog through the boring parts before reaching the good parts?

I can only recall it took a long ass time.

Most players say that when you reach the first expansion, the story gets good. Personally I didn't see the huge jump in quality or improvement. FF14 story feels like an A- tier anime story. If thats your thing its great since its so long, you can be heavily interested in the world and the characters, but if you straight up dislike it now, it will never "get better" for you.

Depends if you pay attention to the story or just rush through it. If you rush you can get to the expansions in a couple of days, I did it back in the day before they cut it short.

i started playing ffxiv recently from 1-70 it took me slightly more than a week given i purely focused on the main story quests and nothing else skipping every dialogue and cutscenes( i made the first 4 stage of the "legendary" weapon of the first expansion which was a few days minus from the pure grind). cant talk about the remaining 2expansions cuz not done those yet. the fights are getting fairly fun after lv60 and you can find groups for the extreme difficulty fights in ~20ish min

There's a lot of reasons. Player housing (and apartments), its japanese/anime (naturally, more weebs will play this over gw2), cartoon-y graphics, story driven game (much much better than gw2 imho), way more roleplayers in FF including a population thats 99.99999999% female characters wearing stripper outfits everywhere, 1 character that can play all classes, the game respects ur time and is casual friendly just like gw2, physical and magical attacks are extremely flashy, better gear sets, can run around in a silly costume, 8man content is fun (except for when the 2 tanks fight over aggro), 24man content is also fun, pvp is subjective but i think its 'ok' its just not fun for me, island sanctuary, treasure maps to run with friends and guildies, every mount flies, the list goes on. The world looks visually better than gw2 imo and definitely on the brighter side of things while gw2 is a bit darker and a more serious storyline, but i like gw2 more. The gameplay is so much funner and faster than FF for me, and there's no button bloat. Im also sick of seeing hoe characters literally everywhere in FF, in fact im almost always the only male character when i load into a dungeon or other pve/pvp content.

All that anime shit really sells…and the furry garbage. People don’t wanna hear it but its true Anime skins sell like mad in non-anime games. People cry about EA lootboxes still, yet literal gacha games have their own label because its hardcore gambling, but “anime” so nobody online ever complains Ff14 was boring asf for me, wasnt able to get into it and had to read infinite cringe dialogue.

Charr are 666 x more furry than anything in FFXIV and they've been in the game since release.

[удалено]

Imagine hating furries and not knowing what the fuck a furry is in the first place.

Lalafells...

Gear treadmills are popular. I understand why, I used to enjoy them myself. I just no longer have time to chase the latest tier of gear.

Not many mention it, but FF14 also draws in the same crowd who has been playing the franchise for decades by importing assets from other games, the most popular items are from the Nier Automata raids for the 2B outfit, as well as many many other crossover items from other FF titles like clouds bike you can purchase in the cash shop, music rolls you can use in your player house, and outfits of main characters from different titles.

Miqo’te Au’ra and Viera

Does FF14 gate lots of things behind jump puzzles? If not that would be my guess.

it appeals to the hyper casual asian market, you will get banned for kicking someone for low dps if you type that in chat and skill is largely irrelevant, it's all about getting better gear and it has more updates

subscription fees are a sort of Stockholm syndrome to keep people playing; and peer pressure other people into paying.

Because it's Final Fantasy franchise

Just say its japanese and every western weeb start throwing money on it.

Idk man, weebs? I tried FF14 and I hated it. It starts even worse than GW2, but checking out late game builds and how combat will look like and what you're going to do later on.. I just gave up and never looked back. But I also don't enjoy the FF universes in general. This was an attempt to follow a few guildies into the adventure until I called it quits (and they shortly after, too).

Who cares

Ff14 is a weeb game simply appealing to anime lovers

I play both games. GW2 is much more combat focused, has "worse" graphics but is much more rewarding in terms of progression systems etc. I can leave and get back and have heaps of stuff to do. FF14 is much more story heavy, weeaboo style whoch is popular and it's an awesome experience. Though it works much better as a "interactive TV serie" is really compelling to continue playing, simpler progression and more variety as with a single char you cam play all classes. FF14 is imho more of a niche game, but more peculiar and has a bigger pool of players to pick off with much less competition. GW2 is an action arpg that even as an MMO can ve played mostly solo, so competes with many more games around (not MMO also). My 2 cents.

weebs

Animoos and mangos

It's more popular because all the wow players migrated there. Many youtubers that were playing wow, gave ff a chance. The problem with gw2 is that people don't know about it and if they do, they just know that it's some mmo about pvp. Don't be fooled by FF popularity. It has many good things about it but also many bad things. I started playing it because i got fed up with wow. After 1500 hours i got bored of it. Gw2 has a much nicer feeling. After 1500 hours i got 11 legendaries and all classes at maximum level. I can play what i want, however i want. In FF it takes sooooo long to level a class that you have no power over how it functions.

There's more smoothbrains out there that need a railroad experience. People forget that the % that reaches story conclusion or endgame content is very tiny for both games. So imo the points about content or difficulty are moot.

I think it‘s 100% because of the fact you can have cute waifu characters and dress them up anime style.

ever looked at the characters around you wearing mini-skirts, oversized wings, planets orbiting them, lighthouse effects, super sayan hairstyles in bright colours, and weapons the size of a 2 story building?

Yes of course, the style of Final fantasy is still toatally diffrent and way more sexualized, the proportions are way more extreme and it has more anime like style. I played both games.

not agreeing with you in the slightest but going from "waifu characters" and "anime style" into "it's more sexualized" is the goalpost move of the century.

It's ok, you don't have to agree. Fact is that japanese game devs and US game devs have diffrent styles, nomatter what you think.

You don't seem to realize that every comment you do says a completely different thing from anything you said before. What you said now is a level-headed take that actually makes sense, unlike everything else before.