In the next few years, players will be able to create and customize their own characters in games like WoW and FFXIV. These games are expected to have a large impact on how gamers play and interact with each other.
The ffxiv beginners guide 2020 is a guide for players who are new to the game. It includes information on what classes to choose, how to get started, and some tips for leveling up.
Customization of your playable character is one of the foundations of the gaming experience for any contemporary game developer that understands a thing or two about his consumers – us, players. Even single-player games with pre-defined protagonists have learnt to accomplish this, from enabling hairstyle modifications to permitting transmog or skins for armor, weapons, pets, and vehicles, as shown in the most recent Assassin’s Creed titles or Star Wars Jedi.
Untying character strength from its appearance is a current necessity for an MMO, and developers have gone down this road to varying degrees. Blade and Soul, in my opinion, offered one of the most creative solutions: your clothing is just your outfit, and character strength is scaled via trinkets, rings, and earrings – in other words, non-displayable things.
Transmogrification and customisation in general is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of any game and a topic for collecting. You may roleplay and switch roleplay of your toon as a new personality only via transmog to emphasize specific character traits.
Is your priest a peaceful, dedicated village healer, or a zealot of cruel Light who despises all Shadow manifestations? Is your warrior a ravager, a berserker, or a seasoned veteran? Is your rogue a ninja, a government agent, or a gang member? Is he/she willing to show their loyalty to a faction? Is he trying to blend in with the contemporary expanding environment and locals, adopting their lifestyle and clothing style, or is he trying to stay loyal to his heritage and roots at all times? Transmogrification and customisation enable all of these issues to be answered and defined, not to mention the fashion experiments, which are important in and of themselves.
Let’s take a look at two MMOs I’m presently playing: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Before we begin, a quick recap: both games feature well-developed customization systems, but they each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.
Pets
Let’s begin with the most minor aspect of customization: pets.
WoW features a massive, expansive pet system that has evolved into its own Pokemon-style mini-game that has progressed as far as Pandaria in 2012. It features its own fights, achievements, missions, PvP, and, of course, pet kinds with their own fighting benefits. In terms of personalization, the game enables you to tame (capture) nearly any creature in the open world, and rewards you with themed pets for completing achievements, missions, dungeons, and raids. To put it another way, anytime you go to a new zone or content, you’ll receive hundreds of new pets to say “hey, I’ve been there.”
On the negative, the large number of pets and the system as a whole seem to devalue their worth. Professional pet battlers have a restricted selection of to-go champions, such as Zandalari dinos from Isle of Giants or Anubisath Idol, while ordinary creatures from new expansions are seldom, if ever, used in fights. Because pets are so popular, they are seldom summoned and shown in public today. The majority of the time, you’ll see a specific individual brag about a new raid or promotion pet, or a pet with a special function (Bonestoooorm! ), but never about a generic zillionth hamster or butterfly from a new zone: whatever went into collection remains in collection until further notice. To some degree, it’s a trap: Blizzard is obligated to offer tameable versions of all new monsters, even if it’s counterproductive in the long term. In any case, having more choices is a good thing: why shouldn’t we enable a particular crazy gamer to go about with an ugly spiky bug?
Because there are fewer pets in FFXIV, there are no tameable animals in the open world, and there is no pet combat system, the pets are more valuable as a flavor item. You don’t receive miniature copies of wolves, wandering plants, or wasps if a place is crowded with them, but some memetic animals like Goobbue do make it into your collection.
Chibi-versions (or baby-versions) of important lore characters are one of the most valuable items in the FFXIV pet system. Kawaii, or adorable, is ingrained in Japanese culture; every major Japanese property would feature chibi-merch (from shirts to action figures), thus it’s no surprise that this concept made it into the game. They may be provided as a reward for completing specific narrative stages, or they may be a boss drop – a miniature replica of a monster, making them much more valuable.
Remember how Harry Potter was permitted to retain the tiny live replica of the Hungarian Horntail dragon he fought in Goblet of Fire as a memento of his adventure? This is the exact same thing. Of course, we’d want a chibi-Kel’Thuzad instead of a mawsworn knight minion in World of Warcraft, or a tiny Jaina when we complete the Siege of Boralus lore? Blizzard even went so far as to create rare promo murlocs with character characteristics (so far, Grommash, Illidan, Anduin, and Sylvanas), which is feasible but, in my opinion, insufficient.
To cut a long tale short, FFXIV gamers like their pets and would happily exhibit them around cities when they are bored.
Conclusion: It’s a battle of opposites, and I don’t believe either side will come out on top. Blizzard has more pets of all kinds, everything you see is tameable, and a wonderful system dedicated only to pets, but this range detracts from their worth, as it is a captive of the complicated system that is always being created. Pets in Final Fantasy XIV are more valuable, but they are very uncommon, and you have fewer options.
Mounts
Mounts are arguably the most popular – and only – vanity choice in game character modification. A casual may stroll into a mythic raid set because to raging transmog, legacy farming, and character boosting, while a mythic raider may have a vanilla axe and vanilla trousers shown, period. Mounts, on the other hand, cannot be hidden, and they will show your drop luck or high-end accomplishments, which many people use only for that reason, rather than because the mount is useful.
However, when it comes to roleplaying, it’s critical to have as many choices as possible, and WoW is an undeniable winner. Basically, you can get and ride almost any animal or creature that roams free in the game (for example, all three types of Korthia creatures – shardhide, razorwing, and devourer), as well as specific models designed for raids and other activities, and a small but dazzling selection of shop and promotion mounts. Recolors may be grumbled at as a fresh source of rep, money, currency, or other farming labor, but they’re also important: my paladin rides a pure white Kul Tiran horse, while my rogue and death knight choose the coal black Drustvar version of the same steed. Could they switch places? Never.
Because the FFXIV mount list may be put on a single wiki page — complete with all the information – the variety of mounts isn’t as extensive. The greatest positive (or negative) of the FFXIV mount system is its oddity, since the designers went completely crazy with the designs. They don’t give a damn about maintaining the world’s atmosphere, and it seems to work. Every mount, even polar bears, can fly here, and you may see a bright yellow chicken that made it to the normally dismal game from a colorful children’s show or a bathtub. Of course, there are vanity choices as well, since certain mounts have a low drop rate from bosses and therefore deserve a gratz and guilty pleasure from their owners.
Conclusion: WoW is the clear victor in terms of customisation, while FFXIV lets you go crazy.
Payed Services, Barbershop / Aestethician, and Character Creation
Prior to the Shadowlands expansion, I would have said Square Enix was the clear winner, but Blizzard introduced a slew of new character creation and customization choices, including skin tones, hairstyles, hair and eye colors, facial and racial feature tweaking, tattoos, and more.
Currently, FFXIV leads in two areas: one, the ability to adjust body size; and two, the palettes of skin, eye, and hairstyle undertones that would delight a professional designer: hundreds of hues of pink, brown, green, blue, and all other colors to select from, and as wild as you can go. At the same time, they fall short in certain areas, such as the ability to discern a significant difference between a small number of face choices.
In World of Warcraft, you get access to a barbershop as soon as you arrive in a major city — you can go there at level 1 and alter whatever you need, including gender switch (! ), for a very little in-game gold price, which got even less in Shadowlands. Let me emphasize: everything. You have access to all of the choices available at the character creation screen.
Isn’t it true that the barbershop – aesthetician – is only accessible after reaching level 15 in Final Fantasy XIV? In other words, if you don’t like your haircut at level 10, you’ll have to wait until the attunement questline is ready before summoning the barber at a major city inn.
The greatest flaw in Final Fantasy XIV is that you just have a few choices at the barbershop – it’s simply your face, haircuts and haircolors, and unique characteristics like tattoos and other adornments. There is no body tweaking, and even the eye color isn’t altered! So, if you created a cool bloodlust warrior with bloodshot, red eyes and then chose to go for priest aka white mage (since the game encourages you to stack classes/jobs on a single character), you won’t be able to change your eyes to blue.
In Final Fantasy XIV, the only way to do so is to use a Fantasia vial, which is essentially a race change item. Once you’ve used it, you’ll be sent to a character creation page where you may start from scratch and change things like eye color, race, gender, and/or name. The bad news is that it’s only provided for free after you reach level 50, and the rest of the Fantasia vials must be purchased for real money – $10 to change your eye color from green to blue.
Conclusion: WoW has recently improved with customization options; customization is available in-game from level 1 at a wink and for a very small in-game fee, and paid, real money services are now limited to changing your race – everything else, including gender swap, is available in-game and for in-game gold.
Character customization in Final Fantasy XIV is locked behind a questline, and there are few in-game choices even when compared to character creation’s basic feature list, which has been cut by approximately half, while many essential fundamental adjustments, such as eye color, require real money. However, WoW’s color palettes pale in comparison to FFXIV, which outperforms Blizzard’s choices by a wide margin.
Glamour / Transmog
Finally, there’s transmogrification, often known as glamour.
Access: level 1, a tiny quantity of gold that grows based on character level and income, and the issue of attaining a capital city in World of Warcraft. However, until you spend 120k on a transmog mount, you won’t be able to alter your transmog where you want (still my best spent 120k in game).
Glamour is once again tied to a questline in Final Fantasy XIV, although you may alter your transmog in any location at any time. The price is also fair and should not be considered. In the long run, FFXIV does better in terms of gating.
Costs: World of Warcraft requires a considerable quantity of in-game gold. In Final Fantasy XIV, special crafted/auctioned disposable things are used; one item is burnt for one piece of glamour or removal of glamour – the price isn’t too expensive at higher character levels, but you might run out of items at an inconvenient time.
What kind of things can you scrounge? Everything is on display. In both games, things are shown differently; for example, FFXIV does not have shoulder or cape item slots, but necklaces and rings do, unlike WoW. In any event, in both games, anything that is shown on a character may be mogged over.
Both games allow you to conceal and reveal your helmet with a single click and at no cost, but WoW goes a step further by allowing you to hide all slots except weapons and trousers.
Mog Range: Because WoW is an older game, it naturally contains more mog sets and quest items, but overall, the number of mogs available is similar. The open world, raids, special events, and features all provide different ways to acquire things for your collection.
Dying or recoloring: ah, here is where Final Fantasy XIV excels, and it’s one of the most believable aspects of glamour. You may always dye over things after you activate this function, as transmog works – you just need to purchase or create dyes of the appropriate hue. And the variety is incredible: there are approximately 20 different hues of red/pink, for example. This alone may significantly alter your perspective: for example, this was the dragoon set’s dismal begin hue.
(I’m not sure whether it already has black recolor, but still):
And here’s what we get when we add a dash of red:
Isn’t it fantastic? It’s as if he has a whole new personality and attitude! Imagine a hundred different approaches you might take with the same piece: joyful, calm, somber, furious…
WoW is losing this race – which isn’t really a race – for a reason: recolors for WoW outfits and equipment function as accomplishment markers for various kinds of content, such as raid difficulty or PvP. Again, because of how the system works, I won’t advocate for major changes, but the FFXIV choice is really refreshing.
However, there is one last aspect in which WoW outperforms FFXIV by a thousand points, and that is the UI.
The transmog interface in World of Warcraft is really fantastic. You can mog over the whole raid or PvP set after you’ve gathered everything, and it all occurs in one window with easy piece-by-piece swaps that save the prior changes, not to mention the option to store bespoke costumes. Oh, and the most significant feature we’ve had since Draenor is that once you have an item, its appearance is now accessible to mogs in your collection for the rest of their lives, and you may dispose of the item itself.
The FFXIV UI is… abysmal. You can only try on one thing at a time, the character window is tiny, the number of clicks required is excruciating, and there is no model preview in the list of products – you have to choose “Try on” from a drop menu every time to even know what that item is. There is no collection either: all model objects must be carried in your luggage to be used for mogs or stored (you can’t glamour out of storage, can you?). In other words, it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable. But it was all worth it in the end 🙂 To be honest, the dye interface is quite amazing.
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So, in general, both games are paradise for those interested in character customization – with variations, of course, and some specific areas where they attempted to deal with in their own unique ways, while sharing a number of similar methods. What WoW wins in numbers – FFXIV makes up with a more comprehensive modifications and care to the things you currently have, and I would not vote for the systems to flow into one other owing to specific methods and limitations.
I just wish the creators of Final Fantasy XIV put some effort into their UI, since its glamour system deserves it, and also made it possible to customize character looks without paying real money. Come on, add some color to your eyes! 🙂
The ffxiv to do list is a topic that has been discussed in the past. There are pros and cons to both of these types of customization.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ff14 really better than WoW?
Does WoW have more players than FFXIV?
The number of players on the PC version of World of Warcraft is unknown, and the number of players on the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is unknown.
Why is FFXIV suddenly so popular?
FFXIV is a game that was released in 2010 and has been slowly gaining popularity since then.
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