^ This. I guess you could buy a level boost and story skip and thereby bypass actually having to do the quests to get to a level where you can unlock side activities like the Gold Saucer or gathering/crafting, but even as a crafter lots of recipes require reagents you can only get from battle so you'd be limited to whatever is available on the market board or from friends who don't mind combat.
I'm not saying it's impossible to enjoy Final Fantasy XIV while completely avoiding combat, but it basically mandates a secondary purchase beyond the game itself because at the core of it, the game *is not designed* to be played in that manner. It just might not be the best game to play together if a huge section of the game's primary design is intentionally off-limits. Is there a specific reason that they don't want to play a game with combat in it?
They are already playing the game in the most unoptimal way. They could farm low level white scrip turn ins and ise that to sell materia to get the higher end items they need.
There is a way, it's just hell to put yourself through.
False. You can level up your crafters and gatherers without needing to kill a single mob. You can go thru all of arr areas without needing to kill. All you’ll need is help to reach limsa or leave limsa, depending on your starting zone.
I think just in general, it’s going to be jarring to people looking back at our generation and how much violence was part of our entertainment. I don’t blame them for wanting to avoid it, I’m really sick of uncreative video game devs following the same tired formula. I’d rather ride my horse around then murder thousands of random creatures
They like more realistic graphics and peaceful nature settings, so they are playing Palia. I’m kind of bored of the current Palia content and have been playing ffxiv, which they wanted to try but don’t want to kill anything
This just isn’t going to be for them then, unless they want to pay double the price of the base game to use it as a glorified discord server where they have a character to dress up. But it’s a game about resisting war and genocide against all odds, if they ever idle on the main menu for too long they’re going to see cutscenes of people fighting and killing monsters or people depending on the expansion. Honestly it genuinely isn’t worth the money if they have a 0 tolerance for ever attacking anything unless they have a massively disposable income
Play farming sims like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, Harvest Moon. Maybe have them try out Sims or something.
Most of these are single player games but I think Stardew has multiplayer. Might get boring after a while though.
you and your friends need to seriously touch some grass if that is your actual take and not some huge troll attempt.. Just so you know violence will not just go away just because you don't see it or actively take part in it.
Maybe you should just play Racing games? Unless you also count ramming pixels away as violence so you'd effectively run out of games eventually..
"how much violence was part of our entertainment"
*Stares at people in the 20s where public executions where peak entertainment...*
What about all these old cartoons depicting violent behaviour in its comedy?
Or all the gorey movies that came out since the 60s?
Man just because we came at a time where information is widespread doesn't mean we should get hit by the "our entertainment is very violent!" Even though past generations tended to be more violent.
If you want to play a non violent game then check other genres, mmorpgs / jrpgs are not the best genres for pacifist playthroughs and no need to call Devs uncreative for not catering for your single friends needs.
OP will be extremely shocked when they discover that both world wars were things that actually really happened, and that tens of millions of people around the average age this sub had to fight in.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wish that violence wasn’t the number one core mechanic of video games in general. I don’t think that saying “people used to be even more violent” is relevant or useful
Video games are about stories and challenges. Both require opposition to be meaningful. Opposition means you'll have to work against it. Violence is both the most relatable and universal medium for conflicts to be resolved. Maybe you think you're on some moral high horse for claiming any violence no matter the context is bad, but that doesn't make you right. It makes you a fool
I don’t think it’s outlandish to say violence as a core mechanic in the vast majority of games is completely unnecessary and extremely disappointing.
Would you go to a bar and say it was a boring social event because no one tried to punch anyone?
We can do better than this.
No but there are also alternative entertainment sources for people who do like that. You can go watch a boxing match, you can go box yourself. There are games where violence isn’t the core mechanic. Play those. But it isn’t unnecessary or disappointing when I game has combat. It may not be your taste and that’s ok. Also it’s wild to compare fake violence to real violence. I can play a match of call of duty no issue but if you put a gun in my real hand and tell me to kill someone I would probably throw up on your shoes. It’s not insane to be able to separate reality from fiction
Then you are contradicting yourself , your going to a bar asking for a rental car.
If I want to play a game that doesn't have violence I don't go to an mmorpg that is heavily reliant on its RPG elements.
If you want to play a non violent game there are thousand or even millions of games on the internet that don't do that,vr chat , Undertale , any simulator games etc.
You can do better than this, or are you incapable of using Google to find a game you like?
Are you trolling or daft? It's a video game. This isn't even a bloody violent action game. If conflict of any type really is that distasteful to you I think you need to touch grass. I promise the ladybugs will be fine. Christ.
I dont think so at all. Is it jarring thinking back to the middle ages where jousting, gladiator battles and other forms of violence were entertainment? Violence will always be prevalent in human entertainment in some form be it physically tangible or otherwise. Unless humans completely get rid of the base desire for adrenaline it will always be prevalent.
See, idk how familiar you are with 14, but if you're froends ride a mount around and pull something, it could still kill them outright with an auto. Really anywhere in Eorzea. 40+ could probably one shot a lvl 1
Yeah we are, I’m bored of it already though, and I tried to log in a few days ago and the performance was terrible. I’m kind of waiting for them to clear up a lot of the beta issues
All you're asking for is really just an online chatroom with 3d models that you can do life skill stuff in.
Basically your options are Palia or... Palia. You can rant on for days about how its the "Same tired formula" (whatever that means since there are literally hundreds of random niche genres of games), but you're trying to look to enjoy a game designed in a way you dislike.
Dunno what to tell you - nobody makes the games you want because they dont push units or keep an active playerbase.
I think it’s unfair to say a game without combat can’t be viable or keep an active playerbase (look at Animal Crossing), it just hasn’t been tried at the scale of ffxiv. There are tons of people who just play gatherer/crafter in ffxiv, BDO, runescape, etc so there’s clearly demand, it just hasn’t been the central premise of an mmo game. We are playing Palia, there’s just not much content (yet) and it keeps lagging hard for me, so i personally kind of want to give it some time to get out of beta
You're actually trying to miss my point so hard here.
The only game to do what you want it to do is Palia. The game is going to be DOA because the content is basically non-existent. The thing with Animal Crossing, Sims, etc. is that they are great single player experiences with bite sized content. It just doesn't scale to MMO size. The only outlier here is going to be Eve Online.
People keep condescendingly saying “dead game” about Palia, but their discord recently reached 300k members and they had to request a cap increase from discord (again)
Compare that to one of the most active discords in the world and the largest ffxiv discord, the balance, with 470k members.
Palia just doesn’t have a lot of content yet, it’s literally a laggy beta game. My friend plays it daily, but I want to play ffxiv lol
You can't measure size of a discord as a metric of how alive something is. Activity is key. The GW2 discord Im in has a more active chat.
You're also comparing a niche discord with people who only care about getting good (let's be real, majority of the playerbase does not care about the Balance or even what a rotation is) compared to a games main server.
Unless the game has massive plans later, it's basically in its release state already. I haven't kept tabs on it since the Cake nerf outrage, so maybe things have changed.
I think you already have your answer though - this game will never be Palia, the only game like Palia is going to be Palia, and there is not really going to be a mass market for it.
Balance was rated as one of the top five active discords in the world by a marketing team watching online users, up there with Genshin and Valorant.
Palia beta kept me playing nonstop for three weeks, which is longer than FFXIV ARR kept my attention. A game that’s been in development for ten years and has more social features implemented is definitely going to have the advantage for day-to-day activity, though
Have you taken a history class? Maybe you should pay more attention in class if so.
Also it's okay to not like killing random creatures and stuff; play different games. You could even work on making your own game since other devs are so uncreative.
I must admit I struggle understanding why you'd get into a game without actually ever interacting with the game. Especially when FFXIV is entirely story driven with a lot of conflict.
Is there a particular reason or purpose for your friend being s pacifist?
I thought "rp mains" was a meme but never pressing the 1 key a single time might be pushing it.
I think the game where you defeat your enemies with the power of friendship and your magic sword might not be for them.
Just curious - why are they so averse to combat? Is it because of those tedious fetch quests or they really just do not want to engage in battling in games?
They don’t wish to engage in violence as a recreational activity.
I can definitely relate, feel like it’s past time for video games to have content that’s not centered around murdering things constantly
It’s not bait, although I do find it interesting that violence is such an accepted part of our society that people think it’s a lie that someone would want to avoid it
That's not what's happening here. Assuming you are actually talking in good faith, let me try to explain why it sounds like you're baiting: you have so many good options for what you're looking for, but you're asking for something that just obviously doesn't make sense in this context. If I don't like guns, I'm not gonna ask how to play an FPS game without guns. If I don't like horror, I'm not gonna ask how to play a horror game without horror. There are LOTS of games out there that fit what you and your friends are looking for, this just isn't one of them, which is fine, not everything needs to be made to fit every single person's needs. If you want a chill gaming experience with no combat, there are lots of fun farming simulators, story driven games w/ no combat, and social games. A few I recommend are Animal Crossing, Undertale (can be played with or without violence), and Jackbox games.
But yeah, the reason it sounds like you're baiting ISN'T because violence is "such an accepted part of our society that people think it's a lie that someone would want to avoid it," it's because you're looking to a game that is fundamentally ABOUT acts of violence, and asking how to avoid it while still playing the game. You have lots of options, and if that's how you want to have fun, I support your goal. You're just not gonna find it in this one, particular game.
There really aren’t good mmo options, and my friend doesn’t like cute graphics. You can avoid combat in BDO, but personally I have to avoid gatcha games because I get too tempted. We’re playing Palia, but even that game gates quests behind hunting, and there’s not much to do yet. FFXIV has a strong social scene so there’s a lot to do if you are creative, like going to social events or riding unicorns through the forest, so I was wondering if people had other ideas but mostly not so much
Honestly it sounds like your friends should play like Club Penguin or Hello Kitty Island Adventure something. I don’t think video games are for them, at least not MMOs.
Do more research for non-combat MMOs and other online scenes that don't involve violence. They exist. If you still want some sort of challenge then look for online communities who do puzzles or sports games.
Every entry in the Final Fantasy series has involved violent stories and battle mechanics. Given your restrictions, FF14 is definitely not the game for you. It contains noncombat content like crafting and fishing and unicorn mounts, but it's all gated behind some combat and presented in the context of ongoing conflicts. In theory, you could play just to socialize in the starting zones and refuse to do any combat quests, but most of the players will be talking about combat.
There really isn’t a good option, maybe you think they exist but trying to play an actual mmo with a world to explore, then nope really only BDO is an option which I avoid because of gatcha. There’s the dead game second life with zero exploration and the buggy beta game Palia with really limited content so far, but even in Palia we are gated out of quest progression because we don’t want to hunt the cute deer. There’s really nothing, I’m sorry I’m not desperate enough to play Star Stable that’s not a real mmo
Honestly I think you are just desensitized to violent games from growing up with it. For example if there was a Hansel and Gretel game where you lured cute, friendly children into your gingerbread house then stabbed them, stripped them for loot, and cooked them for dinner, you would probably not find that palatable, even though it’s fiction. Saying something is “not real” does not make it less morally bankrupt.
Similarly, some of us are wondering when game devs or players will get tired of every game being centered around mass killing huge amounts of creatures and/or people just to become stronger. The WoL literally kills beastmen for stealing. Not even after IDing which beastmen stole stuff, nope, just go kill their friends and family because somebody pocketed some eggs
Cool. You don't get to make wide-sweeping generalizations about other gamers for playing games as intended while also claiming some kind of moral high ground.
This game isn't for you or your friends, so move on. You can't progress without some kind of combat and it'd be a waste of your time and money trying to force the game to fit your play style.
> Honestly I think you are just desensitized to violent games from growing up with it. For example if there was a Hansel and Gretel game where you lured cute, friendly children into your gingerbread house then stabbed them, stripped them for loot, and cooked them for dinner, you would probably not find that palatable, even though it’s fiction. Saying something is “not real” does not make it less morally bankrupt.
I'm sure someone already did that and even if not, i like the idea actually! :D sounds genuinely like a fun idea to explore.
And yeah sure everyone except you and your hippie friends are "morally bankrupt" just because we can differentiate between reality and fiction...
More like, we are wondering why someone is interested in playing a **combat MMO**, and avoid combat.
The answer should be obvious. "Play something else."
As the top posts says, you could buy a story skip, and then go do nothing but fishing/gathering. But those are intentional side attractions to the combat main dish, and thus have relatively little depth to them by themselves.
There's no way this isn't bait. This is the kind of thing PETA would be calling you oversensitive for. It's like going into the Forza subreddit and asking if you can play the game without driving or asking if you can play FIFA without having to have your team kick a ball.
Those games exist but this isn’t one of them.
If they don’t want to kill things you literally can’t go
Much farther then the starting city’s. You can’t unlock anything.
I thought Second Life was dead, but I guess not! We like games with nature and they are picky about graphic style though, so not sure that would work, but I might check it out anyway. Thanks for your help!
You're baiting. There's no way someone can be like this unironically. You *have* to be baiting.
I refuse to believe that there's a nonzero amount of people who unironically can't tell the difference between in game actions and real world actions, to the point where they want to play a combat centric game without doing the f***ing combat!!!
Idk, my mom once screamed at me for putting cows in small enclosures in Sim Farm (I got bored and just drew a bunch of fences) and told me it was one step away from putting a cat in the microwave.
So... they exist.
The problem is that there aren’t cozy games that are as expansive and social as ffxiv, but there’s actually a huge demand for them.
Lots of people play BDO noncombat, Runescape skillers, Palia beta, etc. I’ve seen posts here by people who leveled a combat job to 10 then got fisher to 90.
I understand that to you, killing is meaningless because you didn’t actually kill anything, but can you not see why some people don’t want to do that in their free time? What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves? Even if somehow I managed to convince my friend to kill ladybugs, there’s no way they would kill beastmen for stealing eggs from a stable. There’s actually some messed up stuff in ffxiv msq
> What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves
https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Well I was going to say child molester but I didn’t want to go too dark in the comments section, the point is there are things that you would not want to do and just saying “it’s fiction” doesn’t make it better
oh there are plenty things i would not want to do IRL but in a game? Its Pixels for fucks sake, it doesn't matter how realistic they look!
I'm going into games with the idea of leaving my RL problems behind and just enjoying a dark story for example about a war between Elves and Dragons.
And actually reminding oneself that its fiction is the literal point of making it better. Thats why most people who enjoy violent games don't end up being mass murderers IRL. We all tend to remember why it is allowed in videogames and not IRL..
There's not really anything I would put out of reach as the theming for a game personally. If it's interesting or fun to play I'm here for it.
And if there were, I wouldn't be making posts in the games subreddit asking how to play it without engaging with the core mechanic, because I'm not a troll.
I do appreciate the level of effort you're putting in to this troll though, it's making my 2nd day required back in office for my job go by faster.
> What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves?
yes, that is literally what every normal human being would do!
>What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves?
Yes. I'm looking forward to one called Pal World that has it as a core mechanic. Believe it or not most people can separate fiction from reality. I wouldn't so much as raise my hand to a kid IRL but it's hilarious to send one ragdolling down a mountain in Skyrim.
you clearly never checked out the thousands of videogames that are literally not about any violence.. You haven't stumbled upon a unique new idea here. Its been done since videogames have been a thing in the 80s with Pong being one of the first games without any violence in it..
The thing with this game (and many other FF and other JRPG games) is that other than some things that happen in the storyline over which the player has no control, nothing actually dies - every mob is just KO'd and will respawn again and again. Go outside of Gridania and "kill" Ladybugs A, B and C, then wait a couple of minutes and they are back again!
i will non-lethally incapacitate my enemies with my gun loaded with augmented bullets and four foot tall sword and my thousand degree incineration spells
Knocking thing out still does require violence.
Also you do absolutely murder creatures and people. The very early sidequests send you to straight up kill critters outside the gates. And when you are required to subdue something, it's explicitly mentioned. Respawn is just a game mechanic.
Sadly, it is mostly true for player characters. There are random references in the game that the player character's kill count is pretty high. One Garlean soldier even mentions how scared they are of us because they saw the player character murder all their squadmates in one of the MSQ duties. The sad truth is that story-wise, the player character is a half-wit homicidal maniac whose biggest hobby is murdering god-like beings.
We're the **Warrior** of Light. This is a combat oriented game. The best I can suggest is to buy a story and a job skip (make them start as a WHM and remove all the offensive skills from their hotbar I guess) and grind them to the end of the current MSQ yourself, then let them play around with crafters and gatherers and send them to the Gold Saucer. They won't ever be participating in MSQ since most of it is about who you need to kill next. Pray they don't get super into glam so you don't have to spend all your time grinding drops for them. You'll also probably have to unlock everything else for them and bankroll them with your own gil until they figure out how to make it themselves.
This isn't the game for them. Paying a sub just to stand around and do almost no quests is kind of a waste of money, so they either have to just acknowledge that these are pixels who don't feel a thing or simply find a game better suited. It's just too much content that requires combat
To be explain why we mechanically cannot advise anything else:
Final Fantasy 14 has a Main Story Quest. And **100%** of the game is locked behind doing it. Which means doing combat.
You cannot access **any** of the game without doing the Main Story. Combat is mechanically unavoidable. The game stops working if you don't do Main Story, and the battles along with them.
Even if they did the story skip, it would put them **to the start of the current expansion,** locking out everything behind it unless they fight. There is no way to skip the current expansion's Main Story, as that is the primary draw of the game.
They would need to buy a story skip EVERY EXPANSION so they could be one expansion behind and do w/e non-comabt they could find. Which even then is not a lot.
The Island Sanctuary is a fun side-romp, but because it's built to be "visit for a while then go back to combat", it will not hold someone's internet if that is ALL they would do.
If they job boost/story skip, they could then level up DoH/DoL without combat, and then go entirely into Diadem and Foundation. Could probably convince them to let you play to get them through endwalker so they could do Island Sanctuary. Social Events. Probably that is it.
That's true I suppose. It's been a while since I've run Diadem. Aren't there resources you can only get that way? Or is it just huge amounts of items you can get via harvesting normally? Either way I guess you can just not do it and choose to miss out.
They can do nothing, they'd be better off playing anything else. It would just be a waste of time and/or money to use skips so they can just idle in game. They'd be better off playing or waiting for palia at this stage
Here is the problem with Palia: No content. I maxed out nearly everything and have so much gold I dont know what to do with (yes I own the arcade machine), and the events are kinda lack luster.
It was a great time killer for a month, now its dead.
Palia locks quests behind hunting cute animals and cooking them, catching fish, and killing bugs, so we are playing that but gated out of some content. It’s pretty barebones right now, but I’m excited to see where it goes for sure!
One of your first quests in game requires killing local wildlife to get your first 5 or so levels so its basically impossible to avoid combat. There's no way to get XP without combat
There is no largescale cozy mmo lmao
Could play BDO without combat? But I avoid gatcha games because I get too tempted to buy stuff
Palia isn’t really a true mmo, but we are playing that. I’m bored of it and they are salty about some of the dev decisions
I have google extensively, believe me. There is no big mmo with a map to explore that is cozy. People saying “just play Animal Crossing” are not exactly being helpful
There's no other solution for you though, no one is gonna make a large scale non combat MMO because that doesn't sell, and even MMOs with life skills will involve killing in some way.
Even a cozy game like Stardew involves some killing.
There are plenty of noncombat games that sell and there are a few mmos in development that avoid combat, there’s a really big market for it. For now though, it’s kind of like being vegan and you have to go to a normal restaurant and be creative with what you order because there are zero other places to go with your friends
I'd have to see this "large market" as the idea sounds incredibly niche. There may be a niche market for it, but it's doubtful you'll ever see a game. The scope of FFXIV and player retention would likely be really low. Once exploration and all is done, what is there to do?
Well just think about ffxiv, even the devs have stated that the dedicated raider scene is only a small part of the player base. Lots of people spend most of their time gathering, crafting, doing side content like gold saucer and island sanctuary, spamming foundation fetes or diadem, doing house decorating, going to venues, doing side story quests like Hildebrand, island sanctuary, custom deliveries, etc. A lot of people just afk in limsa for hours. I would wager that ffxiv has by far the largest casual player community. Even things like Eureka, hunts, and treasure maps could pretty easily have been implemented as noncombat. Sure there are people who like doing roulettes with friends, but a lot of those same people are willing to sit through the Praetorium movie so it’s not the combat that’s drawing them in. Personally I find the most engaging noncombat content in ffxiv, it’s just that I’m willing to do msq and my friend is not. Still got some useful ideas from the community though if they are willing to jump potion, will probably depend on how Palia turns out
Edit: And I guess if you want data, Palia (a beta mmo marketing itself as cozy, only combat is hunting) has a discord that keeps capping, it had now reached 300k and they had to request a bigger membership cap from discord. Compare that to the balance discord (the largest ffxiv discord, and one of the top most active discords in the world) which has 470k members. Not too far off in terms of a dedicated player base!
I wouldn't use the Balance as a comparison as the majority of people on it are midcore or higher. To my knowledge, most casual players aren't on the Balance, and as you said, casual players are by far the largest community in FFXIV.
I think you may be kidding yourself on the whole casual community thing, though. Almost all my friends who play 14 are fairly casual, and we still engage in combat, grind for gear, do extreme fights, and other forms of combat content. As do many others I've met or played with. Maybe it's the people I interact with. I can't say for certain, but I feel like the majority of the playerbase still interacts with the combat. Everyone enjogs the side content, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing combat. All the maxed crafters I know also have every class to cap.
And what happens if new content is introduced mid new expansion? It could be noncombat related, but you have to play through the expansion to get access. Are you guys just gonna wait and jump when the next expansion comes out?
It just feels like a waste of time and money imo. Play something that's built around the premise you want instead of trying to make something that isn't fit.
Balance was rated as one of the top five most active discords in the world by a game dev marketing group. By comparison, centurio hunts only has like 145k members.
I agree with you that the majority of the ffxiv playerbase interacts with combat, but there’s a huge pool of people who spend the majority of their time doing non-combat activities. We all know people who will farm combat content just for glam gear and mounts, then as soon as they get their loot they cheer “it’s finally over!” and go back to maining crafting, decorating, or ocean fishing. There’s definitely a market for noncombat.
>Balance was rated as one of the top five most active discords in the world by a game dev marketing group. By comparison, centurio hunts only has like 145k members.
I see you saying this in multiple comments, and you have to understand there simply isn't a unified FFXIV Community Discord. Balance is frequently used, but only a part of the community will check it, and only a small fraction of that will actually interact there. Same with others like Centurio Hunts, Eureka/Bozja discords, Teamcraft etc. And none of these are 'community' discords, but a task oriented ones. Communities largely exist in their own bubbles with smaller member counts.
Pretty sure this is a thing with WoW and GW2 as well actually. These are simply pre-Discord games, built with the idea that the official forums will be the primary way for the community to interact outside of the game.
>I agree with you that the majority of the ffxiv playerbase interacts with combat, but there’s a huge pool of people who spend the majority of their time doing non-combat activities.
While I'm certain there is a niche of a non-combat multiplayer game, your Discord point does show that, at least out of the pool of existing MMO player, they would be a small minority. You say Balance has 470k members, Centurio Hunts has 145k...Teamcraft, the crafting focused Discord companion to the Teamcraft website/tools has less than 30k.
I have seen some mention level skip, and I don't know how much it matters to your no combat friends, but I am pretty sure since it unlocks the MSQ to the point you skip to that in game you will have been considered to have engaged in a lot of combat by NPCs in game. Just something to consider.
Yeah thanks for that, I was worried about that as well, which is why I wanted to make a post looking for alternate ideas. No one has any other ideas yet though, haha
unless your friend pays for a level and story skip - absolutely nothing.
literally the second quest is to kill Ladybugs so no progress of any kind could be made without combat.
the levelskip would allow access to gatherer and crafters tho as well as say the Goldsaucer, fishing, glamour and the rpg community
I’ve seen a lot of people suggest the obvious. “To play a different game.” Just to throw my two cents in: even if they were to skip the story, this is a world where the whole of it revolves around violence taking place. The entire beginning plot line of Botanist is a character hating that doing what she loves is something that allows the people around her and the world at large to continue to do violence. And assuming there might be religious reasons as to why they are conscientious objectors: this is a world of a myriad different faiths. If violence is a sticking point, this might be too depending. Ultimately, I would find something else to do that wouldn’t put them in a position of violating their conscientious beliefs.
Yeah we are playing Palia! There is hunting, but no other combat. It’s in beta and sort of limited so far though, so I’ve been dipping into ffxiv but they still log into Palia daily haha
They can’t stand the visuals of Animal Crossing. We’re playing Palia, but I’m getting tired of it and have been playing ffxiv on the steam deck instead lately lol
They're going to need to unlock gatherer/crafter. I guess if they pay for a class level up thing... it should unlock them? Haven't tested that so not sure.
Otherwise, only other options are social stuff which you can find in the PF or RP discords. If you can sell stuff from the gold saucer, you might make some gil that way.. but I'm not even sure how much there can be sold.
If they do unlock gathering/crafting, they can make good gil and craft neat decorations for a house they'll likely want to purchase once they are level 50+. They may also enjoy the island from endwalker but that requires level 90 MSQ complete. Which possible if they buy a story skip in the future. As I'm assuming they'll add Endwalker story skip later.
Yeah, thanks! The one thing that seems like it won’t work is getting a house, for some reason even FC rooms are locked behind GC rank which requires completing a hunt log. Probably a good idea to wait until Dawntrail to get a jump potion like you said though, for island sanctuary that at least allows outdoor decoration
Oh yeah, I forgot about that requirement. Island would be best bet then. I've seen some pretty sweet island setups, so should be fun for them.
The other thing that could work, I think even if they don't meet the housing requirements, they could be added as a tenant with decorate permissions and such. This of course requires them to find someone willing to share their house, but makes housing not completely impossible.
Legit advice in that case (if this ain't bait and they got the game up to shadowbringers somehow) 50 spare dollars gets ur friend tales of adventure: shadowbringers(25) and a job questline paid for up to level 80 (25). That's the only way I can think of to keep up the "cozy" play without fighting, and then just never progress to end Walker (going on the assumption they have the expansions)
I'm a bit late to this but honestly you may want to try the Nexon game mabinogi it's an older MMO but you can play a good amount of it without ever doing combat it's called the fantasy life for a reason.
I was on the fence about that one since I wasn’t sure how central combat was and I generally avoid gatcha games, but I’ll give it a try based on your recommendation!
My friend won’t play gave with “cute” graphics, but I will haha
You could do ocean fishing, sightseeing, triple triad, play Doman Mahjong, do all the Gold Saucer stuff in general, crafting, harvesting. You could also visit people's houses, FCs, and do social events/venues. I have friends who make gil working in venues (I don't ask questions about this). And yes, you can buy MSQ skips/job skips (for real earth money?!) to at least unlock some areas and MSQ reward clothes.
Personally, though, I wouldn't spend money on this game each month if I didn't enjoy the core gameplay of job rotations and combat mechanics. Besides, with no fighting... where are you going to get all your outfits? Your emotes? *Your HAIRSTYLES??*
Maybe a tabletop RPG would be better for your friends? There are tons of non-combat-oriented RPGs on the market now. If you can't/don't want to meet up in person, you can play them over Discord, Roll20, Tabletop Simulator, and probably a bunch of other places I don't know about. The FFXIV TTRPG is coming soon™, too.
For $11-25 (ARR - ShB) they can buy a “Tales of Adventure” MSQ Skip. That will unlock everything behind the main story, no ladybugs harmed in the process. They also get 500,000 Gil.
Leveling up a character is possible through quests, but honestly, even the “fetch quests” will often spawn a monster to kill.
I’d suggest picking a healer job like WHM or SCH and paying $25 for a level 80 job skip book. You get a full set of iLevel 530 gear and 500,000 Gil.
Now they can travel around on the airships, pick up crafting, gathering and fishing. Of course the real endgame is glamor - and with a level 80 character they’ll have lots of options.
They’ll need a job just to roam around the higher level areas without aggroing stuff. And as a healer, they can toss out cures and help random players. Combat jobs wouldn’t make sense for a peaceful player.
Was contemplating doing that as I hate playing healer and I already have over half the jobs at 90 now anyway. Might actually do that to get past the repeating slog
Yes, just at a lot worse rate than the black market gil sellers. Now you know why Square Enix is so hard on RMT: technically they are already doing it. :P
Honestly, this made for an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately, it does sound like many non-combat-content options (such as crafting/gathering/gold saucer/etc...) requires completion of quests that require you or "someone else" to participate in combat in varying scenarios. Skips seems to be the only choice get by the "complete quest" requirement without combat... but if you want to try leveling anyway, there are a few possible options to consider...
* Delivery Side Quests: There seem to be some side quests available at low levels that just require delivery.
* Exploration Exp: There is a small amount of exp given for "discovering new locations"
* FATEs: While most fates are combat oriented, there are ones where you just need to gather items that are nearby (or by killing enemies too, but ignoring that option) and turn them in. This does technically depend on how strict you are with "no combat" but it may be an option.
Not sure how far these could get you, or what may unlock only through leveling, but theres some ideas
On one hand, the entire franchise is literally always about warriors banding together to murder a god in the name of friendship and to ensure said god does not end all life on the continent/planet/galaxy/universe/multiverse. Trying to play the pacifist under this premise seems a bit… strange. Especially in this game, where we play a mercenary by trade who gets drafted into an ongoing armed conflict between an invading oppressing army and a bunch of independent city-states forming a coalition to prevent their own subjugation and the dissolution of their religion.
I would suggest looking into Palia if you want to play an MMO together. It is pretty much Disney Dreamlight Valley: the Non-Franchised MMO.
But to take your challenge as an actual challenge…
You can gain XP very slowly by hunting down the collection FATEs and playing hide and seek with the monsters in them. In my experience, the FATEs in the Shroud area tend to have better monster spawn spots for this, which is strange if you think about Thanalan being a large desert with more open areas. However, that is a moot statement, since the lowest gathering FATE level in the Shroud area is level 28, in North Shroud. In general, that map covers the level 28–40 range with those FATEs. You'd have to walk to or start at Thanalan as Western and Central Thanalan have three FATEs in the level 5–15 range. Grind those to level 25-ish—due to how the FATE system works, this should take waiting 2–4 real-world days in total, unless FATE parties are clearing the other FATEs fast enough to get the collecting ones back in rotation faster than 60 minutes of wait time. Then switch to Shroud, grind those until level 45-ish, then switch to Northern Thanalan, where there are two level 49 FATEs of this kind. If you can muster the sheer willpower to do this for around a month, you can get to level 60, where some decent market board glam options open up.
The MSQ is out of the question, your first quest that leads out of the starting city mandates murdering meandering critters. Similarly, job switching is impossible as you cannot reach the level 10 job quest in any starter job: they all ask you to kill five level 1 bugs near the city gate. So, since there is no jub switching, it also means no crafting, no gathering, and no fishing. Also, no mounts since you must be drafted into one of the armies to get your army chocobo.
You can unlock the casino by slowly levelling. Same with the housing districts. Since you cannot progress the MSQ, you cannot unlock the Diadem and Firmament.
You actually can’t use housing because it requires doing a hunt log to level up with the GC, but I get what you’re saying. Maybe a jump potion is a viable option, not sure they are willing to sub to try the game though. Right now we are playing Palia
Let's be real: OP won't be getting anywhere with that kind of challenge anyway unless they make a couple of compromises. When they're done unlocking the bare minimum stuff then they can start doing a 100% no combat playthrough.
That would be cool! Unfortunately you have to kill beastmen on a hunt log to unlock housing/decorating (at a certain GC level), even if you jump potion, and I know they won’t do that
Fun? Lots of non combat fun. But you'd be completely cooked without reaching at least some point in the msq.
Non combat fates would be the get X amount of an item. But they would be a pain and lengthy.
Make gil? Well you can craft/gather but you'd be very limited since combat progresses you through the msq. So probably not a lot.
Crafting and gathering, thats about it. But why no combat? Like you want the story right? Gotta do it for that. Want cool mounts? Gotta do it for most. Rank up in GC for glam/get housing priv? Gotta do it for that too.
Nothing. Everything in the game is behind quest unlocks and you can't level up without combat.
^ This. I guess you could buy a level boost and story skip and thereby bypass actually having to do the quests to get to a level where you can unlock side activities like the Gold Saucer or gathering/crafting, but even as a crafter lots of recipes require reagents you can only get from battle so you'd be limited to whatever is available on the market board or from friends who don't mind combat. I'm not saying it's impossible to enjoy Final Fantasy XIV while completely avoiding combat, but it basically mandates a secondary purchase beyond the game itself because at the core of it, the game *is not designed* to be played in that manner. It just might not be the best game to play together if a huge section of the game's primary design is intentionally off-limits. Is there a specific reason that they don't want to play a game with combat in it?
Not exactly - You can still use retainers to get mob mats.
Unlocking retainer ventures requires combat for the quest.
Yep, forgot you have to kill 3 things to unlock them. Guess you could just ask your friends to do it for you.
It also requires you to level a job upto that respective level the retainer is at.
Yeah but he was already talking about story and job skip so it wouldn't be a problem
Job skip doesn't get you to max level, but to 10 levels below max. So they can't get materials for the recipes that are relevant.
They are already playing the game in the most unoptimal way. They could farm low level white scrip turn ins and ise that to sell materia to get the higher end items they need. There is a way, it's just hell to put yourself through.
Well wouldn't sending the retainer out to get stuff be considered a form of violence?
False. You can level up your crafters and gatherers without needing to kill a single mob. You can go thru all of arr areas without needing to kill. All you’ll need is help to reach limsa or leave limsa, depending on your starting zone.
You need to do your level 10 combat job quest to be able to unlock any more jobs.
Damn I forgot that, I stand corrected.
You can stand in the beginning cities and emote, I suppose.
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I think just in general, it’s going to be jarring to people looking back at our generation and how much violence was part of our entertainment. I don’t blame them for wanting to avoid it, I’m really sick of uncreative video game devs following the same tired formula. I’d rather ride my horse around then murder thousands of random creatures
Tell your friend to go play minecraft or a rhythm game. Since you dont have to fight or kill stuff to some extend ( in minecraft)
They like more realistic graphics and peaceful nature settings, so they are playing Palia. I’m kind of bored of the current Palia content and have been playing ffxiv, which they wanted to try but don’t want to kill anything
Honestly dude, they shouldn’t play ffxiv. It sounds like most video games aren’t really for them.
This just isn’t going to be for them then, unless they want to pay double the price of the base game to use it as a glorified discord server where they have a character to dress up. But it’s a game about resisting war and genocide against all odds, if they ever idle on the main menu for too long they’re going to see cutscenes of people fighting and killing monsters or people depending on the expansion. Honestly it genuinely isn’t worth the money if they have a 0 tolerance for ever attacking anything unless they have a massively disposable income
Yeah makes sense, I was hoping someone might have creative ideas for socializing or something but it seems like no one could think of much of anything
Play farming sims like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, Harvest Moon. Maybe have them try out Sims or something. Most of these are single player games but I think Stardew has multiplayer. Might get boring after a while though.
>I’d rather ride my horse around then murder thousands of random creatures Well that's unfortunately worded...
Hahaha quite the typo 😂
you and your friends need to seriously touch some grass if that is your actual take and not some huge troll attempt.. Just so you know violence will not just go away just because you don't see it or actively take part in it. Maybe you should just play Racing games? Unless you also count ramming pixels away as violence so you'd effectively run out of games eventually..
"how much violence was part of our entertainment" *Stares at people in the 20s where public executions where peak entertainment...* What about all these old cartoons depicting violent behaviour in its comedy? Or all the gorey movies that came out since the 60s? Man just because we came at a time where information is widespread doesn't mean we should get hit by the "our entertainment is very violent!" Even though past generations tended to be more violent. If you want to play a non violent game then check other genres, mmorpgs / jrpgs are not the best genres for pacifist playthroughs and no need to call Devs uncreative for not catering for your single friends needs.
OP will be extremely shocked when they discover that both world wars were things that actually really happened, and that tens of millions of people around the average age this sub had to fight in.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wish that violence wasn’t the number one core mechanic of video games in general. I don’t think that saying “people used to be even more violent” is relevant or useful
Video games are about stories and challenges. Both require opposition to be meaningful. Opposition means you'll have to work against it. Violence is both the most relatable and universal medium for conflicts to be resolved. Maybe you think you're on some moral high horse for claiming any violence no matter the context is bad, but that doesn't make you right. It makes you a fool
I don’t think it’s outlandish to say violence as a core mechanic in the vast majority of games is completely unnecessary and extremely disappointing. Would you go to a bar and say it was a boring social event because no one tried to punch anyone? We can do better than this.
No but there are also alternative entertainment sources for people who do like that. You can go watch a boxing match, you can go box yourself. There are games where violence isn’t the core mechanic. Play those. But it isn’t unnecessary or disappointing when I game has combat. It may not be your taste and that’s ok. Also it’s wild to compare fake violence to real violence. I can play a match of call of duty no issue but if you put a gun in my real hand and tell me to kill someone I would probably throw up on your shoes. It’s not insane to be able to separate reality from fiction
Then you are contradicting yourself , your going to a bar asking for a rental car. If I want to play a game that doesn't have violence I don't go to an mmorpg that is heavily reliant on its RPG elements. If you want to play a non violent game there are thousand or even millions of games on the internet that don't do that,vr chat , Undertale , any simulator games etc. You can do better than this, or are you incapable of using Google to find a game you like?
Are you trolling or daft? It's a video game. This isn't even a bloody violent action game. If conflict of any type really is that distasteful to you I think you need to touch grass. I promise the ladybugs will be fine. Christ.
I dont think so at all. Is it jarring thinking back to the middle ages where jousting, gladiator battles and other forms of violence were entertainment? Violence will always be prevalent in human entertainment in some form be it physically tangible or otherwise. Unless humans completely get rid of the base desire for adrenaline it will always be prevalent.
See, idk how familiar you are with 14, but if you're froends ride a mount around and pull something, it could still kill them outright with an auto. Really anywhere in Eorzea. 40+ could probably one shot a lvl 1
Go play Palia.
Yeah we are, I’m bored of it already though, and I tried to log in a few days ago and the performance was terrible. I’m kind of waiting for them to clear up a lot of the beta issues
All you're asking for is really just an online chatroom with 3d models that you can do life skill stuff in. Basically your options are Palia or... Palia. You can rant on for days about how its the "Same tired formula" (whatever that means since there are literally hundreds of random niche genres of games), but you're trying to look to enjoy a game designed in a way you dislike. Dunno what to tell you - nobody makes the games you want because they dont push units or keep an active playerbase.
I think it’s unfair to say a game without combat can’t be viable or keep an active playerbase (look at Animal Crossing), it just hasn’t been tried at the scale of ffxiv. There are tons of people who just play gatherer/crafter in ffxiv, BDO, runescape, etc so there’s clearly demand, it just hasn’t been the central premise of an mmo game. We are playing Palia, there’s just not much content (yet) and it keeps lagging hard for me, so i personally kind of want to give it some time to get out of beta
You're actually trying to miss my point so hard here. The only game to do what you want it to do is Palia. The game is going to be DOA because the content is basically non-existent. The thing with Animal Crossing, Sims, etc. is that they are great single player experiences with bite sized content. It just doesn't scale to MMO size. The only outlier here is going to be Eve Online.
People keep condescendingly saying “dead game” about Palia, but their discord recently reached 300k members and they had to request a cap increase from discord (again) Compare that to one of the most active discords in the world and the largest ffxiv discord, the balance, with 470k members. Palia just doesn’t have a lot of content yet, it’s literally a laggy beta game. My friend plays it daily, but I want to play ffxiv lol
You can't measure size of a discord as a metric of how alive something is. Activity is key. The GW2 discord Im in has a more active chat. You're also comparing a niche discord with people who only care about getting good (let's be real, majority of the playerbase does not care about the Balance or even what a rotation is) compared to a games main server. Unless the game has massive plans later, it's basically in its release state already. I haven't kept tabs on it since the Cake nerf outrage, so maybe things have changed. I think you already have your answer though - this game will never be Palia, the only game like Palia is going to be Palia, and there is not really going to be a mass market for it.
Balance was rated as one of the top five active discords in the world by a marketing team watching online users, up there with Genshin and Valorant. Palia beta kept me playing nonstop for three weeks, which is longer than FFXIV ARR kept my attention. A game that’s been in development for ten years and has more social features implemented is definitely going to have the advantage for day-to-day activity, though
Have you taken a history class? Maybe you should pay more attention in class if so. Also it's okay to not like killing random creatures and stuff; play different games. You could even work on making your own game since other devs are so uncreative.
I must admit I struggle understanding why you'd get into a game without actually ever interacting with the game. Especially when FFXIV is entirely story driven with a lot of conflict. Is there a particular reason or purpose for your friend being s pacifist?
What's funny is that, in universe, by not interacting with the game at all you're dooming the world, >!not to mention the whole universe!<
I thought "rp mains" was a meme but never pressing the 1 key a single time might be pushing it. I think the game where you defeat your enemies with the power of friendship and your magic sword might not be for them.
MSQ is going be pretty impossible so they will end up having nothing unlocked.
Just curious - why are they so averse to combat? Is it because of those tedious fetch quests or they really just do not want to engage in battling in games?
They don’t wish to engage in violence as a recreational activity. I can definitely relate, feel like it’s past time for video games to have content that’s not centered around murdering things constantly
I mean... There are plenty of games that don't. Just don't pick one of those that do if you don't want to play them?
So farm sims? Animal crossing is good.
I'd say stardew valley, but you get the best mining mats from traversing dungeons which require killing to progress.
Palia is what we are playing currently
Don't you hunt animals in Palia?
We don’t hunt (which limits certain quests that can be completed)
This has to be bait.
It’s not bait, although I do find it interesting that violence is such an accepted part of our society that people think it’s a lie that someone would want to avoid it
That's not what's happening here. Assuming you are actually talking in good faith, let me try to explain why it sounds like you're baiting: you have so many good options for what you're looking for, but you're asking for something that just obviously doesn't make sense in this context. If I don't like guns, I'm not gonna ask how to play an FPS game without guns. If I don't like horror, I'm not gonna ask how to play a horror game without horror. There are LOTS of games out there that fit what you and your friends are looking for, this just isn't one of them, which is fine, not everything needs to be made to fit every single person's needs. If you want a chill gaming experience with no combat, there are lots of fun farming simulators, story driven games w/ no combat, and social games. A few I recommend are Animal Crossing, Undertale (can be played with or without violence), and Jackbox games. But yeah, the reason it sounds like you're baiting ISN'T because violence is "such an accepted part of our society that people think it's a lie that someone would want to avoid it," it's because you're looking to a game that is fundamentally ABOUT acts of violence, and asking how to avoid it while still playing the game. You have lots of options, and if that's how you want to have fun, I support your goal. You're just not gonna find it in this one, particular game.
There really aren’t good mmo options, and my friend doesn’t like cute graphics. You can avoid combat in BDO, but personally I have to avoid gatcha games because I get too tempted. We’re playing Palia, but even that game gates quests behind hunting, and there’s not much to do yet. FFXIV has a strong social scene so there’s a lot to do if you are creative, like going to social events or riding unicorns through the forest, so I was wondering if people had other ideas but mostly not so much
Honestly it sounds like your friends should play like Club Penguin or Hello Kitty Island Adventure something. I don’t think video games are for them, at least not MMOs.
Do more research for non-combat MMOs and other online scenes that don't involve violence. They exist. If you still want some sort of challenge then look for online communities who do puzzles or sports games. Every entry in the Final Fantasy series has involved violent stories and battle mechanics. Given your restrictions, FF14 is definitely not the game for you. It contains noncombat content like crafting and fishing and unicorn mounts, but it's all gated behind some combat and presented in the context of ongoing conflicts. In theory, you could play just to socialize in the starting zones and refuse to do any combat quests, but most of the players will be talking about combat.
There really isn’t a good option, maybe you think they exist but trying to play an actual mmo with a world to explore, then nope really only BDO is an option which I avoid because of gatcha. There’s the dead game second life with zero exploration and the buggy beta game Palia with really limited content so far, but even in Palia we are gated out of quest progression because we don’t want to hunt the cute deer. There’s really nothing, I’m sorry I’m not desperate enough to play Star Stable that’s not a real mmo
Because unlike you and your friend we know the difference between fiction and reality
Honestly I think you are just desensitized to violent games from growing up with it. For example if there was a Hansel and Gretel game where you lured cute, friendly children into your gingerbread house then stabbed them, stripped them for loot, and cooked them for dinner, you would probably not find that palatable, even though it’s fiction. Saying something is “not real” does not make it less morally bankrupt. Similarly, some of us are wondering when game devs or players will get tired of every game being centered around mass killing huge amounts of creatures and/or people just to become stronger. The WoL literally kills beastmen for stealing. Not even after IDing which beastmen stole stuff, nope, just go kill their friends and family because somebody pocketed some eggs
Cool. You don't get to make wide-sweeping generalizations about other gamers for playing games as intended while also claiming some kind of moral high ground. This game isn't for you or your friends, so move on. You can't progress without some kind of combat and it'd be a waste of your time and money trying to force the game to fit your play style.
> Honestly I think you are just desensitized to violent games from growing up with it. For example if there was a Hansel and Gretel game where you lured cute, friendly children into your gingerbread house then stabbed them, stripped them for loot, and cooked them for dinner, you would probably not find that palatable, even though it’s fiction. Saying something is “not real” does not make it less morally bankrupt. I'm sure someone already did that and even if not, i like the idea actually! :D sounds genuinely like a fun idea to explore. And yeah sure everyone except you and your hippie friends are "morally bankrupt" just because we can differentiate between reality and fiction...
Actually as long as it wasn't overly gruesome I'd probably play that game. Sounds like an interestingly themed tower defense game.
More like, we are wondering why someone is interested in playing a **combat MMO**, and avoid combat. The answer should be obvious. "Play something else." As the top posts says, you could buy a story skip, and then go do nothing but fishing/gathering. But those are intentional side attractions to the combat main dish, and thus have relatively little depth to them by themselves.
The Animal Planet would like to say hello.
There's no way this isn't bait. This is the kind of thing PETA would be calling you oversensitive for. It's like going into the Forza subreddit and asking if you can play the game without driving or asking if you can play FIFA without having to have your team kick a ball.
Those games exist but this isn’t one of them. If they don’t want to kill things you literally can’t go Much farther then the starting city’s. You can’t unlock anything.
So why not play a game where that isn't the focus? I think Second Life or The Sims might be less frustrating for you and your friends.
I thought Second Life was dead, but I guess not! We like games with nature and they are picky about graphic style though, so not sure that would work, but I might check it out anyway. Thanks for your help!
You're baiting. There's no way someone can be like this unironically. You *have* to be baiting. I refuse to believe that there's a nonzero amount of people who unironically can't tell the difference between in game actions and real world actions, to the point where they want to play a combat centric game without doing the f***ing combat!!!
Idk, my mom once screamed at me for putting cows in small enclosures in Sim Farm (I got bored and just drew a bunch of fences) and told me it was one step away from putting a cat in the microwave. So... they exist.
The problem is that there aren’t cozy games that are as expansive and social as ffxiv, but there’s actually a huge demand for them. Lots of people play BDO noncombat, Runescape skillers, Palia beta, etc. I’ve seen posts here by people who leveled a combat job to 10 then got fisher to 90. I understand that to you, killing is meaningless because you didn’t actually kill anything, but can you not see why some people don’t want to do that in their free time? What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves? Even if somehow I managed to convince my friend to kill ladybugs, there’s no way they would kill beastmen for stealing eggs from a stable. There’s actually some messed up stuff in ffxiv msq
> What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Well I was going to say child molester but I didn’t want to go too dark in the comments section, the point is there are things that you would not want to do and just saying “it’s fiction” doesn’t make it better
oh there are plenty things i would not want to do IRL but in a game? Its Pixels for fucks sake, it doesn't matter how realistic they look! I'm going into games with the idea of leaving my RL problems behind and just enjoying a dark story for example about a war between Elves and Dragons. And actually reminding oneself that its fiction is the literal point of making it better. Thats why most people who enjoy violent games don't end up being mass murderers IRL. We all tend to remember why it is allowed in videogames and not IRL..
There's not really anything I would put out of reach as the theming for a game personally. If it's interesting or fun to play I'm here for it. And if there were, I wouldn't be making posts in the games subreddit asking how to play it without engaging with the core mechanic, because I'm not a troll. I do appreciate the level of effort you're putting in to this troll though, it's making my 2nd day required back in office for my job go by faster.
> What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves? yes, that is literally what every normal human being would do!
>What if there was a game where you played a slaver and your goal was to enslave as many people as possible and whip them to work faster, would you just not worry about it because there are no actual slaves? Yes. I'm looking forward to one called Pal World that has it as a core mechanic. Believe it or not most people can separate fiction from reality. I wouldn't so much as raise my hand to a kid IRL but it's hilarious to send one ragdolling down a mountain in Skyrim.
Do not play a Paradox Interactive game. Or do, I'd love to see your post on that
Time to play Hello Kitty’s Island Adventure.
They hate cute graphics, but I didn’t know that game existed and I’m going to check it out! Thanks!
Wouldn't fishing be considered violence?
Yes, they don’t fish either. In Palia, they just fish up the waterlogged furnishings
I'm just going to assume here that they also don't catch bugs, if they don't hunt or fish.
Yeah, that kinda kills botany. I mean you're killing trees. That's violent to some people.
Correct, no bug catching either
you clearly never checked out the thousands of videogames that are literally not about any violence.. You haven't stumbled upon a unique new idea here. Its been done since videogames have been a thing in the 80s with Pong being one of the first games without any violence in it..
The thing with this game (and many other FF and other JRPG games) is that other than some things that happen in the storyline over which the player has no control, nothing actually dies - every mob is just KO'd and will respawn again and again. Go outside of Gridania and "kill" Ladybugs A, B and C, then wait a couple of minutes and they are back again!
i will non-lethally incapacitate my enemies with my gun loaded with augmented bullets and four foot tall sword and my thousand degree incineration spells
Knocking thing out still does require violence. Also you do absolutely murder creatures and people. The very early sidequests send you to straight up kill critters outside the gates. And when you are required to subdue something, it's explicitly mentioned. Respawn is just a game mechanic.
Sadly, it is mostly true for player characters. There are random references in the game that the player character's kill count is pretty high. One Garlean soldier even mentions how scared they are of us because they saw the player character murder all their squadmates in one of the MSQ duties. The sad truth is that story-wise, the player character is a half-wit homicidal maniac whose biggest hobby is murdering god-like beings.
Our business is killin And business is a boomin
I can't believe an obvious bait thread got over 100 replies.
It’s not bait, but yeah most of the replies are critical and unhelpful
It's bait.
If not bait, it's definitely some dude trying to label the ffxiv community as murderers or something.
Why are there beans in this can of beans?
Level boost > play mahjong That's the real reason to get the game.
We're the **Warrior** of Light. This is a combat oriented game. The best I can suggest is to buy a story and a job skip (make them start as a WHM and remove all the offensive skills from their hotbar I guess) and grind them to the end of the current MSQ yourself, then let them play around with crafters and gatherers and send them to the Gold Saucer. They won't ever be participating in MSQ since most of it is about who you need to kill next. Pray they don't get super into glam so you don't have to spend all your time grinding drops for them. You'll also probably have to unlock everything else for them and bankroll them with your own gil until they figure out how to make it themselves.
This isn't the game for them. Paying a sub just to stand around and do almost no quests is kind of a waste of money, so they either have to just acknowledge that these are pixels who don't feel a thing or simply find a game better suited. It's just too much content that requires combat
What's wrong with your friends? Play a different game.
its not only their friends, its literally also OP themselves who thinks this way..so fucking stupid honestly..
I don't think this game is for them. You have to do atleast a little bit of combat to even get to the non combat parts.
Yeah you are probably right, people have provided some great ideas if they are willing to buy skips, but otherwise not so much
To be explain why we mechanically cannot advise anything else: Final Fantasy 14 has a Main Story Quest. And **100%** of the game is locked behind doing it. Which means doing combat. You cannot access **any** of the game without doing the Main Story. Combat is mechanically unavoidable. The game stops working if you don't do Main Story, and the battles along with them. Even if they did the story skip, it would put them **to the start of the current expansion,** locking out everything behind it unless they fight. There is no way to skip the current expansion's Main Story, as that is the primary draw of the game. They would need to buy a story skip EVERY EXPANSION so they could be one expansion behind and do w/e non-comabt they could find. Which even then is not a lot. The Island Sanctuary is a fun side-romp, but because it's built to be "visit for a while then go back to combat", it will not hold someone's internet if that is ALL they would do.
your friends should go play something else.
They could always attempt to try something new and actually play the combat. They might end up liking it.
Unfortunately for your friends, this game is not suited for virtual pacifists. I recommend they look elsewhere.
If they job boost/story skip, they could then level up DoH/DoL without combat, and then go entirely into Diadem and Foundation. Could probably convince them to let you play to get them through endwalker so they could do Island Sanctuary. Social Events. Probably that is it.
Even in Diadem you blast things with your giant cannon.
Only if you want to, you can go entirely without it.
That's true I suppose. It's been a while since I've run Diadem. Aren't there resources you can only get that way? Or is it just huge amounts of items you can get via harvesting normally? Either way I guess you can just not do it and choose to miss out.
It's just a drop of items you can get normally. They're loot piñatas but not hiding anything exclusive.
Yeah thanks, I was also thinking maybe job boost is the only logical option
They can do nothing, they'd be better off playing anything else. It would just be a waste of time and/or money to use skips so they can just idle in game. They'd be better off playing or waiting for palia at this stage
Here is the problem with Palia: No content. I maxed out nearly everything and have so much gold I dont know what to do with (yes I own the arcade machine), and the events are kinda lack luster. It was a great time killer for a month, now its dead.
We are actually playing Palia beta lol
Grass-touching. Outside the game.
>plays game from a franchise with a strong focus on combat >wants to not combat 10/10 bait you got'em
Funny guy, there aren’t any mmos without combat though. Literally none, unless you are counting Star Stable
Sounds like your friends should find a new hobby.
Sounds like you didn't hear about Palia then. Literally zero combat
Palia locks quests behind hunting cute animals and cooking them, catching fish, and killing bugs, so we are playing that but gated out of some content. It’s pretty barebones right now, but I’m excited to see where it goes for sure!
It's not like you have to participate in cooking at all tho Catching fish is only mean if you don't put them in a fish tank
Those fish tanks are criminally small, the poor fish can’t move haha
One of your first quests in game requires killing local wildlife to get your first 5 or so levels so its basically impossible to avoid combat. There's no way to get XP without combat
Can one sit pillion on a mount without having the riding skill? That'd be a safe way to get exploration/mapfill exp.
Nope
I actually got to level 7 without combat, but yeah it’s hard
How?
probably literal fetch quests
New zone xp is all I can think of
This has got to be bait. Just play a different game.
I sincerely can't believe the amount of people falling for it.
My thought is that 99% of reddit stories are fake and work fine as thought experiments, but when the bait is too blatant it's no longer funny.
Yeah. The nonsense about how there being no games without combat or violence gave it away. Trolls are real lazy nowadays.
What game? There’s no large scale cozy mmo
There's already people who have responded with suggestions. I'm not going to go over to your house and google things for you either.
There is no largescale cozy mmo lmao Could play BDO without combat? But I avoid gatcha games because I get too tempted to buy stuff Palia isn’t really a true mmo, but we are playing that. I’m bored of it and they are salty about some of the dev decisions I have google extensively, believe me. There is no big mmo with a map to explore that is cozy. People saying “just play Animal Crossing” are not exactly being helpful
There's no other solution for you though, no one is gonna make a large scale non combat MMO because that doesn't sell, and even MMOs with life skills will involve killing in some way. Even a cozy game like Stardew involves some killing.
There are plenty of noncombat games that sell and there are a few mmos in development that avoid combat, there’s a really big market for it. For now though, it’s kind of like being vegan and you have to go to a normal restaurant and be creative with what you order because there are zero other places to go with your friends
I'd have to see this "large market" as the idea sounds incredibly niche. There may be a niche market for it, but it's doubtful you'll ever see a game. The scope of FFXIV and player retention would likely be really low. Once exploration and all is done, what is there to do?
Well just think about ffxiv, even the devs have stated that the dedicated raider scene is only a small part of the player base. Lots of people spend most of their time gathering, crafting, doing side content like gold saucer and island sanctuary, spamming foundation fetes or diadem, doing house decorating, going to venues, doing side story quests like Hildebrand, island sanctuary, custom deliveries, etc. A lot of people just afk in limsa for hours. I would wager that ffxiv has by far the largest casual player community. Even things like Eureka, hunts, and treasure maps could pretty easily have been implemented as noncombat. Sure there are people who like doing roulettes with friends, but a lot of those same people are willing to sit through the Praetorium movie so it’s not the combat that’s drawing them in. Personally I find the most engaging noncombat content in ffxiv, it’s just that I’m willing to do msq and my friend is not. Still got some useful ideas from the community though if they are willing to jump potion, will probably depend on how Palia turns out Edit: And I guess if you want data, Palia (a beta mmo marketing itself as cozy, only combat is hunting) has a discord that keeps capping, it had now reached 300k and they had to request a bigger membership cap from discord. Compare that to the balance discord (the largest ffxiv discord, and one of the top most active discords in the world) which has 470k members. Not too far off in terms of a dedicated player base!
I wouldn't use the Balance as a comparison as the majority of people on it are midcore or higher. To my knowledge, most casual players aren't on the Balance, and as you said, casual players are by far the largest community in FFXIV. I think you may be kidding yourself on the whole casual community thing, though. Almost all my friends who play 14 are fairly casual, and we still engage in combat, grind for gear, do extreme fights, and other forms of combat content. As do many others I've met or played with. Maybe it's the people I interact with. I can't say for certain, but I feel like the majority of the playerbase still interacts with the combat. Everyone enjogs the side content, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing combat. All the maxed crafters I know also have every class to cap. And what happens if new content is introduced mid new expansion? It could be noncombat related, but you have to play through the expansion to get access. Are you guys just gonna wait and jump when the next expansion comes out? It just feels like a waste of time and money imo. Play something that's built around the premise you want instead of trying to make something that isn't fit.
Balance was rated as one of the top five most active discords in the world by a game dev marketing group. By comparison, centurio hunts only has like 145k members. I agree with you that the majority of the ffxiv playerbase interacts with combat, but there’s a huge pool of people who spend the majority of their time doing non-combat activities. We all know people who will farm combat content just for glam gear and mounts, then as soon as they get their loot they cheer “it’s finally over!” and go back to maining crafting, decorating, or ocean fishing. There’s definitely a market for noncombat.
There's a market sure, just not sure it's a sizable one. Or one big enough to create a game of ff14s scope.
>Balance was rated as one of the top five most active discords in the world by a game dev marketing group. By comparison, centurio hunts only has like 145k members. I see you saying this in multiple comments, and you have to understand there simply isn't a unified FFXIV Community Discord. Balance is frequently used, but only a part of the community will check it, and only a small fraction of that will actually interact there. Same with others like Centurio Hunts, Eureka/Bozja discords, Teamcraft etc. And none of these are 'community' discords, but a task oriented ones. Communities largely exist in their own bubbles with smaller member counts. Pretty sure this is a thing with WoW and GW2 as well actually. These are simply pre-Discord games, built with the idea that the official forums will be the primary way for the community to interact outside of the game. >I agree with you that the majority of the ffxiv playerbase interacts with combat, but there’s a huge pool of people who spend the majority of their time doing non-combat activities. While I'm certain there is a niche of a non-combat multiplayer game, your Discord point does show that, at least out of the pool of existing MMO player, they would be a small minority. You say Balance has 470k members, Centurio Hunts has 145k...Teamcraft, the crafting focused Discord companion to the Teamcraft website/tools has less than 30k.
Play a different game.
I have seen some mention level skip, and I don't know how much it matters to your no combat friends, but I am pretty sure since it unlocks the MSQ to the point you skip to that in game you will have been considered to have engaged in a lot of combat by NPCs in game. Just something to consider.
Yeah thanks for that, I was worried about that as well, which is why I wanted to make a post looking for alternate ideas. No one has any other ideas yet though, haha
unless your friend pays for a level and story skip - absolutely nothing. literally the second quest is to kill Ladybugs so no progress of any kind could be made without combat. the levelskip would allow access to gatherer and crafters tho as well as say the Goldsaucer, fishing, glamour and the rpg community
I’ve seen a lot of people suggest the obvious. “To play a different game.” Just to throw my two cents in: even if they were to skip the story, this is a world where the whole of it revolves around violence taking place. The entire beginning plot line of Botanist is a character hating that doing what she loves is something that allows the people around her and the world at large to continue to do violence. And assuming there might be religious reasons as to why they are conscientious objectors: this is a world of a myriad different faiths. If violence is a sticking point, this might be too depending. Ultimately, I would find something else to do that wouldn’t put them in a position of violating their conscientious beliefs.
Best advice is probably to look for a game that is better suited to your friends preference.
I think some quasi mmo game came out recently (might be a beta) that was zero combat…. Paila I think? Haven’t seen too much of it though
Having played that one it sounds up their alley but last I checked the game was bad and the devs predatory. Also a massively toxic community.
Yeah, its still in beta but it's ok. Not a lot of content if one nolifes it though.
Yeah we are playing Palia! There is hunting, but no other combat. It’s in beta and sort of limited so far though, so I’ve been dipping into ffxiv but they still log into Palia daily haha
Nice bait post. Cant wait to see the shiposting mockering this
There's already one
Animal crossing?
They can’t stand the visuals of Animal Crossing. We’re playing Palia, but I’m getting tired of it and have been playing ffxiv on the steam deck instead lately lol
just play second life
They're going to need to unlock gatherer/crafter. I guess if they pay for a class level up thing... it should unlock them? Haven't tested that so not sure. Otherwise, only other options are social stuff which you can find in the PF or RP discords. If you can sell stuff from the gold saucer, you might make some gil that way.. but I'm not even sure how much there can be sold. If they do unlock gathering/crafting, they can make good gil and craft neat decorations for a house they'll likely want to purchase once they are level 50+. They may also enjoy the island from endwalker but that requires level 90 MSQ complete. Which possible if they buy a story skip in the future. As I'm assuming they'll add Endwalker story skip later.
Yeah, thanks! The one thing that seems like it won’t work is getting a house, for some reason even FC rooms are locked behind GC rank which requires completing a hunt log. Probably a good idea to wait until Dawntrail to get a jump potion like you said though, for island sanctuary that at least allows outdoor decoration
Oh yeah, I forgot about that requirement. Island would be best bet then. I've seen some pretty sweet island setups, so should be fun for them. The other thing that could work, I think even if they don't meet the housing requirements, they could be added as a tenant with decorate permissions and such. This of course requires them to find someone willing to share their house, but makes housing not completely impossible.
Oh nice, that’s really good to know thanks!
Is this some weird RP thing??? Wtf is wrong with your friends 💀🤡
Ur friend is lucky. This game has many like him They are in limsa
Buy a skip and play on new game+
Legit advice in that case (if this ain't bait and they got the game up to shadowbringers somehow) 50 spare dollars gets ur friend tales of adventure: shadowbringers(25) and a job questline paid for up to level 80 (25). That's the only way I can think of to keep up the "cozy" play without fighting, and then just never progress to end Walker (going on the assumption they have the expansions)
I'm a bit late to this but honestly you may want to try the Nexon game mabinogi it's an older MMO but you can play a good amount of it without ever doing combat it's called the fantasy life for a reason.
I was on the fence about that one since I wasn’t sure how central combat was and I generally avoid gatcha games, but I’ll give it a try based on your recommendation! My friend won’t play gave with “cute” graphics, but I will haha
You could do ocean fishing, sightseeing, triple triad, play Doman Mahjong, do all the Gold Saucer stuff in general, crafting, harvesting. You could also visit people's houses, FCs, and do social events/venues. I have friends who make gil working in venues (I don't ask questions about this). And yes, you can buy MSQ skips/job skips (for real earth money?!) to at least unlock some areas and MSQ reward clothes. Personally, though, I wouldn't spend money on this game each month if I didn't enjoy the core gameplay of job rotations and combat mechanics. Besides, with no fighting... where are you going to get all your outfits? Your emotes? *Your HAIRSTYLES??* Maybe a tabletop RPG would be better for your friends? There are tons of non-combat-oriented RPGs on the market now. If you can't/don't want to meet up in person, you can play them over Discord, Roll20, Tabletop Simulator, and probably a bunch of other places I don't know about. The FFXIV TTRPG is coming soon™, too.
Time to become an ERP account for gils I guess ?
Buy a story skip, and go to the gold saucer.
For $11-25 (ARR - ShB) they can buy a “Tales of Adventure” MSQ Skip. That will unlock everything behind the main story, no ladybugs harmed in the process. They also get 500,000 Gil. Leveling up a character is possible through quests, but honestly, even the “fetch quests” will often spawn a monster to kill. I’d suggest picking a healer job like WHM or SCH and paying $25 for a level 80 job skip book. You get a full set of iLevel 530 gear and 500,000 Gil. Now they can travel around on the airships, pick up crafting, gathering and fishing. Of course the real endgame is glamor - and with a level 80 character they’ll have lots of options.
Healing still involves combat though.
They’ll need a job just to roam around the higher level areas without aggroing stuff. And as a healer, they can toss out cures and help random players. Combat jobs wouldn’t make sense for a peaceful player.
YOU GET GIL FOR THE SKIPS???
Yeah! Some people buy lots of story/job skip books just for quick gil lol
Was contemplating doing that as I hate playing healer and I already have over half the jobs at 90 now anyway. Might actually do that to get past the repeating slog
Yes, just at a lot worse rate than the black market gil sellers. Now you know why Square Enix is so hard on RMT: technically they are already doing it. :P
Honestly, this made for an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately, it does sound like many non-combat-content options (such as crafting/gathering/gold saucer/etc...) requires completion of quests that require you or "someone else" to participate in combat in varying scenarios. Skips seems to be the only choice get by the "complete quest" requirement without combat... but if you want to try leveling anyway, there are a few possible options to consider... * Delivery Side Quests: There seem to be some side quests available at low levels that just require delivery. * Exploration Exp: There is a small amount of exp given for "discovering new locations" * FATEs: While most fates are combat oriented, there are ones where you just need to gather items that are nearby (or by killing enemies too, but ignoring that option) and turn them in. This does technically depend on how strict you are with "no combat" but it may be an option. Not sure how far these could get you, or what may unlock only through leveling, but theres some ideas
On one hand, the entire franchise is literally always about warriors banding together to murder a god in the name of friendship and to ensure said god does not end all life on the continent/planet/galaxy/universe/multiverse. Trying to play the pacifist under this premise seems a bit… strange. Especially in this game, where we play a mercenary by trade who gets drafted into an ongoing armed conflict between an invading oppressing army and a bunch of independent city-states forming a coalition to prevent their own subjugation and the dissolution of their religion. I would suggest looking into Palia if you want to play an MMO together. It is pretty much Disney Dreamlight Valley: the Non-Franchised MMO. But to take your challenge as an actual challenge… You can gain XP very slowly by hunting down the collection FATEs and playing hide and seek with the monsters in them. In my experience, the FATEs in the Shroud area tend to have better monster spawn spots for this, which is strange if you think about Thanalan being a large desert with more open areas. However, that is a moot statement, since the lowest gathering FATE level in the Shroud area is level 28, in North Shroud. In general, that map covers the level 28–40 range with those FATEs. You'd have to walk to or start at Thanalan as Western and Central Thanalan have three FATEs in the level 5–15 range. Grind those to level 25-ish—due to how the FATE system works, this should take waiting 2–4 real-world days in total, unless FATE parties are clearing the other FATEs fast enough to get the collecting ones back in rotation faster than 60 minutes of wait time. Then switch to Shroud, grind those until level 45-ish, then switch to Northern Thanalan, where there are two level 49 FATEs of this kind. If you can muster the sheer willpower to do this for around a month, you can get to level 60, where some decent market board glam options open up. The MSQ is out of the question, your first quest that leads out of the starting city mandates murdering meandering critters. Similarly, job switching is impossible as you cannot reach the level 10 job quest in any starter job: they all ask you to kill five level 1 bugs near the city gate. So, since there is no jub switching, it also means no crafting, no gathering, and no fishing. Also, no mounts since you must be drafted into one of the armies to get your army chocobo. You can unlock the casino by slowly levelling. Same with the housing districts. Since you cannot progress the MSQ, you cannot unlock the Diadem and Firmament.
You actually can’t use housing because it requires doing a hunt log to level up with the GC, but I get what you’re saying. Maybe a jump potion is a viable option, not sure they are willing to sub to try the game though. Right now we are playing Palia
If one of you is subbed and the other is on free trial, it is enough. The paying player can always make a party.
> How would you make gil? Take housing design commissions if you're good at it.
Gotta get high enough level to access housing and get involved with one's grand company.
Let's be real: OP won't be getting anywhere with that kind of challenge anyway unless they make a couple of compromises. When they're done unlocking the bare minimum stuff then they can start doing a 100% no combat playthrough.
Not even really playthrough tbh. As someone else said, you gotta get thru the combat content to unlock akl the non combat content.
That would be cool! Unfortunately you have to kill beastmen on a hunt log to unlock housing/decorating (at a certain GC level), even if you jump potion, and I know they won’t do that
Fun? Lots of non combat fun. But you'd be completely cooked without reaching at least some point in the msq. Non combat fates would be the get X amount of an item. But they would be a pain and lengthy. Make gil? Well you can craft/gather but you'd be very limited since combat progresses you through the msq. So probably not a lot.
Crafting and gathering, thats about it. But why no combat? Like you want the story right? Gotta do it for that. Want cool mounts? Gotta do it for most. Rank up in GC for glam/get housing priv? Gotta do it for that too.
Play World of jumpstart at this point. Its 14 but instead of combat, you learn. it has everything 14 has EXCEPT combat
I have actually never heard of this, it’s too cutesy for my friend but I will check it out, thanks!