What should i show my friend to interest them in ffxiv?

I had a friend that showed me this game a lot before I played it; honestly I had no idea what the hell was going on in videos/screenshots. Especially when there are a lot of characters doing a lot of things. But it meant a lot to them, because they had a context for what was good about it, and knew where to look. Having not played the game, I could scarcely pick out their character, even when they were centre screen. Of course I'm happy for my friend when they achieve something important to them, but with no value assigned to it on a personal level, it's difficult to empathize. If it requires context to appreciate, it's hard to be as invested.

I'm not even sure how interesting it can be to show the different jobs. This game has fantastic animation, but the animations are flashy and rather detached from the result; a lot of attacks are just attacks and your character is just standing there at the end of the day, not doing anything impressive. Not saying the combat isn't worth showing, but it won't be interesting for long.

I wish I had seen a lot of the cool stuff I'd encountered when I played the game, like Odin (along with an explanation of its nuances), the Gold Saucer, and some of the neat emotes and emote nuances-- when I played the game, I thought it was really neat that my character would crouch down in order to hug a shorter character. A tour of interesting locations can be nice. The suggestion of showing a FATE or two is sound: make sure you explain that this is a special limited-time world event that can happen anywhere at any level.

Also, a lot of it can be things that have individual appeal. I like cute things, so I was delighted to see the silliness of lalafells and love them to bits. Also, I'm an old school Final Fantasy fan, so I appreciate all the characters and references. Just some examples; I got to see the stuff I like, not necessarily stuff of value to someone else.

/r/ffxiv Thread