FFXIV - Fundamental Fails
I love FFXIV, I love FFXI, I love most of the FF games and many other games totally unrelated to FF. This is not a post to criticize for the sake of it, this is a post for me to have my say, as is my right, in what I believe are some fairly fundamental flaws in the game at the time of release and even now. Despite some fantastic progress. I think a lot of the pressing issues are being ignored in favour of other things.
The thing is, there are many ingredients which make an MMO popular, and FFXI had many of those ingredients but lacked a few important ones. FFXIV should have been made in a similar mode but with the few things wrong with FFXI (like no soloing) to make an even more enjoyable system, rather than completely starting over again. Very ambitious and baffling, really, what a huge gamble, one that hasn't paid off, thus far. People know the ingredients for a popular and enjoyable MMORPG, why try and ignore many of those things and trying to do it your own way? In hindsight now, many popular MMORPG things have been added. There are a great many things which should have been in this game from the very beginning, before Alpha phase, or at least planned to be implimented by release. The fact that still now many of these things are missing is a complete mystery to me. As is Joshi-san's surprise that people were willing to see a lot of change. If you are reading this, Yoshi-san, if you can imagine how much change you think is needed, and double it, perhaps twice. That's how much change people are willing to see in order for the game to become what it has the potential to.
A remote kick/promote/demote function for Linkshells are an absolute must. I cannot believe how anti-new players the current system is. Due to max number of 128 players, it means no one wants to give a newbie a pearl in case they quit and the shell is stuck with an inactive that they cannot get rid of. This should have been in place from the very start. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea, for whatever reason, not to have this feature in the first place, but its backfired. I'm about to recreate the Church of Mog shell for the 3rd time already... and its only a social shell.
Macros need to work instantly, not slowly. They also need at least 20 lines in which to programme changes, not 10. Ideally up to 50.
If you are crafting and you hit 100% but at the same time, hit 0 Durability, you should be able to retain a random number of goods instead of having 100% of the goods being exhausted. Give people at least some reward for coming close, a random calculation of between 0 and 8 of the ingredients would suffice.
Better/faster movement... how on earth did this game not start with chocobos? I'm hoping and praying that there'll be a quest in Ishgard because right now its really sucking. There's no excuse, this was a worldwide release in a time of popular MMO, not a 1 year trial in Japan before releasing to the rest of the world in a time when MMO were still a new idea. Slow movement caused many people to quit.
Need a change of backgrounds to the windows, like in FFXI, personally I want a greyish metallic background, some might want dark green, some may way seethrough.
All quests should have "Quest music" interesting/amusing tunes, as FFXI had, during quest cutscenes. They are all little tales in their own right. Be that for a side quest or a class quest. Say a selection of 20 tunes that can be used for different parts of quests depending emotion intended. Main story missions/scenarios should have different music, too, during cutscenes, much more grand music than quest music, again like in FFXI. Not saying for crafting leves or anything like that but quests, yes.
The ability to have an LS message so that when people change their LS they can see the current topic, perhaps details of an event, or a welcome for any new members. Also the <call> ability, if someone is reading a book with their headphones on, in the pt ready for the time of action, a simple noise alerting them is what is needed.
A simple /LSmode a, /LSmode b would be handy so that you could choose to view all the chatterings from all of your LSs, or only view the chatter from the LS you have equipped.
We need homes!!! I'm hoping we will get something when the LS Companies are released and an LS can have its own Headquarters building and people can have a room in there to get mail and decorate in their own personal way.
Last and by no means least, its something we've gone over and over but nothing has been even mentioned as far as I know, but a delivery system. So you can send items to your mules or other players and as FFXI had 8 slots, an improved version on FFXI should have around 32, 20 at the very least. Current "trading" be it with other players or your own retainers is so mind-numbingly slow that it alone makes me want to turn off the game sometimes.
I know there are much more important things at hand, to most people, but for me its the little things. At least with some of the above the game would have seemed more polished. I plan on sticking with this game as Yoshi-san seems to be heading in the right direction with the flawed battle mechanics/stats. Yet the above things would improve my enjoyment of the game perhaps 25% and that's without overhauling the entire battle system. I know all of this will have been said before, but this is yet another opinion on it adding more weight because I've not had time to read everything in these forums as I work fulltime.
P.S. sorry for the length ><;