Thoughts from a casual

[EinSoFZ]

FFXI was all about time sink ...even taking a mere ship meant 30mins+ wasted of your life

I'd agree, but only to a certain degree. I remember the first time I took an airship in FFXI and it did have some kind of weird magic to it. You worked hard to get the pass and as a new player it's definitely not a breeze. Finally you wait on it to show and you're able to board. FFXIV to me lacks this as everything is sort of handed to the player, the only difficulty is in traveling from one destination to the next repeatedly. There is no find "x" item in a foreboding dungeon like Eldieme Necropolis where you're scared, nervous and excited at the same time. It's all so obvious and pointed out for you in XIV.

All that to say, traveling and experiencing zones in XI was in itself fun despite potential death and mishaps making it a significant time sink.

I'd rather invest more time and have more "magic", than to spend less time and really be uninterested in what's going on. If that makes any sense.

[ChiefCurrahee]

XI was made in a time when leveling a character was part of the appeal of a MMORPG. It was also made in a time when people played MMOs to group up with other people.

Times have changed. the only reason to level up is to get to the "end game." The faster the better. The game better be solo friendly because god forbid if there is a delay in my progress. The game would be better if it were B2P or better yet F2P, I want my cake and eat it too.

I think it took me 9 months to almost a year to get my first job in XI to 75 (rdm) I dabbled in other jobs along the way. My 2nd job took about 6 months to level to 75 (drg). Here nearly 2 years into the game I have 2 max level jobs. I didn't have a 3rd max level job until abyssea came out 7 years later. Conversely in XIV i really started the level grind when patch 1.18 hit in late July 2011. I maxed all 7 jobs by Feb 20th 2012. 7 classes in ~6 months.

I remember more about my first year in XI than I remember anything I did in XIV. There were milestones in XI. subjob quest, chocobo license, airship pass to Kazham. Key spells learned. I remember farming for a week to get the money to buy Dispel off the AH, how excited I was to use it in a party. And how impressed the party was with me in crawlers nest when I was on top of dispeling cacoon (early XI days).

It might not be fair comparing it to XIV since it was a broken game. I remember patch days better then actual game moments in XIV. My most stand out day in XIV, when they announced ver 2.0.

I'm hoping 2.0 brings about that same sense of adventure and accomplishment that my early days in XI brought me. But that was a different time in MMO gaming. That was when MMO's weren't mainstream, when games were a smash success when they had a few 100k subs. XI hit a grandslam in early day MMO terms.

Now the mainstream gaming community thinks your MMO is dead in the water if you do anything less than 500k-1 mil subs. To appeal to the mainstream you have to make your game accessable. That means "solo friendly" Solo friendly = fast paced easy solo progression. Which creates a shallow 1-max ramp up. After that people expect an amazing end game to unfold.

XIV:ARR, I don't think will ever have more than 250-500k sustained subs. I hope that SE doesn't forego the journey leveling a character can bring to attract more players. I'd rather play an amazing rememberable game from 1-max than a forgetable path to never ending repeated content

aka. "End game."

[Andrien]

Another XI thread.. Not again.

[AmandaHuggenkiss]

[ChiefCurrahee]

No, this is a XIV thread that uses XI as a reference to point out a lack of spark, a certain something that XIV is missing that XI had.

So either learn to read and understand the context before posting, or just don't post if you have nothing constructive to add to the dicussion at hand. It's pretty simple, even for a simple mind.

[Blackpearlguy]

XI was made in a time when leveling a character was part of the appeal of a MMORPG. It was also made in a time when people played MMOs to group up with other people.

Times have changed. the only reason to level up is to get to the "end game." The faster the better. The game better be solo friendly because god forbid if there is a delay in my progress. The game would be better if it were B2P or better yet F2P, I want my cake and eat it too.

I think it took me 9 months to almost a year to get my first job in XI to 75 (rdm) I dabbled in other jobs along the way. My 2nd job took about 6 months to level to 75 (drg). Here nearly 2 years into the game I have 2 max level jobs. I didn't have a 3rd max level job until abyssea came out 7 years later. Conversely in XIV i really started the level grind when patch 1.18 hit in late July 2011. I maxed all 7 jobs by Feb 20th 2012. 7 classes in ~6 months.

I remember more about my first year in XI than I remember anything I did in XIV. There were milestones in XI. subjob quest, chocobo license, airship pass to Kazham. Key spells learned. I remember farming for a week to get the money to buy Dispel off the AH, how excited I was to use it in a party. And how impressed the party was with me in crawlers nest when I was on top of dispeling cacoon (early XI days).

It might not be fair comparing it to XIV since it was a broken game. I remember patch days better then actual game moments in XIV. My most stand out day in XIV, when they announced ver 2.0.

I'm hoping 2.0 brings about that same sense of adventure and accomplishment that my early days in XI brought me. But that was a different time in MMO gaming. That was when MMO's weren't mainstream, when games were a smash success when they had a few 100k subs. XI hit a grandslam in early day MMO terms.

Now the gaming mainstream gaming community thinks your MMO is dead in the water if you do anything less than 500k-1 mil subs. To appeal to the mainstream you have to make your game accessable. That means "solo friendly" Solo friendly = fast paced easy solo progression. Which creates a shallow 1-max ramp up. After that people expect an amazing end game to unfold.

XIV:ARR, I don't think will ever have more than 250-500k sustained subs. I hope that SE doesn't forego the journey leveling a character can bring to attract more players. I'd rather play an amazing rememberable game from 1-max than a forgetable path to never ending repeated content

aka. "End game."

Couple really good points here that i'll use to dispel the "old mmo" model being broken. You played a game for 2 years that was really difficult, although very fun because of all the accomplishments. Managed to get two of your favourite jobs (not every single job) to the top level where you could participate in various end game events that were repetitive, for around 7 years if i'm reading correct. So you spent 9 years playing a game that forced grouping- i'm just saying that this model sounds like a lot more fun from what you've described than the alternative "mainstream" model. All i'm saying is that to appeal to a massive demographic the new way clearly isn't working either, just ask all the F2P; SWtoR, GW2 etc.

However I do 100% agree with the milestone portion of what you were saying. The first year in FFXI was awesome, so many great memories. The question that should be asked is there a way to recapture some of that same magic while still moving forward?

[Solace]

Soloing pets and certain mobs was a great way to xp. I could solo or duo kill chains of pets, for massive XP.. If you knew how to solo it was just as good, or better than any party. Put an XP ring into the equation and you'd get XP so high, people didn't believe you when you told them.
But FFXIV isn't out yet. So let's see what they give us aye.

[Ksenia]

Casual vs power gamer is the balance factor that no MMO has figured out.

Anything casual friendly gets torn apart by power gamers, anything power gamer gets avoided like a plague by casuals.

In terms of grouping, it always breaks down to 2 of this, 2 of that and one of this and one of those and all of a sudden people are asking if they belong in that group. EVE had the alternative and we called those blobs, where simply piling as many people on to the screen as possible was the I-Win button. I'm not sure what the solution is.

[ChiefCurrahee]

The early days of XI were difficult due to the fact that to progress in any meaningful amounts you absolutely had to group. But the co-op play was fun. Each person had a role in a group. Your group was only strong as your weakest link. From puller to tank to DD and healer all had to be working in unison. Setting up the coordination to set off a skillchain and magic burst, made the leveling experience entertaining.

Even if it took a few hours to gain a level, the slower progression made all the difference getting to that next step in your path.

I've been playing GW2 since it launched. I have 3 max level jobs. my first took me about a month to level 1-80 my 2nd play through i did 1-80 in about 2 weeks. The leveling process was so trivial I wore lv 40 armor until I hit level 80. I figured why bother buying new gear, I'm going to be 80 in a matter of days. the upgrade isn't worth it until then.

This to me is poor design of, what I view as a very important part of the game; The journey.

in XI, you looked forward to gear upgrades, learning that new spell, aquiring that new skill. Unlocking the quest chain to search for your AF. The journey was the content of the game. That seems to be lost in todays MMO.

This is something that I dearly hope XIV:ARR finds.

[Exn]

Good stuff

You make some great points. ARR doesn't need 10M subs, so I wonder why SE would create this potentially "watered down" MMO when you already had a subscriber base big enuff to support a long run for this game without ripping its balls off? I guess 250K+ long term (2+years) subs isn't as good as 1M+ short term (2-6months) subs, but MMOs today have a habit of failing, and this game can't survive another disappointment.

SE's saving grace is going to be the ps3 version, as it can pretty much go uncontested as the new mainstream MMO for the console so I bet alot of ppl will pick it up. If your new to the MMO genre (which alot of PS3 users will be), I couldn't imagine they'd find anything majorly wrong or disappointing about it, so alot of them may begin to feel about ARR the way we felt about XI or other mmos. But for the rest of us who've been around the block a few times, it may not be able to live up to the expectation.