Thoughts from a casual

[Pnight]

I feel like ffxiv is missing something to keep players playing, casual and hardcore alike. I played ffxi for 6 years as a casual player( all per abysea, and that game made me want to come back and play every time I took a small break. I'm not sure this break from 14 is making me itch to come back, yes I'm going to play, and yes I like much of the game it just doesn't have that driving factor 11 had.

Things I liked in 11:

Difficulty: even as a casual the challenge of that game is what made it great. You strived to do your best in every xp party to maximize your time. V 1.0 was just to easy, every part of it was easy, leveling, individual mobs, dungeons, instances. what initially got me hooked on 11 was how smart you had to play just to get to cap. In v1.0 I slept thru cap on every combat job solo. I have died less in ffxiv than probably my first month in 11. I do like how easy the first few level were in 1.0 it helps new players get into the game without discouragement, but each level bracket should get gradually tougher. And by tougher all I mean is more challenginging to dispose of the mob in front of you. Party leveling should yield higher xp than solo leveling and it should take more to kill a mob, this "spam move while running oh shit I didn't even touch that mob" leveling is the most boring thing I've ever played in my life. Plus the speed at which you run thru mobs leaves absolutely no time for chat.

Solo play: I think many people have thought v 1.0 is more solo friendly than 11 but I feel that's completely backwards. Yes you can solo 1-50 and do most everything but instances on your own, but you could do alot of that in 11 also. I solo'd all the time in 11( being a fan of the least sought after jobs) I would find a spot which dropped items I needed for crafting and solo, slowly but solo it was. I think soloing should be easier but not as pitiful as it was in 1.0. But the best part of solo play in 11 was NM hunting, there was so many low level NM's to hunt which still dropped decent gear and it was hard.

I think writing this has discouraged me even more about xiv but I'll save my judgement for when the servers come back up

[Gramul]

I'm astonished you where actually able to solo in XI. How where you able to even find creatures that gave any experience past level 30? Was it that book quest feature I've heard about?

Also, be careful when mentioning XI and difficulty, not a lot of people agree.

[Alhanelem]

If you don't think the game was hard enough I don't think you played all of the content available.

Leveling is never hard in any MMO. Time consuming != hard. Leveling up your character is just the beginning of any MMO, this one especially.

Then you move from complaining that it's easy to level up solo then you complain that you can't do anything else solo. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

All I can tell you is you're best off reserving judgement because ARR is not the same game. But if you want leveling to be harder, you're in for a sore disappointment, as you will be with any MMO today. Honestly, based on your post, you don't really sound very casual to me.

[Zenaku]

FFXIV is for casual players so we no longer going to have what FFXI had it's a new gen and this gen like fast and quick.

The Diffculty of FFXI was time how much it took to do something simple you had to look up a wiki to find a person. Then you waste 10-30min finding a person in the corner back of the house that was not fun and half the work right there. Like ninja quest getting to norg you die and you have to start over find the right hole then go under the waterfall and enter the area if you die you have to start over and waste 1+hour just doing that.

With all that issue ffxi had i still want to come back and play it even when i quit for months at a time. So yes FFXI had that driving factor and FFXIV does not and i don't think it going to have it. I enjoy playing FFXIV but the only reason i play everyday is to make sure i get something done. In FFXI it was that driving factor that made me play and enjoy it, it make me sad to say but i don't see ffxiv giving us that driving factor we looking for.

I think part of that driving factor was the fact that it was hard just to find a NPC it took time to find people to find a party. The players themself was nice i remember a time i could /sh to help me with LB3 and i could get 5-20 /tell of people willing to help without payment that one of the factor that made me keep playing.

I hope i'm wrong and yoshi-p can add that factor somehow to ffxiv without making it so hard that people just end up quiting and only us enjoying it.

Sidenote FFXI lost that driving factor soon i join FFXIV i enjoy the battle system and job system more and the look of the game. I try playing ffxi again and i have to say i can't believe i even enjoy the game to start with but i always remember my time in ffxi COP best storyline so far let hope ffxiv can do better.

[Enma]

I feel like ffxiv is missing something to keep players playing, casual and hardcore alike. I played ffxi for 6 years as a casual player( all per abysea, and that game made me want to come back and play every time I took a small break. I'm not sure this break from 14 is making me itch to come back, yes I'm going to play, and yes I like much of the game it just doesn't have that driving factor 11 had.

Things I liked in 11:

Difficulty: even as a casual the challenge of that game is what made it great. You strived to do your best in every xp party to maximize your time. V 1.0 was just to easy, every part of it was easy, leveling, individual mobs, dungeons, instances. what initially got me hooked on 11 was how smart you had to play just to get to cap. In v1.0 I slept thru cap on every combat job solo. I have died less in ffxiv than probably my first month in 11. I do like how easy the first few level were in 1.0 it helps new players get into the game without discouragement, but each level bracket should get gradually tougher. And by tougher all I mean is more challenginging to dispose of the mob in front of you. Party leveling should yield higher xp than solo leveling and it should take more to kill a mob, this "spam move while running oh shit I didn't even touch that mob" leveling is the most boring thing I've ever played in my life. Plus the speed at which you run thru mobs leaves absolutely no time for chat.

Solo play: I think many people have thought v 1.0 is more solo friendly than 11 but I feel that's completely backwards. Yes you can solo 1-50 and do most everything but instances on your own, but you could do alot of that in 11 also. I solo'd all the time in 11( being a fan of the least sought after jobs) I would find a spot which dropped items I needed for crafting and solo, slowly but solo it was. I think soloing should be easier but not as pitiful as it was in 1.0. But the best part of solo play in 11 was NM hunting, there was so many low level NM's to hunt which still dropped decent gear and it was hard.

I think writing this has discouraged me even more about xiv but I'll save my judgement for when the servers come back up

It is true. Final Fantasy XIV misses something the XI has, the magic. First XIV failed for this reason, it was not able to catch players'feelings as XI did.

About difficulty, I think that Ifrit Extreme and Van Darnus Hard should be take as examples of what Yoshi and his team think an hard fight should be. I don't know if you experienced them but they are not so easy as you can think. So from this point of view, and from what you write, there is a huge difference between exping (old way, now in Abyssea you don't need any skill to level up) in Final Fantasy XI and in Final Fantasy XIV, but it is a problem of many modern MMO, where the exping phase has been destroyed, and the sense of satisfaction for earning a level has been removed. I think it's a loss, but not necessarily it will ruin a game, not hopelessly though.

On SOLO playing I can't say much, because if you play an MMORPG you should interact with other people, so if you don't like it, playing solo has not much sense. But I agree about NMs, it's something that Final Fantasy XIV definitely missed.

[Zenaku]

It is true. Final Fantasy XIV misses something the XI has, the magic. First XIV failed for this reason, it was not able to catch players'feelings as XI did.

About difficulty, I think that Ifrit Extreme and Van Darnus Hard should be take as examples of what Yoshi and his team think an hard fight should be. I don't know if you experienced them but they are not so easy as you can think. So from this point of view, and from what you write, there is a huge difference between exping (old way, now in Abyssea you don't need any skill to level up) in Final Fantasy XI and in Final Fantasy XIV, but it is a problem of many modern MMO, where the exping phase has been destroyed, and the sense of satisfaction for earning a level has been removed. I think it's a loss, but not necessarily it will ruin a game, not hopelessly though.

On SOLO playing I can't say much, because if you play an MMORPG you should interact with other people, so if you don't like it, playing solo has not much sense. But I agree about NMs, it's something that Final Fantasy XIV definitely missed.

Ifrit extreme and van darnus indeed was hard but ifrit was hard due to time trying to win the clock. Making sure every person does what they need to do in 13 nails if anyone fails to do that job someone else have to do x2 the job or it's all over. I hope that not going to be all battle base on trying to out do the time limit and win i always dislike time battles.

Van Darnus was hard also and i enjoy the hell out of that fight little more then i did ifrit extreme. Ifrit extreme was also hard due to the fact of lag seeing how in 2.0 that wont be a issue i wonder how they going to change the battle to make it harder. I feel that people was getting relic way to quick once you got all the 9 seals you can get one relic every 5days. I got 3 relics and two of them i got within 2week time it was very simple thing to do. Then again the relic we have is just the base of the upgrade version we getting later down the road so i guess we have to wait see how hard updating our relic really would be.

and ya we do need more hard NM not the simple one we have but i again that what the roaming Odin and primal going to be all about in 2.0 Odin does get harder and harder as people kill him and he drop even better loot so i see Odin getting to a point that only the best party can take him down to they raise the level cap and then more people can take him down to he get to the point that you once again need top level gear to take him down.

[Warlock]

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

[Zezlar]

He's right about the difficulty. It's simply not here, especially in terms of storyline. Divine Might, Alexander (when it came out), the pots, Promys, Airship, Shinryu (without brew), hell even basic Avatars sometimes had some difficulty to it.

There is nothing hard about FFXIV in regards to the story. They tossed Van Darnus 1.0 at us and the toughest thing about that was server congestion.

Now I understand story difficulty isn't everyone's cup of tea but I personally feel they should just add a damn difficulty slider on the instance fights. People who want to get abused can, and those who don't want to can slide by for the story. Perhaps at the end give out a reward based on the average difficulty slider rating for your instance fights.

Garuda, Extreme, and Van Darnus hard can be challenging, but all of them lack that magic that the promys had or gathering people to kill Promathia.

[Warlock]

He's right about the difficulty. It's simply not here, especially in terms of storyline. Divine Might, Alexander (when it came out), the pots, Promys, Airship, Shinryu (without brew), hell even basic Avatars sometimes had some difficulty to it.

There is nothing hard about FFXIV in regards to the story. They tossed Van Darnus 1.0 at us and the toughest thing about that was server congestion.

Now I understand story difficulty isn't everyone's cup of tea but I personally feel they should just add a damn difficulty slider on the instance fights. People who want to get abused can, and those who don't want to can slide by for the story. Perhaps at the end give out a reward based on the average difficulty slider rating for your instance fights.

Garuda, Extreme, and Van Darnus hard can be challenging, but all of them lack that magic that the promys had or gathering people to kill Promathia.

No...just no..you talk about wanting mission fights to be hard because you want a better challenge and then pull out the rewarding card? then you are not asking for it because you like the higher challenge.

[Zenaku]

No...just no..you talk about wanting mission fights to be hard because you want a better challenge and then pull out the rewarding card? then you are not asking for it because you like the higher challenge.

I hope you understand that just what there doing in FFXIV 2.0 yoshi-p said they be hard version and a simple version. You can get the same item just a little weak version of it and the other version you get some new item and better version of the weak items.

so it going to happen that what need to happen so both hard core and casual are happy sadly that how it going to be hardcore and casual gameplay is different and you can simple make one verson of a dungeon to make both happy.