Quote Originally Posted by Eyeballed View Post
Reducing the need for open-world one instance at a time. Spam-grinding out for that next gear just to get a little better. And for what? - to kill the next one in line just to get a little better. No adventure, no story, no need for anything but your epeen and glory.
Sounds alot like xp, killing 1 crab to get a little stronger to kill another crab and so on, nothing really getting done along the way except more of the poor crab people dying at the hands of adventurers. Just to inform you though, Abyssea has a story, even if not great, VW has a story as well, SoA is sure to have a story, SoA sounds like exploration will be a big part, VW forces you to goto nearly every area in the game at some point for at least 1 fight. Xp parties had little exploration, it was the same camps, you went there, you killed things, you left, you didn't walk around for 3 hours with your party moving from place to play killing things for xp, you sat in a corner, had someone pull a nearby mob to it, and kill it, and kept doing that for hours.

At lower levels you had to get gear, use that gear for some time, and discard it in most cases because it became outdated and worthless. In todays game, any gear that is worth while will basically always be, it will over time be out done, but its never some trash gear, unless it was always trash gear. You talk of exploration, adventure, story, yet I remember none of this that existed being taken away really. The story is still there, I for the life of me can not recall a story part that involved my character magically becoming a weakling by compare to his normal abilities because he stepped into a certain area to fight a minotaur. I think exploration is encouraged when there is something to find which you do not know where it is, which means there isn't much in this game or many MMOs in my opinion, story does encourage it a bit with all the running around missions have you do.

I honestly do not see what this game lost that xp is gone other than the xp grind died, and the gear grind came to be, the advantage of the gear grind is many of my jobs can use the same gear, xp however is tied to a job. In the old days I could level up my RDM, but my DRK was lv1, now my DRK is 99, and if I ever finish leveling my DRG, it has alot of good gear to grow into as soon as it hits those levels.