Item Levels

[FrankReynolds]

Wouldn't it be easier to just say "I don't care who made it, it looks cool..."?

You are unbelievably optimistic and I admire you for that. All that other stuff you said amounts to ignoring reality though.

The odds of FFXIV ever doing as good as FFXI are incredibly low. Even if FFXIV is awesome, it will probably never draw the number of subscribers required for it to continue to get the level of developer support that it is currently getting. As soon as the SE execs see that it is never going to have millions of subs, they will cut back the support budget and it will be FFXI all over again only this time it will happen much faster.

I'm not gonna lie. It looks great, but when I talk to my friends - and I have a large number of friends who work in the game industry as developers, tester, artists blah blah blah - none of them are even remotely interested. The same goes for well... pretty much everyone I know outside of the FFXI game / forums.

I will be amazed if it is even capable of maintaining the number of subs that FFXI has now. I would love to be wrong and I will probably try it out, but telling myself or anyone else that it has a bright future is really not a prudent idea.

The crappy thing is that they really could make it a success if they dumped a ton of money into advertising, but I suspect that we would be seeing the commercials during every sports game etc. by now if they had any plans to do that.

[Mirage]

Seriously SE. Making item level affect /check and exp is kind of idiotic and pointless.

No one relies on Adoulin monster kills to gain significant amounts of EXP. People who are 99 will know how strong their gear is when they attack other monsters anyway.

[Helel]

lol @ people thinking XIV is better than XI. XIV people will need something to return to once XIV fails again. They will get a hefty influx of players from XI I'm sure, but who else? Nobody other than XI players has any clue what's going on with the game, nor do they care. A ruined launch of an MMO = a dead MMO. If they were smart, they would have changed the name of the game completely so the average person isn't immediately averse to even trying it. FFXIV is ruined forever, which is unfortunate because it does look like a decent attempt at a MMO. I may even check it out myself, but I certainly don't expect it to live very long.

[Nebo]

Yeah, I don't get this whole "FFXI sucks and the dev's don't listen! Let's all go play FFXIV now!" attitude. As if it weren't the same people making the new game...

Aside from the fact that Square Enix pays their salaries, it is a completely different team making FFXIV.

And as a gamer, designer, producer, director I have a MASSIVE amount of respect for Yoshi-P. Just go watch one of his interviews, it doesn't take long to see that he really understands where SE had been failing in the MMO maret. Mistakes both with FFXI and FFXIV.

He has made a massive amount of effort to listen to and communicate with the playerbase and I think he has made a great game as a result.

If the FFXI dev team had even 1/10 of that communication philosphy, FFXI would be a much better game. Instead we get one way communication: Translations of decisions that have already been made-by devs that clearly have a lesser understanding of what the game needs.

It is BECAUSE they don't listen and ask for feedback enough that FFXI will fail. Not because it's not an amazing game that still holds a lot of potential.

[Mirage]

lol @ people thinking XIV is better than XI. XIV people will need something to return to once XIV fails again. They will get a hefty influx of players from XI I'm sure, but who else? Nobody other than XI players has any clue what's going on with the game, nor do they care. A ruined launch of an MMO = a dead MMO. If they were smart, they would have changed the name of the game completely so the average person isn't immediately averse to even trying it. FFXIV is ruined forever, which is unfortunate because it does look like a decent attempt at a MMO. I may even check it out myself, but I certainly don't expect it to live very long.

If there is anyone who has no idea what's going on about FF14, it is FF11 players.

[Randnum]

That's a bit of a blanket, Mirage.

As a game designer and tester also, I (and my team) have great HOPE for FFXIV, and great respect for Yoshi-P, but we're mostly concerned for that game's longevity. It looks really pretty and fixes many of the issues with this game, but it also somewhat lacks SOME of the charms of this game, therefore on a personal level, I don't want to play it yet (I just wanna look at it... so pretty ~mesmerized~).

I'd hope though that they just talk to each other, learn what to do for both games, because this one doesn't need that much, it just keeps getting more things it doesn't need (e.g. the main topic of this thread), as everyone says.

There's listening to your players too much, too. Now if only we could just take the average of the two games and their design philosophies and rock out.

[Mirage]

Yes I know. I was trying to be as blanket as Helel was, as a joke.

[kylani]

That's a bit of a blanket, Mirage.

As a game designer and tester also, I (and my team) have great HOPE for FFXIV, and great respect for Yoshi-P, but we're mostly concerned for that game's longevity. It looks really pretty and fixes many of the issues with this game, but it also somewhat lacks SOME of the charms of this game, therefore on a personal level, I don't want to play it yet (I just wanna look at it... so pretty ~mesmerized~).

I'd hope though that they just talk to each other, learn what to do for both games, because this one doesn't need that much, it just keeps getting more things it doesn't need (e.g. the main topic of this thread), as everyone says.

There's listening to your players too much, too. Now if only we could just take the average of the two games and their design philosophies and rock out.

I agree philosophically, but I feel like 14 is trying to hit the Wow type of market. I cannot blame any developer for trying to get that market, and I've been hoping SE would succeed, but bring the added depth in that I've always loved about 11. I've taken a break from FFXI before and enjoyed the wow-like games plenty of times (Wow, vanguard, lotro, rift, gw2, etc), but they were always games I enjoyed, even loved (I'm a lifer in lotro) for a time, but I always came back to FFXI because there is a depth/feeling/immersion about it that I haven't found anywhere else.

There is an incredible wealth of content in FFXI. So much, that it can be overwhelming. So I've often taken the break, then come back refreshed, excited to tackle tasks I want to accomplish. I've never minded not being the top tier in the game, so long as I could play the game at my own pace and enjoy it with others.

The delve update was so different than most. I feel like the devs just made this huge jump because they don't care about longevity anymore. Don't put thought into it, just add an expansion to keep FFXI going and get what they can out of FFXI until FFXIV goes live, and if they turn off players so they jump ship to FFXIV, so much the better.

Of course, this makes me really want to invest in FFXIV now... NOT! I have friends who left FFXI ages ago chomping at the bit to play FFXIV, and now I'm having a hard time mustering any enthusiasm for it. It may be different devs right now, but SE has been switching dev teams back and forth enough, that I don't consider anything solid with SE anymore.

Before I was planning to play both and see what happens. Hoping FFXIV would evolve like 11 into something that I'd enjoy for a long time. Now I just feel burnt out on MMOs period, particularly SE.

[Deifact]

The delve update was so different than most. I feel like the devs just made this huge jump because they don't care about longevity anymore. Don't put thought into it, just add an expansion to keep FFXI going and get what they can out of FFXI until FFXIV goes live, and if they turn off players so they jump ship to FFXIV, so much the better.

Slightly off topic, but I see a lot of people saying similar to the above. I doubt the devs are purposefully pushing people away from the game, considering if FFXI went under a lot of people would lose their jobs. Plus I'm sure square enix wants nothing more than for people to play ffxi AND ffxiv for double profits. Plus ffxi is still the safety net if ffxiv:arr flops again.

On topic, I agree with most here when they say this is a huge waste of dev time. Out of all the improvements and features the community has suggested, or SE has promised in the past, why implement item levels? While they're at it why don't they remake beastcoin icons, shorten behemoth tail lengths and give goobbue less teeth.

Talk about procrastination. It's like spending all night making a scale model of the Eiffel tower out of toothpicks and sugar cubes the night before college exams.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Plus I'm sure square enix wants nothing more than for people to play ffxi AND ffxiv for double profits.

They have a funny way of showing it. There is absolutely zero integration between XI and XIV, not even between the /friendlists. Playing two MMO's concurrently is already an unrealistic proposition (and a hard sell because of it), but if a player is, there is zero incentive for both of their games to be Final Fantasy.