Originally Posted by
Alhanelem
I rarely talk to other people much within the game regardless. We talked a lot in FFXI because we had lots of time to- Combat was REALLY slow paced in the old days and especially in the early levels, and it was easy to type chats to each other when you didn't need to press many buttons and it took like 1-2 minutes to kill a snipper. FFXI still requires far less inputs in combat than most games. FFXIV on the other hand, you require constant attention to keep moving and performing frequent actions, so chatting is more difficult. In the end, it's a game we're playing not a chat room. That doesn't make it a "solo game," at least not any more than FFXI already is. But in all actuality, there's tons of chatting and roleplay, it just doesn't take place in combat. You and most people are searching for the community in the wrong place.
As far as "recycled content," FFXIV doesn't have a lot of that, certainly not any more than FFXI does- and yes, FFXI recycles a lot of content and has a lot of copypasta in its level design (Though this is partially due to the technical limitations of the PS2 era, you couldnt use too many models or textures because of memory limitations). As for being reminded of WoW, I'm not sure what the problem with that is? WoW was a very successful game when it came out and is still doing remarkably well. While I don't play it, I don't understand this hate. That game has come a long way and there is a lot to do.
FFXIV has plenty of rare stuff, and I don't see how the use of an item has any relevance if people still want it. As I told someone in another thread, if you don't care about customizing your character, that's fine, but lots of people do and looks matter more to them than stats.
In fact, the less functional stuff is in FFXIV, the harder it tends to be to obtain. The reason why things stay this way is most people like it. it's fun collecting different stuff and creating a unique appearance from it. There is so much gear in FFXIV that it's very easy to create something totally unique from everyone else.
And you may have forgotten but FFXI has had vanity items for a very long time, but they were never really used until lockstyle was introduced, because your stats were tied to your appearance, and you were forced to wear ugly gear if it had stats you needed.
I remember when the yinyang robe was popular for summoner and I never actually got it because I hated how it looked- it was low level monk armor and I thought that was stupid. So while you may not care much about appearances, lots of people do. I was so happy for the lockstyle feature to be added in FFXI because it finally meant I could make my character look good without losing stats. And this is why practically every game with gear has a "transmog" system so you can wear the gear you like without worrying about it making you weaker.