Quote Originally Posted by Alhanelem View Post
That mystery game has a lot more depth than your description conveys, even though there is some accuracy to it.
Sure, there's a whole lot of still that a player can choose to do with it that isn't strictly necessary to the core game experience. I think that's what makes it work - it's as deep as you want it to be, because the top layer is ridiculously simple and the complexity is buried a little under the surface.

Which is kind of the opposite of how FFXI works. Here, you've got all kinds of choices up front, lots of stuff you could do... but experienced players know that there is in fact one specific right choice in almost any given situation, and anything beyond that is largely ignored.

I'd try and do some kind of compare-and-contrast analysis and bring it back to what might make a better remake experience, but I'm freakin' tired right now. I wanted to be settling in to sleep like three hours ago but the guild point item of the day is Sea Zombies and apparently the age of piracy has come to an abrupt end. This is something that could really use some work: respect for the players' time. Don't make us wait 15 minutes for a chance of being able to do an activity, over and over again; offer some kind of direct path to being able to take the necessary action. Don't lock a fish behind a four times an hour something percent chance to attempt to fish for it and then say "that, we need you to bring us that, you have 24 hours."