What did FF14 have right, at launch?

I think there are alot of things. Im just going to say one though.

The idea of SP, and how it was accumulated by using abilities.

Yes I know there was issues with it. But instead of dealing with those issues they removed it altogether and tacked on a generic XP system. Unfortunate in my eyes. An innovative, or at least uncommon, feature removed instead of ironed out.

EDIT:
I don't give a rats behind how messed up something was at launch. Im asking what concepts or features they had that you were a fan of, regardless of the issues that plagued them.

In my opinion it was bugs and lack of effort and quality that ruined FF14 at launch, not the ideas and features in the game. Its just that almost everything was laggy and half baked. Instead of fixing these interesting features, most were just axed and common MMO features were slapped on.

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Originally Posted by Tricksy

I think there are alot of things. Im just going to say one though.

The idea of SP, and how it was accumulated by using abilities.

Yes I know there was issues with it. But instead of dealing with those issues they removed it altogether and tacked on a generic XP system. Unfortunate in my eyes. An innovative, or at least uncommon, feature removed instead of ironed out.

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Not innovative, many games/MMOs had this system beforehand. FFXIV had little right, at launch.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...11131-Be-brave

thing they had right was they didnt shut it down.

The sp system was supposed to be good but they implemented it in a very bad way. Which is still one of the big problem in ff14 that the game is ruled by random number generator.

When at launch, imagine 2 same lv pug beating the same crab together, one get absolutely zero sp but the other guy getting 1k... And this pattern continues....

They could make it better by change sp system that every action you do, you get some sp, the more dmg, more healing, more combo give you bonus sp.

This eventually kill PL and everyone in pt will work hard together for lv up instead of some retard join pt and afk.

But SE is too lazy to think and went with the legacy way

The class system.

Being able to switch on the fly.

Graphi- no... the infamouse miqote ears and helms glitch...

They title art is pretty.

The unique mob behaviors and traits. A complaint about a single mishap and they nix the entire thing. Really hope they bring it back

Autotarget switch after death, for the 2 days we had it :(

that first patch with the 5 NMs that dropped items you could craft.
IMO, that would have been ideal if the drops were actually meaningful. Instead we got gear that was useless.

The peiste that would never return and would just sit outside Ul'dah front gate owning everyone.

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Originally Posted by Jocko

The unique mob behaviors and traits. A complaint about a single mishap and they nix the entire thing. Really hope they bring it back

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What's sad is that the system to fix the problem without cutting out unique mob behavior already seems to be in place. Just today I constantly AoE'd level 52 mobs without pulling them (doing level 43 leves and at level 40 if those are factors).

Heck, the party leader could just have a Link Difficulty slider that determines whether anything more will be pulled. Gimicky, sure, but cutting out something that makes the game unique for such a fixable reason feels... wrong.
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I didn't start at release, but had been playing a while before Tanaka's replacement. The things that seemed "right" off the bat were the armory system and cross-class usage, even if it could have been better. I enjoyed the ability to stack linear cannons (Puncture, Skewer, Doomspike) on Archer, or even fire an air-fist Haymaker after a ranged dodge.

It didn't feel hugely class-specific, but to me the style of each classes's abilities felt more like the class than the reform's abilities for a long time. Skewer and Doomlance available within 12 levels felt far more Lancerish than True Thrust and Heavy Thrust. With Moonrise and Trammel also in Lancer's debilitation aspect, it truly felt like a Lancer.

That Thaum's already established lore was bypassed almost entirely in order to separate it from Thaum by a basically arbitrary method, or the reduction of original classes early levels into identical abilities with different names. Why dark-side element wheel over Light/Dark/Blood, even though it was already fitting to the Thaumaturge guild and its quest connections? If it was done just for raiding, couldn't a less intrusive fix have been made? And why must DoW classes only differ in only a little over half their abilities?

[This class gets a dodge-stun, this one a parry-AoE, this one a miss-rehit. This one gets Power Surge, this one Berserk, this one Fists of Fire, to the same ends but different enough. Yet True Thrust and Heavy Swing, and Fast Blade and Pummel are literally identical, and the majority of later combo actions follow the same problem.]

FF14 didn't do much right that wasn't already done right in a previous game. Even if attaching four wheels to a car is technically "doing it right", I wouldn't bring it up as an argument for a car model doing something right.

If I were to try to come up with something... Uh, job switching anywhere, I guess. Probably haven't had that in an MMO before.

I always fancied the Stamina System

The music was done brilliantly. That's probably what I have the biggest soft spot for.

So was the lore foundation, although it did need more exposition, which we have been now getting.

I agree that the Thaumaturge/Conjurer lore has been butchered somewhat by giving black and white mage to the wrong base classes, even if there were combat mechanic-reasons to break up the elements.

Being able to craft event-specific items using materials was cool. It meant things weren't all L1 and almost purely aesthetic.


What else hasn't changed that is good... let's see...

Definitely the armoury system - all classes/jobs playable on one character.

The concept behind guildleves being collected from the city counter, commenced at a camp and completion returns you to the camp. They've done some fiddling with exp, evaluations and leve capacity, but the core fundamentals are still in place. It also isn't as central to the game in concept as was originally envisioned, but that doesn't stop them functioning as originally designed.

At first I disagreed with the OP, but then later in the thread I read about taking the RNG aspect out of it. I would've liked that.

I always envisioned XIV's leveling tiers to be that of XI's only the progression emphasis was reversed.

In XI, you leveled a job which had specific "sub skills" that were higher or lower based on the job you were playing. Each job had a specific cap at each level, and the higher the cap on the skills coincided with the skills that job utilized most commonly. You could still level up these skills on other jobs. This created a two tiered leveling system and provided incentives for playing in a particular manner on a particular class, creating job identity.

In essence, you had a "main" level supplemented by a "sub skill" level.

In vanilla XIV the "sub skill" level was emphasized and made more apparent allowing for more individual identity as opposed to creating job identity. Instead of leveling a job or class you were leveling a specific weapon. Basically XI's "skill up parties" became the main leveling system in XIV. Unfortunately the main level was neutralized so much that it became essentially purposeless.

In my opinion, they should have made the "Physical level" the harder to level up and the "Rank Level" the easier. They should have had main story quest availability based on physical level and class/job quest story based on "Rank Level" rather than everything being based off of Rank level.

Attaining physical level 50 was not seen as an accomplishment, while reaching Rank 50 met much more applause and you were given more in game incentives to level rank than you were physical level in the form of storyline progression and battle effectiveness.

The two leveling systems could've been done very well but they weren't fine tuned and imo their emphasis was swapped.

I loved putting my class together to fit the changing contexts of my situation. If someone had to go that was filling a certain role in the party, I could adjust my action bar accordingly, if I had previously earned those skills prior, while still being able to level my weapon class gaining access to yet more abilities and accomplishing what I had originally set out to do. Now if someone leaves in a party it turns into a "we have to replace X now. Time to /sh in Ul'dah or scour your linkshells and friends lists for a replacment".

As of recently I've been spending way too much time standing around putting parties together and not playing the game. In vanilla XIV the party could adjust on the fly without having to stop leveling their class. Hopefully some of this time will be offset when they include the content finder system in 2.0. and/or people actually start using the search function.

I also miss the stamina system. It felt like playing Secret of Mana all over again. In alpha they had a charge system similar to Secret of Mana as well. In Secret of Mana if you waited longer you would get a more accurate and powerful attack. I think in XIV beta, if you waited a short time you got a more accurate attack while if you waited a long time you got a more powerful attack. Unfortunately, the battle system was so lagged and the pacing of battles was so slow that it was not enjoyable. If they removed the lag and sped up the gauge I could see that system being very fun. That's just me though.

Don't get me wrong. While I enjoyed the flexibility of vanilla XIV, I very much enjoy actual combat in the current version. I'm loving the combo system. Still miss Battle Regimens. I love actually playing battles rather than endlessly "preparing" for them.

I don't much care for mage jobs though. Mage class > mage job mechanics doesn't match up with the story (The elemental class not having access to elemental spells), and the mechanics of spells seems flawed (i.e. Fire being AoE only across all "tiers", Thunder being single target only). I wish they would've left classes untouched and greatly increased the effectiveness of particular skills when you equipped a job stone (much like it was in XI), or blocked access to certain abilities when a job stone was equipped while giving access to job specific abilities (like they have now). That way you wouldn't have to worry about the bastardization that occurred with the mage classes. As of now they don't fit either XIV's mold or the traditional FF franchise mold.

But ya, if they removed the RNG from skill acquisition that would've been fine to me. It made you play in an anti-intuitive manner like in Final Fantasy II. You'd purposefully keep monsters alive so you could get more experience, kind of defeating the reason to be fighting a monster in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Tricksy

I think there are alot of things. Im just going to say one though.

The idea of SP, and how it was accumulated by using abilities.

Yes I know there was issues with it. But instead of dealing with those issues they removed it altogether and tacked on a generic XP system. Unfortunate in my eyes. An innovative, or at least uncommon, feature removed instead of ironed out.

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Few people outside of Japan.

Well for one thing, the company had more self respect and took artistic ownership of their vision instead of outsourcing all their (bad) ideas from World of Warcraft.

Originally, S.E. seemed to have created FFXIV in the image of Vanguard (it was more open world with an emphasis on community and crafting and they had shipbuilding planned), whereas that design principle will no longer be visible in FFXIV 2.0 because it's just a WoW clone). Don't deny it. I know that's a cliche thing to say, but it's true anyway, so why pretend differently.

In 2 years time since release, SE have made some improvements (which you'd expect 2 years after the release of any game), and even when Tanaka was still the director we already had ward search, so change was happening anyway.

Change is often for the best. But can be bad too if you remove something good. I think a lot of good things from release will vanish with 2.0, such as relevance of open world contents, i.e., the first wave of NMs which involved crafters, and being able to see people running about doing things. The world will devolve into instanced content and a world with no situational relevance (crafting guilds are no longer even remotely important now).

There was a greater emphasis on freedom too in the early game; gear choice, ability choice. Now it's very restrictive. And even in 2.0 they will shrink zones, instance all dungeons, and add kiddy rails to areas where they don't want you to jump.

The music and *landscape* graphics were quite good already.

Elezen females.

/thread

The leve system. They just never added any new leves :(

Battle Regimen's!

Intense & almost too realistic crafting system. (in terms of material & tool usage.)

Im just amazed there has been absolutely no word regaring craftable furnitures for our housing etc.
Re-decorating our Mooghouses in FFXI was very fun & unique to many other mmo's at the time.

The basic foundation for the upcoming 2.0 world. (shame about the crappy engine)

Dodos.... the only thing that couldnt go wrong. lol

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Originally Posted by Rhomagus

If they removed the lag and sped up the gauge I could see that system being very fun. That's just me though.

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Seeing as I agree with everything you've said here, there's at least one more than "just me". :P

I would have loved for an improved stamina bar, a solid mage class base seen through to the end, and the physical level slightly reformed, rather than giving up on or sheerly deforming them.

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Originally Posted by Funky

Intense & almost too realistic crafting system. (in terms of material & tool usage.)

Im just amazed there has been absolutely no word regaring craftable furnitures for our housing etc.
Re-decorating our Mooghouses in FFXI was very fun & unique to many other mmo's at the time.

The basic foundation for the upcoming 2.0 world. (shame about the crappy engine)

Dodos.... the only thing that couldnt go wrong. lol

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http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joy...-2-epl-705.jpg

I found that somehwere the last weeks after Japan Expo.. no clue if its new or something leaked, but i didnt see it before or cant remember it being currently ingame..?! Maybe it is and i never realized it. XD

FF14 opening cut scenes and CGI grade graphics are still the standard I measure all other games by. It's the first game I ever played where it was my avatar that was in a cut scene. If I had the time and inclination I am certain I could do an entire animated movie just using in game footage.

I also liked the physical level. I really wasn't enthusiastic about losing it.

The combat was true FF style and they actually did a remarkable job emulating almost turn based combat that FF became known for. Had the animations been a bit more elaborate and time consuming it would have went uncontested but the opening version of FF14 had just the right timing, just the right amount of lacking that the critics were able to rip it to shreds. I remember when the game was new many critics tried to malign the cut scene aspects but every game that has launched since FF14 have them and they still don't compare to the elegance that FF14 delivers.

It deserved better than it got.

I think they did NMs dropping craft items, not gear, right. I thought it was cool and unique but of course they went on to cater to everyone and made it so that they drop weapons and gear directly.

It's too bad because I really liked the sort of Monster Hunter style loot.

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Originally Posted by Nero

I found that somehwere the last weeks after Japan Expo.. no clue if its new or something leaked, but i didnt see it before or cant remember it being currently ingame..?! Maybe it is and i never realized it. XD

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He's always been in the game. Just like the leatherworker making handbags and stuff.

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Originally Posted by Nero

http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joy...-2-epl-705.jpg

I found that somehwere the last weeks after Japan Expo.. no clue if its new or something leaked, but i didnt see it before or cant remember it beeing currently ingame..?! Maybe it is and i never realized it. XD

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Looks like something from the carpenter's guild. (havent been in the backroom lately...lol)

Clearly there's alot of "Housing" furnitures in there, and im sure they were
gonna add the recipe's sooner or later for furnitures, but since we never
got a Mooghouse / Housing i guess there werent any point in adding them until "Housing" release.

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Originally Posted by Funky

Looks like something from the carpenter's guild. (havent been in the backroom lately...lol)

Clearly there's alot of "Housing" furnitures in there, and im sure they were
gonna add the recipe's sooner or later for furnitures, but since we never
got a Mooghouse / Housing i guess there werent any point in adding them until "Housing" release.

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Yeah figured it would be something i dont see, cause its somewhere in the "back". XD

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Originally Posted by Nero

Yeah figured it would be something i dont see, cause its somewhere in the "back". XD

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There's actually a lot of interesting NPCs that I didn't notice until recently. The cooking guild has some funny ones and I only visited the miner's guild for the first time a couple of months ago, it's a really interesting spot to say the least.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

FF14 opening cut scenes and CGI grade graphics are still the standard I measure all other games by. It's the first game I ever played where it was my avatar that was in a cut scene. If I had the time and inclination I am certain I could do an entire animated movie just using in game footage.

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FF14 has good character models/textures and animations, but the game's graphics as a whole aren't really cutting edge.

First, there's the poort LOD blending going from background to foreground that looks terrible no matter how high you set your settings, and then there's a distinct lack of dynamic shadows. Additionally, the graphics engine is really inefficient. To be quite honest, the original Crysis has better (or at least just as good) graphics than FF14, and doesn't need as powerful a computer to deliver them. That game is also like 4 years old, and the only thing FF14 does better is character models. Better character models are however a sign of 3D modellers doing a good job, not engine programmers.

-edit-
Oh, right. I guess that is something that they did right. FF14 did have very good character models, I'll give them that. Now you can't accuse me of being a complete negative nancy.

Things they got right at launch:

1) All job playable on 1 character
2) Game not being a solo quest grind from start to cap
3) Incapacitation
4) The fact monsters interacted with you in the field outside battle (still pissed this was removed)
5) Graphics

After some thinking, my list sadly boils down to just graphics. Everything else, for me, that could've been done right was, in one way or another, plagued by lag or questionable development choices, too much to consider it as "done right."

Miqo'te
/10

uematsu soundtrack for proper immersion.

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Originally Posted by Sophia

Miqo'te
/10

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http://file.walagata.com/w/nique/FFXIV/happ-gif.gif

The music is great, but it was not properly mixed.

The graphics are great, but the engine is terrible.

The world is huge and semi-seamless, but the terrain is copy-pasted.

For everything SE did right at launch, there was at least one thing they did wrong to cancel it out.

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

For everything SE did right at launch, there was at least one thing they did wrong to cancel it out.

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Some sort of "balancing". XD

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

The music is great, but it was not properly mixed.

The graphics are great, but the engine is terrible.

The world is huge and semi-seamless, but the terrain is copy-pasted.

For everything SE did right at launch, there was at least one thing they did wrong to cancel it out.

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Pretty much this.

I do remember back in the Alpha days, before the Stamina Gauge, there was an actual traditional ATB battle gauge. At the time I thought it was pretty cool and had potential to make a really strategic MMO. However it seemed like Dev's at the time were going for a fast paced game and the ATB gauge wasn't delivering on that. Thus, the laggy Stamina Gauge was born.

I did like the on paper concept of the armory system. It was kind of a way to make your own unique class from the ones given to you. Make a sword wielding mage, or be a heavy armored mage, it was your choice. However, like I said the concept sounded good only on paper and became a colossal unbalanced mess that the developers had an extremely hard time balancing. The point allotment system even was a good idea, if stats actually showed for something.

I was on board with the Physical/SP level system, but it was horrifying leveling your SP. I fight a really tough monster and I smack it and smack it and smack it and I get no EXP from that long fight while someone else got 400+ SP for it. This was a complete deal breaker for me at the time and realized how awful this game was when I was being optimistic as humanly possible. There is no way to justify this system.

People can throw the "WoW' clone at the upcoming 2.0 if they want, but seriously, sometimes going too original can really bite you in the ass, and SE found this out the hard way. But I still believe FFXIV 2.0 will still be original, but fall of WoW's success, not copy/pasting them. Successes such as "Content Finder" and basic UI concepts.

I keep coming back to this. There is a console MMORPG out there that has a fantastic UI, fast-paced combat, beautifully designed world and lore, and perfectly blends traditional MMORPG elements with newer ideas.

The problem is, it is actually a single-player offline RPG called Xenoblade Chronicles.

I guess I was not clear in my OP.

I don't give a rats behind how messed up something was at launch. Im asking what concepts ar features they had that you were a fan of, regardless of the issues that plagued them.

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Originally Posted by Tricksy

I guess I was not clear in my OP.

I don't give a rats behind how messed up something was at launch. Im asking what concepts ar features they had that you were a fan of, regardless of the issues that plagued them.

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You expect a whole forum of negative people to not be negative?