Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

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That's true. I just think if they didn't rush the release, and actually spent much more time on the game before they even considered releasing it, we would have had a much more polished game than what we had. I did play FFXIV 1.0 when it first came out for a couple of months. My mentality was that it was all going to get better, and that I would play it for the sake of playing it. When it didn't, I kinda gave up and went back to FFXI. I can't comment on what the game was like just before it was shut down, but I kept hearing it was getting really good.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

As always, what gets me is that people demonize simplicity like it's this cardinal sin of game design. Then proceed to ruin some aspect of the game and piss off a number of people. Some choose to not look at why stuff is designed the way it is and instead cling to whatever (in this comunity's case) FFXI/FFXIV 1.0 nostalgia, forgetting those two games had a plethora of flaws that affected gameplay, progression and balance...well, either that or they simply don't care about balance.

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I don't want the game to be harder or force the players to have to sue spreadsheets to plan their characters, like people did in XI or Dark Souls, and I don't hate simplicity, what I want is not being spoonfed all the time and I want more depth for the game. For example, I love Portal, it's simple and easy to understand thanks to the clever developers that made 80% of the game a tutorial, or starcraft where you can get the main notions of the game just by the tech trees alone, but both games have a lot of depth that the players need to work to discover and enjoy.

Simple systems and mechanics (which ARR has or can easily have given the game we already got) that dictate depth, that's what I want to see in the game and what I loved most from 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

To each it's own, but I wonder if Tanaka had the extra time, money and manpower Yoshi had to develop ARR, how would he had completed 1.0

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FFXIV was under development for what, 5 years? Keep in mind the original game still had crystal tools, which means it would have run terribly as it did prior to 1.0's shut down. The servers would still be in Japan, which means we'd be dealing with latency on top of the piece of garbage crystal tools was.

We would still have no auto-attack (knowing that SWTOR pulled off a sans-auto-attack combat system tells me it would have worked if people had been a little more open-minded), and the class=>job dynamic would most likely have been similar to what The Secret World did with Decks. We'd still have the copy-paste maps (which means southern thanalan and the black shrowd would still be corridors). I doubt stats would have had much weight since by design it seemed that everyone could wear everything. The only plus to Tanaka's FFXIV is that we'd still have Coerthas as a scottish highlands type place instead of snowy mountains like we have in ARR.

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What is true is that Tanaka almost never listened to the player base, but on certain aspects that is not a bad thing, as the players never really know what they want.

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Your mileage will vary. You ask the mob and the mob doesn't know what it wants. Ask me what I want one-to-one and I can give you a clear answer. Hell, my sig has not one, but several clear answers. :O

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Originally Posted by Renik

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Got all titles from Savage Coils already ? good, go get em

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Originally Posted by Duelle

FFXIV was under development for what, 5 years? Keep in mind the original game still had crystal tools, which means it would have run terribly as it did prior to 1.0's shut down. The servers would still be in Japan, which means we'd be dealing with latency on top of the piece of garbage crystal tools was.

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I followed FFXIV dev since the start, and well it could have been 5 years in development so what? As I already stated there's nowhere that says how long any development should be, it probably needed closer to 7 years, and we'd have a fantastic game, or at least a polished game that did something different to the other myriad of MMOs in the market.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

We would still have no auto-attack (knowing that SWTOR pulled off a sans-auto-attack combat system tells me it would have worked if people had been a little more open-minded), and the class=>job dynamic would most likely have been similar to what The Secret World did with Decks. We'd still have the copy-paste maps (which means southern thanalan and the black shrowd would still be corridors). I doubt stats would have had much weight since by design it seemed that everyone could wear everything. The only plus to Tanaka's FFXIV is that we'd still have Coerthas as a scottish highlands type place instead of snowy mountains like we have in ARR.

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I was OK with most of the systems in 1.0, including the fatigue system, and if the old Armory were balanced it would beat the static jobs we have now at any time (people would have been happy by just getting the armors and looks of the classic FF jobs), and I'm sure 1.0 areas were originally designed to be much more varied and not so copy pasted, but the constraints of the publishing date probably forced the copy pasted environments, oh, and I LOVED the old shroud, I'd give anything to have it back (but I understand why the majority of people hated it with passion).

And we don't know anything about the endgame Tanaka had planned, so we really don't have a clue of what the game would have been if he had the time and resources to complete his vision.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Your mileage will vary. You ask the mob and the mob doesn't know what it wants. Ask me what I want one-to-one and I can give you a clear answer. Hell, my sig has not one, but several clear answers. :O

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Precisely why Directors have to take a stance, and I preferred Tanaka's rather than Yoshi's most of the time, but I guess the middle ground would be perfect.

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

I followed FFXIV dev since the start, and well it could have been 5 years in development so what? As I already stated there's nowhere that says how long any development should be, it probably needed closer to 7 years, and we'd have a fantastic game, or at least a polished game that did something different to the other myriad of MMOs in the market.

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Yoshida made a game that 2 millions plays in 2 years, while Tanaka didn't make it in 5 years and upper limit for his creation still would be around half a million.
Yes, oldschool FF11 lovers would like it and probably consider it an amazing game (like people loves EVE even though its really a relatively small niche mmo), but it still would be a niche game and a failure for SE, given how much resources they poured in in FF14.

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

but the constraints of the publishing date probably forced the copy pasted environments, oh, and I LOVED the old shroud, I'd give anything to have it back (but I understand why the majority of people hated it with passion).

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Constraint was obviously money. Zones were bloated and it was not really needed, you just can cut zones in half - and loose nothing but those "20 mins to run through zone" moments. And to create huge landscapes - you either copy-paste or require a lot of money as artists work ain't free.

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Originally Posted by Felessan

Yoshida made a game that 2 millions plays in 2 years, while Tanaka didn't make it in 5 years and upper limit for his creation still would be around half a million.
Yes, oldschool FF11 lovers would like it and probably consider it an amazing game (like people loves EVE even though its really a relatively small niche mmo), but it still would be a niche game and a failure for SE, given how much resources they poured in in FF14.

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Argumentum ad populum, I don't care about the success of the game, we are discussing here the quality. And I don't negate the fact that 1.0 was implemented terrible, because I experienced that myself by first hand, but given the previous games Tanaka made, I'm sure his complete vision for FFXIV would have been a blast and not only for FFXI loves, but for everyone. If you look back for his interviews and the info we got before release, he was aiming to do something different to XI, and he wanted to made it accessible (which by no means equals dumbed down or with a lack of depth). Also we don't know how much of his old plans and things have been taken into account by Yoshi, who said that if he thought any idea was good, he would put it in the game, maybe we'd be surprised.

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Originally Posted by Felessan

Constraint was obviously money. Zones were bloated and it was not really needed, you just can cut zones in half - and loose nothing but those "20 mins to run through zone" moments. And to create huge landscapes - you either copy-paste or require a lot of money as artists work ain't free.

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The pacing and overall feel of 1.0 where far better for my liking, not everything has to be clogged up, there can be wild areas with dangerous monsters that are not civilized. 1.0 created the feeling of a medieval world perfectly, where you are only safe in the cities or merchant hubs, but you are alone in the wilderness, and that was a good thing, because the sense of adventuring was there, and there's no reason ARR had to take that away completely.

Also, SE has the money and the artists.

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Originally Posted by Felessan

And honestly nothing you mentioned will be implemented. The world belongs to people, and people in this case is a casual crowd. Those that doesn't really likes being locked out of some zones, run half an hour to a point (nobody but rare minority actually likes this) or having 20 sets for each class where only math guru really can understand what is better and when.
The game kept simple to be more accessible for everyone. And for hardcore there are things like coil, ex and now "professional" hunting.

People en masse likes concepts that wow popularized, like easy travelling, full access to zones, straightforward and easily understandable stat mechanics.

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Man... I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like most of your post was unnecessary and rude.

I don't recall Yoshida ever saying this game was made for casuals, ever, and I've spent more than enough time looking at interviews and producer letters. What he did say was that he wanted to cater to both the casuals and the hardcore, oh and also that he was and still is a hardcore mmorpg player himself, so of course he doesn't want ARR to just be a casual game. He also said that he intentionally created the combat and content to be simple in the game, and how I interpret he meant this is that if you start out with a solid foundation then it will be easier to build off of it in any direction, and in that sense the game is full of potential!

With the solid combat system, it's possible to go in any direction with it, whether it be more strategy or action. It may be basic now, but I'd say it has great potential, and that's how you could sum up most of what's in the game right now. Of course there are certain systems that need to change or could be tweaked, but that's another story.

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Originally Posted by Merylx

Tanaka had ENOUGH time.

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2007 (Physical Production start) - 2010 meanwhile still producing Wings of the Goddess content using the same team isn't enough time. As many of the people who seem to hate XI on here not realize as they didn't play at the time, it was very obvious when FFXIV went into actual production because WoTG was left unfinished far longer than any other expansion in XI's life span - WoTG didn't finish until after XIV was pushed out the door by Wada to try to beat Cataclysm.

Coincidence? If you say yes, that's just ignoring the obvious.

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If Tanaka had stayed, it would still be a dead game to this day....

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Yep, kinda like XI died after a yea....oh. It's easy to hate on Tanaka while ignoring the root of the problem. Oh btw, did you know? YoshiP stated when he took over his first goal is to push out the content started by Tanaka's team which was up until around 1.20? Meaning the main things Yoshi himself did was 1.21 - 1.23? So it was pretty obvious the only true issue with the game was using an engine not suited for MMORPGs, as even Yoshi himself has stated. It's like trying to build an MMORPG on the Nintendoware toolset, you can do it but I guarantee there will be foundational issues.

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Originally Posted by Felessan

Yoshida made a game that 2 millions plays in 2 years, while Tanaka didn't make it in 5 years and upper limit for his creation still would be around half a million.
Yes, oldschool FF11 lovers would like it and probably consider it an amazing game (like people loves EVE even though its really a relatively small niche mmo), but it still would be a niche game and a failure for SE, given how much resources they poured in in FF14.

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Eve has not only been retaining players but actually growing its subscriber base a decade after its release. It may be a niche title, but that is exactly the reason that it's been able to succeed for so long. I doubt SE would be too unhappy if FF14 managed to have 500k subscribers in 2023. Especially considering that the last time SE even told us how many subscribers this game had, it was 600k only a few months after release.