For crying out loud, I beg of you, give me some CHALLENGE!!!!!

This and this are on the same page, exciting to see how SE going to juggle both request.

"Catering to casuals" Isn't an excuse to make your game stupidly easy.

And those same casual players should be pretty damn offended by it.

Casual doesn't mean easy. It just means you need content that doesn't require countless hours to enjoy.

Actually casual is too broad a term, let me be more specific.
SE wants to cater to noobs, or rather console gamers that have never played a MMO before.
This whole push is for the PS3 release and they are banking on those players to get their sales where they need to be.

The reason why all the FF MMOs have received a roman numeral is so that all the fans of the previous FFs will just pick up XI and XIV as if they were just playing the next game in the series. SURPRISE!

Also, if the MMO market is "tight" for lack of a better term, one way to increase your market share is to bring new consumers to your market. Similar to the Wii, their sales numbers were outstanding because they had people buying the system who never even played a video game before.

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Originally Posted by Sigtyr

If you had you'd realize pretty much every mainstream MMO uses the same strategy.

Tank n' Spank.

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Pretty much, Sigtyr. You are right.

But I'm not referring to the basic concepts that are used to anchor combat participation, but to the pace of it; and to the concurrent abilities to strategize, plan, theory-craft and become excited about the prospect of combat. I'm referring to a combat which, consistent or not with the genre's traditions, provides with an element of interest and challenge. FFXI did it, and DAoC, and Vanguard, and Everquest... and to a certain extent, despite its breakneck pace, and its simplification of the traditional fundamentals, even WoW has provided some elements of this as well. It had done it by very deftly building zone progression and difficulty leveling. The basic objective is achieved, no matter how: you often end your day's advance feeling exhilarated and satisfied. These are two things I've yet to experience here, much as I want to.

Rut

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Originally Posted by weeble

ffxi mobs had great depth, u had the chance to die in a regular grind group if u weren't doing u'r job, ie crabs and imps. u could die from mobs around the camps, u could die on way to camps, u could die from mpk lmao at start and really wish they will leave this in game cause its just funny. u had to do things to the mobs like dispel stoneskins or deaths are slow and everyone yelling at u Dispel!@@! please. u had to keep attention on u'r mp, u especially at first years did mb bursts and chains. debuffs, buffs, enfeebles all that lasted more then a second and mattered (though i think this is comming soon enought)

this is what makes a game, in other mmo's u can kill any and all mobs in the game and they all feel the same, there is absolutely no difference in what mob u'r killing your still just attacking with whatever moves and u'r healing maybe, or waiting for hp to heal. no real tactics in it at all and the only way to create any kind of tactics with that type of boss endgame is by positioning and that is all, u get the positions down and the game battle is won. from this dungeon we got i'm kinda worried but ...hopefully it was just something to keep us busy and they still plan on fixing all these problems. and se needs to remember those other games had good pvp in them so the crappy pve didn't hurt as much as it will hurt them.

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I very much agree with all you say, Weeble. And I share your hopes, I just want to get a confirmation from them that our hopes are sound. I just don't want to waste time in a process that is going to represent a fundamental frustration. I want to know what I'm buying, more than with money, with my energy, time investment, and hopes. I want to know the blueprint more clearly, because it seems this is going to take a considerable amount of our time.

Rut

For myself, it's not so much a lack of Challenge as we can adjust our own dififculty on Quests, Leves and Grinding, but rather that there is still very little to do. Lack of Content is still a major issue but after 1.20 (when Battle Mechanics are fully implemented) I am certain that Content (both Casual & Challenging) will be added more frequently.

Too lazy to look it up but pretty sure Yoshi said "...2-4 dungeons per month/patch is their goal..."

p.s Both 1.19 and 1.20 will contain lots of content too.

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Originally Posted by Davorok

For myself, it's not so much a lack of Challenge as we can adjust our own dififculty on Quests, Leves and Grinding, but rather that there is still very little to do. Lack of Content is still a major issue but after 1.20 (when Battle Mechanics are fully implemented) I am certain that Content (both Casual & Challenging) will be added more frequently.

Too lazy to look it up but pretty sure Yoshi said "...2-4 dungeons per month/patch is their goal..."

p.s Both 1.19 and 1.20 will contain lots of content too.

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He also said we be getting new side quest every patch have we even got new quest? beside the company one?

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Originally Posted by Zenaku

He also said we be getting new side quest every patch have we even got new quest? beside the company one?

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Yes we did, especially the one with cutscene.

anyone hoping they at least holding back cause they got a super badass expansion on the works for the new ps3 launch?

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Originally Posted by Holyomen

I remember in EQ a blue mob, which is under your level, is what your group would fight.
And seeing as you solo reds in FFXIV, well that alone tells you how they have structured this game.


I believe after analyzing the data, there much be statistics that show catering to casual players is more profitable for MMOs.

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These are from 2004 and 2005, around the 'height' of FFXI's playerbase.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...php?story=6582

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...vatar_the_.php

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Problems severe enough to make players consider leaving are not enough new content, unbalanced classes, and too many bugs. Players generally were unwilling to forsake their favorite MMO even after reaching the game's level cap and exhausting its endgame content due to the community ties formed while playing.

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MMORPGs cater to MMORPG players.