Wonder if anyone here feels this way?

(starts from the last page)

I just hope that someday the developers find a balanced which isn't completely forced hand helding for the whole journey, but make actually you think for yourself too along the way, as in something for the more "old-school" gamer. Maybe the casuals would learn some good virtues (patience f.e from that too?)

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Originally Posted by NyxNoughtNothing

WoW did not launch with nearly as much content as it has now. In time Eorzea will gain much more content. All actively developed MMOs accrete content like crystals growing in a supersaturated solution.

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It's true that it didn't launch with nearly as much content it has now (it's been ten years and four expansions after all) but it launched with two huge continents, sixteen dungeons, and two forty-man raids. That's not "relatively little content" to me. So, technically it had a lot more content when it released than Eorzea does six months later.

However, it's ruined now. Shows what happens when you hand everything to everyone on a silver platter.

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Originally Posted by NyxNoughtNothing

WoW did not launch with nearly as much content as it has now. In time Eorzea will gain much more content.

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No game launches with as much stuff as it has at a later time. None. Doesn't stop games from following the trend of abandonment and shriveling we've seen over the past 10 years. Just because this game will get "more stuff to do", doesn't mean a single thing. If people don't care for the things added, then they will leave all the same. Just ask Tera, Rift, SWTOR, etc. etc. etc. Asking people to 'wait' for the game to be good raises the question of why launch with such little to do in the first place then? Maybe SE just didn't meet the expectations of things to do and launched the game far prematurely? Myself, I don't think so. They just did the same thing every other game has done. Been there, done that. Adding "more of the same" over the course of years doesn't bolster your game, it just bloats it.

It's a shame threads like these never get the dev attention but only ones about how metal looks when it has dye on it.


I've seen plenty of complaints and whining on many MMO forums but only in ARR it feels like people have seriously thought about gaming as a whole and have tangible actionable advice that the devs COULD use to get the FF brand back on track.


It feels like the situation with Resident evil where the whole rest of the world only wants one thing from the franchise but the devs are hell bent on doing something no-one wants.

I mean who really needed any of the 13 sequels and did they improve at all when people complained about the party size and messy story? No.
SE seems it's listening but really they have their own agenda here.

MMOs focused on the end game are, to me, a new genre. A worse genre than those "old" kind of MMOs where the focus was in all the game.

I woud say that the worst about it is how nothing you can do really matters for much time. Gear before lvl cap = crap at lvl cap.

Hell, lvl cap is something bad itself. I undertand that maybe we can't have an unlimited lvl, that it something bad and we must have a cap. But lvl 49 to 50, just because 50 is lvl cap, shoudn't be so different.

I woud like a game with open world content, slow and group oriented leveling and risk on traveling and exploring, with a lvl cap that is not like "Ok, now you are at lvl cap, you can start playing"
But well, this is not that game.


MMOs focused in the end game are OK in his own way, but will never retain people so well. And of course, if you make an MMO focused in the end game and your end game is crap, unless you are lucky and there's not any other major MMO launching in the market, you'll lost all your customers.

This game will have his first real test will TESO and (mainly) Wildstar, and things don't look very well for FF XIV. But well, they said that they woud be confortable if they manage to stay with 500,000 players, and they may achieve that.

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Originally Posted by Seif

It's a shame threads like these never get the dev attention but only ones about how metal looks when it has dye on it.
I've seen plenty of complaints and whining on many MMO forums but only in ARR it feels like people have seriously thought about gaming as a whole and have tangible actionable advice that the devs COULD use to get the FF brand back on track.
It feels like the situation with Resident evil where the whole rest of the world only wants one thing from the franchise but the devs are hell bent on doing something no-one wants.
I mean who really needed any of the 13 sequels and did they improve at all when people complained about the party size and messy story? No.
SE seems it's listening but really they have their own agenda here.

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so true.
im not going to go back and find the post but yoshi already said this was going to be a different then normal final fantasy. if ppl dont like it they may leave. wont change anything.

ive been complaining about different things in this game and the direction both directors have taken but its not really them its the higher ups telling them what they want.
this kind of button mashing with crap ping belongs on a console not on a online mmo. its a slap in the face to the final fantasy name.

if casuals dont have that much time to spend thats fine. you have all console games you can stand. dont see why everyone else is being punnished.

personaly i dont have much free time. i have a full time job sometimes 55 or more hours a week, 3 kids, and a sick wife. i would still rather have a sandbox then this generataion instant crap.

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Originally Posted by Elvin

I woud like a game with open world content, slow and group oriented leveling and risk on traveling and exploring, with a lvl cap that is not like "Ok, now you are at lvl cap, you can start playing"
But well, this is not that game.

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And I would like a game that skipped the leveling process entirely and just started right in with the "endgame stuff". Why do we even need levels nowadays? We don't use them to measure progression anymore, since the game doesn't really start until you reach the cap. So, nowadays, leveling is merely a tutorial on how to play the game, and in that respect, for the type of game this is, FFXIV has done things right. I would say that the leveling process actually takes slightly too long for the type of game they intended to create.

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No matter how hard you spin it, when you create a game with an endgame, you create a game with an end... and not much else.

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^ this dude gets it

Given the trend of what developers are shelling out because that is what the market is buying... I guess WE don't get it.

This article makes me miss FFXI =/

I feel this way everyday, when I try to clear endgame content, and the player just absolutely sucks. I feel like if the journey to 50 was just a tad bit longer, some of these people would learn their job. What's funny is I did fate grind up my ACN to get SCH, and I still learned how to play my SCH. But also, having played so many mmos and games in general, vets tend to make the connections faster.

But lets say I'm in t4, something that can be cleared with people in DL....but yet my dps is in ilvl80 something gear, and they are not putting out enough dmg, they didn't learn to PLAY THEIR JOB, this makes me wish the journey to 50 was slower, and that half the content in xiv couldn't be facerolled, so that when facerollers get to real content, they wouldn't crap it up for the good players. If that makes any sense. Not saying you didn't have bad players in EQ or FFXI, but it seemed that once you got to a certain point, the players were better, because it took more time to get to that point.

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Originally Posted by Diadumenos

This article makes me miss FFXI =/

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Which world were you on in XI? Your name looks familiar, and it's not very common.

The whole point of endgame to me: your character is at their skill peak, and thus more fun to play.
(Remember to keep referring to the above sentence as needed. This 'is' an opinion.)

Leveling is the process that slowly grants you new skills and abilities so that you may become accustomed to their use, but it's not as interesting for that very reason. The game 'begins' at the end because complete characters are just more interesting. Heck, I don't even 'like' raiding. Too many people, too much time invested in one activity, and overall too much hassle.

Yet I still enjoy 'endgame' more (if there is a decent one) because of my character.

MMO's have an endgame for more then that reason though. The in-game story has an end. Developer created activities have an end. Everything that devs 'can' build into a game 'will' end eventually. Games like UO relied almost entirely on the community to create their own fun, much like how PvP works, so sure, that could go on practically forever. But I'm fairly sure that players these days are looking for games, not social events. Dress up a virtual sandbox world how you will, it's still really nothing more then a social experience. You chat, you roleplay, you PvP, you complete tasks together that would otherwise be pointless, yet you enjoy your time spent together doing it, so it doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Gaming today is about experiencing and completing the activities that the developers create for you.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

Gaming today is about experiencing and completing the activities that the developers create for you.

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Gonna just have to say the I can't agree at all with this statement.

Gaming is much more than just following allong a linear path that has been set out infront of you.

Ask the developers themselves, many developers are often amazed at what the gamers do with the systems they hand to the players. UO is a great example it did have a set of goals to accomplish and players took them and expanded them near ad-infinitum. Ninja in FFXI is another great example a damage dealing class turned into a tank because of how players utalized the mechanics, the developer ran with it.

The gaming experience is about having fun your way, sometimes you have fun by following the dotted lines. Other times you have fun drawing outside the lines.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Gonna just have to say the I can't agree at all with this statement.

Gaming is much more than just following allong a linear path that has been set out infront of you.

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UO isn't today's gaming, nor is XI for that matter. I also don't say anywhere that a game has to be linear; devs can create all sorts of systems and events that let players go all over the place.

While players may find interesting ways to experience things in game, the 'vast' majority of everything we do in current gaming is directly involved in events that the developers specifically created.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

My opinion is law!

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Well that's good to know.

Must also be why unscripted Roguelike games and open world sandbox games have been incredibally popular in the gaming scene as well right?

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Well that's good to know.

Must also be why unscripted Roguelike games and open world sandbox games have been incredibally popular in the gaming scene as well right?

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Okay, I don't really want to argue this point with you, or argue at all, I'm merely looking at the current state of the game industry.

The article in the OP talks about how 'endgame' is so terrible for the MMO genre... and yet it's not going anywhere. MMO's keep pushing it, and successfully in most cases. Further, the majority of Rougelike's are small Indie games, where success is very minor compared to AAA games, and while there are some exceptional sandbox games out there (Minecraft, DayZ, etc) the majority of games being developed are highly scripted.

I think that this game in particular is under more scrutiny that others because of the fact that this is the game's second chance at life. People who played the 1.0 version are expecting things to be better this time around.

As for the article in the first post, I think that it accurately discussed that modern state of the genre. The article mentioned some more "grind" games like UP and EQ. I don't think that is the type of game the masses want now a days. The popularity of WoW seems evident of that. People seem to want something that they can feel like they had made progress during their time playing. Not saying that this game doesn't have its grind elements or that players don't get that feeling of getting things done when they are logged on. I will say this though, EQ had probably one of the best features to keep people playing, their Alternate Advancement (AA) system. It was the best hook to keep people playing that I have seen in any MMO to date.

I agree with the article.. but I also don't want to go back to the old timey grind till your eyes bleed to get a single level style of things. I would much rather feel engaged the entire leveling experience, and have that be slow. I think where a lot of developers are kind of letting the playerbase down (or designers maybe..) There needs to be rewards for exploring, and not the same old quests rehashed a bunch of times over. When leveling is boring and very grindy, a lot of players are gonna wanna skip it. Grindy doesn't just mean not having quests.. the quests themselves can be very grindy.

The downside is that replay value, for those leveling alts, is a hard thing to account for. Even if an area is very well thought out, rewarding to explore, and has lot of new things to find the first time through.. it can get old when you have to go through that stuff the second time through. The first time through the dungeons in this game I loved them.. after going through them a bunch, not so much. As much as people don't like WoW.. when burning crusade came out they had some interesting quests.. things that hadn't been done before and all. However, after doing the quests a few times, or future quests reusing the mechanic.. that new thing loses it's luster. There needs to be some sort of balance though. As long as the actual leveling part is boring and disengaging, people will want to skip it.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

Snip.

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I'll leave it as this as you don't seem to want to actually talk on the subject.

The "Success of AAA games" is a hillarious notion as they teeter on the edge of being closed down with every single game they release, their rate of success is actually smaller than indie developers (If you actually know whats going on in the industry) Studios shut down all the time even when using the "Industry standard" that you seem to be pointing at.

Just because MMO's keep pushing this style of gameplay it would be hard to actually call them a success considering a good portion of them fail and move to a F2P model. Unless you think that's success then I guess you would be suggesting that XIV goes F2P as well because that seems to be doing well for the industry too.

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Originally Posted by Mixxy

I miss the ol' Star Wars Galaxies. It wasn't as sandbox as some other games, but it also wasn't "rush to max level, raid for a week, and then bitch for 3 months about there being no content"

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Check out 'The Repopulation' it's aiming to be SWG without the SW.

Looks like it's all being included, bio-engineering, Creature handling, droid creation (Yes, I was a bit of a pet-class guy)

Yes, I also feel that "thing" was the worst piece of drivel to ever be called an "article" on Massively.