I find it funny when FFXI players in here mention they jumped to here because Abyssea and SoA ruined everything then find disappointment that this game isn't what they wanted either and say it needs to be FFXI. I love FFXI as much as the next person, but why are you trying to completely change FFXIV into something it is not? Why are you not on the FFXI forums complaining you want the old day game play back? You get frustrated at FFXI and take it out on FFXIV. Just because this game is called Final Fantasy also doesn't mean it is obligated to use concepts of it's predecessor.
Your main issue when making "very deep and complex mechanics" for a job itself, it is the first step of creating a major imbalance. Don't believe me? Ask 3/4 of the jobs in FFXI that don't get invited to parties because a job with mechanics you are seeking gets ignored for more convenient, simple, and more efficient jobs to play. That was a real bummer to me and I feel like I have to force myself to play something I don't just to get more frequent party invites. This has been an issue in FFXI since advanced jobs became a thing and it hasn't been fixed since. In FFXIV, if you make it that you are more focused on your bar than the fight itself, something went wrong in it's design and good luck dodging things while performing efficient DPS.
I have actually been trying FFXI again to see what has changed and what is new. While I am having fun playing around on THF, I got unfortunate news that if I continue it, it will only come with hardships in joining groups. This issue is near non-existent in FFXIV. Why? Because it bases itself off of simplicity in job mechanics and lets the fights and environment around you be the complexity itself. My example is a different genre but still has a point. Super Mario Bros., all you need to learn is that "A" is to jump, and you can hold down "B" to move faster. Simple to learn right? How to play, yes. Now can the average person take on The Lost Levels(SMB2 in JP) and beat it? No, its very difficult because the level itself and not your controls and concepts. FFXIV runs under a similar concept that it depends on what is around you to determine the difficulty, not necessarily how well you build yourself up. Even then FFXIV still has some complexity in it's rotations and priorities. Go look at any guide here and there is much more to being efficient than hitting 1-2-3 and some buffs.
If you don't like that style and prefer FFXI's, its fine, its not necessarily better or worse, it is different and the game can be difficult in it's own way. I know I had some hair pulling moments in my 2003-2010 career. At the same time however, you have to realize that a lot of FFXI's concepts and mechanics simply do not work in this game. It can be held up to interpretation when expansions come and change things around, but I doubt ARR would ever change drastically to the point that overly complex pet or elemental systems would make it's way in there.
Find ways to make what is already in FFXIV now better without tearing down the wall and putting up something new. Unless proven broken, Dev's will listen to constructive criticism first before destructive criticism. I have my list of complaints with the game, but I wouldn't ever ask them to tear things down to just meet my own interest. I love that the game uses WoW as a blueprint to make it's own game while still bringing new things in. FFXIV has enough of it's own concepts and beautiful world with a rich story/lore that in my opinion to stand out greatly from other typical MMO's. I was actually hoping 1.xx was like this and we got well.....that.
FFXI and FFXIV are two completely different games. It was intentional by the developers. Play the one you prefer more, one is not truly better than the other at the end of the day. FFXI may feel out of date here and there, but still a great experience to play. Or maybe it is just nostalgia kicking in there.
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09-09-2014, 01:34 AMVelhart
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09-09-2014, 01:34 AMAegisI think Tanaka's goal was to create interesting new classes using abilities from classic FF classes and mix/matching them. If the game hadn't been such a flop it would have been interesting to see where he took them. But, since it did fail so hard, Yoshi-P was brought in and saidQuote:
Originally Posted by Tupsi
"You call this a Final Fantasy? There must be moar FF staples! moar!"
And so they had to shoehorn the classes into jobs. The class with all the lore about elementals and harnessing their power becomes White Mage (with Aero and Stone because...erm? elementals? but not the icky fire or ice elementals). The class with the lore about the giving and taking of life and the balance of life forces becomes Black Mage because they had the strongest nuke at the time.
I actually levelled all but a couple of jobs in XI to at least 75 (the cap when I levelled them) and the ones I didn't were Corsair, Puppetmaster and Red Mage. I honestly didn't feel it was that hard to get parties. Of course, BRD got insta-party without even flagging up I would get invites as soon as I logged in, but the other classes? My DRK rarely waited noticably longer than my PLD, SCH, WHM or NIN.Quote:
Originally Posted by Velhart
BST I obviously rarely got parties on, but Duo'ing was fun. BLU got a lot of invites especially when I used to /THF in Wajaom/Bhaflau.
Even if there were discrepancies in wait time for you (I don't doubt there were, it just wasn't the case for me), in the end, wouldn't you say it was worth it for the differences between the jobs?
There was no job that played quite like THF (setting up SATAs, controlling hate), no job that played quite like NIN (balancing shadows, constantly scrabbling to stay top of the enmity table) or DRK (Last Resort, Souleater, Guillotine, manic laughter, insults from the WHM) or BLU (Self-SC'ing, MB'ing, masochistic spell learning) or SCH (AOE every buff, wake me up when they wear off).
I could literally give examples for every class where they had a playstyle-defining mechanic that none of the others had. What's a little queue time compared to that? -
09-09-2014, 01:45 AMTupsiTo be fair XIV 1.x was never a WoW clone and they turned it into one rather than "fixing it", so it's long past the: "XIV isn't x stop blah blah blah" arguments people crop up with. And yes, Yoshida did make it VERY VERY clear his goal was to make ARR basically WoW for Japan.Quote:
Originally Posted by Velhart
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09-09-2014, 01:48 AMVelhartI love Yoshi-P's thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tupsi
Absolutely not, every job in the game should be just as desired as the next. ARR accomplished within one year that FFXI hasn't in twelve. Determined by the players ability to play the job and gear requirements. Not just because of the job itself. Its that thinking is why FFXI is such an unbalanced mess with it's jobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aegis
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09-09-2014, 01:48 AMExstal
I firmly believe making it a WoW clone is only bad for people who've played WoW before. It means absolutely nothing to those who haven't (majority of the Japanese, I reckon). So I don't think that's a bad argument.
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09-09-2014, 01:52 AMTupsiIndeed, and good for the people who enjoy that, which is why they bleed from their eyes and ears at the very sight of whenever someone mentions SE's other FF MMO, because they likely didn't like it or never even played it. XI was successful but it was at a time prior to MMOs being mainstream, so likewise, it also didn't have as much exposure since it was a primarily Japanese MMO. It just shows how flipflop people are when it comes to that subject though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Exstal
It also helped in ARR's favors that WoW has been in an awkward place the past year, so once this year finishes up and Blizzard is back on track with it, we'll see what the MMO trend is then, since if you didn't noticed, those moving away from copying WoW are now copying the more "TERA" style of MMO gameplay.