FFXIV Bitter Sweet

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Originally Posted by ufufu

Okay. I still disagree: I think a fast-paced MMO like this is fantastic and I'm really enjoying it. Combat is deep enough to be enjoyable without being overly slow and nuanced (which would present a barrier to entry for the casual player, like myself - which is what happened with XI and SE wanted to avoid), 1-50 is sure slow enough for me as I've been playing quite a bit and I'm still not to 50, I think the world presented is quite well-designed but I will agree that it would be nice if it were larger, the market is still stabilizing and... that's about it. I disagree with most everything you put forward in your original post, and I still think you just want the game to be more like FFXI. I'm sorry that people disagreeing with you seems to be such a sore spot, but whatevs.

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It's not the fact your disagreeing with me, its the tone and attitude you bring forth with it.

That being said, you like how the game is, and I can respect that. I don't believe you even said anything I said was wrong, what your actually doing is just "preferring" how it is now, over what I said and suggested, which again, is ok :)

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Originally Posted by the_limitless

it's like the OP took the word right out of my mouth and made it so much more eloquent. The game should slow down on the levelling, and make crafting roles more important. Why DoH and DoL even exist if battle classes are self sufficient?

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It's another thing I could of made an entire section on tbh. The fact crafting is only essentially useful for materia melding.. But that again still causes problems with the fact that Materia levels I and II are just about worthless, do the fact that not only do you level so fast, but that the combat is so easy a few points of extra STR, DEX, or anything will have absolutely no effect of whether you win or not, so is essentially pointless to use, and most crafting recipes are useless as every class is nearly self efficient through dungeons/fates and End Game.

I kinda wish you would edit out the long drawn out intro where you try and explain yourself (there is really no reason to explain yourself..your on point and present a good argument..anyone who disagrees isn't going to change their mind by reading your intro) but the overall message is very accurate.

Personally, I have enjoyed the game...but to be brutally honest I am not sure there is much that will hold me in this game for the long haul...yeah I get there will be more updates and maybe some will save the day..but the core of the game just doesn't feel like something that will hold MY attention for months on end (notice I said MY attention..I am not trying to put words in anyone's mouth).

1. I found the overall scope of the world to be a little disappointing. It isn't incredibly small by any means...but lets be real here..it is not that big either. I mean I can ride my mount from the starting cities clear to the lvl 50 areas in a matter of what maybe 7-10 minutes? The smaller sized areas combined with all the fast travel you mention considerably take away from the sense of adventure that could be had with this game.

2. The story and missions could be more engrossing..I think most people are drawn to the final fantasy universe for a story and for the lore of a FF universe. As you mentioned you hear from an NPC that item "X" will be such an incredible challenge to obtain..yet you literally walk all of 1 minute..kill a few incredibly easy mobs (by yourself) and obtain the item within a few minutes..then move onto the next quest.

3. The speed of leveling is a little too fast for my taste as well. That said I have not been speed leveling my character to lvl 50 like so many other people have done...However, I do feel like I made it to lvl 43 too quickly. I wish the task of leveling a character felt more involved and was more of a challenge so that when I did reach the current level cap I would feel like I have accomplished something. A combination of larger game areas..harder mob fights..more requirements to party up for leveling and questing...slower leveling..and perhaps less emphasis on quick traveling all could help to create a game that draws you into the leveling of your character as much if not more so than it does just playing end game content.

4. The lack of a need to socially interact is a little dull for an MMO in my opinion. I get that people essentially have the choice and can party up and socialize if they so choose...but this is an MMO it should essentially be a requirement that I need to group up for harder mob fights and maybe even leveling parties..not just zerg fest fate parties.

5. I play as a THM/BLM for my main and I have to say I am a little let down by the entire spell system. I feel like the spells are relatively boring..as you mentioned its a basic rotation of spells over and over again. Its crap in my opinion that the elements do not play a larger role..heck the whole elemental thing (fire gives bonus damage to ice monsters..ect) has been a major part of every single Final Fantasy (single player) that I can recall and it has the potential to add so much more to the game in terms of depth. I can remember the first time I cast thunder (not knowing what to expect) and boy was I disappointed.


I guess I just feel l little let down by the spell system/design and I feel like it could have been done better.

The whole crafting is also a little bit of a let down. I mean I have enjoyed some time spent on my goldsmith but it almost feels like the entire first 30-40 levels worth of equipment that I can craft are utterly worthless in terms of selling to other players because we get SO much of it from NPC quests. You do not get everything..but you get enough for it to basically make the crafter items null n void. There is also the fact that crafter made items simply do not hold a candle to the other equipment you obtain in the game through various sources..therefore the crafter made items are again next to pointless for most people to use.

I have enjoyed my time on this game..and I really want to get hooked..I am simply not there yet though. I had hoped that it would draw me in and keep my attention and I would not need to bother with something like The Elder Scrolls Online. However, at this point I am thinking I may have to at least see what that game is all about when it launches..to see if it offers something more. I mean I realize it could fail too..but heck I am already starting to get a little bored with ARR and I have not even hit 50 yet. The simple fact that I am forced to choose between mindless levling using fates or slow and boring leveling using dungeons is simply a little disheartening.

All that said I am still willing to give the game time and hopefully the gameplay all balances out..time will tell.

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Originally Posted by CaZx

I kinda wish you would edit out the long drawn out intro where you try and explain yourself (there is really no reason to explain yourself..your on point and present a good argument..anyone who disagrees isn't going to change their mind by reading your intro) but the overall message is very accurate.

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I feel like I need too, simply because of how many times people say things like "OP is just QQIng" or "Gtfo then" or "what you say is an opinion" on things which really aren't opinions (which is why I made that little section as well). I get so many of those comments, I feel as though I do need to explain myself.

it might be a good idea to save this thread, the game have potential, SE listen to player input and request (they do). So lets save this thread and keep it as a reference for the future update

While I do agree with a lot of you are saying, its easy to draw conclusions on whats wrong, but how to really make it so, is a whole different story.
I would really like more a few more skills, were you actually had to choose from a larger pool of abilities to better tackle the enemies, instead of the very repetitive rotation that I use all the time.
However, simply throwing a huge amount of skills at you is not the solution, and making a MMO behave more like Dark Souls I'm guessing would be way to technical to be a plausible solution (due to all the timing and data needed, plus the drawback of ping times).
I'm not really feeling the huge jump in difficulty at the endgame content though. As far as up to Garuda HM, its still very basic running around, and stand in specific places. I haven't tested Titan yet, and I know there is quite the gearcheck there, but when it comes to avoiding ground AoE, my main problem now is the pingtimes and character position update every .3 sec. I have no problems with me totally derping out on not running out of a plume, but when I know I have been outside of it for a good .5 seconds or more, and still get hit, its infuriating.

Also, making a MMO story based its kind of hard. Even though I liked the main story in XIV, I still had the feeling throughout my adventure that, I'm not special, as everyone else has the same story and is treated as "the one". So how would you go fourth making you really feel that its the path from 1 to 50 that is the adventure, and not endgame itself? If you make content hard, people will go the easy route and just do a few more levels before they come back to finish it, thus enforcing the feeling that getting to max level asap is the most worthwhile thing to do.
One solution to it as I see, is to make the levels worth less, make them "unlimited" and asymptotic against a certain barrier, but I'm not sure that would be fair, as there will always be someone grinding insane amounts of levels and despite the theoretic max point, will still have an advantage to everyone else.

As far as crafting goes, I've only heard that its way to easy getting and DoH to level 50, and I can see that ruining the whole point of it.

So in conclusion, I am seeing your problems, but the way to solve them is a different story with the drawbacks of what you are proposing will create.


Btw, you are wrong on the opininon thing, I just had to point that out:

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o·pin·ion:
1. A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof: "The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion" (Elizabeth Drew).
2. A judgment based on special knowledge and given by an expert: a medical opinion.
3. A judgment or estimation of the merit of a person or thing: has a low opinion of braggarts.
4. The prevailing view: public opinion.
5. Law A formal statement by a court or other adjudicative body of the legal reasons and principles for the conclusions of the court.

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I'm gonna throw in my 2 cents here.

Even though i agree with you on a few points, i still disagree with your main points that you were trying to make about the game.
There's a reason that Yoshi and the rest of the development team didn't try and make this game more like FFXI and that is that the game was just a minor blop in the MMO circuit, i tried it a few times and i just couldn't understand a single bit about the game, i didn't have anyone to help me and everyone i tried to ask in FFXI either told me to piss off or that they were too busy to help new players, the community was one of the worst and most elitist i had seen in ANY MMORPG and i don't know why everyone seems to be praising the hell out of it.

The world and combat in FFXI... Sluggish, boring, mostly empty, confusing, nothing to do and 99% of the time, wandering around looking for something to do, not fun if you ask me.

I gave FFXI chances, and it never delivered.

FFXIV, i gave it another chance after 1.0 and it delivered, i have fun playing, i'm still entertained and the main thing is, the game is easy to approach for new players (unlike FFXI), shouldn't these be the things you should have mentioned on your post?

Sure, the end-game is challenging, just like it should be, and it's not just the end-game, even the instances above lvl30 can give you a fair bit of challenge.

It's not a "bumrush" to lvl50 if you don't want it to be, no one is forcing you to level up as fast as everyone, there are things other people enjoy and things they don't, the majority of the gamers nowadays dont bother taking their time leveling and just want to get to top as fast as they can, still doesn't mean that you have to do it if you dont wan't to, does it?

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Originally Posted by Nyme

I gave FFXI chances, and it never delivered.

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This is not a Pro XI thread (certain things about XI would be nice on here, but lets not make a copy) most oldschool XI players dont want "that" kind of gaming anymore, most of us are open for fresh new ideas. On the other hand the XIV community is for a big part the old XI community, SE should try and cater to their loyal subscribers too (yes i played XI 7 years and enjoyed logging in almost every day). What does SE prefer as a company aiming to make money... make big cash short term and fade out after the new vibe is gone, or do they want a loyal playerbase that is willing to commit to their work?
There should be content for the casual player who wants to play for 3 months and quit and never look back, but there should also be content for poople who want eorzea to be their daily escape out of reality for a longer period

While I agree with some of the things that you say: leveling is way too fast, crafting is pointless since not only does the best endgame gear come from dungeons without any crafting input (you can't even meld them), the fast leveling makes investing in HQ gear (that many times is actually better than dungeon gear) not worth it.

That being said, I don't agree with many other things you say.

Elemental weaknesses bringing depth to battle is really just a big fallacy. Having played BLM and SCH in FFXI, the only depth that elemental weaknesses brought to that game was tell me which spell I would spam during a fight. And while yes, you could say that in FFXIV I'm using the same spells in every fight, I don't consider FFXI's system better just because in one fight I'm spamming Thunder IV while in another I'm spamming Blizzard IV, because in essence, Thunder IV and Blizzard are mechanistically pretty much the same spell.

I also have to disagree with your assessment that levels 1-49 lack difficulty. I come to this forum and its like everyone is a pro, but then I go into Duty Finder and get parties that wipe on the first Ifrit fight. At most you can say that FFXIV is balanced towards new players instead of the pros.

Your complaint about the lack of immersion is simply full of hyperbole and mainly just a personal view. Yes, the areas are obviously smaller than the FFXI ones. It would be nice if they were bigger (especially so we could have more space for material farming mobs, Banemites anyone?), but I personally like them. But the bigger problem I have with your complaints about immersion: there is no reason why being able to kill stuff your level easily is a bad thing, you just present this as a fact. You also don't really need to fight super high level stuff to get a sense of danger either. I wanted some Antelope Horns, so I picked up my level 20 Archer and went out to kill some level 25 Antelope Stags. Now I was used to being able to just steamroll everything, so imagine my surprise when the first mob killed me, and after that I actually had to pay attention and be careful not to get killed.

Your complaint about AF not being an achievement... I think is kind of stupid. When FFXI was released (in Japan) the level cap was 50 and AF's weren't in the game. So it made more sense for AF to be harder to obtain in FFXI when it was introduced, since it functioned as a kind of "endgame" content. In FFXIV AF is available in the game at release. More importantly, AF+1 already exists and those take a bit more effort to obtain. Your feeling of accomplishment is there, not in the regular AF (though I personally can't wait until I get my AF).

The last thing I'd like to address: yes, FATE's are mind numbingly easy and people flock to that, but they are far from being the only viable way to level. My leveling (after I run out of quests) is mostly done through dungeons which are a lot more fun. Why do people do FATE's then? If you're a DPS you have to wait long times for a party (same thing in FFXI where there was no DF though), while FATE's are constantly up (which isn't a bad thing mind you). But more importantly, people flock to FATE's because they're easy, the same reason why in FFXI we always went for the mobs that were the easiest and fastest to kill. So basically, most people always go for easy, so the only way to stop that would be to make the whole game hard, which would probably lead to a lot of people leaving. Though my bigger issue with this is that you try to tie FATE leveling to people not knowing their jobs, which honestly is true, but making leveling take longer doesn't actually fix that problem either, nor does adding harder mobs or battles (people will just skip those like they did in FFXI). Unless you want to argue that in FFXI everyone at 75 knew how to play their job, and I'll lol to that. If anything, FFXIV's dungeons do a much better job teaching people how to play than FFXI's lower level content ever did, but people prefer the fast and easy FATE grind.

tldr: At one point you make a comment about FFXIV and rose-tinted glasses. I honestly think the same could be said about you and FFXI.

Reached posting limits so:

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

The reason you see this is because, like I explained. The game is so easy people are not caring to learn. This is why you wipe, or have people who wipe even at low level dungeons. The game is so easy, they go into dungeons thinking its easy, and don't pay attention, or learn. They also are not learning to think on their feet, and hammer in where their spells are, which causes errors,which results in death.

So saying "Oh people die, it must be hard" isn't true.

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Your argument here is ridiculous. So people dieing in a fight doesn't mean that it was difficult for them? You say that people don't know what to do because the game is so easy so they don't care. However, what happened in my example was that faced with a situation where they wiped people did learn what to do and we managed to win. like I also mentioned earlier, I come here to this forum and its like everyone is a pro.

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

So you like the smaller that's your preference, and its fine, but doesn't deter or make what I said any less valid

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Yes, but its also not like what you're saying is MORE valid either, you just act like it is.

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

Also being able to easily kill something your level is a problem, I'm not saying it should be hard hard, but something where you need to pay attention at least. Again, can't make the game to easy or you get people like you explained above who don't know what they are doing. Sloppy easy gameplay, makes sloppy players.

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Really? Why is it a problem? You keep saying it is, without actually proving that it is. I mean, look at FFXI where most Easy Prey could kill you and yet we had plenty of level 75's that didn't have a clue in that game too. Making all mobs that are your level a challenge to kill won't suddenly improve the skills of the entire playerbase, they'll just reach level 50 by killing easier stuff.

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

It's an Artifact Armor. The name in and of itself should make it something worthwhile.

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Well, that's the problem here. Its just a name. If it weren't for the FFXI nostalgia we wouldn't even be having this conversation. And more importantly, I don't think I would be that wrong in saying that most AF pieces were crap in FFXI.

*sigh* These posting restrictions are annoying:

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

That confirms also what I said in the OP, which is its a terrible idea to lump casuals with Elite. Things like that happen, self entitled Elitists see that message and instantly quit. Or you'll as you always do saying "Party of blah blah, looking for blah blah -MUST KNOW FIGHT-" messages being spammed. Can hardly get into something new unless I do it first with my FC because of the Elitists not wanting anything to do with casual/new players. Which is causing yet more rifts in the player base, because of how simplistic the leveling is, causing nobody to know their job. It's an endless spiral downwards.

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*rolls eyes*

There you go again making baseless conclusions to try and push your point.

The problem with later dungeons isn't that "people don't know their jobs because the game is too easy", the problem is people don't know the mechanics of the dungeon because they're new to it. Then you get the jerks that leave instead of explaining the dungeon to the new guys.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

I also have to disagree with your assessment that levels 1-49 lack difficulty. I come to this forum and its like everyone is a pro, but then I go into Duty Finder and get parties that wipe on the first Ifrit fight. At most you can say that FFXIV is balanced towards new players instead of the pros.

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The reason you see this is because, like I explained. The game is so easy people are not caring to learn. This is why you wipe, or have people who wipe even at low level dungeons. The game is so easy, they go into dungeons thinking its easy, and don't pay attention, or learn. They also are not learning to think on their feet, and hammer in where their spells are, which causes errors,which results in death.

So saying "Oh people die, it must be hard" isn't true.

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Your complaint about the lack of immersion is simply full of hyperbole and mainly just a personal view. Yes, the areas are obviously smaller than the FFXI ones. It would be nice if they were bigger (especially so we could have more space for material farming mobs, Banemites anyone?), but I personally like them. But the bigger problem I have with your complaints about immersion: there is no reason why being able to kill stuff your level easily is a bad thing, you just present this as a fact. You also don't really need to fight super high level stuff to get a sense of danger either. I wanted some Antelope Horns, so I picked up my level 20 Archer and went out to kill some level 25 Antelope Stags. Now I was used to being able to just steamroll everything, so imagine my surprise when the first mob killed me, and after that I actually had to pay attention and be careful not to get killed.

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So you like the smaller that's your preference, and its fine, but doesn't deter or make what I said any less valid, it is immersion breaking on a large degree because of how the NPCs, etc. react to it compared to how it actually is. That isn't really an opinion, whether you like it this way or not, is however. Whether it is immersion breaking for you can even be questioned, perhaps its not, and you don't pay attention to how the NPCs react to the world so it isn't immersion breaking for you. Idk. Also being able to easily kill something your level is a problem, I'm not saying it should be hard hard, but something where you need to pay attention at least. Again, can't make the game to easy or you get people like you explained above who don't know what they are doing. Sloppy easy gameplay, makes sloppy players.

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Your complaint about AF not being an achievement... I think is kind of stupid. When FFXI was released (in Japan) the level cap was 50 and AF's weren't in the game. So it made more sense for AF to be harder to obtain in FFXI when it was introduced, since it functioned as a kind of "endgame" content. In FFXIV AF is available in the game at release. More importantly, AF+1 already exists and those take a bit more effort to obtain. Your feeling of accomplishment is there, not in the regular AF (though I personally can't wait until I get my AF).

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It's an Artifact Armor. The name in and of itself should make it something worthwhile. The story that revolves around the armor is something which you would think would require time consuming of proving yourself, and focusing on it. Again, immersion breaking, and really makes the armor lack luster. It's your main suit of armor, the Armor which signifies and portrays that advanced class. Yet here you are getting it without any effort, and greatly diminishes that "special" feeling of it. There is no reason why they couldn't have made AF armor harder to achieve and something to focus on, and be better and stronger than Darklight, etc. but not as good as AF +1 either.