FFXIV Bitter Sweet

I have to say that I have to, begrudgingly, agree with the OP on this.

I played FFXI for a long time and stopped playing it about a year ago due to RL commitments. I picked up this game expecting somewhat of a similar take on the WoW formula whilst hoping many of the Final Fantasy elements would remain. It hasn't quite happened that way and the only things that make it feel like a Final Fantasy game are the Primals, Chocobo's and Cid. Very little else is present.

This game was very enjoyable for the first few weeks. I could not sing its praises enough. But it is now starting to stagnate and become ordinary very quickly. Spamming the same FATES over and over is just far too easy and no challenge is presented except to dodge the occasional AOE.

The immersion is slowly drifting away and it's only the beauty of the zones and the fact that I have yet to fully max out a battle class and take part in most of the endgame dungeons that keeps me going.

I've subbed for 3 months in the hope that the update will stabalise a few issues (notably the economy) but I can't help but feel SE likes this WoW model they've created - especially if it brings in more money than FFXI ever did.

We shall see.

i totally agree with the OP , right now its just all the way till 50. why ever spend gil and materia to gears from 1-40 when its just plain easy till end content? would it be harder achieving that, then i assume it would be more of effect getting those better equips.
there are so many ways to correct that miserable situation, but like the OP got it right, it wont happen with those people right now in the development section of ff14..

this community is so passionate about this game, have so many good ideas for the game mechanics which are possible to be set up, but nobody over there listens. these cries are getting less loud and someday completly silent. those who stay will be those dumb mediocre players which likes to pay every month for some game, which has no depth, just waiting for a further content .. with cutscenes with "sometimes synchronisation" :S thats such a no-go nowadays.. with a p2p game!!!

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Originally Posted by Kuikkusu

This game was very enjoyable for the first few weeks. I could not sing its praises enough. But it is now starting to stagnate and become ordinary very quickly. Spamming the same FATES over and over is just far too easy and no challenge is presented except to dodge the occasional AOE.

The immersion is slowly drifting away and it's only the beauty of the zones and the fact that I have yet to fully max out a battle class and take part in most of the endgame dungeons that keeps me going.

I've subbed for 3 months in the hope that the update will stabalise a few issues (notably the economy) but I can't help but feel SE likes this WoW model they've created - especially if it brings in more money than FFXI ever did.

We shall see.

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I felt the exact same way about this game when I first started playing. I can remember having very high praise for this game following my time spent on the beta because it felt refreshing and I enjoyed my time spent running around Gridenia. That said the experience was obviously limited and we could not level our characters all the way to 50, so the experience was not complete. Then as I started fresh I still enjoyed the game quite a bit, however, I sit here about a month into the game and I have to say that the new game shine has worn off a little. I am sitting at level 44 and its already starting to feel like a chore to login and to level because my time has been reduced to joining the DF and hoping that I find a good group or fate grinding which for me is an absolute snooze fest.

I also subbed for 3 months, at a fair legacy price, and now I am content giving the game a chance and hitting 50 here soon..whenever I can brig myself to put the time in. I just can't help but feel that the game is missing something that would make it feel more complete and that is a little bit of a let down because I want this game to be successful as a FF fan.

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Originally Posted by CaZx

I felt the exact same way about this game when I first started playing. I can remember having very high praise for this game following my time spent on the beta because it felt refreshing and I enjoyed my time spent running around Gridenia. That said the experience was obviously limited and we could not level our characters all the way to 50, so the experience was not complete. Then as I started fresh I still enjoyed the game quite a bit, however, I sit here about a month into the game and I have to say that the new game shine has worn off a little. I am sitting at level 44 and its already starting to feel like a chore to login and to level because my time has been reduced to joining the DF and hoping that I find a good group or fate grinding which for me is an absolute snooze fest.

I also subbed for 3 months, at a fair legacy price, and now I am content giving the game a chance and hitting 50 here soon..whenever I can brig myself to put the time in. I just can't help but feel that the game is missing something that would make it feel more complete and that is a little bit of a let down because I want this game to be successful as a FF fan.

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It certainly is missing that something...

Having arrived in coils, with Relics and whatnot and having spammed out 2 crafting classes and 1 gathering class to add to the 1.0 classes I can say - I enjoyed much of it and I have been feeding of the progression I was able to make and yet.... not much remains. I love you for writing this up, you do speak out what's been slowly dawning on me the past week. This game IS beautiful but most of the rest is ALOT of eyewash.

I can take my time and enjoy completing Fishing Logs - but for exactly the reasons you spoke of, XIV is missing the mark and I just wish there was a way for us to start improving on it, before its all to late.

I agree with OP. I don't think this game is as bad as WoW as I feel like none of the content matters until you hit 90. Literally everyone just wants to get to cap as fast as possible. At least in this game I feel like I can take my time more and not want to jab my eyes out when leveling.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

*snipped due to length*

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You sir nailed it hard. And i MEAN hard. This is exactly what im thinking now. And the sad thing is, the game seemed to be VERY cool at the beginning. I was going to take my time on this game and enjoy the ride then it was like: Woah wait im 43 already? k well might as well try the rest.. wow 50?! O.o Well thats fine, they said they wanted us in the endgame anyway.. um...

Then i saw the light that i had seen at the end of the tunnel, but it wasnt glorious.. it was one big loot grind. Not a big fan of that tbh, i was expecting more from a dev group that touted the reason you leveled so fast was they wanted everyone to get to the end....

I know its still a bit early in the game life but if this is the devs team "vision" of an endgame i think ill pass. Or at the very least do something else...

Gear grinds are not "good" content, they are skinner boxes. (look it up if you dont understand the term)

I have to agree with the OP, he has many good points which I have come to the conclusion of myself.

Some additional things that I wish SE would look at..

1. Item uniqueness is lacking in the game.

Every single weapon or armor piece you get in the game focuses on the same exact stats, nothing unique about them at all. You know which piece is better simply by looking at the item level. You got a new robe? Okay cool we'll give you some more vitality and intellect until you get the next piece. What happened to stats being more difficult to find on armor? In FFXI you had Leaping Boots which gave you 3 dex and agi, which could be used for a very long time because they were the only boots that gave those stats. Why can't we add some flavor to the current bland design of items?

Also, AF gear not having any ability modifiers? Does anyone else miss having +movement speed on their ninja AF boots? How about increased duration on berserk? Why does my class defining armor set in FFXIV only give me more base stats?

2. End game centered on instances narrows the scope of the game world.

With the lack of NMs to hunt and the lack of coffer keys/treasure to seek, I find myself sitting in town or in the Mor'dana crystal just looking for a pick up group shout. I have no incentive to explore the world at all when I hit level 50 because I just have to sit in the camp and get a group, then teleport to an instance using duty finder. It seems like such a waste of beautiful world that I'm stuck sitting in a camp all day because that's how end game was designed. Can we get some world dungeons or more monsters to fight that get us out there in the world?

And I don't think the solution to this issue is through adding more NM Fates like Behemoth or Odin, because those quickly become zergfests that require absolutely no strategy and cause massive latency issues to the server and players' computers. We need meaningful encounters outside of instanced duty finder. A good example of this would be re-introducing monsters that are spawned with rare drop items, or implementing world dungeons/caves/towers that we can openly explore without having to use duty finder.

3. No cool items to find.

So to get the best crafting materials in game I just have to spam Praetorium runs and buy it from a vendor. What happened to killing tough monsters to get rare crafting drops?

4. No threat of death while exploring the world.

There are no monsters in the game world that pose any threat. I can just ride my chocobo through entire beastmen camps and not be stopped. The heavy debuff you get from being hit? Pointless when monsters hit for next to nothing even on my caster classes and they just deaggro a few seconds later. This waters down the world experience because there is no danger at all when exploring.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

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Wow. Amazing post Zanfire. I completely agree.

I still wish they would of BUILT off of what they had in 1.23 instead of trashing damn near everything. Fuck. :/

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Originally Posted by Bluetaro

I have to agree with the OP, he has many good points which I have come to the conclusion of myself.

Some additional things that I wish SE would look at..

1. Item uniqueness is lacking in the game.

Every single weapon or armor piece you get in the game focuses on the same exact stats, nothing unique about them at all. You know which piece is better simply by looking at the item level. You got a new robe? Okay cool we'll give you some more vitality and intellect until you get the next piece. What happened to stats being more difficult to find on armor? In FFXI you had Leaping Boots which gave you 3 dex and agi, which could be used for a very long time because they were the only boots that gave those stats. Why can't we add some flavor to the current bland design of items?

Also, AF gear not having any ability modifiers? Does anyone else miss having +movement speed on their ninja AF boots? How about increased duration on berserk? Why does my class defining armor set in FFXIV only give me more base stats?

2. End game centered on instances narrows the scope of the game world.

With the lack of NMs to hunt and the lack of coffer keys/treasure to seek, I find myself sitting in town or in the Mor'dana crystal just looking for a pick up group shout. I have no incentive to explore the world at all when I hit level 50 because I just have to sit in the camp and get a group, then teleport to an instance using duty finder. It seems like such a waste of beautiful world that I'm stuck sitting in a camp all day because that's how end game was designed. Can we get some world dungeons or more monsters to fight that get us out there in the world?

And I don't think the solution to this issue is through adding more NM Fates like Behemoth or Odin, because those quickly become zergfests that require absolutely no strategy and cause massive latency issues to the server and players' computers. We need meaningful encounters outside of instanced duty finder. A good example of this would be re-introducing monsters that are spawned with rare drop items, or implementing world dungeons/caves/towers that we can openly explore without having to use duty finder.

3. No cool items to find.

So to get the best crafting materials in game I just have to spam Praetorium runs and buy it from a vendor. What happened to killing tough monsters to get rare crafting drops?

4. No threat of death while exploring the world.

There are no monsters in the game world that pose any threat. I can just ride my chocobo through entire beastmen camps and not be stopped. The heavy debuff you get from being hit? Pointless when monsters hit for next to nothing even on my caster classes and they just deaggro a few seconds later. This waters down the world experience because there is no danger at all when exploring.

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These are many points I saw, and wish I had put into the Original Post. I agree completely as well.

-gives CPR to the thread- live!

Wait, what end game?

Grind CM/Prae and have full DL in a week or so? Meh. These are so easy, I did a few runs wearing a summer bikini set.

Run AK to get a few drops/philo tokens and enough times to cap mythos? Wait until next reset and repeat? Excuse me whilst I fall asleep....zzzzz....snort.

Do 3x primals which take less than 10 mins per? All you need is either the relic item and or enough times to get a weapon, in some cases that takes like only a run or two.

Run coil? Requires a well balance team of well geared/skilled players, usually a FC and out of reach of most players. Crystal Keep is the stepping stone to get people up to par to run coil and won't be coming for months. By that time it might be very well not worth running for most elite FCs because they will already be decked in the best gear from Coil. Good planning there, already nulling content before it's released. /2thumbszup

Level alts? I severely doubt most people enjoy fate grinding, I certainly don't. Yet that is the only real way to level past the first job when quests dry up like water in the desert.

Do levels/guildhests etc? What's the point? To make chump change? Better just to run AK, looting 1-3 chests for the allgan coins gives more reward than 16x leves!

Level crafting? No thank you, there is only one game I have played where crafting was awesome and that was pre-cu swg. This crafting incarnation is nothing like that so that is a pass. Besides, competing with botters and rmt abusers is a pointless battle not worth doing + it often results in getting banned for 'doing to well'.

If this game's focus is entirely 'end game' based then you could have fooled me.

Don't take me as a hater for this. I understand your points. Especially with economy materia and that whole section. That I 100% agree with. Its the battle system I don't. Its the balancing I feel you missed your mark. During leveling I never felt a class was more op than me or weaker. The only thing that makes the difference if they did more dps or less than me was the gear they had. The whole level syncing shows that there is great balance and also how the potency works. All classes were able to what they were made to do at the same level as other classes. I feel the balancing is great. Sure the skill usage is kind of meh because 123 123 123 and so on. But in coil you are not able to just do that. There is too much going on. Some say the difficulty spikes at 50. It really doesn't. Dungeons are getting harder every one you get into that leads to 50.Only ones that say it spikes are those who neglect to learn and fate grind. And those players can only blame themselves not squenix. They give dungeons that are fun and challenging and show off a lot of good mechanics. The only spike is coil and that is because we were supposed to go through crystal tower first. That on the other hand is squenix's fault. Also they said this game will be accessible by all and coil is obviously showing that it is not.(for now) so when he says its supposed to be a tutorial leveling up take it with a grain of salt. Which leads me to my last point where I am not sure where you would stand on it. The whole focusing on endgame. Lets be honest it is waaay easier to balance classes when they are all on the same level. Its been showed by nearly all MMOs. But that's not the point. The point is they SAY they are focusing on endgame but I'm not sure how that's going for them. They have 2 dungeons for 50 and a ton for all levels before that. They have 1 raid at the end. There just isn't much endgame. Yet there are a billion classes to level(8 cough) and crafting classes(no idea how many lol) so they currently do in fact have more content for early levels. And honestly it wasn't a bum rush for me the first time. It was fun and super awesome for me to enjoy. And now that I have a max level I don't want it to take as long with secondary classes since I already experienced the main game.(why do tutorial twice?) people that don't know how to play their characters is because of squenix assuming we had an intelligence to learn fast like we say we do. We get mad at them for sending us ff mystic quest(loved it by the way) because it insulted or intelligence to learn a game. Then they give us a easy to learn MMO and give us a properly lengthed tutorial and then slowly gets harder and people get mad cause they can't learn. That confuses me. The grind at the end is ok. Took me a week to do. Now I am having the time of my life in coil. This is all I gethered in my experience. Came in this game with minimal knowledge on how to tank. Paid attention and was ready by level 15 for sastasha and learned my way up. Never fell behind. This is all for your points for difficulty battle system and balance between levels. Rest of your points I agree with. I am not attacking you so please don't feel that way. :)

Sooo honestly this game has a severe lack of content overall but I love it so I will support it and see how it grows.

Seeing a lot of hate on loot grinds yet we all seem to like level grinding. Guess this is where the whole personal preference come in. I guess I would rather constantly change how I look than every once in a while have one more number added to my level.

OP, you said all gear does is open a new dungeon to grind. But all leveling does will open a new map to grind. Whether you like to level on mobs and bosses in a cool looking dungeon or just endless mobs on a map this is just another case of personal preference. No matter how the game chooses to level us someone will not like it.

Yeah I gotta say for the most part I feel the same way about the game.

I think that the game lacks flavor and variety, at the moment. I think that they need to add in some way of diversifying classes aside from cross class abilities. Sure most choices in these games are somewhat superficial, but they are needed to make you feel more invested in the game.

There aren't any interesting items, all generic stats, which is your only drive really. I don't know about anyone else, but I miss the days where that I wanted to go find an item by camping, or getting it in a dungeon, quest or whatever. Not because the item increased some extraneous stat by a couple more points really, but because it does something cool. Not necessarily comparing the game to its predecessors, but you saw this in FFXI a little, among other games, even wow. I have very little drive to hunt items simply for the look of them, or to get some useless mini pet.

Also not a huge fan of the token driven endgame, never really liked this stuff, while I have not reached that point in this game, it is nothing I haven't seen a dozen times before. Also one thing that really bothers me is the fact that the game is ridiculously easy, and when I say that I mean the solo content. The dungeons are hard, but I'm not always in dungeons. While I do enjoy them, I don't always feel like dealing with other people either, I would like some entertaining solo content, that actually requires some thought, and not just at level the level cap, maybe treasure hunting will fix this, whatever it is.

I like the game. I know nobody even cares about my opinion. I am only posting this in the off chance that maybe some developer might read it and maybe commit it to thought. I just think it is a shame that the game turned out how it did, it was looking like they were going in the right direction in 1.0. I would like to see it turn into a deep and thought provoking game, because I love final fantasy.

Well, look on the bright side: at least the game is considered finished, now.

FFXIV 1.0 may have had neat ideas, but they were never added or never added correctly. Anyone on here defending the virtues of the first iteration either didn't play it for very long, or played it for so long that they evangelized its supposed greatness to justify the time wasted on it. 1.0 was a bad game. It was an alpha product, at best, that had a horrible engine, a terribly designed world (four super massive zones that were all copy-pasted barren garbage with random mobs of random level strewn around), and class system that was so 'limitless' that it wound up homogenizing all of the classes into the same handful of mandatory abilities to do anything, and then spamming your strongest ability/heal with the AoE toggle on in Coerthas. You're welcome to mourn what the game could have been, but let's face it: the only thing truly memorable about FFXIV 1.0 was how completely it failed on every possible front. 2.0 is much better, but still manages to be somewhat forgettable.

Regarding the lion's share of the OP, the whole "It's too easy QQ" thing is symptomatic of the entire gaming genre, now. However, I wish people would stop equating things like "solo friendly" to meaning "easymode", or things like, "I don't have five hours to spending looking for a PT in the Dunes to kill lizards until some idiot wipes us by pulling an IT++ Goblin Mugger" as, "I'm a lazy casual and I want everything NOW NOW NOW". I work 40-50 hours a week. I require meaningful progression in whatever hobby or downtime activity I can fit in, or else it's not worth my limited time. Having said that, I also require that my meaningful progression actually feel meaningful, and not simply spamming 2-3 buttons until something dies, repeated 50 times. As much as it would cause people to rage, seeing something similar to the Weapon Skill > Magic Burst system would make grouping, at least, far more dynamic and in depth than simply, "Move out of the red lines."

In short? I agree and disagree. FFXIV 1.0 was a train wreck, and FFXI was a ball-busting laborious grindfest that deserves to stay in the past for many of its outdated concepts. However, FFXIV 2.0 seems...too safe. To survive into today's MMO market, it needs to do something truly different to make its mark. As of yet, I don't think it's accomplished that.

I agree with most of your points and all I could do is nod. I see a trend going that old FFXIV players will agree with you while newer people who joined in late 2013 will feel differently. If only the newer people could have tried 1.0 and saw how big the areas where and how completing something in the game felted more accomplished.

"Bitter Sweet" I couldn't agree more in how I feel. For me; someone that enjoyed logging on in 1.0 to now struggling just to log on–– these posts sums it up pretty much. I don't have to be completed with main story line to realize the direction this game is going in. It is new and a lot more glamorous? Yes but to me it just feels like a wham bam zerg fest, button smash skill rotations, do the same thing over and over (and I have even got to the last part yet which would be dungeons.) Can they make the game better? I don't know at this point. As bad a 1.0 launch started then finished in 1.23 was tons more attractive. I am not ripping on other games either. Just seemed version 1 community minus a some bad apples had some unity, maybe because we felt survivors of the game itself when everyone else ditched out. Now version 2 is just over populated, over run by mindless, negative, elite, trash talking players.

Im not going to compare "other" games I want to compare what we left off with in 1.23. All of the same complaints that were brought up in version 1 beginning to end still exist in version 2. You would think that all these things we wanted in version 1 after 2 years plus wait for the remake of ARR they would of fixed. Not the case in fact if you look at the forums people are still ranting about the same things. RMTs, rushing to 50, spamming the same dungeons, primal drop rates, and my favorite speed runs. Only difference now is the markets are flooded with junk with no real price medians. Crafting? what for unless its to level. 50 lvl dungeons are spammed for tomes versus AV and CC for .01% Darklight drops, and as the main topic stated if you don't have such and such gear for such and such instance then your not good enough.

Yoshi Interview taken from Gamebeat-
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/th...ogo-interview/

Yoshida: Because I wasn’t on the team when that decision was made, I’m going to guess why, from what I’ve heard. What I believe is that, back then, they probably thought that a lot of the Final Fantasy XI users would move to Final Fantasy XIV when it was released. But because what they were making was a new game in Final Fantasy XIV, they didn’t want to make them exactly the same. Then it would just be Final Fantasy XI-2, and they didn’t want to make a Final Fantasy XI-2. But they wanted to make it easier for those people who had been playing Final Fantasy XI for such a long time to take a step into this new world by creating things that were similar, but different and unique to the Final Fantasy XIV world. Again, that’s just my guess.
But then again, that lets us see one of the biggest things that was wrong with the original release of Final Fantasy XIV. If they wanted to make it—they should have taken it and made it into Final Fantasy XI-2. Take Final Fantasy XI and make a sequel with new types of systems and new graphics, but build it off of that foundation. Instead of doing that, they decided they wanted to do something new, but still use some of the things from XI. Again, instead of taking one thing and taking it to the next level, they just kept everything kind of in the middle. Nothing was exceptional. That’s why you get this quagmire that was the original release of Final Fantasy XIV. There were a lot of great things that came out of XI, a lot of revolutionary things, like the level sync system. But the fact is, when they made the original Final Fantasy XIV, they made it with a server system that wouldn’t allow level sync. You have this great system you developed. Why not have your new game also use that?

If I wanted to destroy everything that was in the original XIV, I wouldn’t have taken on the position of rebuilding XIV. I would have gone on to Final Fantasy XVI and made that instead. The fact that I took up XIV is because I realized that, again, even though it had the rocky launch, there were still a lot of people out there who loved the game. You had this new generation of players who didn’t play XI and started their MMO experience with Final Fantasy XIV. For them, they don’t know about Tarutaru. They don’t know about Mithra. For them, they know about the Lalafell and the Mi’qote. To take that and destroy that would be destroying those people’s image of what they got into the game for. There’s tens of thousands of people that, for them, that was the first thing. As a hardcore MMO player myself, I know how important characters are to player. They’re your alter egos. Going in and destroying that and starting over with something absolutely new would crush those people. So keeping that was one of the things I decided we were going to do when we set out to rebuild XIV. Keeping those basic things that people had become used to with Final Fantasy XIV.

So in summary he contradicted everything just said in this interview and totally destroyed this game by pretty much copy and pasting "other" games (we know who those are) He talks about being a hardcore player himself but it sure doesn't show it in V2 everything is dumbed down. No one said we wanted a FFIX-2. Was FFXI it a good game sure, I truly believe most of the player base that played Version 1.0 also played FFXI at some point in time. So yes they tried something different and yes it sucked in the beginning but gradually through a painful process formed into something called 1.23 which was a foundation to build on. Instead they destroyed everything about it and created this crap called V2- A Reck Reborn.

I've heard it so many times before "well you have to wait until the next version update to judge" The problem is that instead of sticking to what they had and building upon that in version 1 they catered, copied and pasted from lackluster "other" games.

When I watched that video when meteor hit and the lights went out gave me shivers in my spine. I wanted that Final Fantasy feeling to be forever. Now I'm doing the story line and looking around and thinking okay where is the depth. Do I really have to deliver tea to some guards, or talk to a npc when he is right next to or across from the original quest npc. If it wasn't for the flashbacks of the calamity I wouldn't recognize this is a realm reborn.

I wanted a Summoner but instead got a Warlock. I know most of you will say but your post is to small to mean anything! Well I don't really care what others think because its the truth.

/clap bravo! Bravo!

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Originally Posted by Austin

/clap bravo! Bravo!

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Thank you, thank you.

I agree with OP.

There are decisions within the game that are in my opinion a step-backwards on what we had in 1.0. The missing elemental wheel is one of them, I still feel bad/weird for attacking a mob with it's same element and I completely miss the fact that CNJs had a small upperhand with Aero + Cleric Stance in Ifrit (it was pointless fun).

The "FATEs shouldn't be the main way to level" issue is a great one. But nerfing the experience gained by FATEs isn't the solution, as giving dungeons more experience and incentive to run will create another problem: too much gear; which in turns takes out responsibility and usefulness of crafting classes in the game (this happens at level 50). SE needs to do something about it since just giving more or less exp in one or the later will not fix everything. I would suggest that in the meantime they could add mob grinding but they won't. They could probably give more experience to Guildhests and Levequests and add materials instead of gear to give more usefulness to crafters (imagine this with a player-made crafting levequest system ~ the possibilities)

The other issue that I've noticed in my pre-endgame month is how everything throws gear at you, it's crazy!!! I understand the desire to alleviate the player of thinking on what to upgrade but this is ridiculous. I imagine that the reason for this is that if you select gear over gil (Allagan pieces) you will be short (by default) on money at 50 and you'll have to do something to get it since you need gil to run dungeons (gear repair). This was working before - to some extent, but now it's meaningless since they made dark matter so cheap - and still not available to DoLs!!

There's much to be said but those are my two points that I feel add to the OP.

I think the endgame kills me the most, once you have everything down 3 hours a week is about all you have to spend playing. You can level sure, but that just increases the amount of fate/philo/relic/AK/BC(/CT) grinding you'll have to do in the end. The grinds make everything mundane though, can't agree enough, you can say you play too hard or w/e to anyone but you'll find that grind eventually no matter how slow you go.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

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And in this post, this guy has pretty much summarized how I feel about this game as it stands (for the most part).

The only reason I'm still subbed is because I'm still waiting for them to wake up and realize what they've done to the game, that this "standard" model is nothing but a quick, short-sighted cash-in without future - it's only worked for the game that imposed it, and it only did because of popularity and massive hype, not because it was actually "good". I'm still here only because of a rather foolish hope that the game will eventually change for the better. Wishful thinking? Yeah, maybe, but hey, this is the same dev team that managed to turn the awful game that 1.0 was into the great thing 1.23 was becoming, so... maybe?

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Originally Posted by Klefth

And in this post, this guy has pretty much summarized how I feel about this game as it stands (for the most part).

The only reason I'm still subbed is because I'm still waiting for them to wake up and realize what they've done to the game, that this "standard" model is nothing but a quick, short-sighted cash-in without future - it's only worked for the game that imposed it, and it only did because of popularity and massive hype, not because it was actually "good". I'm still here only because of a rather foolish hope that the game will eventually change for the better. Wishful thinking? Yeah, maybe, but hey, this is the same dev team that managed to turn the awful game that 1.0 was into the great thing 1.23 was becoming, so... maybe?

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It's not the same dev team. The 1.0 Dev team was fired, this dev team only did what 1.0 dev team was going to do through to 1.23. While then creating their new "Realm Remessedup" at the same time.

Just as an FYI. Through the ingame "Suggestion" Contact tab, I did direct them to this thread :3... I wonder if any dev's actually looked at it.

Edit: I just noticed my thread has 10k views O.o;;;

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

It's not the same dev team. The 1.0 Dev team was fired, this dev team only did what 1.0 dev team was going to do through to 1.23. While then creating their new "Realm Remessedup" at the same time.

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I thought it actually was Yoshi's team that did all the changes that led up to 1.23. Well, if that's true, then that just made me lose a bit of that hope...

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Originally Posted by Klefth

I thought it actually was Yoshi's team that did all the changes that led up to 1.23. Well, if that's true, then that just made me lose a bit of that hope...

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It's just what I heard at any rate. Which it seems to be what happened in retrospect.

Very well-written and thought out OP. Well done!

I completely agree :)

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Originally Posted by MistressAthena

It's not the same dev team. The 1.0 Dev team was fired, this dev team only did what 1.0 dev team was going to do through to 1.23. While then creating their new "Realm Remessedup" at the same time.

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It is pretty much the same dev team. They moved people around after Tanaka was replaced by Yoshida, but mostly around the top of the hierarchy. The rest stayed the same, it's just a different direction they are now taking, largely determined by what Yoshida is telling them to do.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

It is pretty much the same dev team. They moved people around after Tanaka was replaced by Yoshida, but mostly around the top of the hierarchy. The rest stayed the same, it's just a different direction they are now taking, largely determined by what Yoshida is telling them to do.

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I thought it was the whole dev team that got replaced. I see.

I can kinda see it in this way... What we have now is exactly that, a tutorial. A sort of pregame to allow both legacy players and new ones to get to about the same point to make up for the fact that the previous incarnation was so bad while not giving those legacy players such a huge advantage.

Everything after level 50 is essentially where the real game begins... Unfortunately this is also where current content ends. The next few content additions will probably be geared towards raising the level cap and moving away from what FFXIV originally was. It'll probably just end up taking a year or two before there is any significant post 50 content.

People who are screaming for content NOW and are comparing it to other MMOs fail to remember that it took WoW a few years and several million concurrent subscriptions before Burning Crusade was even a thing.

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Originally Posted by Vagrant-0

People who are screaming for content NOW and are comparing it to other MMOs fail to remember that it took WoW a few years and several million concurrent subscriptions before Burning Crusade was even a thing.

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At least in WoW I had more than one true lvl 50 dungeon to complete (Upper and lower BRD, Scholo, that undead one with two sides in EP, and a few more I can't recall atm) and world PvP. A month or two later they added multiple BGs to fight in + separate progression/rewards for it, multiple reps to grind, and then 3x 40 man raids + multiple open world raid bosses that dropped top gears. Heck I spent 3 months literally just fighting in TM vs SS battles and infact never even made a forum post for a long time since I had lots to do. People say WoW had no content at launch but I personally remember it having far far FAR more than FF 14 currently has...in next update we get housing beta (yawn), one 4v4 wow arena (lame), Crystal Keep, 4th Primal fight, and 2x 4 man HMs; all that should have been at launch and not 3+ months later....

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Originally Posted by Vagrant-0

I can kinda see it in this way... What we have now is exactly that, a tutorial. A sort of pregame to allow both legacy players and new ones to get to about the same point to make up for the fact that the previous incarnation was so bad while not giving those legacy players such a huge advantage.

Everything after level 50 is essentially where the real game begins... Unfortunately this is also where current content ends. The next few content additions will probably be geared towards raising the level cap and moving away from what FFXIV originally was. It'll probably just end up taking a year or two before there is any significant post 50 content.

People who are screaming for content NOW and are comparing it to other MMOs fail to remember that it took WoW a few years and several million concurrent subscriptions before Burning Crusade was even a thing.

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And what? More dugeons? as Sasakusaku said (yawn). More Primal fights? (yawn).... Same old same old...

Completely agreed with OP. Some ppl are just whiners, some are white knights. These are the communities lol.However to make changes to what OP had mentioned required tons of funds and it's very unlikely gonna change. Like how i mentioned about some animations and graphical problems, it's still happening. Due to how much money involved just to fix these things. However i feel the game is not grasping me. For example, archers can run backfacing the enemy while shooting arrows, and the arrows still hit them. There's no projectiles seen from the arrows, etc etc etc. well.. sigh. welcome to ARR.

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Originally Posted by Permata

Completely agreed with OP. Some ppl are just whiners, some are white knights. These are the communities lol.However to make changes to what OP had mentioned required tons of funds and it's very unlikely gonna change. Like how i mentioned about some animations and graphical problems, it's still happening. Due to how much money involved just to fix these things. However i feel the game is not grasping me. For example, archers can run backfacing the enemy while shooting arrows, and the arrows still hit them. There's no projectiles seen from the arrows, etc etc etc. well.. sigh. welcome to ARR.

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Well Look at how fast they screwed up FFXI with just 1 Abysea expansion, perhaps they can completely change ARR in a good way with 1 expansion!

117 Votes so far! I wonder how many views and votes I'll need to get before an SE person comments.. hmm...

118, actually. And excellent articulation, Athena. I personally prefer an easier game; Final Fantasy XI was a drag after Lv. 10, and sitting around shouting for missions killed my enjoyment. I agree with you, though; Fourteen is entirely too easy.

I agree with OP.
I can't understand why have EXP and Level system, at all. I mean, if the game "starts" only at level 50 (if spamming one dungeon can be considered game), just make a whole tutorial that gives better items periodically, as quests from 1 to 49 do.
And about crafting, when I first played ARR I though to myself: "Nice crafting system, I hope the game puts them to use, like getting rare recipes and materials from several dugeons to make better items than drop/quest reward. I really hope it doesn't become useless as most of MMO's." Well......

And for those talking about OP wanting another FFXI, I've never played FFXI* and I still agree with OP.

*FFXI was so bad-advertised in my country that if you ask anyone about FFXI, they don't even know it existed or they say "Isn't that an online FF that failed?"