The disapointment that is Alexander

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Originally Posted by Elim

So you're saying we should only compare A1-4 to first coil?

k.

IMO first coil had better story and aesthetics, but to each their own.

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What story?

"Oh wow. Look at this cave. I sense my grandpa somewhere down here, lets go!"

That's the first set of turns, right there.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

What story?

"Oh wow. Look at this cave. I sense my grandpa somewhere down here, lets go!"

That's the first set of turns, right there.

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I'm sure someone can sum up Alex story in one sentence too.

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Originally Posted by Elim

I'm sure someone can sum up Alex story in one sentence too.

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Sure, there are crazy cultist goblins somehow utilizing a death machine that's pretty damn large.

Putting it side by side with the girl who is leading us by the hand into a cave to search for her grandpa, which one of the two sound better?

Gotta agree here. The story of "coil" is not interesting until later turns. The story of Bahamut sure was great -- but that was the entire 1.0 storyline that led to that. Would be a bit unfair to compare ALL of it to just Alexander 1-4.

And yeah, first coil story was as dull as it goes -- if you forget about the background of Bahamut, which was as said 1.0 storyline, not coil, then all we get is a girl looking for grandpa indeed. SCOB gets mildly more interesting, FCOB was were the good stuff really was.

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Originally Posted by Elim

I'm sure someone can sum up Alex story in one sentence too.

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You could sum up the entirely of Heavensward's story in one sentence too by oversimplifying it too y'know, but Binding Coil (1-5) did lack depth and just opens up more questions. The same can be said for Alexander though, although it's ever so slightly better than Turn 1-5. For those saying "well it's better than First Coil, so it's fine", sure it's better, but it's still very lackluster. I expect more from Square Enix, known for their awesome stories. One of the reasons I'd prefer they didn't do continued raids was that they're obviously holding back on the story, and waiting 6 months, and then another 6 months after that to get all of it is a tad annoying.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Sure, there are crazy cultist goblins somehow utilizing a death machine that's pretty damn large.

Putting it side by side with the girl who is leading us by the hand into a cave to search for her grandpa, which two sound better?

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lol

Like I said, I found first coils story more interesting. I'm sorry my opinion makes you sad/mad/upset or whatever.

Really? You're going to play the dictionary gotya game?

Your post seemed to imply that you thought I had pre-judged Alex as being a worse raid than coil before it had all been released.

I was simply pointing out that this was not the case and that I was only talking about the atmosphere.

I apologise if I made it difficult for you to understand that by choosing the wrong word.

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Originally Posted by Casper

Gotta agree here. The story of "coil" is not interesting until later turns. The story of Bahamut sure was great -- but that was the entire 1.0 storyline that led to that. Would be a bit unfair to compare ALL of it to just Alexander 1-4.

And yeah, first coil story was as dull as it goes -- if you forget about the background of Bahamut, which was as said 1.0 storyline, not coil, then all we get is a girl looking for grandpa indeed. SCOB gets mildly more interesting, FCOB was were the good stuff really was.

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Even considering 1.0's story, they made it obvious that something was amiss before Coil had even released.

Least with Alex we get a bunch of crazies that can make explosive toys, tanks, and what have you. On top of the fact that they have what basically amounts to a god damned gundam in terms of size to anything in Eorzea.

I do suggest they use Big-O's theme when it completely surfaces though, that would be pretty cool.

I guess two years is like a billion years ago in forum time. It feels like every time we have this discussion people keep bringing up coil with the most rose tinted goggles on the planet.

I can get it, SCoB and FCoB did an amazing job bringing everything together. But considering this is the first part of a multi-patch raid, I think its only fair we compare this to its older brother, BCoB.

BCoB consisted of...

A snake, re-skinned over a field area trash mob.
A series of spheres, just copy pasted from the initial gatekeeper.
Literally nothing.
A series of mobs placed as a wink and nod to previous FF titles. (Mainly XII and XIII)
And a re-skinned dragon.

Overall there was if I recall, a total of 4 cutscenes married to the initial raid, including the intro and stinger of an outro? It wasn't until the very end did we receive any actual plot to add to the mystery.

I feel the Gordian Knot suffers through the same fate, its the introduction to a new story, but it doesn't benefit from an entire game and a 7 minute CGI movie to build it up.

That's not to say there's nothing to look at when it comes to Alexander as a whole. For one, keep in mind you are traveling up the arm. Imagine being in the underbelly of a cruise ship, you wouldn't be seeing much other than metal and pipes. Alexander is a bastion of mobile knowledge, the only people who would realistically be inside these portions of the moving castle would be technicians and engineers.

But not all of the Gordian Knot is just metal and steam shooting everywhere. Which brings us to A3, the Arm.

The arm's architecture looks almost alien compared to the other floors. Replacing the metal and steam pipes with obelisks of stone and marble. It's makes it clear that Alexander won't just be black and grey metal and steam. I have a feeling in later patches, when we are going deeper into Alexander (Like the actual body.) We will be seeing more architecture to make Alexander feel like an actual place people would live in. Since Alexander IS meant to be a place people would live in.

Also, some food for thought. In the Hinterlands, go fly over that one floating rock embedded into the force field surrounding Alexander that you can land on. Take a nice long look at the shape of that rock, then compare it's shape to Alexander's head poking out of the water.

You may find a suspicious similarity between the two. Weird isn't it?

Keep in mind apparently Yoshi-P pretty much flat out said he didn't expect players to clear Savage stuff yet, its designed for a higher gear level, and that most groups here are running at 85% what it was designed for.

In fact, my circle's current expectations are that next savage will be *grossly* overtuned, because this one was cleared too quick.

Basically, Savage is for the 1% until you're in full 200 gear.

Completed the normal mode of Alexander, and haven't really gone back much since. Gear wasn't all that appealing, friends are taking a break, and eso came out right after. So, figured my time and focus was better spent on PVP while it's hot instead.

Honestly I believe Alexander is going to get epic by its last chapter, but right now we're just "learning" about it. I'm also liking the not so urgent feeling since... well we're established god-slayers at this point. Hopefully us not going full assault on the goblins sooner will bite us in the butt and Alexander's going to have some secrets that the gobbies will be oblivious to since... tempering and all.

I will admit that the raid's theme itself seems underwhelming in comparison to Binding Coils of Bahamut. No matter how large the threat actually is, goblins have never in the FF series been taken seriously and still hard to now. I will wait and see how it all plays out before properly criticizing it. I do have a feeling something bigger than the goblins is going to appear and then the threat being more real.

In fairness to Alexander: Gordias, BCoB had a bunch of uninteresting bosses also. First floor was a giant snake, the 2nd a giant ADS, 4th floor was just a gauntlet, and 5th floor was Twintania. Only real interesting boss fights in the entirety of the last raid were Darnus, Phoenix, and Bahamut, mostly because they were all major plot points. I will wait and see how Alexander delivers on this. I do think in the future raids though they need to throw the hard punches right from the start to keep people motivated and interested.

As for gear. SE is getting real lazy here. You would think for top notch raiding gear, you would make each set look unique. Aiming, Scouting, and Striking all look the same with very minor differences. Its understandable for lower gear, but this is unique, very hard to get gear, it should be treated as such.

Yoshi P has no FF experience at all just check his resumé he came from working on Dragon Quest straight to this and his MMO Experience is everything but FFXI. There is really nothing more to say. Its a business its generate money all the non FF fanboys love it cause they dont know better we have to suck it up and accept this lulz of a WoW clone with a FF costume.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

Yoshi P has no FF experience at all just check his resumé he came from working on Dragon Quest straight to this and his MMO Experience is everything but FFXI. There is really nothing more to say. Its a business its generate money all the non FF fanboys love it cause they dont know better we have to suck it up and accept this lulz of a WoW clone with a FF costume.

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Did you ever eat paint chips as a kid?

Velhart: It hurts when im righht doesnt it?

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

Yoshi P has no FF experience at all just check his resumé he came from working on Dragon Quest straight to this and his MMO Experience is everything but FFXI. There is really nothing more to say. Its a business its generate money all the non FF fanboys love it cause they dont know better we have to suck it up and accept this lulz of a WoW clone with a FF costume.

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I love this statement. It's absolutely true. People have a hard time accepting it's a WoW clone. I'm a die hard Final Fantasy fan and even I can admit that. I truly believe if Blizzard decided to re-release World of Warcraft with current gen graphics, it would reign MMO king again. A LOT, TOO MANY inspirations were taken from WoW.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

Yoshi P has no FF experience at all just check his resumé he came from working on Dragon Quest straight to this and his MMO Experience is everything but FFXI. There is really nothing more to say. Its a business its generate money all the non FF fanboys love it cause they dont know better we have to suck it up and accept this lulz of a WoW clone with a FF costume.

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I'm the opposite, I come from an Final Fantasy background with no pervious MMO experience, this feels like a Final Fantasy to me.

Actually...why are you even in this thread? You haven't even done Alex NM yet.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

Velhart: It hurts when im righht doesnt it?

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Funny enough, he has made the most Final Fantasy game since the early 2000's, and it is an MMO none-the-less. Also has expressed greatly how deep of a fan he is of the FF series and expresses it very well. I don't think you need to have worked on previous FF titles to know how a FF works.

Hiromichi Tanaka worked on FF titles since the NES days and look how well FFXIV 1.xx turned out.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

Yoshi P has no FF experience at all just check his resumé he came from working on Dragon Quest straight to this and his MMO Experience is everything but FFXI. There is really nothing more to say. Its a business its generate money all the non FF fanboys love it cause they dont know better we have to suck it up and accept this lulz of a WoW clone with a FF costume.

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All of your favorite directors will die in your lifetime.

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Originally Posted by DukeBurden

I love this statement. It's absolutely true. People have a hard time accepting it's a WoW clone. I'm a die hard Final Fantasy fan and even I can admit that. I truly believe if Blizzard decided to re-release World of Warcraft with current gen graphics, it would reign MMO king again. A LOT, TOO MANY inspirations were taken from WoW.

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They *just* did that.

And subs dropped like a rock. The content was crap.

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Originally Posted by DukeBurden

I love this statement. It's absolutely true. People have a hard time accepting it's a WoW clone. I'm a die hard Final Fantasy fan and even I can admit that. I truly believe if Blizzard decided to re-release World of Warcraft with current gen graphics, it would reign MMO king again. A LOT, TOO MANY inspirations were taken from WoW.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

They *just* did that.

And subs dropped like a rock. The content was crap.

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Did well for Everquest 2! >_>

I apologize OP, seems we got a bit off topic. This is suppose to be criticism towards Alexander.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I will admit that the raid's theme itself seems underwhelming in comparison to Binding Coils of Bahamut. No matter how large the threat actually is, goblins have never in the FF series been taken seriously and still hard to now. I will wait and see how it all plays out before properly criticizing it. I do have a feeling something bigger than the goblins is going to appear and then the threat being more real.

In fairness to Alexander: Gordias, BCoB had a bunch of uninteresting bosses also. First floor was a giant snake, the 2nd a giant ADS, 4th floor was just a gauntlet, and 5th floor was Twintania. Only real interesting boss fights in the entirety of the last raid were Darnus, Phoenix, and Bahamut, mostly because they were all major plot points. I will wait and see how Alexander delivers on this. I do think in the future raids though they need to throw the hard punches right from the start to keep people motivated and interested.

As for gear. SE is getting real lazy here. You would think for top notch raiding gear, you would make each set look unique. Aiming, Scouting, and Striking all look the same with very minor differences. Its understandable for lower gear, but this is unique, very hard to get gear, it should be treated as such.

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Thank you for your contribution to the thread :D
I do believe that Alexander will get a better story in the next installment but I'm of the opinion that after ScoB and Fcob they needed to come out guns blazing with Alexander.
And interesting point with the gear - I didn't even think about that.

I'm not defending Tanaka but his vision was to create something that was not like the rest. Like FFXI was it didnt remind you of WoW or any new MMORPGs that came after WoW wich was good. Again since people by default always randomly like to provoke this out of most of us discussing just because. No one wants to wait 6h for group but we do want to feel like we earned our gears and lvl and stuff wont be useless after 6 months. I think most FFXI gamers lost their minds when they saw how easy it was to level in this game and how everything was handouts and nerfs. I just realized whats the point of me doing Alexander now? What satisfaction will it give me? I can do it when im i200 and the silly title is as valuable as yours I just didnt happen to be "first" LOL <-- See what i mean with this handout gaming mentality? It teaches you to slack and do stuff later because its just as rewarding and i get to do it with nerfs :) Fair huh?

FFXI was an EQ clone that somehow managed to be worse.

Lmao at anyone thinking it was original and fresh, though.

I had more fun 2 manning T1 last night with my DRG and Paladin friend last night then I ever did with Alexander, period. The area was not incredibly large, but it -felt- expansive. The atmosphere was enjoyable, and it reminded me why I loved the coils to begin with. For Velharts point, he's right. All the gear is lazily designed, and not just from Alex. Ravana PLD sword is just a cheap Ruskin of the dread sword. The Alex savage gear should be easily distinguishable, and not just dyeable. I'd like incentive as a raider, because not only am I bored in the raids, I don't care about the future developments of Alexander's story, which isn't anything like what I experienced with coil. Give me a reward that's worth -something- to someone. I'd almost be happy with a compelling story at this point, but if they do the normal/savage raids in the future I hope they change the bosses and make them unique. Should have just named it Alexander HM, cause it's borderline the exact same thing

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Originally Posted by HReincarnate

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The thing I wonder is if the story is even meant to be serious. I don't know how to treat it yet.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

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Fun fact: FFXI came out in 2002. WoW came out in 2004. FFXI drew heavy inspiration from Everquest and developers are open about that. Also by your logic, we should not be playing video games at all.

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Originally Posted by DukeBurden

I love this statement. It's absolutely true. People have a hard time accepting it's a WoW clone. I'm a die hard Final Fantasy fan and even I can admit that. I truly believe if Blizzard decided to re-release World of Warcraft with current gen graphics, it would reign MMO king again. A LOT, TOO MANY inspirations were taken from WoW.

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Actually, people have a hard time realizeing it's not a clone, and just call anything that pretty has mounts and HPs bars a "wow clone" this terrible assumption has been thrown around since relase, and no matter how times you say it in your head, it won't make it true, inspiration does not mean "we copied the game" this is a big mistake all the nay sayers keep using and it just keeps making them look foolish. You are most certainly not a die hard fan if you can't even see this.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Actually, people have a hard time realizeing it's not a clone, and just call anything that pretty has mounts and HPs bars a "wow clone" this terrible assumption has been thrown around since relase, and no matter how times you say it in your head, it won't make it true, inspiration does not mean "we copied the game" this is a big mistake all the nay sayers keep using and it just keeps making them look foolish. You are most certainly not a die hard fan if you can't even see this.

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It's.... basically a WoW clone.

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Originally Posted by DukeBurden

It's.... basically a WoW clone.

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It's not, but we can do this all day,

If it was a wow clone, pretty much every MMO after wow was created is also a clone, and anything new will also be, in addition to being an FFXIV clone, you see the pattern?

You may just be used to WOW if you played it for so many years, and everything you play after will seem like a clone, it happens to a lot of gamers.

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Originally Posted by SkizzleofRagnarok

It teaches you to slack and do stuff later because its just as rewarding and i get to do it with nerfs :) Fair huh?

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But it's NOT as rewarding at that point. Unless you mean gear... which I gotta say is a far distant second to downing content for truly hardcore raiders.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

It's not, but we can do this all day,

If it was a wow clone, pretty much every MMO after wow was created is also a clone, and anything new will also be, in addition to being an FFXIV clone, you see the pattern?

You may just be used to WOW if you played it for so many years, and everything you play after will seem like a clone, it happens to a lot of gamers.

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I played the free trial of WoW 3 weeks ago. 20 levels was ENOUGH to see where the entire layout for FFXIV was pulled from.

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Originally Posted by DukeBurden

I played the free trial of WoW 3 weeks ago. 20 levels was ENOUGH to see where the entire layout for FFXIV was pulled from.

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Really? 20 whole levels? you must be so proud. they level up the same...and they have HP bars.. omg it is a clone! how on earth did i NOT see this, omfg.

Sarcasm aside, like i sad, we can do this all day, but you're free to believe whatever you like. i don't want to merry go around again with this.

I agree on pretty much all of your points. The look and feel of Alex is pretty bland to me, i'm sure there are people who are into the whole steampunk thing, but i personally am unimpressed. The boss arenas are very monotone and uninteresting, aside from A3, and the bosses themselves are forgettable, again, aside from A3. The general feel as well is disappointing, I don't feel like i'm in some Fantastical place, I feel like i'm in some bland, industrial factory.

I also wish that these fights were less focused on stalling progression with DPS, and more focused on mechanics. A1S's difficulty is amlost entirely dependent on DPS. I'm a WHM so I am handling a large portion of the healing, and honestly it just takes practice. It's pretty tight at times, but like learning to heal all fights you just need to experience it. The DPS check however, is a bit much. My old group, as well as a friend's group wiped at 1% countless times.
It also sounds like this is the case with A3S, however it has much harder mechanics on top of the intense DPS checks. There is still no group on my server that has downed A3S, and the one group that was closest, at ~7%, broke up.

IMO SE made these fights this way to simply extend how long these fights will be relevant. It is honestly lazy design to me.

IMO, the proliferation of dps checks as the difficulty barrier in fights stems from the feedback on raids/trials in 2.XX. People continually complained about the fights being too mechanics heavy and just a game of "team jump rope" and that it was "lazy design" and no fun.

I guess this could be a good example of "be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it".

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Really? 20 whole levels? you must be so proud. they level up the same...and they have HP bars.. omg it is a clone! how on earth did i NOT see this, omfg.

Sarcasm aside, like i sad, we can do this all day, but you're free to believe whatever you like. i don't want to merry go around again with this.

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Yes, 20 level was enough to notice where the foundation for FFXIV was influenced by. From the hot bar and GCD functions to the way we queue up quests, are notified of them on the map and mini map, key enemy names high lighted, the mount quest is on the same level, same dungeon matching feature, etc. Even though I NEVER played WoW before FFXIV, when I played it, it literally felt like I was playing the SAME game just WoW now instead of FFXIV. I don't know if you can't see this or refuse to admit it, but it's true.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

It's not, but we can do this all day

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It's not, it's worse.

What FFXIV has taken from WoW:
Vertical progression of replacing gear every few weeks/months for higher ilvl.
Standard cookie cutter UI and combat mechanics.
One single progression path for endgame content.
Cross server Dungeon Finder.
Hand holding quest system that leads you to your objectives.

I'm not saying other post WoW games also didn't copy these formulas but in some of those cases, it wasn't the primary mechanics of the game. What SE didn't copy they actually did rather well. By that I mean story and.... story? They did literally nothing new in FFXIV, nothing, not a single new or unique thing in the MMO genre. There is no reason outside of story to play it over another MMO and actually plenty of reasons not to. Broken features like housing and PvP are enough to dissuade a lot of players as it basically means your only side content available is chasing minions, mounts and glamour. There is virtually 0 open world content outside of gathering and crafting which do nothing but maybe make you some money to spend on nothing because again, unless you're chasing minions and glamours there is nothing to even buy. Housing was their attempt at a gil sink and even that they screwed up.

You can defend and argue your point til you're blue in the face, fact of the matter is, XIV is incredibly shallow for a game already in it's first expansion. By this time in XI there were 100s of things to do that would progress your job/character that were not just cosmetic or related to leveling another job and that is why it is always used as a comparison to what should have been it's successor not it's bastardized illegitimate child. They had the entire foundation of 1.0 and years of feedback from legacy players in addition to the two years of ARR to do something new with Heavansward and it ended up as an identical repetition of ARR.

^ this +1 (that's HQ, btw) :D

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Originally Posted by Kazama

By this time in XI there were 100s of things to do that would progress your job/character that were not just cosmetic or related to leveling another job.

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FFXIV 2.0 (and onwards) has been out for a little less than two years. FFXI launched on May 16, 2002. By May of 2004, based on this page, there were the following end game events:

- Dynamis
- Sky
- Ground Kings

Dynamis could be done twice a week, King were on a spawn timer, so the only thing there was to do with no limitation was Sky (though even that had timers on all the NMs to drop the pop items for gods).

ITT: People giving commentary on Alex Savage who've barley managed to dip a toe into the first fight. Precious.

For the record, I disagree with nearly all sentiments by the OP. Good raid, even normal mode, thoughtful and fun to run with competent people.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

IMO, the proliferation of dps checks as the difficulty barrier in fights stems from the feedback on raids/trials in 2.XX. People continually complained about the fights being too mechanics heavy and just a game of "team jump rope" and that it was "lazy design" and no fun.

I guess this could be a good example of "be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it".

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Totally this ^
I chuckled when I read dps check complaints. It's just sad - poor SE can't get anything right. And also, dps checks will be nothing after everyone is i200+