FFXIV: ARR becoming TORtanic

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Originally Posted by Miinister

They should hire you Chrysania, effing good ideas. I want to play the MMO you envision and wonder why they can not do these simple things to make it FUN.

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Mighty kind of you to say!

Its long been an observation of mine that mmos are very commonly unfriendly environments and bad games, with the few that are not are cutesy or childishly shallow.

Why, for example, must it be regarded as a staple in mmos for there to be grind you will absolutely hate? Are we still trying to justify this lazy design absence as some sort of 'rite of passage'? Its not good game design; its crap.

Why also must mmo's be work? I define work as labor you may or may not enjoy, but must do whether you like it or not, for this concern.

While it is true that people tend to value more highly that which they feel they have earned, mmos try perhaps too hard to make you feel invested thusly (and more likely to keep passing whether you want to or not lest you have 'wasted all that time') and too little trying to genuinely earn that kind of loyalty.

To this, I think something my husband recently said says it best: "MMO's are like abusive friends in virtually every way. They're very demanding, prone to being manipulative and doing everything they can at all times to make you think you need them, when, in fact, they need you."

And its bloody well true. So why do we put up with it?

Do we, in general, not write yet imagine that it could be better? MMO makers are quick to bemoan how hard and expensive it is, yet it looks to me like the vast majority of their time and efforts are not spent trying to bring us a better game, but rather, refine ways to maximize our time wastes and treadmills.

They say its soooo hard to 'balance'. I suspect the truth is that its hard to make sure we can't have too much fun with any given thing. The balance they actually mean isn't the one we tend to assume.

I won't say that its cheap and easy to make a great game to modern specs, and mmo's have ongoing costs to boot. But I do not think it is as difficult as they would have us believe. Or, at last, it shouldn't have to be if they weren't so often trying to please too many types of gamers at once, and consequently leaving them all often dissatisfied.

MMO's should specialize. They should target a specific market and serve it well rather than trying to 'do it all' and generally sink at everything.

Why? Because WoW has been doing it all for 8 years, and if you can't do even one thing better than WoW, you cannot compete.

SWTOR, as a shining example, should have been more like mass effect as a game, because that style of game is something bioware does very well. Powerful action, great storytelling and lots of dialige-driven character development is, I'd daresay, what most of the audience wanted, along with space combat and rather a lot more to explore in general.

Nobody got what they wanted with SWTOR, however. You'd almost think they set out to screw it up in the most screwed up way possible, at least if you were me.

Here, 1.0 was...junk. Only the most undeterable bothered fighting with its insanities to play it, and having beta'd it, I can well say that SE WA told mammy times and in many different ways by many that out was a bad job and would not, as it was, go far.

I was there one day when a rep asked the group I was in for or opinion on something we'd just done and, in being told some things he clearly didn't want to hear, told us we obviously didn't understand the thing that was bad, and it was fine; we were the problem.

I remember it well, because it was the day I decided never to touch ff14 again.

Here I am though. Its not the same game, that's for sure, but its still an mmo in that it trites very hard, and very transparently, to waste as much of your time as possible while utterly minimizing its own effort on anything at all.

Maybe, just maybe, it could try being a good game instead, and the equivalent of a good business partner at least. Friend might be too alien to hope after.

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

Edit 2: I still have my original SNES cartridge of FF2, from waaaay back when, before I knew it was actually 4! Lovely game. I was rather impressed with the PSP remake, though the After Years pseudo-sequel...eh. It missed something. Wouldn't you agree, mon peche?

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So you have the US version of it, not the Japanese version. You know the US version was nerfed heavily because they didn't think the American's could handle the original difficulty. Once again, you failed at comprehension. Your FF2 cartridge is NOT the original hard version of the game. I'm talking about the actual hard version of FFIV.

The sad thing is that SWTOR actually had a lot to do on launch, despite however its popularity might've waned afterwards.

The one thing SWTOR kicks FFXIV's butt at is maintaining story quests/cutscenes for far longer than XIV does. The biggest problem I've had with XIV's content is the sharp dropoff once you've completed the main quest. With SWTOR, if you finish one class's large storyline, then you can go and do all of the other ones, and have brand new story content to keep you interested for far longer than XIV. Sure XIV has class quests/storylines, but they are so miniscule and far apart compared to SWTOR's. So once I've finished my main story with my first XIV class/job, there instantly doesn't feel like as much to do with my other classes/jobs in XIV in comparison. Then again, I am partial to plot and cutscenes as opposed to grinding endgame, and some people like grinding endgame, so for them this isn't a bad scenario.

lolTOR. When "Cut scenes with voice over!" is your main selling point, you've got a problem... Fail game from a fail company, end of story.

Now to address your points:

There are more people with zero interest in PvP than zero interest in Crafting. As a whole in MMO's, the PvP community tends to be rather vocal but also makes up a very small portion of the player base. PvP is not, nor has it ever been, a requirement for a game to be successful. It may be a nice diversion for yourself but it is not a make or break feature for most MMO players.

Define post game. Are you intentionally limiting yourself to only one Job and the Classes required for it? All all those Classes level 50? Are you intentionally limiting yourself on what "post-game" there is? Judging by your next points, the answer is yes. YOU are the one who has written off leveling additional Classes as well as Crafting. By doing that, YOU are writing off anywhere from fifty to seventy percent of the content this game has to offer. Considering that you've done this to yourself, I can only imagine that attaining the various Achievements as well as leveling a Grand Company have also been written off so arguably you're writing off an even higher percentage of game content.

So the generic loot from mobs isn't top notch raid gear and Gil comes in slowly... If you didn't reference the fail that is SWTOR, I'd wonder if this was your first game. Welcome to pretty much every MMO on the market. Generic mobs are never going to drop top end items. If they did, your end game content would either be a joke or would bring in so much power creep that the whole game would quickly become a joke. Gil is a resource that enables the player to do a whole host of things. As such, it is going to be limited in order to limit what the player can accomplish. I'd much rather see the flow of Gil being used as a limit as opposed to artificial timers like some Facebook game.

No transfer, no vanity slot? Again, welcome to most MMO's. Very, very rarely will you see add-on's such as these implemented at launch because they are not as critical to other essential elements such as guilds. All things considered, I feel that the system and features we did get at launch are very polished and well done. I'll happily take that over not being able to enjoy a vanity slot for a while.

The queue times are the only thing where I can agree that there was an issue and in some cases continues to be an issue. Of course there is something we can do, despite it not being something most want to do; change Jobs. Seriously, if you're sitting in a queue for "hours and hours" as a DPS that's no one's fault but your own. Go out, level up as a Healer or Tank and come back. You greatly reduce your queue time, you suddenly remove the "nothing to do" fallacy, and you probably help trigger a queue for several others who are too lazy to help themselves.

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Originally Posted by Juubi

The reality of the current MMO landscape is that an MMO can exist without crafting, but it can not exist without PVP, you said it yourself, crafting wasn't fun, the degree of its simplicity or complexity is irrelevant, the point is that crafting isn't fun and downright boring, Many would rather clash swords with another player than carry a pickaxe

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FF11 called, it still exists 1000 years later. And no, 11's PVP isn't real PVP. I don't understand why people who dislike a game so much simply don't quit playing. Yeesh.

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Originally Posted by seekerofpower

So you have the US version of it, not the Japanese version. You know the US version was nerfed heavily because they didn't think the American's could handle the original difficulty. Once again, you failed at comprehension. Your FF2 cartridge is NOT the original hard version of the game. I'm talking about the actual hard version of FFIV.

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We actually had the children's EZMODE type in the US. Sad.

An mmo is more likely to survive with healthy PVE and no PVP than it is with mediocre pve and mediocre or good pvp.

The truth of the matter is right now, XIV has mediocre PVE and no PVP. The worst of both worlds.

This PVE is tons of fun the first one, three, five times you do it.

somewhere between then and forty five times later, it stops being fun.

And don't fault me for rushing to endgame. This is how I like to play MMOs. Fault SE for not realizing there's a lot in the mmo community that don't want to fiddle faddle around on a dozen jobs and actually want to be 50. Aside from their experience with XI, I'm sure that some of their employees have worked for AION, WOW, TSW, TOR, something. Some among them know the behavior of the mmo community.

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Originally Posted by Juubi

The reality of the current MMO landscape is that an MMO can exist without crafting, but it can not exist without PVP, you said it yourself, crafting wasn't fun, the degree of its simplicity or complexity is irrelevant, the point is that crafting isn't fun and downright boring, Many would rather clash swords with another player than carry a pickaxe

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FFXI existed for 11 years without PVP. Runes of Magic has several PvE dedicated servers, that are highly populated, and still have limited pvp. FFXIV has existed for two+ years without PVP. It can do fine.

Sorry to shock you but MMORPGs don't need PVP to exist. FFXIV will get a very limited form of PVP.

And sorry to say but I am having fun crafting and gathering as much as I love to fight. If you don't believe me, refer to my signature. Two gatherings at 50, one at 40. Three crafts at 50.

So, about how crafting isn't fun...

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

You should see my bad side if 'charming' isn't to your liking.

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I'm pretty sure charming would not be one of the words I’d ever use to describe you.

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But this is not a sandbox of any sort. Its not even a little sandboxy. There are no particular tools here in ARR for people to basically build their own game out of. That is not, in fact, a component of MMO's with any commonality at all. So, while you're being dead wrong by dint of confusing 'sandbox' for MMO...

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Sigh, the example was to show the difference between similar activities in a single player game vs MMO, and it is my assertion that even for theme park MMOs like ARR the social component is a very integral part of the experience.

Unless you’re just a terrible person who can’t make any friends.

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I'm the authority on what I think. You disagree?

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Of course not, though it does strike me that you seem to think your opinions are facts.

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That's nice. Do you expect me to respect your opinion because you had the temerity to have one, but couldn't quiiiiite evidence genuine thought backing it? Nope.

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Respect? From you? Why, never! At this point I wouldn’t even expect you to display a shred of common courtesy.

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Incorrect, my malapropic fellow forumer. See, there was no oppositional target there. You're one of those lads that discovered logical fallacies on a forum somewhere and thought they sounded very witty, I surmise? 'Mass ad hominem'. Keep your cookie, you need it more. The term you're looking for is 'hyperbole'.

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Naw, I'll readily cede the mastery of the English language to you, it is after all not my first language, but even then I have to say you rely on sophistry a bit too much. The sad part? You still haven’t responded to my original point, which is that you basically labeled every Eve player a sociopath. Not a very classy move there Chrysania.

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My argument is rather simple, all things considered: ARR doesn't have the quality where it counts to hook and retain the people it will require to succeed financially.

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If things remains as they are, I agree. 2.1 is a rather important update they need to get right.

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While it is, to some extent, a poor thing for me in regard of my general hopes for ARR, I'd dare think it worse for you, as you seem to be a valiant defender of something here. I'm not sure what, but you're valiantly defending it, whatever it is.

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I’m actually defending nothing here, I enjoy ARR for what it is, but I also see its flaws just fine. If you had stopped for a second and read through what I wrote initially before launching into your tirades, you probably would’ve noticed that all I commented on was the criteria you used to judge MMOs and your thoughts on MMO gaming.

But apparently to you that’s akin to running over your pet puppy repeatedly and pissing on its dead body while singing praise to ARR.

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They could have done amazing things. They had the technology. All the pieces were there.

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The time and money, were not, 1.0 made certain of that.

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Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

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I guess this is where we make quotes in foreign languages to look more intelligent?

Here's mine to you: 兼聽則明，偏信則暗

See. I have to voice my own opinion here. And not just to say "I love this game" or anything. But I want to point out one thing that keeps getting mentioned, in a sense, but never has the light shone on it.

This game has not had a single content patch yet. No expansions. No large additions outside of the summer event and a few tweaks, really. So why is everyone comparing a new game to those that have had several, if not more, content additions? Yes. We have CM, Praetorium, AK, 3 HMs and a 5 part raid as end game PvE. That... Is actually a lot. A total of SEVEN places for end game content before the first content patch. And that patch is promising to bring even more. Mix that with nine jobs, eight crafters and three gatherers that can all be leveled to 50. A full storyline, plenty of sidequests, FATEs, dungeons up until 50, Guildhests, Leves... And if nothing else, a vibrant lore and stunning visuals for RP.

How are people already bored with this game?

Most people love the older games right now because they've added so much. WoW has 4 expansions and quite a few patches with each of them. The lack of content, yes, is there. For now. FOR NOW! But that's the part of an MMO. Content keeps coming out for it. It's like DLC for an Xbox game, only fuller and without a fee directly for it. Sheesh... Learn some patience people and ENJOY it. Don't just burn through it.

ARR has its issues. The biggest one that no one even touched on is the fact that SE decided to be the only company I know of that places everything server side causing retarded lag in fights where .5 second means life or death. This issue is by far my biggest complaint.

Everything the OP mentioned means little to nothing. Q times can be avoided by not Q'ing up on Monday and Tuesday, shocker I know. Crafting is actually better then most games because you can't just buy mats and afk for an hr to be max level.

There are problems, but the problems are bigger then the "things you don't like to do"

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Originally Posted by Matthias

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First of all, this game was designed with already existing max level characters in mind. So there's that.

Also it's not competing with games in the past where they had no content updates, it's competing with other games in their current state. ARR being a 'new' game is irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Juubi

Seriously, with the way things are progressing, it won't be long until this game follows the footsteps of SWTOR: .......

....... I hope Square Enix remembers that first impressions last and hope they won't regret that these game deficiencies won't be solved too little too late like SWTOR did.

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http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3VP1jeHITf...oo+tantrum.jpg

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Originally Posted by Matthias

How are people already bored with this game?

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If the game is based on the community.. I'd like to know the community will be stable enough for me to keep playing the game. Therefore if the game is bad/boring and shuns many away.. then those months of 'future' investment are doubled if not quadrupled. Time is money mang, and I have stuff to do outside of gaming (shocking i know).

In my opinion though and I dare say there would be a fairly large consensus over this; Is that subscriptions just aren't worth it for any modern gamer these days since theres so many games that do it better, or are actually innovative and fresh.. Hell I can even see elder scrolls online & everquest next failing simply because their not established subscription based games.

Developers need to understand that you have to go far beyond the known standards to justify a long-term commitment such as a subscription. Blizzard understands this with their "project titan" which was scrapped and redone from the ground up with a b2p/f2p model in mind.


*to answer your question though.. its the combat man.. if you can't backseat game without yawning then its too slow and not entertaining/stimulating. Oh yeah DODGE THE RED CIRCLE OR CONE!

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Originally Posted by Matthias

The lack of content, yes, is there. For now. FOR NOW!

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The game has a severe lack of content on all areas of the game, and the whole "you can't compare it to older games" argument has never worked to begin with. Of course you can compare to them, they are the competion. They are the games that players will leave this game for, if nothing is done. And guess what? We are paying for the game now. NOW! :P

CM/Prae give zero loot and only tomes of philo; it's a boring philo farm raids that are about as exciting as watching paint peel.

AK is fun the first 10 times but after that we are expected to run it 1000+ times for 2 months until 2.1. Yuck...

Primal fights: once you get weapon and or relic bit there is absolutely no reason to go back. Besides, they are over in less than 10 mins. You can't call that deep content, sorry!

Coil: only a small portion of players will see that place and even less that will have success. Need a leet crew of well geared/played people to have any chance.

Leveling alts: no thanks, I am not an alt person + there is no point competing with RMT abusers/botters anyways when it comes to crafting besides, have you seen the costs for end game items? Only people who can afford that * is gil buyers. Pretty much I find a class I like and stick with it for a long time. SWToR tried that ploy of making a game where you fill in your time with alts...well, I lasted three months of that before I hit "cancel" and only reason I lasted that long is because it had PvP at launch; ff 14 has none at all until they implement a 4v4 WoW arena next patch (lame). Oh how history repeats it self?

Lesser dungeons: did them all. None of them are worth running after you done them a few times so all there is left is AK. Yay?

Rest the 'content' is not worth mentioning since they are not rewarding nor fun.

So here I wait for 2.1 and pray it brings in content that should have been in at launch...first impressions are lasting impressions. Patches only every 3 months is not going to go down well, let me tell you.

edit. also comparing this to content from a 8+ year old games launch is flawed. You should not just meet that bar, it should be EXCEEDED since most modern MMOs usually offer more than this these days. Rift, SWToR, TSW, GW2, ect all offered more end game content at launch so I really don't get why people bring up that excuse...

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Originally Posted by Juubi

it won't be long until this game follows the footsteps of SWTOR:
- No PvP upon launch (even SWTOR had PvP on Launch)

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What? SWTOR had PvP at launch, therefore a game without PvP at launch is following in its footsteps?

Must be the oversized font, it seems to be affecting your ability to communicate...

Yes why don't they have 10 years worth of content off the bat? For one if this was 100% based off of players being at max level we would have just started at max level.

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Originally Posted by Menubrea

First of all, this game was designed with already existing max level characters in mind. So there's that.

Also it's not competing with games in the past where they had no content updates, it's competing with other games in their current state. ARR being a 'new' game is irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Juubi

Seriously, with the way things are progressing, it won't be long until this game follows the footsteps of SWTOR:

- No PvP upon launch (even SWTOR had PvP on Launch)

- Little Post-Game Stuff to do (AK,CP Runs, Long Duty Finder Queue, Tomes Farming)
Very boring and repetitive stuff.

- Little incentive to do a max level alt class, leveling them is entirely dependent
Upon mindless Fates grinding and minuscule leve quests, seriously why shouldn't
former low lvl quests reset for a low level alt?

- Crafting is very boring and inconsequential and a majority of players have no interest
In wasting their time crafting wherein they could be doing other more fun stuff

- Worthless monster drops that give nothing but stupid crafting materials

- Very hard to accumulate Gil in this game because monster loot sucks.

- Ridiculous teleportation and repair fees

- No server transfers upon launch

- Terrible Instance Dungeon queues in Duty Finder

- No vanity/fashion items upon launch

I hope Square Enix remembers that first impressions last and hope they won't regret that these game deficiencies won't be solved too little too late like SWTOR did.

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seriously? you sound to me like just a troll who wants to get some post ranks by posting this stuff, lets breakdown stuff shall we ?

- no pvp ? well yea cos this is a PvE game not a PvP game

- little post lvling stuff to do ? who told you to ride the fate band wagon for max lvl? did you finish the story line? did you watch all the CS do you know what the story was telling you ? did you even bother with quests ? the content is there you just ignored it.

-little intiative to do alt max level right now then tell me this, was there any other MMO who used the idea of multiple classes on same character before FFXI ? or the idea of sub jobs and main jobs requirement to unlock something else ? better yet allowing you to lvl everything on one character ? just like the FFXI you can do that in this game, no you Runes of Magic and stuff dont count cos they came after the only thing that I can say was before FFXI with that concept was UO but that is Old school I bet you never even heard of that game before.

-Crafting now if you were to take crafting out of most MMO then there is no point in making a MMO player driven economey since thats what makes a MMORPG what they are.

-worthless drops they are only worthless if you think they are worth less, let me ask you this do you know what Vortex headdress are? what about inferno tapers? no? I guess not, I know you are gonna reply to my post after using google cos you dont know what they are.

-hard to make money really? I wouldnt know cos everytime I login I am broke but then again I get about 100-200k spend that and then go broke again... I wonder how I am making all that money ? oh yea, those worthless monster drops that you sell to NPC I just sell those to other players...

-no server transfer you know why its not there right? its because the people like you who didnt want to use the server transfer option when it was there before the launch but cant wait to complain about it, dont worry they got it covered its coming in next patch, since free trial peopl should be out of game by then.

-duty finder I admit they have some hicups with it with all the overloading of it and all, let me ask you what other game has resolved issues of crashing and stuff with in a week? heck how many games have had it at launch? most games you know stole the idea from one and another, dont just say that its not a issue with the games that are already out way before this game because you would be lying.

-no vanity right about that... did you know there is a event going on right now ? so whats there to stop you from using that gear in dungeon run? nothing because I have done it in Preaterium, even in Castrum Meridum as well, I did it with my FC member when 2 of us did Preaterium run just for the fun of it, we ran the whole run in swiming suits, then next day we were going to do Castrum run as FC, btw it wasnt planned on FC run but it turned out like that, same me and the other guy we changed right at the start of the run, by the time we turned off the first alert, the whole group was running in swimsuits, even the tank all they had was their weapon and shield... so dont go around saying the gear isnt there, its there but it takes the normal equipment slot, use it like that till this next patch comes....


oh and as for impersion they already know, they have known about it for about 2 years, because of failed rush launch of orignal game, where the original producer refused to listen to player base and went ahead with launch anyways, because of which SE lost alot of money and two years worth of revenue, if he had listened to player base at that time and delayed the game for few more months SE would have been rolling in money, orignal game was intersting and good but I like more of the functions in this game, for someone who has played the both orignal and relaunch I can say SE has pulled Rabbit out of the hat, sure its not the colour rabbit they wanted but its a rabbit none the less...

so let the comment about being a white knight come, because I know I will be here being patient with this as I have been for 2 years, I am not going anywhere I am quite curious as to what SE is gonna throw my way...

*sorry for any Spelling mistakes*

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Originally Posted by seekerofpower

So you have the US version of it, not the Japanese version. You know the US version was nerfed heavily because they didn't think the American's could handle the original difficulty. Once again, you failed at comprehension. Your FF2 cartridge is NOT the original hard version of the game. I'm talking about the actual hard version of FFIV.

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It seems to be you that fail at comprehension as you seem to be laboring under this unfortunate delusion that you have anything even remotely resembling...a point. Your initial premise is wrong; I've been playing FF games for about as long as they've existed to play. My statements based upon that fact are contrastive between their content and experiences (qualitative/anecdotal), whereas you are simply attempting (with great ineptitude and nothing that's ever stood near a point, let alone possessed one) to...what? Prove my opinion wrong? Because you dreamed up this notion that I've...never played Final Fantasy games?

No, I didn't grow up in Japan or have magical access to imported games at roughly the age of...what wozzit...12? 12ish?

But here. You keep belaboring a non-point and have confused your own total lack of comprehension for mine, so I can only presume words are too much for you to process.

Baka.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...LtYMhzKkwqc2q7

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

I'm pretty sure charming would not be one of the words I’d ever use to describe you.

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And your topical expertise would be leading the way, I'm sure.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

Sigh, the example was to show the difference between similar activities in a single player game vs MMO, and it is my assertion that even for theme park MMOs like ARR the social component is a very integral part of the experience.

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The social component would be very integral to retention, yes. How do you generate retention? What core component of the matter must, itself, have either the active quality of being enjoyable to some quantifiable majority of your target market, or is at least not alienating thereof?

The answer: the gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

Unless you’re just a terrible person who can’t make any friends.

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Once again, you have to first be attracted to a game and likely find some sort of enjoyment playing that game before you're going to be in that game long enough to get to the part where social integration becomes relevant. This is, for what I'd wager would be the vast majority, true.

Most people are not in multi-game clans/guilds. Most people are not migrating between games with friends. What are most people doing?

Trying games out uuuuusually by themselves. Its them vs the game. Battle 1: FIGHT

Does the game suck to install? Endless fiddly problems connecting/maintaining a connection to the servers? Does it crash every time you're making a character? If yes, them's some problems. If no...moving along.

Ok, you're logged in. What now? Its still You vs The Game. Can you reasonably figure out how to perform basic functions with minimal difficulty? ARR's got a perfectly good tutorial system in place, and it needs it. Moving along.

You've run around for an hour or so, mostly just getting your bearings. Now you've got a class and you're rip-roaring to go try it out.

You find your way outside. Whee, lets beat on the squirrel; you need three of those anyway!

Still You vs The Game. Is it fun so far? In ARR, I daresay they did quite well with the super-important 'First two hours' experience. Well done SE, you nailed this important step pretty ok.

But...then its a few days later. Mirroring my experience, you've stuck your foot out into socializing, asking people lots of questions, chiming in on random zone banter, generaly being sociable. You know you're in an MMO and you're going to need to get a guild eventually, but you don't have to worry about that straight out the gates in most games. You should have plenty of time to run around before you need to worry about finding the FC that's right for you.

NOPE! Oho, how wrong you are. Level 15 stage in that main story you were starting to get really into, are you? PAUSE. Nope, no more game for you, go find people to do this dungeon with. And then this dungeon. And juuuuuuust because ...another dungeon.

Now, maybe you're ok with that, and if you are that's nice. I'm not. I think that's bad game design and forces people to go guild hunting (or rely on the duty finder, which SE should not be encouraging anyone playing a DPS class to do for how badly that reflects on them, whether its fair or not that it does so) FAR sooner than I think is even remotely wise.

Such content often starts appearing in other games around that level of power, sure; you're not forced to stop everything and be prohibited from continuing until you do it in the direct competitors' games. Why does SWTOR encourage you and warmly invite you to do Esseles/Black Talon at level 10, but not lock you out of ever moving on with yourself until you do?

Why does WoW practically handhold you to Dead Mines/Ragefire Chasm at about levels 15-18, but not stonewall you from running right along with your bad self if you'd prefer?

ARR didn't read the fine print there, perhaps. You let people make friends and jump into the social pool...on their own time. Better yet, you cheerfully draw attention to social tools throughout the first 1/3 of the leveling experience, force none, but remind. Make sure they know they're there and that a tutorial for using them, if required, is just a click away.

SE did the tutorials right, which makes it all the more hilarious that they interrupted their game selling itself to new players so quickly to ...force them to not just do a social dungeon, but THREE IN A ROW!

HAH! No, you don't have to be a terrible person that can't make friends to quite easily find ARR's model both frustrating and, dare it be said, alienating. You could easily be a 'normal person', whatever that really is, that just doesn't appreciate the disruption.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

Of course not, though it does strike me that you seem to think your opinions are facts.

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My opinions are the facts by which I'll sub or never bother. My opinions are the facts by which most of my friends and guildmates from elsewhere will decide whether or not to even look at ARR for much. They like to get me to be the canary trying these new games out. If I come back choking and fuming and breathing 120 fiery words per minute, they know better than to bother.

So no, not objective universal-trufax capital 'F' Facts, but for all intents and purposes, they're the chief facts relevant to my decision-making processes.

This is, as an amusing aside, true for us all. SE doesn't have 'The Playerbase' to actually concern itself with. They have a whole lot of individual opinions to sway, appeal to and...oh, right, IMPRESS.

Because why? They need us. We don't need them. And that, monsieur, IS a fact.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

Respect? From you? Why, never! At this point I wouldn’t even expect you to display a shred of common courtesy.

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Mein herr, I've been alarmingly charming and curiously courteous. Wry with a light spreading of snark whilst remaining germane to the points presented and topic at hand? This isn't even an argument. We're one pot of tea away from it being a rousing discussion, and not a thing more.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

Naw, I'll readily cede the mastery of the English language to you, it is after all not my first language, but even then I have to say you rely on sophistry a bit too much. The sad part? You still haven’t responded to my original point, which is that you basically labeled every Eve player a sociopath. Not a very classy move there Chrysania.

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I DID respond to your initial point; it was hyperbole. Literary exaggeration not meant to be taken literally, but rather as a representative context figure.

And for the love of air, man, we're on an internet forum. Seminal treatise on Very Important Things, this is not.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

If things remains as they are, I agree. 2.1 is a rather important update they need to get right.

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To that point, we're entirely agreed. You might dislike my armchair fancy for using single player games as any sort of contrast to MMO's (And why shouldn't I? Why should I be 'fair' and give MMO's a special retard room in which they don't have to impress by the same or even similar standards as everything else that wants my money? Why do MMO's allegedly deserve 'special considerations' that are tantamount unto special permissions to be shoddy, awful games nobody in their right mind would play EXCEPT with friends to deaden the pain of the visceral experience?) buuuuut...

I apparently have intellectual courtesy sufficient to still want to know what you think they should change and what you think they got right.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

I’m actually defending nothing here, I enjoy ARR for what it is, but I also see its flaws just fine. If you had stopped for a second and read through what I wrote initially before launching into your tirades, you probably would’ve noticed that all I commented on was the criteria you used to judge MMOs and your thoughts on MMO gaming.

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MMO's are very often afforded special considerations no other game or entertainment platform would be given if they begged for them. Why is that?

Why do we tolerate in MMO's what we'd burn buildings down over in our...oh...cable television experience? Gosh darn cable television subscribers, they just want everything on a silver platter. They don't want to work for their HBO and their cinemax; they're lazy is what they are. They just want to pay their sub and have it ladled into their laps.

...Except that is, in fact, how it absolutely is with cable television. That is exactly how it is with internet service. Nobody has to farm tokens in addition to their subscription fees in order to purchase things via Amazon Prime.

Yet, MMO's enjoy a special status for no good reason at all. None, at least, I can even begin to identify.

Nothing in the world except an MMO could ask of us the things they ask and outright flagrantly expect and hope for much better than to be laughed off the floor. So, why do we give MMO's that sort of special pedestal?

Why is it not only reasonable, but angrily defensible, for an MMO to be a poor game riddled with glaring oversights a five year old, if queried, could have espied as probably being important?

Its a real puzzle to me, and I don't know that many people even think of it in that frame. So you might say I'm spreading the question.

Because its distinctly abnormal in the service industry. Even if you compare it to subscribing to a sports club and still needing to 'work' to play the sport (which isn't work to those that enjoy the sport), we're pretty much never offered an MMO that specializes at all.

If they were sports fields, they try to mangle at least three entirely incompatible different pursuits into one cramped area. Welcome to EveryGame, where you can do EVERYTHING...poorly. Guaranteed to be mediocre in every way possible! Don't worry, we will neglect your favorite experience soon NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE! We've probably neglected it recently and will neglect it again very soon. Watch the patch notes!

ARR is making the same mistake as every attempt at conforming to WoW's long shadow before it, in that. I suspect they think they're playing it safe, being conservative, going with a 'tried and true', not rocking any boats. I suspect they think 1.0 bombed more because 'it was too different from WoW' than because the game was simply awful. I can only surmise that the relative handfuls that stuck with it were able to do so because of the social aspect, yet likely despite the game, not because of it.

And like many attempted WoW/Everquest clones before it, ARR doesn't know who its trying to impress, and I'm not at all convinced that YoshiP will pick a market and focus on serving it well. 'Everyone' is not a market you can target effectively or with anything resembling hope for success unless your product is 'Air' and you're giving it away for free.

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

But apparently to you that’s akin to running over your pet puppy repeatedly and pissing on its dead body while singing praise to ARR.

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Wut?

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

The time and money, were not, 1.0 made certain of that.

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'We only have limited time and resources. What shall we do? BE MORE LIKE WOW!' - a recipe for disastercake.

What baffles the unending crap out of me isn't why they do that, but why they continue to do that when pretty much nobody's done WELL with that.

The outright astounding is that companies like Bioware and Square-Enix; legendary companies that have the resources and the means to DEFINE A GENRE...tuck their tails between their legs, hide in Blizzard's shadow and aspire to mediocrity.

Final Fantasy MMO's won't even significantly copy Final Fantasy games for much. Bioware abandons everything from its amazing 'Doing Amazing Things In Space' games in favor of making Burning Crusade With Lightsabers (minus everything good about Burning Crusade), and I keep trying to figure out why.

ALL ARR needs to be to quite probably do splendidly is a pretty good Final Fantasy game people can keep playing. That's it. We already typically know and, more often than not (if we're here, I presume it to be so) love. Many people didn't come to Final Fantasy MMO camp going 'Wut I don't even' but rather 'I WANT TO LOVE YOUR THING PLEASE GIVE ME SOMETHING TO LOVE'

Its a testament to how much people want a Final Fantasy MMO to love that 1.0 faceplanted like it did and people are back to give ARR a real, genuine chance.

So...here. Have this deficient likeness of all the other games you're bored of/dissatisfied with. We put a moogle sticker on it and it plays pretty music!

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Originally Posted by Aenarion

I guess this is where we make quotes in foreign languages to look more intelligent?

Here's mine to you: 兼聽則明，偏信則暗

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I did listen to both sides. I was enlightened. Unfortunately, it only served to reinforce my initial suspicions and cement them into certainty; I'm really sick of milk tea.

All else is Internet Forum Banter.

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Originally Posted by SugarUnicorn

Do you have reading comprehension problems? I was talking about masterworking -- where yes, you sat and spammed one button over and over, desperately hoping that the 473rd attempt might be the +9 or +12. Try to actually read what you're replying to next time before getting snarky and acting like a child.

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Well it'd help if you actually knew how to use commas properly..

By all means resort to insults.

So... Why do troll topics like this remain, but the actual discussion topics get closed? :\

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

/snip

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I must say i enjoyed reading your post Chrysania; yesterday i woke my wife up while in bed because i was laughing so hard to the herpp derp herpp song of yours :)

p.s agree 100% with the message you are speaking off.

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Originally Posted by Hairo

I must say i enjoyed reading your post Chrysania; yesterday i woke my wife up while in bed because i was laughing so hard to the herpp derp herpp song of yours :)

p.s agree 100% with the message you are speaking off.

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Thanks much! Always glad to entertain, too :D

If you agree with the gist, spread the word! Don't grumble into dead air about things you don't like; bang a forum post out about it. Kick it repeatedly. Make sure that if SE's not seeing what you're saying, its because they're not reading the forums at all.

So sayeth me!

the problem is that ever time i mention the word content, people keep thinking only of end game content.

Don't get me wrong am old school, i been around since eq1, eqoa, eq2, wow, aion, blah blah so am used to grinding.

My biggest gripe with this is the fate system and easy levelling meant that there was no need for content or attempt at trying to fill the game with content between the levels as people could just run around endlessly whack some mobs, not learn their classes and get to lvl50 in 1-2weeks. To that affect i feel like the sense of a journey has been lost;

Compared to some old games, i find exploration boring and the world just bleh, it feels so small and uninteresting.

However I think someone already mentioned that SE themselves didn't think ffxiv would be so popular, and to be profitable they don't need as much of the users that they have currently.

Ideally i wanted a game i could enjoy with a community of friends i have played mmorpgs since 13 years ago, however if the game play gets boring my friends will leave and then so will I.

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

snip

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Very nice post, I couldn't agree more. Especially:

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

'I WANT TO LOVE YOUR THING PLEASE GIVE ME SOMETHING TO LOVE'

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I try so hard to love this game. I even paid 180 days in advance and I don't even know why. Certainly not because it's a game that I think is worth it. Probably because I want to delude myself into the idea that it's a great game. If someone asked me if I could recommend ARR I couldn't say yes with a straight face.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hairo

the problem is that ever time i mention the word content, people keep thinking only of end game content.

Don't get me wrong am old school, i been around since eq1, eqoa, eq2, wow, aion, blah blah so am used to grinding.

My biggest gripe with this is the fate system and easy levelling meant that there was no need for content or attempt at trying to fill the game with content between the levels as people could just run around endlessly whack some mobs, not learn their classes and get to lvl50 in 1-2weeks. To that affect i feel like the sense of a journey has been lost;

Compared to some old games, i find exploration boring and the world just bleh, it feels so small and uninteresting.

However I think someone already mentioned that SE themselves didn't think ffxiv would be so popular, and to be profitable they don't need as much of the users that they have currently.

Ideally i wanted a game i could enjoy with a community of friends i have played mmorpgs since 13 years ago, however if the game play gets boring my friends will leave and then so will I.

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I'm an old Ultima Online nutjob myself, so I hear you there, Hairo! Exploration isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. The grind, I think, just doesn't have the general tolerance available for it that it once did.

Heck, once upon a time, we were so 8D to be playing a video game online that we'd probably have banged rocks together and thought it was the best thing ever. In retrospect, mining in UO sounded like banging rocks together, and I did...more mining than I'm going to admit to because I like my one shred of dignity, thankyouverymuch.

Ahem.

There's a lot of competition now, and its changed the market. I don't know what SE's expectations are as far as what they'd call profitable go, though this...this can't be cheap, and they're re-doing it. They did not make money on 1.0, and that was a AAA development.

With 2.0, I honestly can't even feel comfortable speculating on what they think 'profitable' might be.

What I do know is that I'd like to like this game, though I'm not sure if any/many of my friends will ever touch it (or in some cases, touch it again). No harm in making new friends, of course...if this is something worth sticking around for.

If this is something worth waiting to improve, 'cause sure, and I've said it elsewhere repeatedly...new game is new. It will have issues. It will have weird restarts and funny lag fits and crashes. That all gets sorted out.

Will their game content releases be worth sticking around for? I can't guess. All we actually know is that they clearly think so. What relatively little we've been given to read about things like housing, chocobo breeding, gold saucer and crystal tower?

Not feeling it, I suppose. Seeing how they do other things; seeing their design philosophy made manifest in the world of Eorzea around me; I don't have much faith in some of even their stated endeavors.

Housing is probably going to be so ridiculously expensive that recreational enjoyment of it will be out of the reach of most, and 'saving up for a house' will be another cardboard cutout that looks like something to do until you actually look at it. But we'll see. Housing might be cool and have something for most people of most economic positions to do.

But I'm not gonna hold my breath. It'll probably be no update at all for most, something to spend the next few months working industriously towards for others and developmentally neglected when SE, like Turbine and Cryptic and SWG before them, learn why WoW won't touch even guild housing.

High maintenance costs, low returns. If they keep it supported well, it will likely do well. If they backburner it, it'll become a blemish and detriment.

But we'll see. How things often go in MMO's isn't new terrain, but we'll see.

Its al been said before. The time for words is done. They'll either prove they're worth sticking with or they won't.

I keep making noise on this forum in the vague hope that someone upstairs will think about the threads I'm wallkicking, maybe for what I'm saying, maybe for what everyone on them is saying. Aware of the topic, at least. Aware of a problem, really.

I'd like to see the game succeed even if I don't play it because its competition that could make the games I will play do better, try harder, reach further.

If it leaves another faceprint on the floor of the internet, all it succeeded in doing is wasting everybody's time, investments and support. That's good for nobody, not even the competition.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Recycler

Very nice post, I couldn't agree more. Especially:



I try so hard to love this game. I even paid 180 days in advance and I don't even know why. Certainly not because it's a game that I think is worth it. Probably because I want to delude myself into the idea that it's a great game. If someone asked me if I could recommend ARR I couldn't say yes with a straight face.

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See, chances are, you're not actually an idiot. Supporting the things you want to see succeed is how most things get a chance to succeed, after all. There's nothing to inherently feel bad about in that.

Trouble is, we (not just you, oh no. I've done it too, as have many of us) often invest in what we hope will be true with MMO's, often despite there being no actual reason to hope for this, or for that. Some of us spend years continuing to play and sub to a game we've hated the entire time because we keep not-thinking about it; we told ourselves at some point 'It'll get better, just give it time' and largely refused to look at it since.

We sometimes get angry at the people that point this out in some fashion not because they're wrong, but because we feel stupid that they're probably right and we've likely wasted hundreds/thousands of dollars and hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of hours of our lives on a lie we told ourselves.

My advice, if you want it: don't try to make yourself love it if you just don't, even if you paid for it already. Encourage SE to make that investment worth it though. Write forum posts, send emails, make unceasing quantities of noise letting SE know what you want.

If you're silent, you acquiesce to whatever they feel like giving you or doing. If you want to see something changed, rail on about it. It might not work, but not trying is guaranteed not to work too.

Something to think about at least!

I'm not sure which I find to be more amusing... that people still act like the MMO with the second most subscriptions is a failure.. OR that people use said game (which is still apparently popular to hate upon, borderlining as much as the actually most popular MMO. lol) to indicate that ARR will become a failure, too.


oh internet, I love you so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

snip

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My original point was that, yes, in EVERY FF GAME EVER, you have to run around killing mobs before you can attempt to fight a boss. You said you never have to do that in a FF game.

P.S. I don't completely disagree with some of your points. I just think that, if you are going to try to make these points, the "facts" you use to back them up need to be correct. Also, you need to calm down and stop raging at everyone that doesn't support your ideas.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by amnie

I'm not sure which I find to be more amusing... that people still act like the MMO with the second most subscriptions is a failure.. OR that people use said game (which is still apparently popular to hate upon, borderlining as much as the actually most popular MMO. lol) to indicate that ARR will become a failure, too.


oh internet, I love you so.

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You do know most people are in free trial still? Aka doesn't have an active sub. They've had the most concurrent users in a beta yes. But there is no numbers out on how many active subs they have. We'll have to see after the 6th how many people actually stick around.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

I shall sing it to you in the language of your people: harparp derp derrrrrp herperp.

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Chrysania, we're destined to be friends! Expect a /tell in your future!

Quote:

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- No PvP upon launch (even SWTOR had PvP on Launch)

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Maplestory had no PVP upon launch and still has no PVP. That game is still very much alive and still is Asia's most played MMORPG.

Quote:

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- Little Post-Game Stuff to do (AK,CP Runs, Long Duty Finder Queue, Tomes Farming)
Very boring and repetitive stuff.

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I doubt you can find an MMORPG that gives you infinite non-repetitive things to do 1 month after launch.

Quote:

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- Little incentive to do a max level alt class, leveling them is entirely dependent
Upon mindless Fates grinding and minuscule leve quests, seriously why shouldn't
former low lvl quests reset for a low level alt?

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Cause maybe the story is over? Your grinding of alts is just you post story making yourself stronger?

Quote:

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- Crafting is very boring and inconsequential and a majority of players have no interest
In wasting their time crafting wherein they could be doing other more fun stuff

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Have you run through Lower Limsa, Old Grid and Ul'dah?? It's infested with crafters... to the extent it graphically lags me at time.

Quote:

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- Worthless monster drops that give nothing but stupid crafting materials

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Why don't you suggest to SE, that you would like to have Excalibur +99999 drop for you when you kill ladybugs

Quote:

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- Very hard to accumulate Gil in this game because monster loot sucks.

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It's not hard to gain gil. I gain average 50-70k gil per day on selling nothing but monster loot. Now imagine those people who craft.

Quote:

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- Ridiculous teleportation and repair fees

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I teleport all the time, cause walking is too much exercise for lalafells... yet I don't think I have ever been under 100k since the day I cross that mark. Perhaps you need to look for a better way to earn gil?

Quote:

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- No server transfers upon launch

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Considering SE's lack of foresight in terms of server capacity, the lack of server transfer is an actual good decision to ensure all servers are filled evenly. Having said that, SE will be giving free transfer soon, so what's the problem?

Quote:

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- Terrible Instance Dungeon queues in Duty Finder

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This I agree... queues during peak hour is as horrible as an Roegadyn running around in pink shiny sparkling undergarments dancing Oppa Gangnam Style. Future expansion, number of such instances will increase as well.

Quote:

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- No vanity/fashion items upon launch

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I heard they will be implementing this soon as well. I want bunny ears on my Lala >_<

I absolutely love the graphics and the art style. Music, animations and sounds are also great. I also quite enjoy playing through the story, it feels like I'm doing more when I have to travel around the world constantly instead of just being locked in a single zone.

That's the good, sadly the list for the bad is much more significant for an MMO. The net code is abysmal, by far the worst in any AAA MMO I have seen. End game is a joke (no, not been there myself yet, avoiding it, but it is). Leveling your alt classes means endless FATE farming, which is one of the most boring things I have experienced in an MMO.

So as a one month MMO hopping game it's a very solid 8/10. As a long time MMO it is a 4/10.

It's a nice excuse to say that most MMOs don't launch with a good end game, and it is true as well. But nearly all of those are F2P now so obviously it's not a sound strategy anymore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tj1981

You do know most people are in free trial still? Aka doesn't have an active sub. They've had the most concurrent users in a japanese mmo beta yes. But there is no numbers out on how many active subs they have. We'll have to see after the 6th how many people actually stick around.

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fixed for you

I like how people cry about end game and compare it to WoW. I remember back when WoW started and it was compared to EQ. Vanilla WoW endgame at the start wasn't all that great either. It's had over a decade content added to it. This game is just getting started. They've already stated they're adding content. The first of which I believe will be released in November. People here really need to learn patience. It seems to be a virtue many have discarded to the four winds. It's surprising they even bounced back as they did. I remember what it was like when it first came out. So cut them some slack and let them work on the game. Give it a year before you pass judgement. If you can't do that then that just means less lag on the server for those of us who are enjoying the game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Juubi

Seriously, with the way things are progressing, it won't be long until this game follows the footsteps of SWTOR:

- No PvP upon launch (even SWTOR had PvP on Launch)

- Little Post-Game Stuff to do (AK,CP Runs, Long Duty Finder Queue, Tomes Farming)
Very boring and repetitive stuff.

- Little incentive to do a max level alt class, leveling them is entirely dependent
Upon mindless Fates grinding and minuscule leve quests, seriously why shouldn't
former low lvl quests reset for a low level alt?

- Crafting is very boring and inconsequential and a majority of players have no interest
In wasting their time crafting wherein they could be doing other more fun stuff

- Worthless monster drops that give nothing but stupid crafting materials

- Very hard to accumulate Gil in this game because monster loot sucks.

- Ridiculous teleportation and repair fees

- No server transfers upon launch

- Terrible Instance Dungeon queues in Duty Finder

- No vanity/fashion items upon launch

I hope Square Enix remembers that first impressions last and hope they won't regret that these game deficiencies won't be solved too little too late like SWTOR did

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LMAO, I ll mark this as troll post.

If you check his character and read what he complain about, it might make some of his points are invalid

edit: and if you did follow the news (live letter or letter from producer), his point are totaly....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GameGeeks

I like how people cry about end game and compare it to WoW. I remember back when WoW started and it was compared to EQ. Vanilla WoW endgame at the start wasn't all that great either. It's had over a decade content added to it. This game is just getting started.

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When you play WoW today you are not playing vanilla end game content nor the next three expansions that followed it. You only play the current expansion which launched two years after the release of the previous one. It is completely incorrect to say that the whole of WoW end game is ten years worth of stuff. Each expansion now releases with a far superior end game compared to FFXIV.

Also that excuse would be amazing in 2004, but it's not 2004 and you can't compete in the past.