An Open letter to SE & Yoshi-P

Dear SE,
I would highly recommend that the game developers take 15 minutes of their time to watch this video and invest in some thinking outside the box. I do believe that this video by NA Community member Mrhappy provides some great insights and food for thought. It sums up what the community has been saying for some time now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdr8xIEhtHc

EDIT: It is a rant, but there is a lot of valuable feedback that can be used to sum up what FF XIV's trajectory should be.

I almost fell asleep watching that video. Holy crap, I don't remember FFXI being that slow and boring.

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Originally Posted by KiriA500

I almost fell asleep watching that video. Holy crap, I don't remember FFXI being that slow and boring.

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Honestly, I enjoyed the slower pace, large (but not 1.0 large) environments, and slow revelation of the world and lore. Gave enough time for the rest of it to sink in. It could have used more options for faster travel the more you progressed sure, but I personally never really felt bored. I felt like I was interacting with a real setting, not just a collection of set pieces which served as glorified waiting rooms.
I can't really get into something quite that slow now due to real life commitments, but in an aesthetic sense it brought out a level of comfort and engagement with the actual world that I rarely see in modern games. It seems to be all about flash and how quickly you can burn through the content. Less about making a lasting and evocative impression and more about feeding the skinner box addiction.

In a way, it reminds me of those episodes of Samurai Jack where it took time to establish the setting. Slowly showing you the world around him to really let it sink in.
Not a perfect comparison, but I feel there's some sort of game design 'technique' like it when you introduce an interactive element to a world.

Yes. More gated content. Good idea.

(????)

I loved XI, I grew up with the game and I made a lot of good memories while I played it.
However, I have to disagree with his "gated by effort" in regards to XI and NM's.
NM's was a terrible system and the drops were abysmal, not to mention that most of the drops were useless. Very rarely did NMs reflect the effort a player put into the game since the drops were all RNG based.
Oh and the NMs "worth" camping were about who had the best claim bot.

Personally, I'd call it "gated by RNG", which I wouldn't want added to such an extent as it was XI.

What SE needs to do is just stick to their bread and butter- world building , storyline, and memorable characters. That is one of the biggest reasons those of us who played XI for so long feel so nostalgic about it. The other reason XI was popular was because of the community- but as we all know, communities aren't built overnight. Nor does one simply "stop" building a community. It is an ongoing process.

Either way, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

Yes. More gated content. Good idea.

(????)

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What is the harm in more content, be it gated?

Not everyone enjoys working around SE's weekly lockouts and cooldowns.

With a mix of different type of content, which XI did well, XIV would have a lot more life injected into it.

Its Wednesday and 4 hours of gameplay have resulted in nothing left to do for the week. Open up Sky/sea/Einherjar like content with no cooldowns and lockouts, while still keeping the Binding Coil of Bahamut lockouts, Mythology caps and CT 1 drop/week limit.

The binding coil of bahamut should never have dropped all different types of items (rings, necklaces, bracelets, body armor and weapons)

Spread the drops across a wide range of both lockout and gated content.

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Originally Posted by Royze

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And do you think, with one fell swoop (i.e. one major patch), they could add an equivalent to Sky, Sea, Nyzule Isle, etc. all at the same time? We have to be realistic about how much content they can create in a given amount of time.

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

And do you think, with one fell swoop (i.e. one major patch), they could add an equivalent to Sky, Sea, Nyzule Isle, etc. all at the same time? We have to be realistic about how much content they can create in a given amount of time.

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When SE released XI it had less resources, smaller budgets, no experience in MMOs. A year later we had Rise of the Zilart.

SE have had a lot more time with XIV.

That is however, besides the point. While the issue appears to be quantity of content, it really is a question of tying the content together and reworking how drops function in the future so that the dungeons, crystal tower, primals and coil work together rather than on their own.

Time to close the open letter, as they've never accomplished anything anywhere on the Internet.

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SE have had a lot more time with XIV.

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Not really. I think you're forgetting that they virtually started over and rebuilt from scratch, only retaining some of the assets as they rebuilt the engine and almost the entire world save the main cities- in other words, 1.0 doesn't really count. It's highly likely by the 1 year anniversary we'll at least have had the first expansion announced, which would be on par with XI and every other MMO out there.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Time to close the open letter, as they've never accomplished anything anywhere on the Internet.

Not really. I think you're forgetting that they virtually started over and rebuilt from scratch, only retaining some of the assets as they rebuilt the engine and almost the entire world save the main cities- in other words, 1.0 doesn't really count.
It's highly likely by the 1 year anniversary we'll at least have had the first expansion announced, which would be on par with XI and every other MMO out there.

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The changes from 1.0 to ARR were cosmetic. Not a big job. Of course SE wants to play it up as being something bigger than it was. It was a scale down and mostly migration of existing source onto other platforms. This has nothing to do with content. The content is run by a complete different team than the Tech experts.
1.0 Does indeed count. We still have the same cities, the same jobs, armor, graphics (be it a scaled down version) music, characters, story remnants. 2.0 is not a complete reboot. Its more like a reskin than a complete reboot. So it does count.

Final Fantasy XI release date: May 16, 2002
Rise of the Zilart release date: April 17, 2003 [11 months]
Chains of Promathia release date September 22, 2004 [30 Months]

Final Fantasy XIV release date: September 30, 2010 - November 11, 2012 [25 months]
Final Fantasy XIV ARR release date:August 27, 2013. [35 Months] + the 5 months it has been live for total of 40 MONTHS!

When you compare the amount of content released in both RoZ and CoP in comparison to FFXIV/ARR and note that FFXIV has had longer to deliver, its clear just what a let down this game continues to be in comparison to the largely successful XI.