Thoughts on 2.0 News

First off, I'm going to preface this by saying while I haven't played a lot, clearly-I have played enough to actually point out what the issues are that HAVE kept me from playing the game. Over the past ten years or more, I've played the vast, vast majority of MMOs that have been released for at least some period of time, especially the more well-known titles. They're my favorite genre to get lost in, and I've been around the block more than a few times. Thus, issues needing fixed with FFXIV.

- First, I think it's a mistake to go p2p at the moment. The game, while improved immensely, still has extremely little content. The major issue with p2p is the quest limitation. En Masse Entertainment has understood the issue with an Eastern MMO and a Western MMO. That is to say, we don't like grinding. Their product has added hundreds of actual quests to the game, like a proper MMO.

The idea that not only does FFXIV have an extremely small amount of actual quests, but -limits you per day- is ludicrous, and completely uncalled for. This is not something that can fly in a Western market. Grinding mobs all day with no story or sense of progression other than every few levels, while being limited to 8 essential "daily quests" per day is no good. The game cannot go p2p and offer this little!

- Multiple characters. Why Square continues to think it's a good idea to limit players to only a single character on their account is beyond me. NO mmo does this, whatsoever, and even f2p versions of p2p mmos tend to offer more than one slot before you need to buy more. This NEEDS to be changed.

- Optimization. Why this is I have no idea. The game is pretty, but it's not THAT pretty, and it has some of the absolute worst optimization I've ever seen. My computer with a Radeon 5870, an i7-480 processer, and 8GB of RAM should not have issues running this game. And yet, I have to run the game at 1280x1020 resolution with every single option cranked down to Low to even run smoothly. This is totally unforgivable, and a big reason why I won't be paying to play for sure. It seems like 2.0 will fix this, and I hope it does.

- The UI. I know UI changes have been mentioned, but I hope they are on the same level I'm expecting. Dragging the mouse to the corner is a pain! It needs to be standard.. You know, I or B for Inventory/Bag, Q or J for Quests/Journal, something for Community, L for Linkshell perhaps, etc. The pdfs mentioned Global MMO standard so I hope hotkeys like this will be implemented or made customizable at the very least.

These are the big dealbreakers. Lack of content, character limitations, performance quality. I hope 2.0 will take all of these into account, and I hope someone actually sees this despite how little play time I've put in. Like I said, I've played a LOT of MMOs over the past 10+ years, so I like to think I know what I'm talking about!