Full Responses to Survey Questions

I'm starting this off because I typed out way longer than 500 Character responses to SE's questions, feel free to also use it for the same purpose so this thread can be considered a little less narcissistic.

Q4. If you selected the fourth option to Q3 above, "something other," please elaborate. (500 characters or less)

While it is the right pace the grinding gets extremely tedious. I had my fair share of Robber Crab parties and KRT parties back in pre-exp curve nerf FFXI and that sort of gameplay is just no longer relevant in today's world. It serves to ruin the player's excitement about whatever new spells/gear/abilities they get when they have to repeatedly use them endlessly on pre-determined groups of monsters based on efficiency over and over again for hours on end.

You should reflect on what made leveling fun in traditional Final Fantasies, likely that it was done incidentally while moving between story driven content and thus progressing the narrative where as in FFXIV you independently choose to go out and specifically level, which just feels like yet another chore that impedes upon your ability to engage in meaningful genuinely fun content (missions, primal battles etc.)

If you can restructure the way players progress through the game and content so that leveling is incidental rather than a mandatory chore, you'll have a more fun game. I think part of the answer lies in the way players constantly return to the capital cities rather than moving between several major cities or other non-combat areas for the sake of story. As it stands travel is a huge and constant burden (for example culinary ingredients being scattered across the 3 cities for one, low level recipe.)

Q5. Please share with us your opinions of the Lodestone and the official forums. (500 characters or less)
I feel that it's annoying I got banned on the FFXI forums for saying "this game is stupid" when Tanaka brutally nerfed like 3-4 jobs in a row after my constructive criticism which received many likes and was well thought out was ignored. While this is the FFXI forums (and I hope my permaban will be lifted) the moderation staff is the same and I feel concern that censorship is too strong on the forums. We can and should be able to criticize you harshly, and you often deserve it. Both FFXI and FFXIV have serious issues that shouldn't be allowed to continue to manifest as they can eventually accumulate in significant quantities to cause the downfall of the game. We are also paying customers who deserve a voice, I've put about 1 grand into FFXI, and you have the nerve to perma ban me for disatisfaciton with a product? Why are you even putting a director who had to publicly apologize and whom was fired from this project back on another game in the first place? That's insane. I hope the FFXIV forums don't become as oppressive as your sister game's.

Q3. Please share with us your opinions of the current version of FINAL FANTASY XIV and version 2.0. (500 characters or less)
I feel you should REALLY home in on what Yoshida said about giving the game a "final fantasy feel" because as it stands the game reminds me of very bland korean RPGs like lineage that have no real distinguished soul. FFXI DOES have this soul, and a lot of it stems from the art design. While the job AF gear is good (though not perfect, the white mage hood should be up for example, black mage eyes should be darkened with yellow dots and the armor should probably be blue with the yellow hat, not black and purple) think about the majority of the armor in the game. None of the classes have any FF feel to them, the only way you can even tell the difference between a marauder or a gladiator is their weapon choices.

On the other hand, if you take a typical FF player and show them a FFXI BLM or WHM, they can immediately point to why they are that respective role. Your spells and animation also have too much cut and paste and shared content. You made blizzard a shrunken down freeze, and half the lancer animations are the same thing. Anime it up a little, chaos thrust is what abilities should look like, low level gladiator attacks are literally your character swinging around in a circle and it's awful.

I also think you should consider maybe re-naming the races their old FFXI names and giving back Roe'Gadyns their tails, please. At least add the option. I think you need to work on clipping errors a lot (MY DRG AF on my roegadyn permanently clips with his lance, this comes off as not caring, or being too lazy, or not even testing it for all the races (unless it does for each race in which case shame on you.))

I hope we can see Bangaa added to FFXIV, Hell it'd be cool to see cross world content (in particular with Vana'Diel and Ivalice.)

Please for the love of god kill the UI and make it look like something more traditional FF, I'd love to see options like dissidia to make the UI look like respective FF titles even if you had to integrate them gradually starting with say FF7, FF1 etc. The current UI looks like your typical bland MMO wow-clone crap. I want to open a mini menu and select attack, magic, etc. when I'm fighting, not have 1-9 etc. with bland stick figure icons. At least consider adding the alternative option. Again, FF feel.

Liven up the cities, more npcs especially ones that move around, more color, more details, NO buildings or doors you can't enter, this includes around the world. Players hate that and part of the fun of any FF game is entering random strangers house, maybe you can even add back looting random homes!

Combat is pretty boring honestly, I feel players are too low power, in FF it's fun because you fight malboros, iron giants, midgar zoloms, not freaking rats and bunnies and moles. I'm level 50 now, a mole can't defeat the Azure Dragoon, OK? Stop it. You need a Hell of a lot more monsters, and they need to be less insulting. Bust out the color swaps again too, but don't get lazy with it like in FFXI. The combat is also just dry, do you know how sick I am of doing generic fronst thrust, leg sweep, jump up and spear attack? (note, it's YOUR fault I can't remember these attacks names, I can name off any number of FFT or FF7-12 attacks easily because they're iconic and memorable) It's sickening and boring, we need a hell of a lot more options to choose from, and you should be able to customize the way your character plays beyond 5-10 actions from other classes.

When I heard you learned from your weapon, I was thinking of FFIX and was SO excited. I think a GREAT way to make crafting and combat better is to have abilities you can learn to customize your character that come from weapons both found, stolen (when you add thief), and crafted! Even a weak crappy weapon retains its value if you need to use it for a while to learn some ability or trait! Please strongly consider looking into this FFIX model. Borrow from your series' rich history instead of other crappy MMO competitors! It's FINAL FANTASY online.

PS Add Bangaa