Looking Back: Oct. 2010 to Mar. 2012

I honestly wish I hadn't started this game at release, for obvious reasons, but also because 1.21 seems to have been the patch that, to me, would have been sufficient content to release the game with.

Players are all over the world now, and not just exploring for the sake of it, but because there are actually multiple targets of interest and progression spread evenly all over the world.

It's refreshing to see groups of people out in the world again, and not just at Broken Water. SE, can we please get a major event that doesn't revolve around Thanalan next patch? I mean, to start with it was Coblyns/Doblyns, Broken Water being Battlecraft Leve-central, Ifrit and Zaha'rak for Inferno Tapers, and now Cutter's Cry? What gives?

One question I have though is, what if Tanaka had worked on FFXIV for the next year and a half, and the game had been released now in the same shape we saw it back in Oct. 2010? Think of it - March 2012 - Levequest grinding, Ability-spam for SP, Fatigue system, Original repair system, etc.

Would we have had to wait another 1.5+ years to have the game ironed out even to have it in the shape it's in today? Probably not that long, but you get my drift.

Thinking about that, in a sense, I'm glad they released it early.

i agree if the game came out it would have been ok and great or even wait for 2.0 lol.

Honestly, I still wonder why this game was released in the condition it was in.

I really want to know what Tanaka's vision was. But on the other hand, it scares me.

Tanaka wanted us to bake a cake.

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Originally Posted by NefarioCall

Tanaka wanted us to bake a cake.

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http://blstb.msn.com/i/8D/3025FBD0D1...56AB5256AD.jpg

I would have loved to see the game launch in its current state, but unfortunately if we didn't have the bad launch then we wouldn't have Yoshi-P and all that he has done so far, not including 2.0.
Tanaka lost his way. He was more interested in beating RMT than making a fun game for players. He was overconfident and put in place systems that discouraged players from playing. He created a beautiful world, no doubting that, but forgot to turn it into a game.
I reckon, if we still had Tanaka, we would already have had an expansion with new Classes/Zones ect, but i can't imagine an XIV without Yoshi-P and 2.0 anymore.

Looking back i think it was good that the game released as it was. If not we wouldnt have had the "renaissance" this game went through.
I really doubt it would have been any better with the old leadership and more time.
It was not just the missing time which made the game fail hard, Many ideas were bad and that would not have changed with more time.

Those of us who played since release have a clouded view of the game. Even if it was released in its current state, I think it would have gotten a rather meh reception. A good test would be if you would recommend to a friend AND you're confident they would be impressed and stick around.

I would have to agree that this would have been an acceptable point in launch, but I kind of wish they had closed the game down to relaunch it in this state once they realized that things werent working out instead of giving us a free trial. As much as I have enjoyed playing for the past year, the truth of the matter remains that a huge issue with this game at the moment is the incredibly large number of players at level cap.

Most of the content that is released is done and over with by a majority of the playerbase because they are revved up and ready to go. At the moment, not even a week after the patch was launched, its near impossible to find people to do the final AF quests with because an overwhelming majority is already done with all the quests. You have to sit there and shout in uldah for an hour or more on my server just to get a reasonable sized party to attempt the quests, and even then, I am more relying on people that I know than people in pick up groups to come and help me because I missed out on the 2 day rush of everyone trying to get the quests done.

I know that server merges are coming and its going to increase the population on each server by quite a bit, but I am already on one of the more populated servers for the game. If its taking an hour or more to get a party together for these quests a week after their release, even with the server merges coming, think about how difficult its going to be for the new players joining the game in a month or a few months to do these quests. Its going to be near impossible to find a group to do them unless you get lucky and you get quite a few people who have already done the quests to help you because a large majority of the player base would rather stand in uldah and cast flare on themselves every 2 minutes.

There definitely needs to be some sort of incentive program for people that redo instances/quests with people that actually need them for progression that is simpler than ifrit/moogle where you have to run back and talk to the guy a million times just to get a reward the next time you do it, otherwise new players are going to be stuck in the water even more than ever 3 months down the road.

My biggest problem with launch and Tanaka is that almost all of his ideas were almost great. They were incomplete and had potential to be amazing but they just fell short and were poorly implemented. Battle Regimens, Optimal Gear, Crafting/Gathering and the Armoury system all seemed like they started as great ideas but they weren't complete.

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Originally Posted by Quesse

A good test would be if you would recommend to a friend AND you're confident they would be impressed and stick around.

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I'm not.
I fail miserably trying to explain why they should leave their current MMO and start playing FFXIV.
The first question I'm confronted with is usually "What does it have my MMORPG doesn't?"
And really, there isn't anything. Sure, it has greater graphics, a more mature community, but that's pretty much all there is. Raids, Dungeons, Bossfights, etc. are pretty much basic MMORPG stuff.
And FFXIV still falls short on other "basic" stuff like having a post system or a world which is not terribly copy-pasted.
So I start to talk about the things which are kind of special in FFXIV; the real storyline most MMOs don't have, the FF feeling, being part of something rapidly changing, playing a MMORPG which doesn't take you by the hand and helps you with every dumb little baby step you make..but at this point, I'm pretty much grasping for straws.

We are biased because we are already used to the broken parts of the game, so much that we barely notice them anymore. We only see how much it changed for the better from what it was at release.
A new player though will see the whole picture. He will not whine about "too less content at R50" but about slow fights, the missing mail system, empty zones, etc.

Still, I sometimes get people to at least try the game; and here is where the biggest problem FFXIV has kicks in:
It's not accessible.
Every MMORPG out there, even boring, tedious asia grinders from Korea, starts off easy, interesting and joyful.
They try to get you hooked before they throw the tedious everyday gameplay at you.
FFXIV though starts off with the most negative parts of gameplay we even have.
The only part you are introduced to are leves; a remnant from the time all you could do were grinding leves everyday.
This has to change.
Explain to the player how leves work, sure, but also show them little quests, a dungeon, some mini boss fight..stuff like that. Show them there is more to this game than grinding leves everyday.
Right now it takes at least R30 (more like R45) to once feel PART of the epic things going on in Eorzea.
Until then, all you ever get treated as is a bystander, often even an unwanted one.

Also, fights as a low lvl character.
Thy are boring as hell; you have 1-3 abilities, it takes up to 30 seconds to build up enough TP to use even ONE, you fight nothing more dangerous than mammals or baby sheep and it takes you a full minute to beat them up?
Exp are way too low too. Since there is nothing you can do before R15, it should be fast and easy to get to this rank. It also gives the player more of a feeling like "I'm being rewarded with new abilities, I can do more, I'm awesome, I like this game."
I don't think leveling as a whole should be faster, actually, it's already way too fast for higher levels, but when you are just starting out it shouldn't feel hard and time consuming to lvl up, especially since you already have to grind before you even hit R10.
I lose most new players in this phase, they never make it to R30 or R45 to enjoy all the beautiful new and interesting content Yoshi-P's team added, they leave way sooner because the game lacks the most important thing of all - accessibility.

Most of the things tanaka told us we would have all seem like they would have been impossible to actually make given the known conditions of the servers. I think he was lying to us. Most likely why he make progression so slow, to buy himself some time.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

Most of the things tanaka told us we would have all seem like they would have been impossible to actually make given the known conditions of the servers. I think he was lying to us. Most likely why he make progression so slow, to buy himself some time.

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I think he was taking the Peter Molyneux method of game development...which is "talk out of your ass about everything your game does."

I think the only thing thats truely going to get people out of Thanalan is Ishgard. :/