FFXIV Bitter Sweet

[Soukyuu]

The problem is not the game, but the players. More players want instant gratification, hiding behind excuses like "I can't play the whole day, I have a life to live". Well, so do I! Yet I'd want a game that is slower paced. People rush to endgame, clear all content and leave because there is nothing to do. And with a fast paced leveling people with little time get left behind even faster.

Grinding in itself won't solve any problems though, the battle system should be more complex so you actually LEARN something by leveling up. Class quest should not simply be a story, but actually teach you about how to play the class. PGL quests were quite good, teaching you about combos and how you have to keep up greased lightning. I hear GLD quests have an NPC tank stuff for you and when you pull aggro from them you get nearly oneshotted. How are tanks supposed to learn how to hold aggro?

Another point I agree with the OP on is, elements. They, as well as many other things were cut out because things are "causing too much stress", as Yoshida worded it. Same with more behavioral patterns and aggro methods for monsters. The monster AI is dumber than a brick. Collision detection? Too stressful. Realistic movement animation? Too stressful. Might as well just jump off a bridge, breathing is too stressful too!

I also see people complaining how crafting and gathering is slow. Are you kidding me? I get 90% HQ crafts, netting me 60k exp + crafting exp per leve, make that 180k with repeatable hand-ins at level 30. In 1.0, we were getting 200-400exp per craft at level 30 and 2-4k per leve. It did get better after adjustments, but still not comparable to the pace we get now. And crafting still got degraded to materia melding instead of being an actual class. No one is saying to make leveling a craft a requirement, but it should at least be an alternative to farming tomes. Yet people are seemingly fine with it, even though farming mats would be easier once you level a DoL - just like you had to level a battle class.

Alas, they have to cater to the crowd to get money, which is why the game is how it is now.

[MistressAthena]

Another point I agree with the OP on is, elements. They, as well as many other things were cut out because things are "causing too much stress", as Yoshida worded it. Same with more behavioral patterns and aggro methods for monsters. The monster AI is dumber than a brick. Collision detection? Too stressful. Realistic movement animation? Too stressful. Might as well just jump off a bridge, breathing is too stressful too!

I literally lol'd, but I do agree. I also agree with the rest of your post about self entitled, and instant gratification being all people want. I merely didn't add it in my OP because 1) that would cause a flame storm against myself, and 2) not many people like to admit that, especially when its themselves.

I digress though, despite agreeing with everything you said, alot of what I posted still shouldn't be an issue that SE ignores. It's disheartening. I do hope they have some idea of how to make End Game not a mindless grind of boredom to the "next set of armor".

[Jinko]

We new for a long time this game wasn't going to be anything like FFXI, we knew it was going to be a WoW clone, so why even buy it ?

I can understand not liking the game though.

The main problem I have with this game is that its an inferior product to what WoW, Rift and all the other theme park MMO's provide, if you are going to copy something at least do it better.

IMO fates were a bad idea, it breeds a bad community right from the start, people don't know how to play their class and have an inflated perspective of self entitlement.

The levelling system was too fast, if you are going to center you game around end game you sure as hell should have plenty of end game content .... Which as of this moment you don't, Spamming AK and Titan is not fun.

I've given them 6 months to fix this game (more than most), by which time if they haven't I will gladly play something else.

[Hanabira]

The reason battle is so bland and why elemental weaknesses were removed was because they want you to have this false sense of every job being more or less equal. They dont want any situation where a duty finder group is impossible with any setup you get stuck with.. nor do they want any job being shunned from any content. Problem with this is that since everyone can do just about everything, there is no need to make strategy, there is no ability that are especially useful for particular fights and there is no content where BLM can shine or struggle. If we had titan in 1.0, blm would never be able to go. They could have simply removed elementals from primals (which sounds very stupid, but is the only thing blms would be unable to do)

[Memoe]

It's not about FFXI vs. FFXIV as some people seem to think. And simply because someone wants good features from FFXI implemented in FFXIV doesn't make it "they want this game to be exactly like FFXI". I'm not into FFXI at all, but OP is right in every aspect, that this game, as it is, just doesn't cut it.

I'm going to wait patiently for patches and major fixes. And if SE fails to deliver, you can wish "good riddance" to me, too. Oh how I want to like this game. >:

[Amiantos]

I disagree on the balance in difficulty to an extent. You can just burn to 50 on FATES if you wish and not know the job. Dungeons do need a bit more incentive to play at lower levels but they teach you to do your job properly and give you the concept on what to do in harder dungeons. Do most people ignore them? Yeah they do which is sad. I spent countless hours with friends doing dungeons over and over in hopes to get some of the special gear in there but to mostly no luck. Longstop teaches you minor character positioning with the boss spewing poison pools and then also teaches the tank about moving with the boss. Cutters teaches you to dance the dance. Stone vigil again is about knowing your position to the bosses position.
FFXI took forever to get new shit out really. Oh an expansion? Here have the base region, about 10% of the story and half the functioning stuff that should be there. I remember ToAU it took them quite some time to even get the rental chocobo guy in there.Even longer for other stuff. Missions were usually like 2-3 things a month and didn't finish up the story til the next expansion was really announced. FFXI included stuff in updates, FFXIV will include stuff in updates. We didn't magically get all the spells and skills in 1 single expansion/update. It took fucking forever for them come to us.

[MysteriousRonin]

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

[Soukyuu]

It's not about FFXI vs. FFXIV as some people seem to think.

In my case, it's not about FFXI at all, since I never touched it. Well, fine, I did use the trial and took a few circles around... Bastok, was it? Haven't done anything else though since the UI is just horrible and I was spending more time fighting with it than doing anything else.

Point is, games nowadays are too afraid to scare away people. And people just want quick fun, hence the raise of the mobile gaming.
Oh how I wish for a game to actually have a challenging monster AI for a change, not a shallow set of pre-scripted patterns. It doesn't even have to be too punishing, but it has to make you understand you're doing something wrong. Throwing an insane amount of damage on you is not challenging, it's just cheap 1hko mechanics, especially when the biggest challenge is to predict how much server lag you will have. I lost count to how many times I got hit by an AoE I was nowhere near to. I prefer to actually make mistakes, cause hell, at least I can learn from them and improve. All I'm improving from lag is my sixth sense.

The reason battle is so bland and why elemental weaknesses were removed was because they want you to have this false sense of every job being more or less equal. They dont want any situation where a duty finder group is impossible with any setup you get stuck with.. nor do they want any job being shunned from any content. Problem with this is that since everyone can do just about everything, there is no need to make strategy, there is no ability that are especially useful for particular fights and there is no content where BLM can shine or struggle. If we had titan in 1.0, blm would never be able to go. They could have simply removed elementals from primals (which sounds very stupid, but is the only thing blms would be unable to do)

I can't remember any content where BLMs weren't welcome in 1.0 Hell, we had mostly 1xTank+1xHealer+6xBLM parties. blms not being preferred for a content would have been a change for the better. MNK was the direct opposite, not because it was gimped, but because people thought it was gimped.

As for elements, they could just add an elemental manipulation spell, that allowed you to change the element for a limited time, or just give blm access to all the elements, for example by cross-classing WHM's stone/aero. It's not really an issue beyond the fact that people are too lazy to think about what they do, apparently.

Not all games should be made for you casuals though.

I'm a casual player. I want challenge. I want deep gameplay. I don't want instant gratification. Casual does not equal lazy, don't lump me with them please.

[Amiantos]

Snip

I agree the community is bad but are we comparing a game that's a month old to a game that has been out for 10 years with 5 expansions, 3 add on scenarios and 1 mini expansion? I remember coming in early CoP and there being quite a bit but not too much to explore. Given I had jumped in after 2 expansions being released for it I can't say how it originally looked like. I know pre zilart which most english players never saw as when it came out in english zilart was included there was actually jack squat for content. 60 cap, no dynamis, sky, or desert region. It's quite unfair to compare a new game to one with a decade of work isn't it?

[Soukyuu]

Dungeons do need a bit more incentive to play at lower levels but they teach you to do your job properly and give you the concept on what to do in harder dungeons. Do most people ignore them? Yeah they do which is sad.

What dungeons need is a harsh penalty for experienced players leaving the moment they see the "one or more players are new to this instance" message. I had multiple tanks leave the moment we entered before even having one battle, because apparently, giving a few hints in chat is too stressful. Just confirms what I was saying about the players.