FFXIV Bitter Sweet

[ApolloGenX]

I could tell you how happy I was to get that rare dagger at level 30 which I used until level 40 which was over a week of content alone.

Omg... this made me cringe... do you have any idea how long I used my epic in EQ? My cleric had it for a couple of RL years! (Even after that I kept it in my bag to use!)

[Yoko_Kurama]

Omg... this made me cringe... do you have any idea how long I used my epic in EQ? My cleric had it for a couple of RL years! (Even after that I kept it in my bag to use!)

Dude I remember when my guild fought a dragon that normally is strong enough to wipe entire alliances and said dragon spawns once a week and out of 3 drops one was a high level shirt that I wore for over a year, people in the server specifically knew of me as the mage in blue goddess top lol. I totally know how you feel.

[M4Fade]

Great post OP. Sadly, this is what most people wanted.

2.0 has been a disappointment to me, a person coming from FFXI and FFXIV 1.0.

Honestly, this game would of been fine if they actually improved upon the WHOLE tried-and-true MMO and "WoW" formula but as it stands the game used much of what made other MMO's and WoW successful and delivered it in a worse manner than it's predecessors. How the fuck do you do that?

Oh well. I guess they did a good job with the little amount of time they had? Meh.

I still have hope for the game. I enjoyed FFXI and FFXIV 1.0, and I want to give 2.0 more of a chance. I enjoy FFXIV 2.0 to a degree. Let's see how the game turns out in 6 months.

My main beef with SE right now, other than their unpolished game, is the delay that's attached to everything you do in this game, nothing is "fluid" or "smooth". There was delay in FFXI and there was delay in FFXIV 1.0. It's STILL present in their 2013 release! My goodness!

[Ventus]

Thank you for posting this. Literally everything you said I agree with and complain about all the time.

Why am I still here then? Because I've been here since 2010 1.0 and have been interested in seeing this game grow and want it to become something special, I'm personally invested in this game being amazing; I can suck up my complaints for a while and just try to have fun because I try to have faith they will fix things once they lose subscribers.

Materia is useless, crafting is borderline useless, dungeon gear replaces everything RAPIDLY, 1-49 has almost no meaning, and this game lays down all of its interesting content once you reach the END. It makes no sense, it really feels like a cheap carbon copy of what SE thinks western players want because look at how many westerners love MMOs! It feels like this game is selling its soul for the quick buck that the company needs to get out of the debt 1.0 incurred. Such a shame, it really is.

I can say the game is alright considering it's vanilla ARR, but this game as a whole has been out for 3 years and in my opinion a lot of backpedaling has been done on the direction it could and should have gone in for the armoury system. Jobs aren't numerous enough to feel like they give you versatility and instead feel like restrictions required of you for partying and endgame, literally the biggest strength this game has in its multiclass system is destroyed by jobs; I will never understand that along with the battle system catering to mindless rotations. Boss mechanics and patterns are the only things making battle interesting, not the combat itself.

[ufufu]

THAT was a real mmorpg experience. THAT was adventure, don't bs the bser trying to say every game since the 90s was as dumbed down and simplistic as this...because you only show how little you know about mmorpgs with such statements.

Okay, but the majority market share don't want immersive, slow experiences. It's 2013 and the market has moved on.

[Yoko_Kurama]

Exactly Ventus, and to everyone who thinks it's acceptable because the game just launched or they didn't have enough time it's baloney. It's 2013, I watched a speech Yoshi made talking about the failure of 1.0 being that the developers of 1.0 simply wanted something different and they had no actual direction, and that "The problem is they tried to make something out of nothing and this is not something you can do". Well, I don't think that something can be made from nothing either but you also shouldn't try to create something that is the same or fundamentally the same as something else in a world of progress.

No matter what any developer may think, they must or should factor technology into their equations, any digital game is powered by technology, this isn't D&D. I work in the industry of gaming technology (graphics cards to be precise) and graphics cards evolve yearly, technology as a whole evolves constantly, we are talking about games utilizing technologies which should be evolving so why aren't the games themselves evolving in terms of content, challenge, and immersion? A console game played today feels nothing like a console game from 10 years ago, and definitely not like one from the 90s, so why do mmos today feel the same? There is no logical excuse for a new mmo today to be launched which uses mechanics that come even close to the mechanics of a game launched 10 years ago. Everquest was successful, their developers were probably dreamers at the time, that is what we need again, dreamers. Perhaps 1.0 sucked because the dreamers of that game didn't have proper structure, but to take away those dreamers and replace them entirely with Yoshi and his robots was a mistake...

[Daragust]

Everquest was successful, their developers were probably dreamers at the time, that is what we need again, dreamers. Perhaps 1.0 sucked because the dreamers of that game didn't have proper structure, but to take away those dreamers and replace them entirely with Yoshi and his robots was a mistake...

I honestly don't think the issue comes from a lack of dreamers, I think the issues comes from the multitudes of view points of how a MMO should be built. MMO gamers have the distinction of being one of the most divided communities on earth. At any given time we demand from the development team that everything should be easier, harder, more distinct, more homogeneous, more casual friendly and more hard core all at once. Pre-WoW mmos launched they had a tiny (respectively) audience that, in general, had a unified mind on what an MMO should be. When a new MMO is announced the developers have to take all of those opnions into account and build a game that will attract the broadest group because they are demanded to make the most money possible.

Without the option for niche mmos due to the abhorrent cost of development we end up with problems like these. Where half the community hates it because it is too easy, half the community thinks it is great because they can play for 2 hours a night and see everything. Where skill gets looked down on in favor of attainability. Where these beautiful ideas that can make memories are pushed to the side because they would be under appreciated by the masses.

TLDR; Don't blame the devs, blame the cost of development.

[AhriSazame]

Good post. Though you have to remember that what may be perfect for you, may not be perfect for others. After being a 7 year vet of WoW, FFXIV is a good chance of pace to me and I am having a blast.

[Sogi]

yeah, say wordz! ley wize soy pro\ble!

[Jeronlmo]

As for endgame grinding, I personally prefer this version of endgame to FFXI-like timesinks that always had random variables involved (spawn time, claim, griefing, RMT, etc.) on top of awful loot RNG that only a small percentage of the actual subscription base even bothered to take part in. Why wouldn't you copy a game design/business model that caters to the majority of your audience rather than the minority? I am not claiming you want this game to be like FFXI, but you don't really offer up any real solutions either. Just "this is bad because Blizzard".

What you are saying is just so wrong... you literally only listed HNM's as FF11's endgame, HNM's was 1 single part of prob 15+ endgame events, not to mention every single drop that was worth getting from HNM's was available in sky/Einherjar (excluding d.ring and before you say it (ridill which was later found to be worse than a m.cris)). HNM's is what every casual person ever from FF11 loves to turn to for whatever reason and it will never have any real ground, "hardcores" were willing to put in an extra 20hrs+ a week for a chance (claim) at a chance (drop rate) at a chance (distributing loot) for a slightly higher chance at getting gear which was generally .01-5% every 3-7 days (3 being very lucky) which was also available in other "endgame" events.
People being butthurt that endgame shells who managed to generally keep 40-60 members together in order to get these slightly higher drop rates for a ridiculous amount of extra play time in comparison to the casual play time of maby 5hrs a week is just ridiculous and always will be, hardcores just want something to do that's meaningful within the game to burn time, it doesn't even need to be much, just something.