FFXIV: ARR becoming TORtanic

[Chrysania]

They should hire you Chrysania, effing good ideas. I want to play the MMO you envision and wonder why they can not do these simple things to make it FUN.

Mighty kind of you to say!

Its long been an observation of mine that mmos are very commonly unfriendly environments and bad games, with the few that are not are cutesy or childishly shallow.

Why, for example, must it be regarded as a staple in mmos for there to be grind you will absolutely hate? Are we still trying to justify this lazy design absence as some sort of 'rite of passage'? Its not good game design; its crap.

Why also must mmo's be work? I define work as labor you may or may not enjoy, but must do whether you like it or not, for this concern.

While it is true that people tend to value more highly that which they feel they have earned, mmos try perhaps too hard to make you feel invested thusly (and more likely to keep passing whether you want to or not lest you have 'wasted all that time') and too little trying to genuinely earn that kind of loyalty.

To this, I think something my husband recently said says it best: "MMO's are like abusive friends in virtually every way. They're very demanding, prone to being manipulative and doing everything they can at all times to make you think you need them, when, in fact, they need you."

And its bloody well true. So why do we put up with it?

Do we, in general, not write yet imagine that it could be better? MMO makers are quick to bemoan how hard and expensive it is, yet it looks to me like the vast majority of their time and efforts are not spent trying to bring us a better game, but rather, refine ways to maximize our time wastes and treadmills.

They say its soooo hard to 'balance'. I suspect the truth is that its hard to make sure we can't have too much fun with any given thing. The balance they actually mean isn't the one we tend to assume.

I won't say that its cheap and easy to make a great game to modern specs, and mmo's have ongoing costs to boot. But I do not think it is as difficult as they would have us believe. Or, at last, it shouldn't have to be if they weren't so often trying to please too many types of gamers at once, and consequently leaving them all often dissatisfied.

MMO's should specialize. They should target a specific market and serve it well rather than trying to 'do it all' and generally sink at everything.

Why? Because WoW has been doing it all for 8 years, and if you can't do even one thing better than WoW, you cannot compete.

SWTOR, as a shining example, should have been more like mass effect as a game, because that style of game is something bioware does very well. Powerful action, great storytelling and lots of dialige-driven character development is, I'd daresay, what most of the audience wanted, along with space combat and rather a lot more to explore in general.

Nobody got what they wanted with SWTOR, however. You'd almost think they set out to screw it up in the most screwed up way possible, at least if you were me.

Here, 1.0 was...junk. Only the most undeterable bothered fighting with its insanities to play it, and having beta'd it, I can well say that SE WA told mammy times and in many different ways by many that out was a bad job and would not, as it was, go far.

I was there one day when a rep asked the group I was in for or opinion on something we'd just done and, in being told some things he clearly didn't want to hear, told us we obviously didn't understand the thing that was bad, and it was fine; we were the problem.

I remember it well, because it was the day I decided never to touch ff14 again.

Here I am though. Its not the same game, that's for sure, but its still an mmo in that it trites very hard, and very transparently, to waste as much of your time as possible while utterly minimizing its own effort on anything at all.

Maybe, just maybe, it could try being a good game instead, and the equivalent of a good business partner at least. Friend might be too alien to hope after.

[seekerofpower]

Edit 2: I still have my original SNES cartridge of FF2, from waaaay back when, before I knew it was actually 4! Lovely game. I was rather impressed with the PSP remake, though the After Years pseudo-sequel...eh. It missed something. Wouldn't you agree, mon peche?

So you have the US version of it, not the Japanese version. You know the US version was nerfed heavily because they didn't think the American's could handle the original difficulty. Once again, you failed at comprehension. Your FF2 cartridge is NOT the original hard version of the game. I'm talking about the actual hard version of FFIV.

[Gaddes]

The sad thing is that SWTOR actually had a lot to do on launch, despite however its popularity might've waned afterwards.

The one thing SWTOR kicks FFXIV's butt at is maintaining story quests/cutscenes for far longer than XIV does. The biggest problem I've had with XIV's content is the sharp dropoff once you've completed the main quest. With SWTOR, if you finish one class's large storyline, then you can go and do all of the other ones, and have brand new story content to keep you interested for far longer than XIV. Sure XIV has class quests/storylines, but they are so miniscule and far apart compared to SWTOR's. So once I've finished my main story with my first XIV class/job, there instantly doesn't feel like as much to do with my other classes/jobs in XIV in comparison. Then again, I am partial to plot and cutscenes as opposed to grinding endgame, and some people like grinding endgame, so for them this isn't a bad scenario.

[Cigaran]

lolTOR. When "Cut scenes with voice over!" is your main selling point, you've got a problem... Fail game from a fail company, end of story.

Now to address your points:

There are more people with zero interest in PvP than zero interest in Crafting. As a whole in MMO's, the PvP community tends to be rather vocal but also makes up a very small portion of the player base. PvP is not, nor has it ever been, a requirement for a game to be successful. It may be a nice diversion for yourself but it is not a make or break feature for most MMO players.

Define post game. Are you intentionally limiting yourself to only one Job and the Classes required for it? All all those Classes level 50? Are you intentionally limiting yourself on what "post-game" there is? Judging by your next points, the answer is yes. YOU are the one who has written off leveling additional Classes as well as Crafting. By doing that, YOU are writing off anywhere from fifty to seventy percent of the content this game has to offer. Considering that you've done this to yourself, I can only imagine that attaining the various Achievements as well as leveling a Grand Company have also been written off so arguably you're writing off an even higher percentage of game content.

So the generic loot from mobs isn't top notch raid gear and Gil comes in slowly... If you didn't reference the fail that is SWTOR, I'd wonder if this was your first game. Welcome to pretty much every MMO on the market. Generic mobs are never going to drop top end items. If they did, your end game content would either be a joke or would bring in so much power creep that the whole game would quickly become a joke. Gil is a resource that enables the player to do a whole host of things. As such, it is going to be limited in order to limit what the player can accomplish. I'd much rather see the flow of Gil being used as a limit as opposed to artificial timers like some Facebook game.

No transfer, no vanity slot? Again, welcome to most MMO's. Very, very rarely will you see add-on's such as these implemented at launch because they are not as critical to other essential elements such as guilds. All things considered, I feel that the system and features we did get at launch are very polished and well done. I'll happily take that over not being able to enjoy a vanity slot for a while.

The queue times are the only thing where I can agree that there was an issue and in some cases continues to be an issue. Of course there is something we can do, despite it not being something most want to do; change Jobs. Seriously, if you're sitting in a queue for "hours and hours" as a DPS that's no one's fault but your own. Go out, level up as a Healer or Tank and come back. You greatly reduce your queue time, you suddenly remove the "nothing to do" fallacy, and you probably help trigger a queue for several others who are too lazy to help themselves.

[Noahlimits]

The reality of the current MMO landscape is that an MMO can exist without crafting, but it can not exist without PVP, you said it yourself, crafting wasn't fun, the degree of its simplicity or complexity is irrelevant, the point is that crafting isn't fun and downright boring, Many would rather clash swords with another player than carry a pickaxe

FF11 called, it still exists 1000 years later. And no, 11's PVP isn't real PVP. I don't understand why people who dislike a game so much simply don't quit playing. Yeesh.

So you have the US version of it, not the Japanese version. You know the US version was nerfed heavily because they didn't think the American's could handle the original difficulty. Once again, you failed at comprehension. Your FF2 cartridge is NOT the original hard version of the game. I'm talking about the actual hard version of FFIV.

We actually had the children's EZMODE type in the US. Sad.

[Steeled]

An mmo is more likely to survive with healthy PVE and no PVP than it is with mediocre pve and mediocre or good pvp.

The truth of the matter is right now, XIV has mediocre PVE and no PVP. The worst of both worlds.

This PVE is tons of fun the first one, three, five times you do it.

somewhere between then and forty five times later, it stops being fun.

And don't fault me for rushing to endgame. This is how I like to play MMOs. Fault SE for not realizing there's a lot in the mmo community that don't want to fiddle faddle around on a dozen jobs and actually want to be 50. Aside from their experience with XI, I'm sure that some of their employees have worked for AION, WOW, TSW, TOR, something. Some among them know the behavior of the mmo community.

[Suirieko]

The reality of the current MMO landscape is that an MMO can exist without crafting, but it can not exist without PVP, you said it yourself, crafting wasn't fun, the degree of its simplicity or complexity is irrelevant, the point is that crafting isn't fun and downright boring, Many would rather clash swords with another player than carry a pickaxe

FFXI existed for 11 years without PVP. Runes of Magic has several PvE dedicated servers, that are highly populated, and still have limited pvp. FFXIV has existed for two+ years without PVP. It can do fine.

Sorry to shock you but MMORPGs don't need PVP to exist. FFXIV will get a very limited form of PVP.

And sorry to say but I am having fun crafting and gathering as much as I love to fight. If you don't believe me, refer to my signature. Two gatherings at 50, one at 40. Three crafts at 50.

So, about how crafting isn't fun...

[Aenarion]

You should see my bad side if 'charming' isn't to your liking.

I'm pretty sure charming would not be one of the words I’d ever use to describe you.

But this is not a sandbox of any sort. Its not even a little sandboxy. There are no particular tools here in ARR for people to basically build their own game out of. That is not, in fact, a component of MMO's with any commonality at all. So, while you're being dead wrong by dint of confusing 'sandbox' for MMO...

Sigh, the example was to show the difference between similar activities in a single player game vs MMO, and it is my assertion that even for theme park MMOs like ARR the social component is a very integral part of the experience.

Unless you’re just a terrible person who can’t make any friends.

I'm the authority on what I think. You disagree?

Of course not, though it does strike me that you seem to think your opinions are facts.

That's nice. Do you expect me to respect your opinion because you had the temerity to have one, but couldn't quiiiiite evidence genuine thought backing it? Nope.

Respect? From you? Why, never! At this point I wouldn’t even expect you to display a shred of common courtesy.

Incorrect, my malapropic fellow forumer. See, there was no oppositional target there. You're one of those lads that discovered logical fallacies on a forum somewhere and thought they sounded very witty, I surmise? 'Mass ad hominem'. Keep your cookie, you need it more. The term you're looking for is 'hyperbole'.

Naw, I'll readily cede the mastery of the English language to you, it is after all not my first language, but even then I have to say you rely on sophistry a bit too much. The sad part? You still haven’t responded to my original point, which is that you basically labeled every Eve player a sociopath. Not a very classy move there Chrysania.

My argument is rather simple, all things considered: ARR doesn't have the quality where it counts to hook and retain the people it will require to succeed financially.

If things remains as they are, I agree. 2.1 is a rather important update they need to get right.

While it is, to some extent, a poor thing for me in regard of my general hopes for ARR, I'd dare think it worse for you, as you seem to be a valiant defender of something here. I'm not sure what, but you're valiantly defending it, whatever it is.

I’m actually defending nothing here, I enjoy ARR for what it is, but I also see its flaws just fine. If you had stopped for a second and read through what I wrote initially before launching into your tirades, you probably would’ve noticed that all I commented on was the criteria you used to judge MMOs and your thoughts on MMO gaming.

But apparently to you that’s akin to running over your pet puppy repeatedly and pissing on its dead body while singing praise to ARR.

They could have done amazing things. They had the technology. All the pieces were there.

The time and money, were not, 1.0 made certain of that.

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

I guess this is where we make quotes in foreign languages to look more intelligent?

Here's mine to you: 兼聽則明，偏信則暗

[Matthias]

See. I have to voice my own opinion here. And not just to say "I love this game" or anything. But I want to point out one thing that keeps getting mentioned, in a sense, but never has the light shone on it.

This game has not had a single content patch yet. No expansions. No large additions outside of the summer event and a few tweaks, really. So why is everyone comparing a new game to those that have had several, if not more, content additions? Yes. We have CM, Praetorium, AK, 3 HMs and a 5 part raid as end game PvE. That... Is actually a lot. A total of SEVEN places for end game content before the first content patch. And that patch is promising to bring even more. Mix that with nine jobs, eight crafters and three gatherers that can all be leveled to 50. A full storyline, plenty of sidequests, FATEs, dungeons up until 50, Guildhests, Leves... And if nothing else, a vibrant lore and stunning visuals for RP.

How are people already bored with this game?

Most people love the older games right now because they've added so much. WoW has 4 expansions and quite a few patches with each of them. The lack of content, yes, is there. For now. FOR NOW! But that's the part of an MMO. Content keeps coming out for it. It's like DLC for an Xbox game, only fuller and without a fee directly for it. Sheesh... Learn some patience people and ENJOY it. Don't just burn through it.

[Ariyn]

ARR has its issues. The biggest one that no one even touched on is the fact that SE decided to be the only company I know of that places everything server side causing retarded lag in fights where .5 second means life or death. This issue is by far my biggest complaint.

Everything the OP mentioned means little to nothing. Q times can be avoided by not Q'ing up on Monday and Tuesday, shocker I know. Crafting is actually better then most games because you can't just buy mats and afk for an hr to be max level.

There are problems, but the problems are bigger then the "things you don't like to do"