Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Shan]

I played UO for about 3years, WOW for 7 years,

So, to me, WOW is better than UO?no......

The more I played WOW ,the more I hate it,
Quit WOW because I got tired of the boring raids. got tired of the community
I felt I was working on some boring things,with callous people, not playing a game, not having an adventure.
not meeting new friends & doing some interesting/stupid things together.
the only thing I can do in game is go to dungeon, grind for the token,upgrade my gears & stand in the town.
& repeat these boring things when new expension come out.
just a waste of time

UO was like an adventure! so much wonderful memories,
I've stopped playing it, but I still love it
there are some magic in those games, that WOW is lacking

[Welsper59]

As for FF games i would recommend... Well, I haven't particularly liked any of the single player once after 9. For me, the whole voice acting and not being able to change my characters name have made the game lose some immersion.

Have to agree with you there. That was one of the things I'd always enjoy from those other games. The player was essentially the character, regardless of the name you gave. Whereas the newer games makes the player not the character him/her/itself, but rather a facilitator to the overall story. You aren't part of the story, you're merely there for the ride.

Regarding your earlier comment about Doom and current FPS games, I'd play and have more fun with Doom. Actually, I still do from time to time. If I felt like experiencing an interactive FPS movie (linear play and pretty graphics), I'll hit up a CoD or BF game. If I want to play an actual FPS game (minor puzzle solving, secrets galore, badass music, fun and unique enemies, etc), I'll hit up Doom.

[Divinemight]

Attitudes like that lead to a growing divide between gaming communities. We're all 'real' gamers. I don't think I can continue a discussion beyond that point if you're elevating one group above others so blatantly.

You are perfectly knowing what I am referring to. The gaming mechanics like Duty Finder (LFG and LFR) gradually destroying the gaming community from the root. Do we really need Duty Finder? No, we do not. It is a tool created for casual playing, those who are not willing to invest time into mmorpg and to live into a virtual gaming community.

You can not ignore that fact that Blizzard and WoW has created a generation of gamers that want everything to be hand to them on a silver plate. This post WoW generation of gamers create very unpleasnt gaming experience for others. Self-proclaim to be a casual gamer with actual hardcore gaming mindset.

[Kittra]

I liked FFXI for what it was at the time.

I would NOT, however, like to see very many of its systems implemented into FFXIV, simply because I don't think they could make the majority of them work for the current demographic that is targeted (example: Casual/Semi Hardcore).
That isn't to say I wouldn't like seeing "some" of the stuff that worked well in FFXI making it's way to FFXIV eventually.

As for WoW... I'd rather MMO developers actually attempt to steer away from that and finally make something original and fresh while creating system that work.

Too many MMOs strive for WoW's "perfection" as far as money making potential goes, but they completely fall flat in the delivery because: WoW already built that hill and occupies that slot at the top of the hill! Go make your own damn hill already and try something different!

[Bloodwillow]

1. Incorporate some kind of 4 and/or 8-person party grind option similar to those found in FFXI as an alternative to FATE and dungeon-grinding

This I would like to see. Only partying for dungeons sucks. Give me some overland quests one needs parties for and not just FATEs. I mean, isn't that what FF is all about? A group of adventurers questing?

4. Make gear with lasting power. Adding useful set bonuses like increased radius on Flash or increased duration on Regen when you're wearing full artifact gear would be awesome

I am still wondering what we didn't get some special stat boots with each crystal we got. Would be neat, and fit. a +5 to STR perm etc. One for each. But nope. Wasted. I haven't gotten my full Artefact stuff yet as only level 47.

5. FFXIV needs a sense of community. It was a huge letdown to obtain all five pieces of artifact gear by myself over the course of 2 five-minute quests

Heh ah, I remember those 3 months getting raids and groups together in EQ2 for my Beastlord Epic. That made it so much more worth it. I am getting tired being solo.

I do understand this game is relatively new. But they had alot out there to draw from. Bad enough there are minimal amount of quests. Ugh. But I will be around for a while.

[Hyrist]

To elaborate on my views on an individual basis, and illustrate why I think FFXI is a bad example for anything more than the broadest of inspirations, let me breakdown.

Oh god, please no. At least, not in their forms. Don't get me wrong, I loved Limbus and Salvage (Dynamis and Nyzul? ...not so much), but the combination of sheer amount of time spent per run, with, most critically, the fact that with inter-run dependencies, only the people whose schedules allowed them to make it to EVERY SINGLE RUN ever had a significantly high chance of getting anything decent... I'd rather not see that in this game.

Additionally, Dynamis, Salvage, and Limbus were simply raids. We have raid content, and will continue to have more raid content. The system we currently have, with multiple dungeons and raids sharing similar or the same currency base to work towards unified goals, works fine. It just needs more variety. This will come with time on its own. We don't need FFXI's specific style of raiding to duplicate this.

Sky/Sea: Yes and no.

Yes to open world endgame content zone where a feel of wonder and danger are appropriately mixed.
No to making a gated elitism playground (Sea) or a spawn-camping nightmare (Sky) in order to enjoy any of the content that should be readily available to players. That means removing bottlenecks that get compounded on by competition..


HNM: Odin and Behemoth already exist. This will be our template for HNMs for the foreseeable future. What I would like to see is that we go a different direction - actually more towards Guild War's encounters that hold multiple objectives to split the zerg rush down a bit and have players work together without forcing people to compete for participation. The forcing to compete for participation was the worst thing FFXI perpetuated. If something is that popular, it should accommodate it's popularity somehow, rather than make it horribly cutthroat on who actually gets to play that particular part of the game.

Alternatively, HNM Leves and guildhests would be very intriguing as well, if people are wanting a more reserved experience. Point is, there are other, better implimented both open world and closed/instanced examples to large world bosses to simply pull from FFXI's HNM systems.

2hr: No point. This was part of the 'downtime' mechanics that weren't necessarily good to have around. Even the 15 minute timer was griped upon heavily for many skills.The 2hr system itself perpetuated a problem that, to this day, still persists in FFXI. Instead, I'd like them to revamp the limit break system - creating individual limit breaks that each consume only one 'bar' of limit to create a unique, powerful effect based on the Job using it. More on this later, actually.

RSE: Why? If you're trying to pull more uniqueness to the races, why not something related like quests related to races digging into their lore and backgrounds. As far as Race Specific Gear, we walked into the world with RSE, I can see more vanity sets show up with vanity pieces, but you just namedrop this without any real reason or purpose for it. So I must post the question why.

Skillchains: Skillchains died in usefulness due to the way DPS worked. In order for Skillchains to work, they would have to be on the level of Limit Breaks in terms of usefullness.

This is where I pick up on the 2hr subject. Instead of one player using all 3 bars of the limit break - make it so that each bar could only be used by one player, and for the full effect, you'd need multiple party members using their Limit breaks together, in a sort of combined skill effect Ala Chrono Trigger. And that the overall effect of the limit break depended on the Role combination (and possibly order) of the Limit Chain activated.

This would function far more effectively than what the Skillchain system did, (which fell out of favor unless you were self-skillchaining). Additionally, adding more context and player sensitive objectives that could visually assist in filling the limit bar would be great (an indicator to show what contribute to the limit bar also would help a lot in encouraging these actions). But FFXI's Skillchain/Magic Burst system ver-baitum? No, that would not work well here - as we have no elemental system to exploit, and should not have one to begin with based off of existing systems, and a static team system will simply mean that it is exploited in the most efficient manor.

[Jubez187]

4. Make gear with lasting power. Adding useful set bonuses like increased radius on Flash or increased duration on Regen when you're wearing full artifact gear would be awesome

This. We need cooler gear/materia. Vitality + X is not interesting and gets old after a while. I want something more tangible, more unique. Frostbite, a sword from Toto dungeon, doesn't even have % chance to freeze on-hit...come on now SE.

[Hyrist]

You are perfectly knowing what I am referring to. The gaming mechanics like Duty Finder (LFG and LFR) gradually destroying the gaming community from the root. Do we really need Duty Finder? No, we do not. It is a tool created for casual playing, those who are not willing to invest time into mmorpg and to live into a virtual gaming community.

You can not ignore that fact that Blizzard and WoW has created a generation of gamers that want everything to be hand to them on a silver plate. This post WoW generation of gamers create very unpleasnt gaming experience for others. Self-proclaim to be a casual gamer with actual hardcore gaming mindset.

If you think Blizzard and WoW created that generation of gamers, you're sorely mistaken and ignorant of the larger picture. You neglect to acknowledge the fact that the gaming community has exploded in population in the last fifteen years, and MMOs are not the sole culprit to this. Matchmaking existed in Halo, and other FPS and grouped multiplayer games as well.

You paint a very dangerously broad brush about the varying and complex issues about entitlement and declining maturity in the gaming community. And that you try to pin anyone who grew up previously to that generation as 'true gamers' it's quite frankly appalling to me because I feel that this accusatory attitude you take with it means you wash your hands of your contributions to the problem as well. This is our community, and if you wish to speak for the community then we also need to take responsibility of the community. This means assuming a conduct that's productive to the community. This looking down thing is not helping the problem you're citing. The fact that you're supposed to not wash your hands of this due to disliking features such as the duty finder, and try to actively participate in making such encounters as pleasant as possible is in fact contributing to it.

What Square Enix could do to help is offer more easily accessible social tools to enable players to engage one another better, not remove tools that make the game more accessible. What we can do is engage the community in a positive manner and get people out of their social shells. Our self-defensive reflexes from being part of the older generation of games keep wanting us to push away from something we should have been welcoming guiding towards for years. We perpetuate this problem as well, and rather than stare at it bitterly, we need to be proactive in helping turn it around.

[Althea]

Lol I love this thread. You can really see that FFXIV is a conglomerate of old veterans and a ton of noobs to MMORPGs in general. The hardcore players in this thread are clearly shown supporting an FFXI based game

This is generally what I've seen from XI players. They where stuck in a world very very separated from the rest of the MMO world, then come demanding this game be like XI which in all actuality is what 1.0 was; which failed miserably. My biggest worry is that SE will listen to them.

2.0 is a HUGE improvement - but I'm concerned about the quality of life problems (bad netcode, lack of transparency from SE, gil spammers/hackers, etc). I've cancelled my sub for now. Will come around in a few months and see if things have been cleaned up.

[AzumaKun]

This again? FFXI sucked, let's move past it.

Clearly you never played, you've only heard about the horror stories from people who have.