FFXIV: ARR becoming TORtanic

[Deedsie]

you honestly enjoy killing a monster for it to drop something that sells 1-3 gil on the npc?

Some of those things I can make something out of and sell for 500 on the board, or some thing I can put directly up on the board for 100 each. Want to NPC it? Your problem.

[Sidious]

I'd say that this game has a pretty good amount of dungeons/instanced content to do in general. Besides, your mentioning of the individual dungeons doesn't really mean much given that you already mentioned "tons of dungeons to do before cap" prior. It'd make your statement a lot shorter. Plus, most people didn't repeatedly do those old vanilla instances in one sitting. They weren't exactly short instances for most people, especially prior to 60. In fact, some of them (on average) took longer than 90min to complete.

The dungeons I mentioned were only the endgame dungeons that were available at release. If I mentioned ALL of the dungeons--not even including the ones released shortly after the game went live--my statement would be much, much longer. And no, they didn't repeat the dungeons one after another because the game wasn't designed around doing that kind of nonsense-- there was so much to do beyond dungeon grinding. Dungeons were long, complex, and sometimes very easy to get lost in. They were dungeons. It's not nostalgia-- hop on a 3rd party vanilla server today and see for yourself. I recommend one called Emerald Dream.

*This* game was designed around dungeon grinding and instanced content. *This* game has one viable end-game dungeon. You can't have ONE endgame dungeon in a game designed around instanced content. You just can't.

The weapons to craft, I'd say this game has WoW trumped on that... you know, given that you kinda need crafted weapons to create the relic. Not to mention needing someone with said craft skills to apply materia to them.

Most people don't actually *use* the weapon that crafters make. You *used* the weapons and armor that crafters made in vanilla WoW. The arcanite reaper, the lionheart helm, etc. And the relic weapon isn't that hard to make. It doesn't take time, it doesn't take effort. I have it. The only roadblock was Titan. And even he is pretty darn easy with a group that I preformed/gearchecked.

Not really sure what you mean by "great leveling curve" though. That it took a full week at minimum to grind out the levels for an average player (that plays 4-6hrs+ a day)? I really don't think that's a positive thing to the majority of players these days.

It took a lot more than a week to get to cap in vanilla for the average player. It wasn't negative then and it's not negative now-- if the game is actually good. And really, what evidence do you have to support such a claim to the contrary when every ultra-casual P2P MMO has fallen on its face?

[Reokotsae]

I think its funny when people call us "White Knights" just because we are having fun lol

Your not a White Knight for enjoying the game.

Your a White Knight when your adoration for the game causes you to completely ignore fundamental flaws in the game.

Do I agree with the op? On some notes but not really, this game has far more hook then ToR did.

However it would be amazingly foolish to not realize the game has a bunch of things to fix if it wants to remain competitive.

[Chrysania]

Lots of good points and well thought-out observations.

I don't disagree at all that its very probably a funding issue. The temptation to try to please everyone all the time isn't new though, and its lessons are numerous. In no industry has it ever been more than a fluke for something to please even most a significant portion of the time.

But the MMO industry on the whole is learning. Games like MOBAS (Looking at you, League of Legends and DOTA2) offer a rather specialized experience on a platform that caters to that experience exclusively. At no point playing LoL (for the chiefest example I can make) will you have to go run around a maze of a city and spend three hours trying to find a quest objective.

If you love PVP in RTS games, LoL might just be your dreamboat. It isn't trying to cater to everyone; its targeting a very specific (and very significant thus-worth-targeting) market, and it is (at least attempting) to deliver to them an EXCELLENT experience in that niche.

Pan your gaze over to World of Warcraft. That game's done the improbable; it pulled off trying to please everybody all the time well enough to become a phenomenon of the digital age. Its success will not be replicated because that success hinged far more on circumstances than anything Blizzard specifically did.

In effect, they won the perfect-storm lottery. Financial interests that understand significantly less about causality than they do money wanted to somehow get in on that cash cow, and so trying to make MMO's have something for just about everyone became the standard.

No MMO that patterned itself off of WoW even loosely has done all that great. Some have done moderately ok at times, but they've struggled to pull off even shaky, intemperate success. Why? Because even if their game was arguably better at being like WoW than even WoW was at times and in places, they didn't have the circumstances WoW did.

Now look over at EVE Online. That right there is a game that did it right because they (rather cleverly) identified an extremely exploitable market, took a chance and turned it into something rock solid. EVE is a game that is not for everyone. Depending on what you look for in a game, you'll probably hate it or love it. If you like the sort of thing it offers, there's a lot to love. If you don't...it isn't even going to try to please you. Its not your game.

CCP's success with EVE is replicable, because it achieved that success far more by design than chance. WoW's phenomenal success is mostly the product of chance. It has remained successful in great part due to Blizzard successfully pairing design off to that unparalleled success, but it did not achieve that success by design.

If ARR truly wanted to succeed, Yoshi would've looked more closely at games like EVE and LoL not for design inspiration, but for method and infrastructure.

In the end though, investors of a publically traded international holding aren't often as in-the-know as they sometimes think they are. He was probably dealing with execs that needed to soothe and coddle investors as well as their own pride, and its the historical precedent for ultra-conservatism to dominate mindsets when its desperate-measures-time.

Patterning a lot off WoW is safe. Even if its tactically unsound, parroting the successful often looks safe on paper, and investors are often caring about very little other than doing the safe thing when its hit the fan. I suspect that Yoshi would've been swept aside and replaced by someone that would do the safe thing quite quickly even if he'd wanted to pattern off of anything but WoW.

It is, in any case, entirely possibly so. If it was not the case and Yoshi had a genuine degree of control over the design...then he simply made the same mistake so many have in thinking that WoW's success ever had to do with anything formulaic and thus repeatable.

You still can't please everyone all the time. If you try to design your product to do so, you'll be far more likely to generate a lot of annoyance, some tolerance and a negligible quantity of novelty approval.

Pick your thing and do it well. Don't try to be forgettably mediocre at everything.

Still sage advice. Even here in MMOland.

[EzriNuru]

Snip

Why did you Necro this thread? The OP had good points 2 months ago, most of those issues have been addressed and fixed at this point and contain very little relevance anymore.

[Chrysania]

Because unlike some, I don't have time to live on a forum every day. I reply to things when I find them. Also, the last post prior to mine was about a month ago. Not two. Cheerio.

[DoctorPepper]

Haha, why are so many people still accusing people of rushing? This game has been out for months now, just because you focused on one or two classes and not all of them does not mean you rushed. Personally I work 40-50+ hrs a week, have a relationship and 2 dogs, and I'm still 50 on my main and 4 crafts, have been doing coil for about 2 weeks now (which is refreshing after grinding dungeons). I have absolutely 0 interest in grinding FATEs, mindlessly spamming aoe spells/abilities and not even getting to play my class as intended is not my thing and although I think some of the reasoning the OP suggested is irrelevant I really have to say there IS NOT a lot to do in this game currently as some people are suggesting. I understand this is launch and I'm more than happy to give the game time to implement content but at this rate I know about 10 people who have quit due to lack of content and I don't want to see that number continue climbing because people have nothing to do.

[DSN]

CAPS AND LARGE FONTS TOTALLY WILL GET THE ATTENTION OF THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM, I HEARD PURPLE TEXT ALSO WORKS TO

- No PvP upon launch (even SWTOR had PvP on Launch)

Don't care FF has never been a PVP Focused game and if that is what you need feel free to check out many other games that focus on this.

- Little Post-Game Stuff to do (AK,CP Runs, Long Duty Finder Queue, Tomes Farming)
Very boring and repetitive stuff.

Unlike every new game that doesn't have 10+ years of content and expansion packs?

- Little incentive to do a max level alt class, leveling them is entirely dependent
Upon mindless Fates grinding and minuscule leve quests, seriously why shouldn't
former low lvl quests reset for a low level alt?

If you are looking for the fastest way to the end this is true, however if you actually enjoy the game and playing it you have many options for leveling. You dont need to 'beat' the 'unbeatable' game in the first week its out.

- Crafting is very boring and inconsequential and a majority of players have no interest
In wasting their time crafting wherein they could be doing other more fun stuff

I like crafting and based on the hundreds of people standing around crafting I think your opinion here is just that YOUR OPINION but thank you for telling me how I like to play my game and what I enjoy and don't

- Worthless monster drops that give nothing but stupid crafting materials

versus ... what? you want to find some bad ass epic on a level 5 mob?

- Very hard to accumulate Gil in this game because monster loot sucks.

Do you only rely on killing enemies for their gold drops? If so you will find yourself in a bad place in any MMO.

- Ridiculous teleportation and repair fees

See Above - If you rely soley on that gold drop from enemies to finance your time in the game I could see these being 'ridiculous'.

- No server transfers upon launch

Who cares and its live now? Are you bitching for the sake of bitching?

- No vanity/fashion items upon launch

My bag is full of swimsuits, Usagi Kabuto masks, ghost costumes, etc. There is RP gear all over this game have you tried looking for it?

[Laf]

uh-huh, ARR's whiteknights say exactly same stuff as tortanic's whitenights... Tortanic too was getting content slow(and bugfixes) and how did it turned out? Casuals played trough most of the relevant content and quit.

[ashikenshin]

yet here you are... and what does that make you?