"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

[RedAffinity]

If you implement a system or team that's dedicated to researching trends in efforts to provide information for the development team to balance the game, you can also implement a marketing gimmick, something along the lines of the game is constantly evolving and enemies adapt to players, they learn from you and "strike back harder" bla bla blah... and use that as a twist to cover your adjustments basically tweaking enemy strengths and resistance against specific play styles that you believe are against the original vision for how the battle would have gone down.

[kukurumei]

Talk is cheap.

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

There will always be balance problems, and broken tactics, community harassment and so on. This is by the definition of MMO and games alike.

Even if repeating every single one of FF11's mistakes is still better then FF14's current form. Should they do better? Heck yes. Should they start forgetting every past thing, because it was imperfect, especially when it's their bread and butter...

I wouldn't mind a FF11-2 to start off with because at least I'll actually make that white box collecting dust worth something rather then it's current form.

We expect something better, but at this point almost anything solid is better then current trends.

[Physic]

Talk is cheap.

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

There will always be balance problems, and broken tactics, community harassment and so on. This is by the definition of MMO and games alike.

Even if repeating every single one of FF11's mistakes is still better then FF14's current form. Should they do better? Heck yes. Should they start forgetting every past thing, because it was imperfect, especially when it's their bread and butter...

I wouldn't mind a FF11-2 to start off with because at least I'll actually make that white box collecting dust worth something rather then it's current form.

We expect something better, but at this point almost anything solid is better then current trends.

ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town.

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

[ZephyrAM]

I/We had more fun in one day in FF11, then the whole time in FF14. Strive for the holy grail is nice and all, but at the end of the day, something decent is by far not the worse thing to happen.

That may have been true for you/your group, however, it by no means holds true for the rest of us. Personally, I've enjoyed the rather broken world of XIV far and above more then any or all of my days in XI, in large part because they're different games and designed to be so.

XI still exists, even still gets expansions. SE had no reason whatsoever to even attempt to remake or make a sequel to a game still in the business, especially since no matter what they do they're going to alienate potential players 'somewhere', so why not go for two different fanbases for their two running MMO's?

I say, fix what's broken, break some more stuff, fix that, and break more again if you must... just don't pull XI into this.

[Airlea]

ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town..

You need a bit of a history lesson as far as XI is concerned. http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

It's almost eerie how similar the progression of these games has been.

[SuzakuCMX]

ffxi still exists, there is no advantage to recreating it. And the reason this game is not comparing to ffxi, is because they have added no new content for 8 months. If we had to stay in the 3 main zones in ffxi with no cap raises at level 40, no bcnms and only access to rank 2 missions for 8 months, i guarantee you FFxi would be extremely wack. back when we played ffxi, i was in jueno within like a week or two tops. this game hasnt even released its non starting city town.

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

Kinda pointless to put in any content that would have to be reworked as soon as the battle system is reworked.

[Shampooo]

Things that aren't "innovation" so much as they are copouts designed to step around any system that aims to reward effort and innovation:

Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Kiting
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Terrain blocking
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": DoT death by attrition
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Bind rotations
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Stunlocking
Mob hits too hard. "Innovation": Don't feed it TP.
Mob doesn't die fast enough. "Innovation": Rangering ranger on their rangers
Mob has heavy AoE. "Innovation": Rangering ranger on their rangers
Too many mobs. "Innovation": Manaburning
Too many mobs. "Innovation": Spike damage whoring
Devastating AoE debilititations. "Innovation": No meleers.
Timed fight with pressure. "Innovation": Zerg rushing

Unless the developers have novel ideas on how the population won't take their "system that rewards effort and innovation" and turn it into a system that "rewards archers and thaumaturges for being archers and thaumaturges" I really don't see this new direction enhancing the game's quality.

Effort will become "If you want to be useful, level a useful job."
Innovation will become...well nothing. It'll be the same copouts the population has relied on to shirk difficult content for years.

The tanks, mages, and ranged fans in the crowd are licking their lips at these buzzwords, because they know that ultimately it's their jobs that will come out on top of the ensuing mess. Sorry meleers. Looks like you'll be standing in the corner of the Ouryu fight again, lest you ruin the blm's "innovation."

Player-driven innovation is weak, derivative, exclusionary, and elitist.

Innovation can only come through the developers ironically, in creating a challenging system that doesn't exclude people but rather by necessity includes everyone who plays the game. Not just the same jobs over and over.

People will claim it's the players' faults for resorting to cheap tactics and relying on the easywin tactics, but it isn't. It's the developers' faults for not designing quality game design. If their solution to an easy game is to just throw a berserk boss fest at 20% HP, a bunch of paralyze-class AoE's at the players, and to make them hit like a truck...well we already know how to handle those situations: just bring the 3 best classes in the game suitable for that kind of cliché "difficulty" and ditch the dead weight.

Cliché challenge calls for cliché behaviors. They worked before. They'll work again. I don't want to see this game become a playground for prima donna archers and mages like FFXI did from years 1-4, and we'll be well down that road come fall unless the developers have some NEW challenge up their sleeves that demands REAL innovation and effort.

omg still crying? wait till patch comes to post your complaints

[kukurumei]

the problem is lack of content and a release filled with bugs and oversights.

If that was the only reasons FF14 wouldn't be in this state. You can wave the magical memory modification wand, all you want...no one is effect by it at this point.

Let's face it, you can try to pamper the story of the "FF14 that wasn't" all you want, but it was grade A trash and still probably is to many players and former players.

If it even got to the level of classical FF11, it wouldn't have gotten ranked down so hard. That's cold hard truth.

The fact that a bit of FF11-2 creeping back in is still leagues better then the original plan of self implosion. Our standards are so low at this point, it's better we have some then nothing. The bread and butter of FF11 that worked fairly well shouldn't be sneered at even if it's not the greatest taste on earth.

It's like the titanic sinking and you refuse to get on the life boats because it's too crowded for your tastes.

[Issachar]

omg still crying? wait till patch comes to post your complaints

My sentiments exactly. Theorycrafting is fun until you get some wannabe know-it-all picking apart things that havent even been put ingame yet.

[Physic]

You need a bit of a history lesson as far as XI is concerned. http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

It's almost eerie how similar the progression of these games has been.

oh i know, but vthey had lots of updates and a lot of content in the first 8 months, they got jueno, 5 new jobs, announcement of expansion 2 level cap raises, northlands unlocked