Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[DSX]

Final Fantasy 11 was/is a great game. That's why it is still around over a decade later and has made SE more money than any of their other games. So people can bad mouth it all they wish. But the facts speak for themselves.

14 would have been very wise to follow in its footsteps and improve upon it, rather abandoning it completely and trying to clone WoW. So I agree with the OP.

FFXI could live because it was unique AND had long term goals to achieve.
FFXIV is a clone MMORPG just like the rest of them that made bank with the privilege of having the Final Fantasy skin available to them to slap it on the game.

[Doo]

This is the funny part for me. I hear them pointing fingers at anyone that say something positive about FFXI and cry its too grindy and nothing in it except time sinks then you look at what they are playing its as grindy with time sinks everywhere AND doesn't challenge your intelligence in anyway to boot it just treat you like a child.

Newer games tend to feed their players constant gear and weapons that it makes their minds think it's less grindy. I.E Get Ifrit weapon, get Garuda weapon quick in no time. Grinding crafts and leveling classes there's so much unnecessary gear you can skip through or do without.

[synaesthetic]

What? Copy WoW less? Are you high?

If anything, Square needs to copy World of Warcraft (and other games they already badly copy) more and better!

Labyrinth of the Ancients is a poor half-ripoff of LFR. They should copy LFR more and allow each player to win one drop per boss.

FATEs are a poor facsimile of RIFT's rifts. They should do a better job of copying them, by making FATEs just as varied and interesting as RIFT's rifts.

The dye system is just a half-baked version of GW2's dye system. They should make a fully-baked version, complete with multiple dye color areas per piece, dyes not being a consumable item once you've "learned" a color, and every single piece of gear being dyeable.

Their story quests are just half-assed remakes of SWTOR's class mission lines. They should be less half-assed, and give the player character more input in the story, allowing us to have dialog options and branching conversations!

The combat system is just a...

I could go on for hours. SE hasn't done a damn thing perfectly here, and most of what they've done wrong has to do with cleaving far too close to their obsession with arbitrary restriction. The only point I even remotely agree with the OP on is that we definitely do need a more varied gearing metagame. Right now it's just "higher numbers are better" and the secondary attributes (crit, determination, etc) are so much weaker than the primary attribute (int, mnd, etc) that it's not even really worth gearing for them with a few major exceptions (bard, monk).

I'd have loved for the Crimson Vest to have "Fire III/Fester: Increases damage dealt by 10%." That right there would make me seriously consider, "is this better than AF+? Better than allagan? Must go test it." Where's the variety in endgame gearing? The sidegrades? The extremely muddy and unclear upgrade paths that actually give us endgame players something to do, something to test, and lots of situational pieces to find and use? These things all help prevent power creep, which kills MMOs.

[Ahzarhuuk]

Why does everyone think FF XI was some sparkling gem of originality.

It mimicked Everquest. Just like FF XIV took note of other modern MMORPGs.

[Reeth]

I do enjoy the game as it is and for what it is, but I would be extremely happy if it also had the difficulty and depth that XI had.

[Shadex]

Why does everyone think FF XI was some sparkling gem of originality.

It mimicked Everquest. Just like FF XIV took note of other modern MMORPGs.

I believe it is all the things that it did not take from EQ that made it great. The crafting system that actually mattered, open world events that were not GM required, the Campaign system, chocobo breeding, etc. There was so much more to XI than EQ and while I played EQ for years from launch, XI was the next evolutionary step. 14 just nuked itself back to cro magnon. Zog press one button... too hard!

[Ahzarhuuk]

FFXI could live because it was unique AND had long term goals to achieve.
FFXIV is a clone MMORPG just like the rest of them that made bank with the privilege of having the Final Fantasy skin available to them to slap it on the game.

I have a feeling you don't know what a Clone is.

I believe it is all the things that it did not take from EQ that made it great. The crafting system that actually mattered, open world events that were not GM required, the Campaign system, chocobo breeding, etc. There was so much more to XI than EQ and while I played EQ for years from launch, XI was the next evolutionary step. 14 just nuked itself back to cro magnon. Zog press one button... too hard!

I think you have your chronology mismatched if you think FF XIV is a regression of MMO Game evolutions.

[Tiggy]

There is a funny thing about subjective statements. They are opinions. Seems like a lot of people in this thread just want to argue opinions.

When it comes down to it though any company trying to make money on MMOs has a business imperative to make the game as accessible to as many people as possible and friendly to as many new players as possible. FFXI did not achieve those two goals what-so-ever, and that is the primary reason it never had a million subscribers. That style of MMO is dead, and for very good reasons. The fact FFXI is the most profitable game Square ever made doesn't change the fact that had it been easier to get into they would have made even more money. I have well over a dozen friends who I failed to convince to play past the free month simply because the game was so difficult to learn and slowly paced. I can't remember what the cost of the sub was, but lets assume 14 a month. If those 12 friends of mine had been able to learn the game more easily that's an extra 168 bucks a month they were loosing. Square understands this math which is why they've made the choices they have. Which MMO will be the most successful in retaining long term subs certainly remains to be seen, but constantly fostering a new and growing player base is a key part of the equation. While FFXI certainly had its good points it had many issues that prevented a steady stream of new players to the game. In my humble opinion they made the right choice by avoiding many of FFXI's pitfalls. I'm eager to see what kind of new content they can develop to keep me interested in the long term.

[Doo]

When it comes down to it though any company trying to make money on MMOs has a business imperative to make the game as accessible to as many people as possible and friendly to as many new players as possible. FFXI did not achieve those two goals what-so-ever, and that is the primary reason it never had a million subscribers.

Games don't need to appeal to the masses. Sport games, Dark Souls, Minecraft, etc. It gets dumbed down that way.

[Reeth]

Games don't need to appeal to the masses. Sport games, Dark Souls, Minecraft, etc. It gets dumbed down that way.

True, but it's a lot more profitable if they do. Which is why they made FFXIV the way they did.