Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Arkune]

Edited to Add: I continually fail to understand why this game can't just be FFXIV, instead of people demanding that it be FFXI. If you like FFXI so much, please go back and play that game. I like FFXIV. I would never play FFXI.

Well every MMO Copied stuff from other MMO's thats how it is, but Yoshi cloned 95% of the game from WoW and thats something u cant deny.

XI had copys from EQ but it was more Original then XIV:ARR will ever be. "Go back to XI" can only someone say who doesnt know that this Game already turned into a "Casual" Game like XIV:ARR but they already promised that it will Change back to the Original Steps sooner or later.

While i enjoyed every Boss Encounter on XI and XIV 1.XX (because of the Slower Battle System,TP Gain/Feed System and random TP moves from Bosses), I really cant stand this Button-Smashing Fights and Attack Patterns anymore.

To be honest, how much time on a Boss Encounter u Focus the Boss itself instead of your Cooldowns and your HP Bar and the HP Bar of your Party Members ?

What some People asking for is a slower battlesystem like we had in 1.23 to enjoy the fights instead of running arround like headless Chickens to dodge and focusing the HP Bar and the Cooldowns of SKills.

I want real Alliance Open World Feeling, sure XI had also instanced fights like Primals/BCNM/KSNM/Dynamis/Einherjar/Salvage/Limbus but we also had Open World Zones like Sky/Sea, HNMs, Open World NMs with Lasting Equipment even it was Low Level Equipment. (Leaping Boots, Valkurm Emperor, O-Kote etc...).

If Yoshi would have sticked to 1.23 Battlesystem, we wouldnt be at the Point where People getting disappointet because their Gear Progression got dumped because of new Content. (I dont want to go into the Details on this post)

Also some sidenotes because of Casuals and Hardcore Players:
Do you really think the Myth Points which give us acces to Ilevel 90 Equip with a 450 myths cap each week is really Casual friendly? Well nope isnt at all, if you can Play 2 Hours a day as a casual (example) you will spend 5 days a week for some Points if you dont have a Group of friends which help you to farm Points even faster.

Yoshi says that he want that Players also enjoy RL and other Games or MMOs but he is forcing you to Log in every Day indirectly with Dailys and Weekly Point resets and Weekly Lockouts.

Item-Levels:
I see alot People complaining about the current state of Elitists and Stuff, things like Ilevel is one of the worst things they could have been added to a Game and its quite simple. This Item-Level System turned the Community into a "We dont want to give beginners a Chance at all", you ever checked the Party finder? 1 Fail = Kick, Ilevel 80 ONLY this is so WoW Community Like and it srsly **** up the whole Game Community.

[Doo]

While i enjoyed every Boss Encounter on XI and XIV 1.XX (because of the Slower Battle System,TP Gain/Feed System and random TP moves from Bosses), I really cant stand this Button-Smashing Fights and Attack Patterns anymore.

Add in skillchains, 2hrs, a delicate hate system,etc oh man way more complex and fun. While in FFXIV the hardest part is when someone messes up during a certain script (due to not knowing the rotation, lag, or just bad) and cause the party to wipe over and over again while in FFXI it's more manageable if your someone screws up.

[ArcheustheWise]

The problems with copying WoW

Yeah this always has bothered me. Why try to be WoW with a different coat of paint but worse? I mean its pretty simple, if people wanted wow, they would go play wow... shocker i know. This feels like a pseudo wow with ff staples tacked onto it. Same style of "place pop culture references everywhere", same place quests with ! above their head, same gear treadmill. Yada yada yada... I could go on about how everyone in endgame looks the same but Im going to stop their because my intention is not to make people mad, and i know i will if i go any further.

And yes yes i know wow copied things from eq technically speaking but at least they both felt like thier own game. Now its like devs aren't even trying much anymore. Just gear treadmill spam. Personally i cant wait for eqn, the way they are preaching thier game is how i belived mmos should have been for a very long time. But the way game dev companies are going these days and the train wreck after train wreck we've seen not going to hold my breath on that either. Lol.

But i digress. i still hope yoshi can add some cool stuff to the game or fix it before we all lose our minds lol.

[Naberrie]

I have many guildies who have played XI, and every single one of them said that if FF implemented things from XI - especially the RNG, grindy crap that the game had - they would quit in a heartbeat. Every single one of them had stories of how terrible the crafting was, how stupid the PvE was, how grindy it was. The only thing that was worse was actually 1.0 FFXIV, which a couple of them also played.

There are six people in my FC that played FFXI and none of them talk like that. But my focus group does not equal everyone's majority opinion any more than yours does.

[NefGP]

I think you are missing the point.

It's not that players are demanding Final Fantasy 14 be Final Fantasy 11. They just wished for something that followed in its tradition but with significant improvements. Instead they got WoW with better graphics. Which is all Final Fantasy 14 is.

I am glad you like it. It is a solid game. But it's nothing remarkable. Final Fantasy 11 was far more ground-breaking in its scope and span and it would have been nice to see a sequel to that game instead of WoW.

If this game is still around 10 years later as a subscription-based model like 11 is I will be very surprised.

Nail on the head. I made my peace with XI and am fine with having left it, even if I do still miss it from time to time.

I never expected or wanted a rehashing of it either with XIV, but rather take what worked well in XI and expand upon it. This isn't what happened at all. Yes we got some improvements but what was at the heart of XI, that made it such a memorable experience was completely abandoned for reasons I still can't understand or fathom. All the people saying "XI is still up, go play it" need to just stop. XI isn't the same game it once was for one thing (it too, has sadly fallen under the spell of WoW influence as Delve nearly destroyed the game by obsoleting REM weapons and pissing off the majority of the community) and while I personally enjoyed abyssea, it did basically destroy 7 years of viable content in a single patch.

I'd love to see XI remade in HD or at least Vana'diel revisited in an offline entry, but for the time being I'm more interested in seeing XIV thrive under its own identity and as a true FF experience, not a WoW clone with FF themes (something I'd long denied but honestly there's no denying it anymore; this game is pretty much that...)

Maybe things will improve once the first expansion comes along and we get some more classes but as it is, I'm probably not going to renew my sub once it's up. I gave ARR the 6-month test and it's not living up to expectations at all. It's by no means a bad game, but I get the feeling myself and the bulk of the XI fans who supported it through the rough times are feeling the same thing - that we got screwed.


I love the refined combat and crafting in XIV, but it's the crappy new armory system and horrible job design that kills it for me more than anything (and the lack of open world content). I also like the more solo-friendly environment but the game does feel severely lacking in teamwork mechanics compared to XI (SC + MB, Bard being an infinitely more powerful support role etc.)

Let's just do a few comparisons, starting with WAR.


In XI, WAR was the basic starting tank but really shined as a DD capable of using virtually every weapon & weaponskill relatively well, with its specialty in Great Axes (which also had some of the best debuffing weaponskills like shield break and armor break). It had some of the best tools in the game in Provoke, Berserk & Double Attack making it a great subjob and main etc etc. It's only major flaw was that it kinda tapered off as a tank later on as PLD had a far superior skillset, and then NIN really came into it's own shortly after NA release as the evasion tank further leaving WAR in the dust (and now there's RUN as well).

At first in XIV, back around 1.17 WAR seemed to be pretty good. The limitations on weapon variety (thanks to the armory system...) sucked but it felt like a powerhouse compared to XI. High HP, variety in gear (could use both heavy and normal dark light sets for emphasizing tanking or dps) and Steel Cyclone was just a monstrous WS. ARR screwed with all that.

* gotta cut this short for now, post more later.

[Magis]

They are treating us like children, they are afraid it will be too complicated for us....
So we are getting this simpleton no brainier system.
They are completely scared that any game event causing stress will drive all the players away (well drive their target audience away)
It's a sad state of affairs really

Or they don't want to do the extra effort of balancing a more complicated system. Pigeon holeing classes/jobs into 3 roles and no elemental wheel comes to mind.

[LiadansWhisper]

I never said the word must.

If SE wants to try and copy WoW they can, and have.

Also, I should point out one of the main reasons for WoW's success is their excellent server performance. Something Final Fantasy 14 is having difficulty with. So I think they lack this key ingredient to become the next WoW.

And I disagree with you that this game does quite a bit things differently than WoW. It really doesn't. It is a shameless copycat. And you need to just admit that.

Now you may be right it was a smart financial move. Time will tell. I won't even attempt to argue that WoW is not profitable, because it is. But is it the type of game most long-time Final Fantasy fans were looking for? I kind of doubt it.

This isn't WoW. Not by a longshot.

- The most obvious reason is that I can level every class on one character, something that's impossible in WoW.
- There are no Jobs in WoW.
- There are no cross-class skills.
- You can only have 2 Crafts in WoW, and it's impossible to HQ anything (and crafted items are patently useless to PvE until max level and have almost no use for PvP).
- Food does not last through death (although it lasts longer than in FF), and the raid-quality food generally only gives one stat - a primary stat such as Intellect, Stamina (Vitality), Dexterity, or Strength. You can't HQ food.
- There is no Archaeology in FF.
- Herbalism (aka Botany) is only used for Alchemy and Inscription. The only way to find cooking ingredients is to kill animals that drop them, or grow your own - on your own farm.
- There is no use for lumber or wood - and, in fact, you can't gather them at all.
- There are almost no loading screens in WoW. The only "loading screens" are between continents. You can fly from the top of Winterspring to the tip of Tanaris in Kalimdor, and there isn't a single loading screen.
- You can fly in Wow.
- Mounts have different run speeds, and flying mounts have different fly speeds.
- You have to buy successive levels of mount training.
- You can climb to the top of any hill in WoW - or fly to it, outside of Eversong and the Draenei starting area.
- You can fall to your death while out of combat. In fact, I spent a good long time dying horribly in Howling Fjord trying to get to mining nodes while too low level to fly.
- You can level from 10-90 without ever stepping foot in the world - leveling entirely in dungeons or PvP Battlegrounds.
- You can level from 1-90 without ever stepping into a dungeon or Battleground - leveling entirely through quests.
- You will never run out of quests in WoW. If you exhaust the quests in one zone, you simply go to the next zone and there will be more quests there.
- You can level 1-90 by doing nothing but grinding mobs. It'll take a long time, but you can do it.
- You can level 5-90 by doing nothing but gathering professions (aka Mining and Herbalism). Each node you harvest gives a small amount of experience, depending on how high level your gathering skill is, and how high level your character is.
- You can trade Justice Points in WoW for trade good items, like ores, enchanting materials, cloth, Spirits of Harmony, etc. Unlike FF, there is nothing overtly "special" about these items, and you can also farm them separately on your own.
- You can trade Justice Points in WoW for "Heirloom Gear," which are pieces specifically tailored to a particular class or spec, with all of the correct stats on it, that levels up with your chracter and gives you an experience bonus while leveling that alt character so that you level faster.
- You can use your non-combat pets in WoW to battle other non-combat pets, a la Pokemon.
- You can run non-heroic dungeons as many times as you want in WoW, and they do not have a lockout. However, Heroic Dungeons have a 24 hour lockout (resetting at like, 3am PST every day) after you have completed one (unless you do it using WoW's version of Duty Roulette).
- Like FF, WoW's raids have a 1 week lockout, resetting every Tuesday morning. Unlike FF, you are not immediately locked to an instance by entering it after bosses have been defeated (unless it is a Heroic version of the raid, but even then you are asked whether you want to stay by a pop up window).
- Crafts in WoW are not separate classes. You do not wear special gear to use them, and you do not use experience points to level them. In fact, nothing you wear will change the outcome of the item you are creating. You cannot fail at creating an item. You can mass create items and have 0 chance of failure - even if you were doing it naked.
- Crafting items does not incur durability loss.
- You can friend people cross-server.
- If you meet some cool guys in a dungeon, you can queue for a new dungeon with them again at the end of your run - regardless of what server they are from.
- Raids in FFXIV are fixed at 8 man parties, or 24 man alliances (being 3 groups of 8). Raids in WoW can be 10 man, 25 man, or 10-25 man "Flexible," allowing groups to participate regardless of raid size. If you have 10 people, you can go! If you have 12 people, you can go! If you have 17 people, you can go! And so on.
- If you want to enter a raid instance in WoW, the system does not care how many people you bring inside - so long as you do not exceed the maximum number for that raid size. So if you want to do a 10 man with 2 people, you can do it! If you want to do one of the old 40 man raids with 1 person, you can do it! If you want to do a 25 man with 5 people, you can do it! WoW's system doesn't care if you would probably fail at trying to do an on-level 25 man with 5 people - it's your choice to go in.
- Most endgame gear - including that purchased with the equivalent of Tomestones - has gem sockets (i.e. Materia slots).
- Gems (i.e. Materia) are created by a crafting profession (Jewelcrafting).
- You cannot lose gems while slotting them into an item, but you cannot "overmeld" an item.
- Most pieces of gear can be specially enchanted with extra stats.
- If an item has poor stats on it for your particular Job, you can "Reforge" some of those stats into a more beneficial stat.
- WoW has Glyphs, which can change the function of a spell or ability.

I mean, I could go on for pages. These are not the same games. FF has some things from WoW that have worked really well, but it is, by no means, a WoW clone. It's not even close - and it's not trying to be (which is one of the beauties of the game).

Oh thought you meant loot. FFXI fights were more fun and there was more of a variety of styles. In FFXIV it's mostly in/out dodging or simple tank/spank and take care of adds. It's probably due mainly to how simple FFXIV mechanics are that it's impossible to add much variety.

I'm not going to argue that the fights in FFXIV are simplistic. I think the most "complicated" fight I've seen so far have been Ultima HM. Even then, it's very much in a set rotation, whereas the hardest and most rewarding fights I've encountered in WoW were extremely complicated and had an element of RNG to them that doesn't really occur in this game.

[ApolloOphion]

I think FFXIV is heading down a path of his own. It's not looking anything like WOW from my angle... FFXIV will become so innovative.

[Ahzarhuuk]

Someone with clarity finally graces the thread.

Thank you LiadansWhisper

[Devilray]

This isn't WoW. Not by a longshot.

- The most obvious reason is that I can level every class on one character, something that's impossible in WoW.
- There are no Jobs in WoW.
- There are no cross-class skills.
- You can only have 2 Crafts in WoW, and it's impossible to HQ anything (and crafted items are patently useless to PvE until max level and have almost no use for PvP).
- Food does not last through death (although it lasts longer than in FF), and the raid-quality food generally only gives one stat - a primary stat such as Intellect, Stamina (Vitality), Dexterity, or Strength. You can't HQ food.
- There is no Archaeology in FF.
- Herbalism (aka Botany) is only used for Alchemy and Inscription. The only way to find cooking ingredients is to kill animals that drop them, or grow your own - on your own farm.
- There is no use for lumber or wood - and, in fact, you can't gather them at all.
- There are almost no loading screens in WoW. The only "loading screens" are between continents. You can fly from the top of Winterspring to the tip of Tanaris in Kalimdor, and there isn't a single loading screen.
- You can fly in Wow.
- Mounts have different run speeds, and flying mounts have different fly speeds.
- You have to buy successive levels of mount training.
- You can climb to the top of any hill in WoW - or fly to it, outside of Eversong and the Draenei starting area.
- You can fall to your death while out of combat. In fact, I spent a good long time dying horribly in Howling Fjord trying to get to mining nodes while too low level to fly.
- You can level from 10-90 without ever stepping foot in the world - leveling entirely in dungeons or PvP Battlegrounds.
- You can level from 1-90 without ever stepping into a dungeon or Battleground - leveling entirely through quests.
- You will never run out of quests in WoW. If you exhaust the quests in one zone, you simply go to the next zone and there will be more quests there.
- You can level 1-90 by doing nothing but grinding mobs. It'll take a long time, but you can do it.
- You can level 5-90 by doing nothing but gathering professions (aka Mining and Herbalism). Each node you harvest gives a small amount of experience, depending on how high level your gathering skill is, and how high level your character is.
- You can trade Justice Points in WoW for trade good items, like ores, enchanting materials, cloth, Spirits of Harmony, etc. Unlike FF, there is nothing overtly "special" about these items, and you can also farm them separately on your own.
- You can trade Justice Points in WoW for "Heirloom Gear," which are pieces specifically tailored to a particular class or spec, with all of the correct stats on it, that levels up with your chracter and gives you an experience bonus while leveling that alt character so that you level faster.
- You can use your non-combat pets in WoW to battle other non-combat pets, a la Pokemon.
- You can run non-heroic dungeons as many times as you want in WoW, and they do not have a lockout. However, Heroic Dungeons have a 24 hour lockout (resetting at like, 3am PST every day) after you have completed one (unless you do it using WoW's version of Duty Roulette).
- Like FF, WoW's raids have a 1 week lockout, resetting every Tuesday morning. Unlike FF, you are not immediately locked to an instance by entering it after bosses have been defeated (unless it is a Heroic version of the raid, but even then you are asked whether you want to stay by a pop up window).
- Crafts in WoW are not separate classes. You do not wear special gear to use them, and you do not use experience points to level them. In fact, nothing you wear will change the outcome of the item you are creating. You cannot fail at creating an item. You can mass create items and have 0 chance of failure - even if you were doing it naked.
- Crafting items does not incur durability loss.
- You can friend people cross-server.
- If you meet some cool guys in a dungeon, you can queue for a new dungeon with them again at the end of your run - regardless of what server they are from.
- Raids in FFXIV are fixed at 8 man parties, or 24 man alliances (being 3 groups of 8). Raids in WoW can be 10 man, 25 man, or 10-25 man "Flexible," allowing groups to participate regardless of raid size. If you have 10 people, you can go! If you have 12 people, you can go! If you have 17 people, you can go! And so on.
- If you want to enter a raid instance in WoW, the system does not care how many people you bring inside - so long as you do not exceed the maximum number for that raid size. So if you want to do a 10 man with 2 people, you can do it! If you want to do one of the old 40 man raids with 1 person, you can do it! If you want to do a 25 man with 5 people, you can do it! WoW's system doesn't care if you would probably fail at trying to do an on-level 25 man with 5 people - it's your choice to go in.
- Most endgame gear - including that purchased with the equivalent of Tomestones - has gem sockets (i.e. Materia slots).
- Gems (i.e. Materia) are created by a crafting profession (Jewelcrafting).
- You cannot lose gems while slotting them into an item, but you cannot "overmeld" an item.
- Most pieces of gear can be specially enchanted with extra stats.
- If an item has poor stats on it for your particular Job, you can "Reforge" some of those stats into a more beneficial stat.
- WoW has Glyphs, which can change the function of a spell or ability.

I mean, I could go on for pages. These are not the same games. FF has some things from WoW that have worked really well, but it is, by no means, a WoW clone. It's not even close - and it's not trying to be (which is one of the beauties of the game).



I'm not going to argue that the fights in FFXIV are simplistic. I think the most "complicated" fight I've seen so far have been Ultima HM. Even then, it's very much in a set rotation, whereas the hardest and most rewarding fights I've encountered in WoW were extremely complicated and had an element of RNG to them that doesn't really occur in this game.

Pfft... way to be ignorant. You are just turning a blind-eye to the similarities between WoW and ff14 2.0: Dungeon/Raid Finder (dailys), (!)'s over NPC heads (questing being the main way of leveling up, quest HUBs), fast-access to mount travel, mobs stop chasing you when you get far enough, HM=heroic dungeons, typical raid spam 123 button to DPS or tank fights and avoid circles of death. The things that make it different from WoW are mainly from FF11: Cutscenes, the FF universe, and the job/class system. But most of the other things are just WoW systems with different names and slightly changed up. Don't be ignorant. Most of the points you are stating are basically implemented into ff14 but in a different fashion or named differently. It doesn't matter if you can't do it or buy it the exact same way. It is basically the same type of MMO elements between the two games. Even the producer admits to following in WoW's footsteps for the base of FF14 2.0. And just because something is missing/different does not make them unlike each other. They just said "Let us just leave that out (change it up) so it is not a 100% carbon copy to spare us the humiliation of being a copy-cat MMO". You are taking everything at face value and completely ignoring the whole idea of a CONCEPT.