Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Velhart]

For those only wanting Vertical Progression, how would you feel if Yoshi P released a weekly patch raising the Item Level and making last week's gear worthless? I know it's an extreme example, but at some point, even for Vertical Progression lovers, it becomes silly.

Lets go to the other extreme. Lets say gear lasts 7-8 years before something superior comes. How many would still be playing today? At some point, horizontal progression becomes silly. As a FFXI player from 2003-2010 and endured all the hardships and play styles, I cannot go back to this type of thing. I need a new goal every few months, I like to explore new dungeons, take on new bosses, and explore new areas at a reasonable pace. FFXI did a fine job abusing the RNG/low drop rate system to keep you going, but it doesn't work as well in modern times. Look at 1.xx, CC/AV were the only dungeons to play for 9-10 months. People got sick of it within 3-4 months, people hated progress being haltered by extremely low RNG. It caused people to quit. You can't expect people today to play only certain content for a long period of time. Making long period content creates these frustrating RNG systems that do cause people to quit.

Things like vertical progression are popular over horizontal is because people naturally like feeling like they are making progress in something every day. Creating horizontal means you have to drastically hold back the rate on how people progress, which in the long run, makes it feel less appealing to people. This was a major complaint with friends of mine who played other MMO's during FFXI's prime and could not get into it. Extreme horizontal (which FFXI was) is a very unique taste that only few realistically enjoy. Making content intentionally last the long run pretty much shows that the developers don't have many ideas going on and dragging on content seems like lazy development. FFXI gets a pass on this because of PS2 limitations, it can't bring out content at the pace ARR does. So it recycles content and adding new rules in certain content, or reusing areas to make new content (Abyssea, WoTG). Gear rarely gets put in because adding pieces constantly would take up a lot of space on what little that PS2 HDD has. So the majority of new gear that does come out is a recolor or slightly altered design of current gear. Its not to say it is 100% the reason, but development and concepts of FFXI were built around knowing they had to work with limited space and knowing they could only go a certain extent on adding new content.

It was fun for what it was, but player mentality does not favor this play style anymore and the only people I see complain about a lack of horizontal progression is FFXI players. You can point a finger at me and call me out, but I am pretty sure SE did some thorough studying of what play styles people prefer, including their current fan base at the time before making decisions that led to the game we play today.

During my play of FFXI, going through sky/sea every day, hunting down NM's to get the items to unlock the bigger bosses, or any content like Dynamis. I never truly felt achievement in gaining an item, more like relief. For the amount of time and effort I put in, I always felt obligated to get what I am looking for, not held back by other players necessarily, but the rules of the game were pretty punishing. I never felt like my effort and reward were ever properly balanced. I could go weeks without making any form of gear progress on my jobs. Some may be able to endure this, and I did, but the average player today will not settle for that. When people argue that "They will get use to it", they won't. Even FFXI players (least the ones I played with) were only truly tied to the FF name itself, and found certain requirements and time sinks beyond ridiculous.

I say all these negative things, but did I hate FFXI? Of course not, for all the things me and my friends dealt with over the years, we did enjoy aspects. Such as a colorful world, an interesting job system, combat (for it's time) was fun, really well written story, and so on. Stuff like Assault and Nyzul Isle were really fun, their only issue was the balance of reward and effort. Travel a 100-foot tower just for nothing to drop, content that was relatively difficult and took a lot of effort to accomplish, just for nothing to drop. A sad tale indeed for anyone.

It isn't fair to say nothing from FFXI wouldn't work in FFXIV. I personally would like to see content like Nyzul Isle and utilize the guildleve system to expand upon open world content. I'd like to see jobs like Samurai and Corsair make it's way to FFXIV with it's own take on it. I'd like to see Chocobo Racing return. They are ideas I like and I believe can work in the context of FFXIV's built and established system.

I do find SE's current system is in the right direction, despite some small flaws. They are making vertical progression with a small mix of horizontal, by offering various content that drops high tier. Rather it be raids, primals, crafting, or mythology farming, there is various ways to make progress during the day. This to me really feels like a "having your cake, and eating is also" scenario. Of course some in here will not agree with me.

You are 100% obligated to your opinion if you favor FFXI's style over ARR's. However, all argument in here is completely theoretical and realistically the developers would not completely change and alter the concepts and mechanics of the game. They already have development in content all the way to the expansion, which is also in development also right now. I also hear the argument "FFXI isn't what is use to be, I wanted FFXIV to be the answer to it." Well, reality check, it isn't, and likely not going to be if you are that dissatisfied with the system. Like I said before, the only FFXI experience you are going to get is in FFXI itself. I already see the FFXI developers trying to bring some old content back. You would have a better chance of getting your style of FFXI back by going to their forum and expressing your dissatisfaction for the direction it took.

ARR is it's own thing, it had no obligations to FFXI nor 1.xx players in making a game suited for them. All they owed to us was making a quality game that befitted not only the Final Fantasy name, but the MMORPG genre as a whole, which I 100% believe they accomplished rather if you agree with me or not.

[Fendred]

Velhard, I don't think anyone is suggesting we bring back low drop rates and the 6 hour HM camps for an Ochuido's Kote. What they want is some permanence to the value of end game content. If we are going to get thrown for a loop every 3 months where the last content they released is going to become way easier to do, and the primary reason to do any of the content is to see the unique story thread for that encounter set (its an RPG after all), it doesn't leave much incentive to stick around to tackle the harder content. It really isn't about the gear or the achievements, but the fact that the payout for doing stuff is going to be devaluated relatively quickly. They are suggesting things like sideways progression because they want the value of the content to be preserved.

[Slickpig]

Here is the big difference to me between FFXI and FFXIV:

I haven't logged into FFXIV for almost 2 weeks now, when I think about logging on, I think to myself "What would I do in the game today?" then I quickly get discouraged and don't log on.

I played FFXI for 7 years, but haven't played for about 3. when I think about going back, I get excited, and think about all the things I COULD do in that game still after all this time.

Bottom line: FFXIV is just extremely lacking in design to me, crafting is useless since all gear is handed to you, and melding is useless since end game gear cant be melded. Job gearing is all the same, do a couple dungeons over and over to level, then over and over to get a piece of gear, then over and over to get another piece of gear... repeat. At least in FFXI when you party exp'ed, you moved zones every 5-8ish levels. I could go on, but it just upsets me with the direction they went with FFXIV, when FFXI had so many better things going for it.

[Doo]

I haven't logged into FFXIV for almost 2 weeks now, when I think about logging on, I think to myself "What would I do in the game today?" then I quickly get discouraged and don't log on.

Can't do hard content in Duty Finder because your chances of beating it are slim.
Can't do PF groups because their standards are so high and they don't seem like fun players to play with.
Can't do Coil because you're locked out and need a static to go further.

So all you're really left to do is the repetitive grinds of leveling alts, crafts, or farm philos/myths. Maybe I wouldn't mind as much if I didn't feel like I could do these in my sleep. Take gathering for an example, pick up levee, go to node, hit x x x x x x x , repeat.

[NefGP]

Why does that goal have to be better gear though?


Something XI did at various points (and just recently) was introduce new content that not only offers new gear, but improves older ones too.


For example when CoP came out, we got access to Sea, ENMs, and Limbus. Limbus is the one I want to highlight in particular because in addition to getting drops from Ultima and Omega, you could get a new ancient currency that was used to upgrade Artifact Armor into +1 versions that were quite powerful. Most of it was still situational, but that played into XI's design with gear swapping in mind. XIV doesn't use that (and thank goodness for it) and so I can't help but think why not offer ways to upgrade Allagan/Dark Light/Myth Gear/AF ?! Add something so that all the old stuff we worked so hard for isn't automatically rendered useless but can be made into something competitive with the new stuff. This greatly expands our options, all the better without having to rely on the otherwise lackluster Materia system (sorry but it sucks... they made some nice changes but materia was much more potent in 1.23 especially savage might)

There are other aspects of XI I dearly miss that would be appreciated in XIV. Can we please do away with the nonstop pointless fetch quests, and have some decent story or meaning behind them? The rewards for most of XI's quests sucked, but at least the quests themselves were entertaining and revealed a lot about the world. Stuff like openly exploring the Kulu ruins around Saruta, or Dynamis being a prison of souls created by Diabolos etc... all this really cool stuff. Not to mention the fact that pretty much everything in Vana'diel was a credible threat - it didn't matter what level you were, somewhere in Vana'diel there was a bunny that could kill you

Eorzea (well, Hydaelyn as a whole I guess but we haven't seen the other parts of it) just feels like world without any teeth. The worst I get is being hit with Heavy status while running beast dailies and thinking "ugh, this is just gonna slow me down and annoy me". Not like maneuvering through Cape Terrigan trying not to die horribly just to fight Garuda. Heck speaking of Garuda, just getting to her in 1.23 could be a rather horrendous task as Natalan was extremely dangerous. Now it's a complete joke (not that I want it to go to the extreme; getting some of those AF crates was retarded with the level 80+ mobs guarding them...)

Not everything has to or should be on the Duty Finder. There's aboslutely no sense of wonder or exploration in this game, it all just feels like a bunch of pretty curtains to look at as you wait for the DF to kick in. There's nothing awesome like wandering around outside the Aht Urghan areas and suddenly seeing a horde of beastmen running to the city for besieged (and fighting them out in the open like that was cool both for the danger it presented but also being able to effectively cut off reinfrocements and make the eventual fight easier) or bumping into the Dark Rider (Odin). Or sneaking around mobs in dangerous places to get to the battlefields etc.... none of those traditional RPG elements are present in this game and it sucks.


There's a line between making the game accessible and holding our hands, and the devs have crossed it. I personally find FATE actually diminishes things further as well rather than enhancing it.

[Velhart]

Velhard, I don't think anyone is suggesting we bring back low drop rates and the 6 hour HM camps for an Ochuido's Kote. What they want is some permanence to the value of end game content. If we are going to get thrown for a loop every 3 months where the last content they released is going to become way easier to do, and the primary reason to do any of the content is to see the unique story thread for that encounter set (its an RPG after all), it doesn't leave much incentive to stick around to tackle the harder content. It really isn't about the gear or the achievements, but the fact that the payout for doing stuff is going to be devaluated relatively quickly. They are suggesting things like sideways progression because they want the value of the content to be preserved.

If you do horizontal, you have to balance how long it takes to acquire said item. Unless there is ideas I simply cannot think of, the best way to do so is low RNG and over the top time sinks to balance the longevity of the content.

The idea of devalue is all on your own opinion. I am not in favor of holding the same gear for a long period of time because I have some emotional attachment to it. I like that there is always a feeling of progression and no extreme road blocks. For many years I wanted a TP piece on my SAM that wasn't Haubergeon+1, an ugly piece that was lv.59 no less and couldn't even use the higher level versions of it. Ask how many people were disappointed that there was no gear progression past ilvl90 in 2.1. I felt a great sense of accomplishment beating all the content available in 2.0-2.1. I don't need gear longevity to prove that. The fact that I beat T5 in it's prime, which the majority of players have not is good enough for me. I look forward to repeating this pattern in 2.2 and so on. On how often gear gets outdated within a year can be debatable, but either doing horizontal or vertical, SE will never get it just right because there is no way to be right.

I have always said that people don't know what they want, they just know what they don't want. Make something one way, people complain. Cater to the will of the people, they still complain. Only thing developers can do is balance what is right and attempt to understand what people truly want, which is near impossible because I believe people truly don't know what they want anyways. You can throw me in that guilty party while you are at it.

[BoltNixter]

Give us unlockable areas ala Sky and Sea (FFXI) where we have open world content in those maps.
It would require 2-4 ppl to kil normal roaming monsters that would drop pop item for a special boss.
6-8 ppl to kill those said bosses where they could drop special crafting material for endgame gear and sometimes rare drops.

[Enkidoh]

You know Sky and Sea weren't in FFXI from launch though - Sky was added in Rise of the Zilart, the first expansion which came over a year after FFXI's original Japanese launch, and Sea was part of Chains of Promathia, the second expansion released over two years after launch. This game is still new - give it time....

[Doo]

You know Sky and Sea weren't in FFXI from launch though - Sky was added in Rise of the Zilart, the first expansion which came over a year after FFXI's original Japanese launch, and Sea was part of Chains of Promathia, the second expansion released over two years after launch. This game is still new - give it time....

You think they going to put anything outside of a Fate in the open world?

[BoltNixter]

I don't care when it came out... SE knows how to make that kind of content. Why not take what really worked well in their first mmo and implant it in their new one???