I don't feel like doing anything.

[Chayala]

I agree with most the people pointing to things in this game that kill community and keep everything here a grind without actually making it feel like an accomplishment(That's the deal with grinds.If you don't feel like you really did anything you're not gonna keep going) . And the thing I disagree with is the old WoW and FFXI things brought up. WoW had a number of off the wall specs that worked and very well until end of lich king. A few points are Prot paladin DPS specs, ret paladin healing specs, disc priest dps specs for WoW and a few of the hybrid builds that were doable back then. In FFXI you had a number of sub jobs and while not optimal many could be VERY powerful. Ever seen a warrior just sit there for a fight and wait for the time to skill chain? And then see them pop berserk. And war cry. And last resort(WAIT WHAT?) and then soul eater(Oh my god are they /drk?) and then pop mighty strikes? Yep. Seen it. Done it as a matter of fact. Not the best exp party setup but wonderful for the biggest burst possible in a short window. sub rdm on a ninja? Fast cast and MAB and enspells? Oh my. WoW evolved away from those things by simplifying and "Streamlining" their talent trees but for a very long time my weird raid geared tribuild paladin destroyed in PVP on argent dawn as a healer who could throw out decent damage or just distract 5-10 horde players. This game tried to capture what made WoW popular by copying what WoW is doing now compared to what pulled in all the players originally(aside from the fact that many played and loved the RTS's and they had a giant brand name in the west and did alot of firsts with their game). Then they went out and hired lots of devs from other games to get their experience in dungeon and raid designing fast. Yes, they poached devs from EQ DAoC and I think they even brought in a few from funcom. They used a great amount of resources to build raids that felt differently(And in many cases were built by different teams. UBRS, Molten Core, BWL, AQ, and that jungle one with hakkar all felt different. And that was before their first expansion) and gave a sense of scale. Think to something like the barrens as they were originally. A dangerous place that was a crossroad between alliance and horde. On PVP servers it was a safe place for timid players to grind to as high as 30ish. In PVE it still felt like a dangerous place because if you went too far north into the forest you might find some sentinels. If you were not careful around the lift you'd get ganked by horde guards. If you went too far east alliance patrols. The game felt large when you played it and looking at the scale of it even comparing vanilla to 2.0(Which isn't vanilla no matter how people wanna spin it. it is for all intents and purposes an expansion. To say it's not is to say Cataclysm wasn't an expansion because it changed the world on such a massive scale and hit a reset button on all the character builds) it felt big. There were "hidden" areas of the game with quests. Remember the quests in that cave OVER wailing caverns? There were factioned mobs outside the two molds. Now I'm no fan of what wow turned into eventually but don't hate it just to be popular. Give it the valid points it deserves just like FFXI.

Now to be fair to the people who loved FFXI. It punished stupid people. It had the Maat fight. If you say casuals couldn't get past that you're wrong. You might have had to do a bit of research or change your playstyle but it tested you and made you better. Unless casual to you doesn't refer to play time but effort put in during your time played. The game punished you for death. The people who sat "Afk for hours" looking for party were too stupid to build groups. 3-4 drg's looking for party? Oh hey who has mage subjob? Buy some juice. Go make a party poking IT's and using dia poison or something to heal. While I mained a white mage and started a strike of WHM teleporters on Seraph(You can even see the hate filled thread where I tell whm's how to really make money on Allakazham's forum from before the site sucked and how 500 gil for a tele compared to 2k gil for a chocobo was an insult with erase being over 1 mil. I handed out gardening, farming and other information people could use to build money. The amount of tele's in jeuno for about 2 months were non existent except for some gil farmers which many refused to use. Best part is I started that because some little 21 twerp told me that I needed to teleport Dem him because as a whm it was my job to help people and that my cooking should come second to his wishes. I thought it was my job to help my friends and people who aren't entitled pieces of crap who think everyone should give them everything. Turns out he was wrong. I just kept crafting.). FFXI had some annoying RNG things that people hated but you could do your job with the minimal gear. If you couldn't then the problem was likely in your ability to play or your friends. A whm that had 0 enfeeble at 50? Yeah I think I found a problem with your static. A warrior without /monk solo tanking as /nin on heavy hitting mobs? Found the issue. Oh but shadows = no damage! No. Just no. low evasion = shadows run out fast. no Ni till 74? Hah. Counter = stopped damage. High vit at the time lowered damage taken(It came before armor calculated so it reduced damage heavily when wearing vit). Boost was a huge threat gen. WS's were vit based on greataxe further increasing damage and hate holding. You might have taken more hits over time as a /mnk but you took less burst damage. Seeing all those war/nins solo tanking in +eva gear was always hilarious because they'd tank terribly and blame the class. And that war/mnk with CP bought gear and some vit rings would just truck on in and eat a fishkabob or some other cheap(Tank food at the time was VERY cheap) +def % food that gave vit. The game's random break system on crafts sucked and i crafted all the time. At least housing did something and produced a noticeable difference with full fire enhancement(i didn't lost mats on break near as often). RNG was a bitch as was having mobs appear 1-2 seconds after the jp crowd could see them most times. At the same time you had a good number of people who were helpful and full of information. You had functional link shells and a community that was built around doing stuff with people(Not that WoW didn't let you help others or group with them. It did. I could run people through dungeons or assist them on quests as an alt or as my main. But in FFXI it fostered a community that was more interactive with each other because there weren't really any shortcuts aside from a whm healing outside party or the quickly nerfed monk/rdm PLing that was around for a short while).

In a very real sense, both games which people here villianize(Oh hey people playing FFXI races with slight name changes and taking part in a Shantotto event! Hi people playing a heavily WoW inspired game which the devs have even admitted to) are the only reason you are all here. The worst part is that they are trying to copy the stuff that many games are doing now that are causing them to lose players than try and innovate. As I've said in another thread this game just doesn't have anything new. Maybe gaming doesn't need a revolution but there is a reason that JRPG's are on decline. Where many of them were once innovative (Hi FFVII. OH hey, look behind you. Chrono Trigger. You're even more awesome than FFVII. Oh and standing next to you FF VI? And Star Ocean second story?) they are now very narrow in what you can accomplish and try to be high drama. Unfortunately many of the things that made them so connected to us in the past are gone. You don't have any investment in a game you can't control or freely explore. Remember finding that one ledge in FFIX where that giant level 60ish dragon was? When you were 20? Yep I do too. Remember actually figuring out a way to kill it? Yep. Me too. Remember that feeling of accomplishment? And that's when I was playing as a super deformed monkey looking thief. Remember when awesome music looped? Remember when overworld music was awesome and totally memorable(I can't say a single overworld theme in FFXIV has ANYTHING remarkable about it. Couldn't make another Ronfaure Forest theme.)

Now to finish this highly distracted post, yes what was labeled about those games is not what made those games great. Those are things that came later. Things that took away from the games and reduced subscribers in WoW's case. Also Beast mastery not being awesome? DoomHuggles would like a word with you(He was a cat. They looked like they were trying to hug you when they attacked. A giant angry red/purple panther. Doom Huggles. You are missed oh noble friend). This game has started where those two have both ended up and rather than capturing the sense of wonder and adventure FFXI had or the point of being a large world with conflict points and open world PVP(When the game first came out before BG's mucked it up. Although AV pre nerf was awesome although it was rare for anyone to be in it from start to finish since it often lasted DAYS). As usual disclaimer is this. I liked this game. I thought it had some wonderful steps up from FFXIV 1.0. But it isn't holding people's attentions because it went for the quick buck route of lazy designs. IMO they should have stuff like RSE 2.0 in this game that's good(Some of those pieces out performed AF gear which was 1 full expansion later). Allow mix and match of equipment and quests that feel like they're worthwhile. But it wont' happen. And "casuals" who don't want to get better will keep things this way till the game is set on a course and they jump to a new expansion. A "Casual" by most accounts is someone who isn't invested and doesn't care about the game as a whole. A person who's hardcore doesn't need the massive amount of play time. They need to care about the game to some extent and the people and community in it. Unfortunately this game just doesn't have the tools or build to support such a class so the people who would get settled in for a decade of play are the ones who aren't going to stick around. But what is done is done. if you're not having fun post why which you've done, unsub and move along. Keep attention on the game incase things move in a way you feel you want or that you wish to give it a try.