New Letter from the Producer, XII

[zaviermhigo]

Casuals and Soloers will be super pumped, but what happens to those levelinkers? I'm not questing to hit max rank, and if I have to solo to max rank, I might as well just quit. I wanted to play a MMO, and not just an rpg. I'm just saying how are they going to talk to casual/solo players, but then not tell the "group players (real mmo players btfw)" what they're going to have to do after that! Leve linking was one of the only social aspects about this game. It was monotonous and boring, but they didn't even tell us what they would replace it with. Leaving a lot of "party-ers" worried a bit. I can't believe there's a distinction between "party-play" and "solo-play" in a effing mmo and that burns my cheese. Rpg's aren't good enough, they have to ruin mmos now?

[Richard]

"Levequests yielding guild marks will be limited to city-states hosting the corresponding guild only. In compensation, we will make it easier for players to amass the guild marks they desire."

I am weary that if you do limit acquiring guild marks to their respective cities you will not have job classes partying in certain area's. i.e. all the thm will stay in uldah, all the conjurer's in gridana, and so on with every single job. How will this effect crafting guild marks, since those are not a direct reward seen in the leve cards. What if i want to level a weaver and a merauder? Do i have to accept leves from Limsa and Uldah for the respective jobs to get guild marks? Are you going to increase Anima regeneration. I already burn through my anima way to fast porting around everywhere. I like accepting crafting leves at the same place i get my battle leve's. I turn in my crafting leve's as i travel from camp to camp doing my battle leve's. Now you are saying that i have to port around to other camps in a different town than where i do my battle leve's to get guild marks for crafts? Maybe only get crafting guild marks from quests given directly by the guild? I think you should be able to earn guild marks anywhere. You should make it that when you accept the leve you choose what job you want the guild marks for. And increase the amount of guild marks awarded still of course. I liked that part

They are doing it so people have a reason to go to the other 2 cities. At the moment there might as well only be one city in the game: Ul'Dah. Classes wont always just stay in their respective guild cities as 90% of people like to level different things plus you can only use guildmarks for so many things. It would be impractical to just stay and do leves near your guild. Secondly they are making leves more of a solo experience so you really wont need to worry about what other people are doing. They are adding in Airship travel from City to City so don't worry about your anima.

[Richard]

Casuals and Soloers will be super pumped, but what happens to those levelinkers? I'm not questing to hit max rank, and if I have to solo to max rank, I might as well just quit. I wanted to play a MMO, and not just an rpg.

You can still leve link it just wont be as beneficial as before on some leves and possibly more beneficial on others. You can also party up and grind mobs, do behests, do dungeons or do Frontier Hubs for XP.

Why does everyone get so narrow minded when thinking about XP?

[PrettyPrincess]

I am weary that if you do limit acquiring guild marks to their respective cities you will not have job classes partying in certain area's. i.e. all the thm will stay in uldah, all the conjurer's in gridana, and so on with every single job

Not entirely true. Regional leves dont always reward you with guild marks anyways. This is probably one of the ways they're going to try and get people to do things in the other regions seeing as most of the time they're dead.

[Fuzball]

They are adding in Airship travel from City to City so don't worry about your anima.

When where how?!?! nowais!!!

I've seen them flying between the cities, but everytime I run after them theys disappears! It's like chasing a rainbow, except there's a nasty NPC that says i'm not cool enough to ride them once i get to the end

[Rowyne]

You can still leve link it just wont be as beneficial as before on some leves and possibly more beneficial on others. You can also party up and grind mobs, do behests, do dungeons or do Frontier Hubs for XP.

Why does everyone get so narrow minded when thinking about XP?

Because they're used to FFXI, which had zero options. >.<

Now you can grind if you wanna grind
Quest if you wanna quest
Leve if you wanna leve
Raid if you wanna raid
Solo if you wanna solo
Party if you wanna party

... I think I just wrote a new song! The ballad of change!

I'm with you, Richard, we have options now, and options are good!

[Richard]

When where how?!?! nowais!!!

I've seen them flying between the cities, but everytime I run after them theys disappears! It's like chasing a rainbow, except there's a nasty NPC that says i'm not cool enough to ride them once i get to the end

Confirmed they will be in the game by 1.19.

[Balbanes]

They just effectively shut down 20 servers (they're now "trial" servers), but the funny thing is, because of that unofficial server merge, all those low/medium servers are now medium/high/full again. Also, they opened, what, 40 servers at launch? How many was FFXIV forced to open? Oh, and by the way, the most casual and easymode game out there has over 11 million subs (that's at least 2775 times the population of FFXIV currently), and all the other MMO releases failed because they sucked. They were unoriginal, bland, buggy, poorly developed and managed, and when the playerbase realized they got fleeced, they fled in a mass exodus back to their old MMO.

Sound familiar to any games in this zipcode? I'll give you three guesses.

Let me put it this way: even though Rift had to merge servers, the game still has several hundred thousand subscribers more than this game does -- and come to think of it, so do all those "failed" games like Aion, and AoC, and maybe even Warhammer. So, if you have a point that I can't easily refute in 30 seconds, I'd like to hear it.

Insofar as your casual = OMGEASYMOOOODE T_______________________T ...You seem to be working under the erroneous assumption that time equals skill, and that "casuals" who cannot devote the exorbitant amount of time required to get this or that done are automatically terrible players who want everything handed to them on a silver platter without a shred of effort on their part. This is the exact same argument I've read on the WoW forums for years from angry raiders who felt that they should be allowed more because they want to waste their life in a virtual world instead of the real one -- or rather, that those who don't want to waste their life in a virtual world shouldn't be allowed to lick their boots, let alone acquire anything of merit while online.

Let me tell you something. I'm a casual player. But I'm also an intelligent one. I may not know everything, but I do my research and learn what I can to be an asset to myself and other players, along with how to be efficient at what I do. I do not, under any circumstances, want everything handed to me. I don't care if raiders or people who play far more than I do get the really high end stuff -- I'm okay with not seeing absolutely everything in the game, so long as I'm not locked out of practically everything if I don't have 4-5 hours to spare getting a PT like I was in FFXI circa-2004. You want the best of the best gear? Fine. But give me the option to get something done in the 1-2 hours I may have set aside after a 10 hour shift that began at 3 am of heavy lifting.

Casuals like myself don't want 'easy', we want engaging. I left Rift not because it lacked content, but it lacked interesting content. All those awesome rifts and invasions that were the central focus levels 1-49, and at 50 we got relegated to an instance-gated gear-grind again? Blah, pass. If they'd given us dailies where we had to spawn and solo certain specialized rifts, I'd have been as happy as a pig in mud. But they didn't, so I left and came here. I don't want easy. I want fun. Rift endgame wasn't. FFXIV any-game currently isn't. If YoshiP wants to change that, they're going to have to entice everyone, not just the minority who feel that unless the game is kicking you in the babymaker with a spiked-toe combat boot every time you change a piece of equipment, it's for children.

God I hate elitism.

Edit: Oh, one more thing -- just because the devs are throwing casual players a bone doesn't mean that the game is now Hello Kitty and all hardcore players are now being tossed on their derrieres and told to go elsewhere. I'm sure they'll emphasize grouping via other means, like dungeons, NMs, and non-instanced elite areas. As they should, if they want to attract a wider audience.

Marry me.

/10char

[Richard]

Because they're used to FFXI, which had zero options. >.<

Now you can grind if you wanna grind
Quest if you wanna quest
Leve if you wanna leve
Raid if you wanna raid
Solo if you wanna solo
Party if you wanna party

... I think I just wrote a new song! The ballad of change!

I'm with you, Richard, we have options now, and options are good!

SQEX: We heard you like options so we gave you more options that you can put on your options optionally and opt to opt out your optional options.

[Rowyne]

When where how?!?! nowais!!!

I've seen them flying between the cities, but everytime I run after them theys disappears! It's like chasing a rainbow, except there's a nasty NPC that says i'm not cool enough to ride them once i get to the end

Yoshi-P posted on the JP forums saying they're aiming for airships in 1.19.