Quote Originally Posted by Wildsprite View Post
he admitted it and you could see it in the game itself. he and his devs immensily difficult and mind boggling things without thinking the consequences through. like the non nerfed Absolute Virtue. players found an exploit to beat it before they nerfed it but nobody found the legit way to beat the non nerfed AV. there were other things but this came to mind because many players kept going non stop to try to beat it with no success and actually got sick over it.
That explains so much.
Aside from boss encounters, a lot about the game feels like it was designed on paper and no one in testing was listened to, in addition to the developers clearly not having a fixed direction for content.
Say what you will about the idea of HW following directly from ARR and requiring it, at least you're told exactly where to go and have reason to be there.
In FFXI (and some older MMOs, like EQ1) expansion content is plopped down on top of the existing content, only really activating when you seek it out. During my recent return to FFXI, the only reason I even figured out how the WoG zones work was because I wanted to unlock Dancer, which requires it.
There are pluses and minuses to both, but the lack of direction in FFXI definitely says it was born in a committee meeting without thought to how it would feel.