Am I just old fashioned?

[Magis]

We actually have over 1 million players. Right now, going by active players, there is 1.6 million active out of 4.5 million registered accounts. This does not include free months or trial. Though I haven't checked that in a while so I'm sure we have more than 1.6 million active now.

That over 500k you are toting was from a report early 2014 showing SE's sub numbers from 3 of their MMOs ending 2013, but earlier this year Polygon mistakenly published it saying it was for last year and later apologized for it, but by that point it had spread like wildfire and published by many sites. So considering by the end of 2013 we had between 500k and 1 million and game has continued to grow, and then 1.6 million by late last year, I'm sure it's a lot more now.

Where did you get your 1.6 million?

[Felis]

that's not the problem if it started like that we would have a lot less players. look at 1.0 for a good example.

Interaction with other players was not one of the reasons 1.0 failed

my list for the worst 1.0 features at launch:

- UI loading times with retainer inventory and NPC shop (i think it was 5-10 seconds until the item list popped up)
- Market Wards with no search system. Getting an Atma from a FATE in ARR have a higher chance than to find in the market ward the item you are searching.
- No recipe book for crafters. Remember the recipes yourself, write them down or look in a fandatabase for the recipe you want
- 8 leves every 36 hours. It don't build up. if you miss one day, you will still have only 8 leves after the next leve reset.
- No battle content beside behest and leves
- Fatique: you started to earn less exp on a class if you played the class too often, until it reach 0% exp.
- random exp : during the fight exp reward get triggered by attacking the enemy (for XI players, i think it was like leveling up the weapon). At the end of the fight the player get the total amount of exp he earned. Resulted in using the weakest skills on high def enemies to keep the fight going (who don't remember the exp grinds against Doblyns outside of leves?). DoT skills were called exp-killers, because they didn't trigger the exp rewards.
- skills setup an equips didn't get saved seperate for every class. To change class you wrote 2 macros for each class. The first to change the class and to rearrange the equipped gear. The second macro to rearrange the skills on the hotbar.

The challenge was not the open world or the interaction with other players, the challenge was the game itself.

[Lemuria]

This is what this change brings: making the open-world far more annoying leading to people avoiding doing stuff there.

People already avoid doing stuff there. Because there's nothing to do!

The overworld just exists. It doesn't add anything to the game, it doesn't challenge. It's just a means to get to the next aetheryte and shorten future trips. That's it. The only people you find roaming are those still levelling classes, usually by grinding Fates endlessly or gatherers out collecting. Even Hunt monsters are largely going unchallenged since they dropped the rewards to a meaningless pittance.

You keep using the word 'annoying' referring to enemies that might actually challenge you, yet not a single word for weak enemies who die in 2 hits constantly hitting you with a heavy effect every time you chocobo through? At least in XI, chocobos never had that problem. You really don't understand gameplay to make such statements. When places are challenging to get to, they become fun destinations. The fun IS the challenge, the danger and the exploration. Take that away and you're left with a lifeless husk of a world. And that's, sadly, what ARR has been reduced to.

The original 1.0 may have had some ugly cut and paste terrain, but it knew how to throw some dangerous areas in that made you feel incredible when you managed to sneak inside!

[ToppeHatte]

I classify myself as a "casual player." I completely gave up on coil after clearing turn 5 and the extent of content I'm willing to clear are EX primals. That being said, even I am desperately hurting for some tougher mobs. The current "difficulty" in the overworld comes from the barrage of heavies or the STICKY TONGUES mobs like to put out, while otherwise they may as well not be there; a glorified museum really. If they can swap out the heavies for damage output and danger, as well as giving mobs an actual "presence" then I'm all for that tradeoff, especially since you get the ability to fly over them after exploring the zone fully.

[MrSmiley]

people also missing how the open world content will easily be skipped after your first class is leveled up via flying. There has been nothign to show any kind of danger while flying

[Iromi]

Yeh, right now the open world feels more like a hub :/ looking forward to these changes! Thanks Yoshida and devs

[Potchi]

You gotta think too, this is getting blown out of proportion. The developers said that if you get more than a couple mobs on you, you should run or be ready for a big fight. This implies 2 things. One this is not going to be ffxi difficulty people so stop thinking it's going to be. And two, you will be able to run away from the fight, probably by sprint. so if you are going to argue about the changes to the overworked you should really stop bringing up ffxi cause that's not what it's going to be

[Gunspec]

Some level 50 mobs hit my tank for around 120 and she has 9k hp. She regens health faster than she loses it. Right now there's no point in even having mobs outside because they are annoying because they are like flies. If mobs would deal more damage, or maybe have some mechanics it would actually be challenging and more fun.

Ok... So you are comparing ilevel 110-130 gear to enemies that were introduced and intended for ilevel 55 players. Did everyone start playing recently, or does no one remember being ilevel 45 and walking into a beast zone for the first time?

Now, maybe they could ADD outdoor content to KEEP UP with content from dungeons and raids, which is what they've said they will add. But I'm pretty sure the information we have been given so far is that Yoshi-p was afraid to fight two level 53 chocobos at once, as a level 60 blm wearing AF2 gear.

I'm more concerned with what there will be to DO in the open world. In 2.0, we mostly level by running fates, since the normal mobs weren't worth much experience on their own. Some mobs were useful to farm for crafting mats (spiders, aldgoats, toads, boar, sheep) but there was never much reason to kill anything else unless your hunting log told you to. There weren't even any achievements for killing x number of mob types.

[Iromi]

You gotta think too, this is getting blown out of proportion. The developers said that if you get more than a couple mobs on you, you should run or be ready for a big fight. This implies 2 things. One this is not going to be ffxi difficulty people so stop thinking it's going to be. And two, you will be able to run away from the fight, probably by sprint. so if you are going to argue about the changes to the overworked you should really stop bringing up ffxi cause that's not what it's going to be

Yeah I never got the comparison to ffxi either. I know for a fact you couldn't run and survive in ffxi..lol the only way to escape was to either zone, which lots of times would result in the mob killing you as you zoned...or sleeping/binding and running until you zone. In ffxiv you just run a little bit and the enemy will give up. Way to much hyperbole.

[Hailia]

Well I want to say that this will be quite interesting to see play out. I for one am looking forward to seeing how this increase in difficulty plays out. If it is implemented right it should not be this overwhelming difficulty that everyone is making this out to be. I will be honest I never played FFXI so I have no take on what its overworld was like, but any difficulty introduced in this game will be nice.