What 1.0 Did Better...

[Ksenia]

1.00 was a flop, it wasn't a bad game. Most never gave it the time of day, that was the problem. It was for those of us who played it, a 'flawed' sandbox. It was still an open world sandbox though and had the best graphics and animations at the time, hands down, of any MMO out there. It was the only game at the time, 14 still is as far as I know, that puts your character in story mode cut scenes the way it does.

ARR/ HeavensWard are alive and well, SE had to do what they did but I'm going to remember 1.00 with fondness. I still have all my Marmot Pelts, even though they be useless.

[KisaiTenshi]

1.00 was a flop, it wasn't a bad game. Most never gave it the time of day, that was the problem

I think a lot of us are looking at it with nostalgia-tinted rose-colored glasses.

There were a bunch of albeit minor things in FFXIV V1.0, like the larger Miqo'te butts, the better animation and cut scenes (but not hugely better), and the more epic starting quests, and the larger-seamless maps.

But...

These were all things scaled back to make the game faster and easier to get into. When V1.0 was released, the nVidia Geforce 580 was the top-of-the-line GPU. The equivalent to that now is the 760 or Radeon HD 7950 / R9 280. When FFXIV V1.0 was released, few had Quad-Core systems, and the average CPU was 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo.

So what was a 2000$ system in 2010 is now a 600$ system today. You also have the PS4 which is about 75% as capable of such a system.

Just about everyone who played V1.0, unless they had sunk 2000$+ into their gaming rig, did not get the maximum visual impact of FFXIV V1.0. And even if you turned a lot of the fluff off, it was still a super-slow game due to loading times alone. That IS something I do remember. Even in V2.0 the loading times for some areas are a bit ridiculous, so you try to avoid zoning by doing everything in one zone first.

Like there are two things I found disappointing with V2.0...
The lack of seamless maps (thus it felt like the world was substantially smaller)
Some animation quirks. During Beta I found the lalafell animation to have the worst changes, because it looks like they have no knees in a lot of their animations. What I didn't like in V1.0 was how the player "slowly walked into the scene" of a lot of the cutscenes, but in V2.0 they improved it only slightly by cutting out a lot of the "enter stage right" moments and saving those for rushing through doors.

[VarinaVashai]

I think a lot of us are looking at it with nostalgia-tinted rose-colored glasses.

Such a bad phrase nostalgia-tinted rose-colored glasses, there where great features in 1.0.But it gets discared, swept under the rug, because 1.0 also had bad features and the elephant in the room was the copy pasted world . When ppl quickly want to trash 1.0 in explaining how it was bad they talk about the worlds copy pasted areas.

I would say "i think alot of individuals are looking at 2.0 and Yoshidas design philoshy, blinded by illusions of infatuation"
2.0 well designed world (visualy), bit small (very small world). It does however look very very nice. A shame all that hatred for the 1.0 copy pasted world doesnt translate into hatred for copy pasted content. Even greater shame that the new world is pretty, but useless no reason to be exploring in it. So we have this brand new world remade, with a theme park philosophy on all its content. But a world so empty and shallow, and we got flying so now its even more useless.

4.0 we dont even need a world just a picture of one that looks pretty. And lets add depth to the combat, lets add 5 more skills thats part of your rotation. That you spam away over and over til its muscle memory and brain is busy watching netflix on the side.

Combat not as fast paced as you might have belived. Modern mmos all use it, psychology you're constantly pressing buttons therefor your doing something important all the time. This game is fast because im pressing something all the time, if the buttons where made to only send you tells and make your character wave it would be just as important as that.

I hope that someday they will do something new and make something great, rather then copying content from Blizzard, bioware, arenanet and so on. Add more life into the world itself rather then putting everything in instances, and not F.A.T.E or Hunts. Fates and hunts are the same thing in terms of execution server roflstomp, mmos used to be an adventure in a dangerous world. Playing togheter with others, not just next to them at the same time. A world with substance, and combat with some thought and interraction with others. And no im not talking about the interractions we see now, where ppl only talk to berate someone, ask if they watched a guide, tell them to watch a guide, tell them to uninstall or just some ego stroking ilvl comparing contest.
No i mean interraction in terms of the combat mechanics, job x does something job y does something else this interracts and create rainbows.

Or we could rebrand the genre Massively single player online

[KisaiTenshi]

Such a bad phrase nostalgia-tinted rose-colored glasses, there where great features in 1.0.But it gets discared, swept under the rug, because 1.0 also had bad features and the elephant in the room was the copy pasted world . When ppl quickly want to trash 1.0 in explaining how it was bad they talk about the worlds copy pasted areas.

The thing with the copy-pasted areas, is that it was excessive at launch. Like, it literately overshadowed everything good about the game.


Like, this is worse than 8-bit 2D era RPG's repeat usage, where they did it to save space.

Look at it from the entire zone, and it looks even worse:

[Jynx]

The thing with the copy-pasted areas, is that it was excessive at launch.

Who cares if it was copy/pasted. Bloated for sure I don't think anyone would disagree but to say that it took away from the experience I guess I just can't agree. Copy pasted or not the world felt and looked alive.

[Shamo_Lomenzo]

Who cares if it was copy/pasted.

I do. It's lazy and dumb and I don't like running through the exact same area five times before I get to where I need to be going.

[QiLymePye]

I do. It's lazy and dumb and I don't like running through the exact same area five times before I get to where I need to be going.

BUt that I don't understand. You say that but you are ok with fighting the same stupid fate, using the exact same rotation, wearing the exact same style of gear over and over again. What attracted me to mmo, especially FFXI, was the immersion of the world I was in. This world is ok, but not superior. Once again, I bring up ESO. Im playing on the PS4 and its 100x more immersive and 10x more beautiful than FF. I mean I can sit on a hill and watch the sun set while in the distance I can see a storm approaching. Lightning and rain and thunder, swamps and farms and beaches with big ass pirate boats docked that I can swim to. I mean I'm confused. People are saying they can't make FF look better because of Playstation but then I log onto ESO on my PS4 and I'm like, FF can't do this?

Sidenote: also the staleness of your characters look and abilities compared with everyone else playing the same class is copy and pasted. I don't understand having, for example, an optimal way to play each class. You line up 100 people of the same class at the same ILVL about 95 of them will have the same build, same weapons, same rotation. Thats stupid. Thats boring. There is nothing that make you stand out from other players. ESO: I can have a mage tank, or a rogue templar, I can build my character anyway I want, wear whatever gear and equip what ever weapon. I can seamlessly swap during battle from my sword to a bow with ease. After playing ESO, Im starting to feel confined playing FF. If this game was advertised as a single player game(which IMHO, it pretty much is), I would understand. I feel like FPSMMO like Destiny is more MMO than this game is right now.

[Sapphic]

I do. It's lazy and dumb and I don't like running through the exact same area five times before I get to where I need to be going.

Plus most of the areas where empty, there was zero reason to explore, because there was nothing to find. Yes that was one of the big complaints of 1.0

1.0 failed because it wasn't good enough, plus 1.0 players where given the chance to keep it going just by logging on. They didn't, that shows how much love they had for it.