What 1.0 Did Better...

[Jynx]

Without spoilers I'd say the big one is forcing players to explore the areas for the aether nodes to access the vaunted flying. Likewise smart placement of Vista locations give amazing views of every area and aren't tied to some crazy specific time of day/weather.

The larger environments speak of a dev team who wants the open world to be seen as something usefull. The zones aren't just fluff they are designed with purpose and flow well. When I say "Small wins" I do mean small, at the end of the day the developers catter to the players whith the.


Syndrom. But still there are a few things for people used to the old ways get, now hopefully they can use this giant world they created for something other than a place to put the entrance to dungeons.

[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.

[Teleste]

But still there are a few things for people used to the old ways get, now hopefully they can use this giant world they created for something other than a place to put the entrance to dungeons.

Excellent, thanks for the heads up. I've heard the new zones are stunning and looking forward to exploring very soon. Yes let's hope they incorporate some new unseen features to unfold in the new world!

[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:

[Canadane]

My buttocks.

[Luvbunny]

AAR 2.0 and 3.0 is far far far superior game. It is accessible, well curated, respect your time (most of it anyway), and has plenty of variety to cater to all types of players. It is not super hardcore like vanilla FFXI (hated that game with passion, cannot do anything solo and forced group play). Here you can log in, do your dailies, and other non combat activities, make progress, and log out. It is also beautiful game, each areas are so very well designed and looks amazing, has tons of personality and charm.

[Aeyis]

AAR 2.0 and 3.0 is far far far superior game. It is accessible, well curated, respect your time (most of it anyway), and has plenty of variety to cater to all types of players.

Mostly the ''average joes''. Due to the bolded part.

Here you can log in, do your dailies, and other non combat activities, make progress, and log out. It is also beautiful game, each areas are so very well designed and looks amazing, has tons of personality and charm.

If you ask me, Dailies are a blight upon MMOs...

[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.