Did Yoshida went a bit too far by cloning WoW?

[Felis]

I'll just say this.

People give Tanaka a bad rap for 1.0 He knew how to make a world that felt alive. 2.0 for all the new convient systems they have implemented it's a seriously dull world.

1.0 world feeled not alive. It feeled empty. Except of the aetherite camps and the 2 hamlets in every region there were no settlements, no villages and not even NPCs outside of the 3 cities.
Big =/= alive


Also don't forget the limitation of 30 visible players/NPCs/enemies/objects, in a MMO

[Jynx]

1.0 world feeled not alive.

Obviously we have different views on the subject, the world had detail a sense of purpose. It took time to get from one end to the other, the monsters were dangerous and smart. Technical limitations aside the open world had a purpose in the world unlike 2.0.

I'll take monsters with AI beyond HULK SMASH and that are actually dangerous over seeing 100 people zerg hunts anyday.

[Felis]

Obviously we have different views on the subject, the world had detail a sense of purpose. It took time to get from one end to the other, the monsters were dangerous and smart. Technical limitations aside the open world had a purpose in the world unlike 2.0.

I'll take monsters with AI beyond HULK SMASH and that are actually dangerous over seeing 100 people zerg hunts anyday.

Only purpose was for mainstory quest, class quest, gathering, leves and behest, if you mean open world content with purpose.
And only a handfull of enemies were dangerous on the same level as you.

[Kikoten]

I think this game beats WoW as far as storytelling goes. And when I say WoW, I mean everything beyond Vanilla. Vanilla was good because everything still made sense, storywise.

However...

At no point in WoW did I actually FEEL like a hero. I was a "champion" in WoW's story, but the real heroes were the renowned NPCs from games past (WC 1, WC 2, WC 3). We got a "Hero Class," but it stopped feeling heroic when people (PvPers, lol) cried nerf and the Death Knight got nerfed to oblivion.

In FF14, I feel like a true hero. Not THE true hero, just A true hero, because I have you tanks and DPS to protect me when the heat gets turned up =3. Still, there's one thing that bothers me, if ever slightly...

*Heavensward spoiler ahead*

At the time we fight Ilberd during Raubahn's rescue, we're technically godslayers, and we're recognized as such. How, then, is Ilberd able to withstand our assault for so long, beat us silly, and make it out alive? He's just a man!

[Felis]

*Heavensward spoiler ahead*

At the time we fight Ilberd during Raubahn's rescue, we're technically godslayers, and we're recognized as such. How, then, is Ilberd able to withstand our assault for so long, beat us silly, and make it out alive? He's just a man!

*Heavensward spoiler ahead*

At that moment your light is still sealed. Only were Ysayle join your group you start to unseal the light bit for bit.

[Kikoten]

*Heavensward spoiler ahead*

At that moment your light is still sealed. Only were Ysayle join your group you start to unseal the light bit for bit.

Ah, I forgot about that.

[zipzo]

Obviously we have different views on the subject, the world had detail a sense of purpose. It took time to get from one end to the other, the monsters were dangerous and smart. Technical limitations aside the open world had a purpose in the world unlike 2.0.

Right, because the same 32 sqfeet of land copy/pasted across every single grid of the in-game maps just with grass, dirt, or plants (depending on which major region you were in) was totally immersive.

Seriously? Gridania was simply a collection of narrow green hallways, basically no creativity whatsoever. Than and La Noscea could only be moderately considered open, and they still used the same copy/paste routine there, not only that, but there was a dearth of any interact-able NPCs, enemy or not, outside of the scarce amount of aetherite camps. You could walk through an entire zone and not see any enemies if you looked the wrong ways. If 1.0 is your version of a world with a sense of purpose, I highly question your taste in what constitutes having a purpose. The environment was pure shoddy design to say the least.

To be honest, I'm saddened that they kept the character models intact in almost every way except for adding in jumping, because it reminds of what this game used to be, an abhorrent frankenstein of some of the worst design decisions an MMO has ever seen. In my honest opinion the character models still slightly stink of a worse time for the FFXIV development team, and better looking "life-like with a slight anime touch" models exist in other square games.

To desire anything from that version of the game to return is to literally be the enemy of all gamers. It was an utter train wreck in every sense of the word.

[KisaiTenshi]

To desire anything from that version of the game to return is to literally be the enemy of all gamers. It was an utter train wreck in every sense of the word.

Oh please. There are two things that were proverbial stakes-in-the-heart in V1.0:
1) The Copy-paste scenery (that everyone who played it in Beta warned SE about, and SE ignored)
2) The way V1.0's combat system worked, character level (which is what enabled the storyline) , and the need to rest otherwise you get significantly less experience.

Those are the two, and ONLY two points that people rightfully can complain about V1.0 that made it a major joke. There was a lot of other stuff that was more nitpickery than real gripes like...

- Too many damn menus
- Bots overran the world in less than a week by taking advantage of a levelquest chaining (bug?)
- It took damn forever to cross a map, and players speed-hacked their way across the map
- The original harvesting and crafting system was stupidly slow and far more RNG based. Like if you thought the current system was slow, V1.0 actually threw RNG's and time limits at you.

Like all things considered, what "broke" FFXIV V1.0 was trying to repeat everything that worked from FFXI and just make it bigger. Like the most pointed example of this is the races in FFXIV all match a race that was previously in XI, only slightly different. Like for all intents, XIV may have started out as a sequel to XI before it got it's own identity.

But what's been said quite a bit over multiple threads is that the V1.0 wasn't "better" than V2.0, but rather the maps and combat system (And overly menu-dependant UI) gave players who tried it a much inferior experience compared to games that had been released in the previous 10 years. XI's combat system may have been fine in a time when the only other successful MMORPGs were Everquest (1999) and Ultima Online (1996). But current MMORPG's UI/UX draw from Everquest (the compressed inventory) and Diablo(1996) (the "belt" of icons that correspond to number keys) and not Ultima Online (though the "paper doll" gear equipment is still in use and has it's origin in Ultima 7 (1992).)

The WASD control scheme ironically comes from one of the first Multiplayer CRPG game (Moria) for the PLATO in 1977, and was used with Wizardy in 1981 (another predecessor to damn-near-every-CRPG-and-MMORPG) but fell out of favor with the introduction of computer mice in 1984, and didn't come back into favor until Quake (which is... *drumroll* a multiplayer game in 1996.) FFXI and XIV (and PC ports of FFVII, FFVIII) all had development targets for game consoles which didn't come with keyboards. So the game had to be able to work with a controller alone.

So everything that we complain about from V1.0 are management missteps. There was a lot more care and thought put into the cutscenes, lore and supporting quests, while where they really struck-out was with the maps and antiquated combat.

So is V2.0 better? It's better in MOST ways. Combining the Miqo'te gear with the Hyur gear (and hence the often cited "Miqo'te butts" comments) was definitely a step backwards, and so was nerfing the opening cutscenes. But you have to also understand that there was no way of putting those opening cutscenes into V2.0 because most of it was was rendered in real time against the MUCH larger Gridania (Forest) and Ul'dah (Entrance) maps. (Limsa's Opening takes place on a ship, which was an actual thing you could ride in V1.0, but had to wait for.) They would have had to redo them entirely.

[Shougun]

1.0 world feeled not alive. It feeled empty. Except of the aetherite camps and the 2 hamlets in every region there were no settlements, no villages and not even NPCs outside of the 3 cities.
Big =/= alive


Also don't forget the limitation of 30 visible players/NPCs/enemies/objects, in a MMO

Probably goes hand in hand with my dislike of FATEs and Hunts but I liked only seeing 30 entities (priority on NPC/Party), I actually find it less appealing to be full of people - if it wasn't for the clear advantages of when you want a party you can have one / active market I might consider a server transfer. Well and for the most part the people of Balmung are nice and my FC is great (buuut if there was a slider for how many people were on the screen at once I'd probably bring it down just because).

Mostly miss monster behaviors in and out of combat, large scale environments and lack of instant traveling everything (3.0 addressed this a bit) - still want live lore based traveling though. The amazing animations. Better resolution on some textures (mipmapping seemed to be better in 1.0 for example). And the bit more earthy (saturated, lol) color palette.

Also Twilight over Thanalan. Hnng.

Ramblings:

There are a number of things that 2.0 could take from 1.0, monsters as Jynx mentioned was a huge boon to the living world feeling for me. Another which likely won't happen, but was more present in 3.0, is traveling - I love the feeling of scale that can bring and I don't exclusively mean "wait 45 minutes on a boat to wait 20 minutes for an airship to wait 30 minutes for an altep summon". WoW has shown you can keep things under wraps and still have traveling (the open world map also helped with that aspect in conjunction). I really like the idea of that feeling that begins when you start to travel, especially when you can tie it into the world lore (why are there no caravans between the three cities? Seriously no one trades? Train tracks in thanalan and no train?). Again 3.0 was a bit better, bigger zones few aetheryte and requires you to explore first - appreciate this, still missing a societal method of transportation though.. And a dream we get an overworld map, can make flying work in 1.0 zones without editing them by lifting off into the overworld map and only landing at designated locations, use a No Man's Sky sort of effect as a loading screen :P.

So I'm excited to see 4.0 just because they might keep doing large/exploration themed zones (not opposed to small zones, but not every zone (imo) needs an aetheryte). While sky is nice it will be neat to see what they will be willing to do on the ground as well (not a complaint of 3.0 just an excitement to see more).

The higher quality models (flower pot that had the same amount of polygons as a character , huge problem for lower end machines.. I know.. ) and better textures is missed (not always true, largely talking about the mipmapping resolution). With on the fly animation modification (does take system resources, especially if everyone has it applied) you could avoid forcing momentum with 1.0's awesome run animations - loved how it looked like you were actually running on the ground and not floating upon it (as an aside, get some stair animations.. lol). Would love to see a enthusiast setting~ I also miss some of the colors (2.0 allowed some very "modern" color palette that not quite WoW went away from some of the more earthy tones).

Obviously the cutscenes were very well directed.. felt like movie at some points. Though (as SE said) it is very costly and slow to get through the pipeline. They've shown glimmers here and there, hildibrand cutscene, major story moments, just hope to see them do it whenever they can find the space (imo the first time I saw a true form Ascian was amazing, 2.0 Ascians feel very organization 13 "meh, dem the bad guys" - glad they brought the model back for 3.0 though).

The amount of activity in 1.0 may have not been more than 2.0/3.0, clearly as you say way more NPCs doing things and talking, but there was an amount of character that imo 2.0 didn't take on with it. A lot of little things that made a whole (whole-ish? lol) experience, extremely high quality animations that grounded you in a large scale environment, which looked great on a macro scale (needed some work micro, like removing that Thanalan ramp and tri-hollow-tipped mountain that was 100% exactly the same as the other 5 you just went by). Monsters to be learned and feared, monsters to love being in the presence of.

Wonderful monster quirks like parasitic snurbles helping you out, goobbues eating the nearby vegetation, territorial crabs, and afraid critters. That monsters had sight, sound, smell, and true sight and you had to respect them otherwise you might be in a world of hurt (3.0 made some improvements on 2.0 in terms of monster strength, I feel like some monsters still have aggro types but you hardly notice or care because "lol 20 monster train"). Areas of the game that clearly told you you were not prepared "hi I'm level 80 tree, this is ground - you like ground". Beyond adding back the neat AI I imagine they could simply add a variable of monster levels, even "NM" class monsters. So you might want to check their guage before face pulling with your chocobo or you may want to check your gauge to have a very rewarding monster kill (perhaps they can use these to make light party monster roaming non-FATE exping viable (not OP, just viable)).

It may be too much FFXI but I find party interaction a bit interesting, maybe not exactly the skill chain system, but at least from the cutscene you see a Thaumaturge enfire an archer. Or a non-skill chain based ability that is more interactive (enfire is just a neat buff) would be like Guild Wars 2 where you had a firewall that lit passing archer arrows on fire (not opposed to a interparty member class system personally, but I can see it adding a very deep and high skill requirement if keeping everything else the same). Also miss being able to target monster's body parts to affect their in combat AI. So you had this quirky out of combat AI and then in combat you had another set, like not ramming when you break their horn and dropping their horn as a loot drop, or simpler ones like trying to get help (via running to or calling - dungeons do this already, but to my knowledge no world monster cares that his buddy is 1 malm away and just dies instead of trying to live).

While I certainly feel the mainstream environment won't take getting beat up by a rabbit anymore, I do feel like we can keep mining 1.0 for little gems. I'd probably like to see monster AI first, but a world feeling via outside of town network would have to follow. Give me that train.. xD. Also, Doom Train?

[Jynx]

Ramblings:

Oh man take that out of hidden tags very well written post.