Did Yoshida went a bit too far by cloning WoW?

[Sandpark]

I doubt it is about the hotbar. 1.0 had it also and nobody said WoW clone to 1.0
I think it is the duty list.

If I remember right the original alpha had a power gauge system then beta introduced a stamina based system in the vein of dark souls or elder scrolls. Then in 1.23 they added auto attack and the system was more similar to FFXI. ARR ditched most of 1.23 and now we have what we have.

http://gamerescape.com/2009/08/22/4g...-sundi-part-2/

[Tuathaa]

Apparently all MMOs in this world are a WoW clone to some people. Just because of WoW's huge success doesn't mean everything is a WoW clone. After all WoW was NOT the first MMORPG nor the only one in existence in the period it launched. WoW also copied some things from older games.

WoW took the best elements form the mmo's of the time put their Warcraft (as in 1994 Warcraft) spin on it and made it successful. Any game that's going to be successful will do the same.

[Tuathaa]

Once again, he didn't say he copied anything from WoW. But yeah, it doesn't matter, if you feel FFXIV copied from WoW, that's cool. There are people who don't agree with you tho. It's a matter of opinion, and I'm not going to argue about that.

Seriously why ask for proof if you aren't going to read it? You must have missed “We looked to World of Warcraft. What they have there is pretty much what most players are used to. We’re using that as a base.”. I am glad I didn't bother digging up the other articles and interviews in relation to dungeon design, gear progression and DF

[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?

[Jin-]

I love the game, but there is nothing in common to FF series except

- Items and use animation
- Some bosses/enemies
- Graphical style
- Music/Sound
- Somewhat okay story
- Fanatical, rude and disrespectful fanbase

Without those it would not even feel FF game. It would be another yet very good High Fantasy MMORPG
My honest personal opinion. In before all the fanboys come calling me with various insults

[Mintyfresh]

I love the game, but there is nothing in common to FF series except

- Items and use animation
- Some bosses/enemies
- Graphical style
- Music/Sound
- Somewhat okay story
- Fanatical, rude and disrespectful fanbase

Those elements you listed, that's 80% of the game and what makes ff unique my love.
So..I'm not really sure what else it could have done to "NOT" make itself feel like wow.

[Fendred]

I love the game, but there is nothing in common to FF series except

- Items and use animation
- Some bosses/enemies
- Graphical style
- Music/Sound
- Somewhat okay story
- Fanatical, rude and disrespectful fanbase

Without those it would not even feel FF game. It would be another yet very good High Fantasy MMORPG
My honest personal opinion. In before all the fanboys come calling me with various insults

There is also the elemental wheel and resistances. Those were a mechanic in most Final Fantasy titles up to this point.

[Calypsx]

I am deeply saddened by the fact that everything pretty much changed from 1.23. It's one of the top things that makes me sad in mmorpg history besides City of Heroes shutting down.

1.23 was a pretty creative and game and they were slowly fixing everything, I feel with time it could have became something really unique and great. However I understand 2.0 was necessary. 1.23 would not have worked in this day and age and 2.0 takes very little risks which is what's required to do well in today's gaming world.

I'm just glad FFXIV is still alive. Even if I'm not the happiest with how it turned out at least I can still keep playing in a world I love.

[DkDerek]

WoW did a lot of things "great". That's why most of these new games feel like WoW.

I mean what kind of combat do you want? Terra? It gets boring after 10 minutes. Like XI? Get out of here.

Griffins? I mean....

Sure it's like WoW in a lot of ways, but thats because WoW is a fantastic game. Why would you move away from something that works?

WoW actually does a lot of things better unfortunately, mainly everything to do with UI and menus. FFXIV is still very young and lacks polish, but it's getting there. Definitely worth my investment.

I've played WoW since vanilla, quite frankly i'm sick of it. That doesn't mean it's not a phenomenal game. It still has the most subs by a landslide.

[Assirra]

I love the game, but there is nothing in common to FF series except

- Items and use animation
- Some bosses/enemies
- Graphical style
- Music/Sound
- Somewhat okay story
- Fanatical, rude and disrespectful fanbase

Without those it would not even feel FF game. It would be another yet very good High Fantasy MMORPG
My honest personal opinion. In before all the fanboys come calling me with various insults

Guess what makes Final fantasty games in general stand out the thousand and one fantasy games?
Those exact things...
Hell, what makes final fantasy games final fantasy games if not for those things?