Really starting to get discouraged from playing.

[Shiki_Lockhart]

OP those things you asked existed in 1.0. They just dumbed down because they thought western players can't do complicated things, literally to appeal the masses with casual playing.

The AF gear and relic had effects that would boost some skills. They even change the name like fire for example as fire, fira, firaga (they still use it but in japanese language only!) for fire 1, 2 and 3 because they thought people would get confused!

It is just too sad

We had gears that were the best as melded, like a triple melded gear was op, because getting quadruple or penta it would be a miracle to happen, since after the forbidden materia if you failed to meld everything would be lost and you would have to redo from 0 again.

[Magis]

OP those things you asked existed in 1.0. They just dumbed down because they thought western players can't do complicated things, literally to appeal the masses with casual playing.

Like someone said before: Ultima Online, Everquest, FFXI, and even early WoW had complex systems and difficulty. Don't bring in the "JAPAN SUPERIOR CULTURE" weeboo stuff. FFXI was built ontop of a WESTERN game.

This is just a trend with businesses trying to cater to people who don't normally play MMOs.

[Yaichiro]

This is just a trend with businesses trying to cater to people who don't normally play MMOs.

Which is making people who play MMO quit their games. With the launch of the expansion many people came from WoW and they are enjoying the game as they are levelling but I bet you they will quit as soon as they hit the end game. Even those SE trying to appeal to play MMO are eventually going to quit someday and you can't hope to get the same influx of new players all the time.

I haven't played FFXI but from what I have read from the abundant comments made here in this forums, it seems to me the game that I would really enjoy. It makes me wonder why did they throw everything they've learnt from running it. The problem is that things are working good for developers with all these new players coming to FFXIV but they can't hope for it continue indefinitely. While they think it's the "success" formula, it's actually not but SE is getting away with it since competition from other games is not big but once a new MMO game with solid gaming experience comes along I think we will see the fall of FFXIV.

[Kaaylryn]

I personally don't know what happened with HW. I enjoyed ARR for two years. Got all my crafters and gatherers to 50, worked on the relic, did the beast tribe stuff, finished all of coil. And now, soon after the 3.0 launch I find it very hard to log in. Everything seems to be drudgery right now. Even filler stuff for me like crafting and gathering is pure grind. 3.1 will be the break point for me as I don't have a lot of discretionary money to spend. If there is no other MMO of interest at that point, I may take a complete break from gaming in general, which may not be a bad idea after all.

[Magis]

While they think it's the "success" formula, it's actually not but SE is getting away with it since competition from other games is not big but once a new MMO game with solid gaming experience comes along I think we will see the fall of FFXIV.

Someone put a good theory. Tanaka was the producer of FFXI and also FFXIV 1.0. Due to his failure for 1.0 (which was also a mix of terrible business decisions by the SE bigwigs themselves like releasing the game way too early to beat WoW: Cataclysm), the new team are avoiding anything from his older games. They don't want to use anything touched by Tanaka due to 1.0's failure attributed to his name, even though FFXI was SE's most profitable game that lasted TO THIS DAY. Yoshi made a hit with 2.0 (ARR did very well), and now they are afraid to deviate from that, so they keep churning "what works". Let alone use game design from someone who caused the biggest MMO failure even though there were some gems that did work, and FFXI was a success.

So instead they look to another game designer, or in the case company: Blizzard.

[Vejjiegirl]

This was posted on reddit a while back but a lot of gear got downgraded/dummed down when we went from 1.0->2.0

Most gear like the AF set in particular had special bonus effects on them which made them unique compared to other equipment.
http://ffxiv.mozk-tabetai.com/
For Example, if you were wearing the Paladin AF and used the move Cover, you would get a MP Regen effect.



Some gear like the Imperial set even gave negative stats in some areas but bonus in others. It has -50 HP. However it gives a bonus of +50 MP and +1 Refresh... and a +20 Resistance to Paralysis




And this is just the Body Slot, the other slots added to the bonuses or gave other bonuses,



Materia was also different. They were much more advanced than we have now and allowed us to customize our gear(If they had Materia Slots) to fit our needs and playstyle more than relying on BiS

[Iromi]

We had those stats in 1.x and it was amazing

I thought they said they are putting that stuff back in with the expansion release..so what gives?

[Pesh]

I personally don't know what happened with HW. I enjoyed ARR for two years. Got all my crafters and gatherers to 50, worked on the relic, did the beast tribe stuff, finished all of coil. And now, soon after the 3.0 launch I find it very hard to log in. Everything seems to be drudgery right now. Even filler stuff for me like crafting and gathering is pure grind. 3.1 will be the break point for me as I don't have a lot of discretionary money to spend. If there is no other MMO of interest at that point, I may take a complete break from gaming in general, which may not be a bad idea after all.

I know exactly what happened. We expected change and instead of 3.0, we got 2.0 v2.

It almost feels like we paid money for a large patch instead of a true expansion.

[Windklinge]

I know exactly what happened. We expected change and instead of 3.0, we got 2.0 v2.

It almost feels like we paid money for a large patch instead of a true expansion.

feels? its what we got. a large leveling patch content wise. hw was not a real expansion basicly. it was basicly 2.6 with 10 extra levels of one time quests added to it. not more. delete the leveling part and we might aswell have gotten a 2.6 instead of a 3.0

[SakuraMidori]

What id love to understand is why ppl always go back to 1.0? it looked better character graphic wise sure but other then that it was a big op world mess with copy and paste in every zone. And was all around ugly and busted yet some ppl on here act like 1.0 was this super amazing game i feel bad for SE i mean they re built the game made it something much better {ty Yoshi} and doing what most companies never do. This is the first expansion give them time