Ideal versus Real

[Enkidoh]

Really, if you came into FFXIV expecting the game to be heavily PvP focused then you were always going to be horribly disappointed. FFXIV is, a FF game, and the FF series have never been about competitive multiplayer - spin-offs maybe, but the main series has never been about players fighting each other, even in FFXI PvP was never nothing more than a minor diversion completely separate from the main game. FFXIV is PvE not PvP focused, it always will be.

Also, that's the nature of game development for you - concepts and ideas might be mentioned and shown, but during the development process aspects planned may be discovered to be for whatever reason just not implementable to how they had mentioned it, and thus it's either altererd to 'make it work', or excised completely.

This isn't a terrible thing, it's a natural part of game design. Unfortunately players don't usually take this into account and thus it's far easier to articulate "They lied to us!" when a certain content idea is mentioned and then later on scrapped, than simply accepting this is what happens when developing a game, especially MMOs.

It's why early trailers for games after all usually carry a legal disclaimer along the lines of "The following shows this game in an early stage of development and thus may not match the final version," things can change at any time (it's also why developers are usually tight lipped about what exactly they're doing.).

As for the Cash Shop, players actually begged SE for it, so blame other players, not SE, they're after all only trying to please everyone. Really these sorts of posts they may as well not bother trying to because no matter what they do it's always wrong.

[Amiaze]

Really, if you came into FFXIV expecting the game to be heavily PvP focused then you were always going to be horribly disappointed.

I'm fairly new to MMO culture, but I don't think anyone really came into FFXIV expecting this. I didn't; however, I did hope that, since the mode was there, that it would at least be a fun and interesting distraction for a while. Yet the mode itself feels so bare that players don't even queue into it, and I think that that's the most telling aspect of it. People play it so little that you could be stuck in queue for hours before getting in.

And I agree on the nature of game design; that's the nature of any sort of media, really. I purchase a lot of concept art books, and I often see things that were mentioned before or that the creators left little hints of in the final product. I leaned from AAA games to never trust a trailer or concept art, and just wait to play the game.

[WellFooled]

Really, if you came into FFXIV expecting the game to be heavily PvP focused then you were always going to be horribly disappointed. FFXIV is, a FF game, and the FF series have never been about competitive multiplayer - spin-offs maybe, but the main series has never been about players fighting each other, even in FFXI PvP was never nothing more than a minor diversion completely separate from the main game. FFXIV is PvE not PvP focused, it always will be.

I agree with your thoughts on the development process completely, but I disagree with this argument of PvP in FF. A feature doesn't need to have a history in the series to excel. Almost every FF game has included features unseen in past games or changed the fabric completely (No one would argue that FFXI shouldn't have been an online game because no FF had ever done it before, or that FFIV's ATB shouldn't be included because FF games had always been turned based, FFXV is even changing to an action RPG system for the first time).

I also believe the focus of an MMO should be up to the player. The game needs to be robust enough so that any of its features can be the focus for a player. If a feature is included, as PvP has been, it needs to be implemented well enough so that a player could feasibly dedicate enough time to it that it is their personal focus in the game.