to Yoshi P. (Please read)

[Isaveron]

Im sorry but drop rates should be low and hard to get. If you dont want to work for gear go play wow not FF

Since when does being at the mercy of the random number generator equate to hard work? People don't mind work, what they don't want are blatant time sinks that only serve to waste your time.

[Aenarion]

not looking for a ffxi clone, but to hell with a wow clone with a final fantasy story too. op hit pretty much everything i can think of that was needed in this game. and hopefully that is the direction they finally push it and keep it at.

Why is it that you think people don't want a FF11-2 are automatically someone who want 14 to become a wow clone? I don't want a ffxi clone or a wow clone, I want ff14 to be its own game.

also, you can't claim that you don't want a ffxi clone while in the same paragraph saying that what this game needs is to become a ffxi clone :P

[Sephrick]

1. Leveling

Although I am a little tired of killing raptors and going to the same camps over and over, I still feel shades of FFXI while grinding.

XI had crawlers, crabs and -- later in it's life -- little pink birds. XIV has coblyns and raptors. Same experience.

THE MAIN FOCUS OF LEVELING YOUR CHARACTER SHOULD BE GROUPING.. ANYTHING IS UNACCEPTABLE AND WILL LEAD TO THE DEATH OF THIS GAME.

It's been clear that the focus of this game will be on endgame activities. Thus, they're not messing with some arbitrarily long grind.

The concept seems to be "easy to start, difficult to master." People tend to jump on every single announcement SE makes because it's "zomg easy mode." But they're trying to make a game for a broad audience.

The short, easy exp grind will be for the folks who want start the game and play with friends without needing to spend an arduous six months of severe grinding to just be able to start having fun.

To me, the materia system is for the hardcore crowd. A sort of levels beyond cap. Again, it's easy to start, what with a 100% success on the first attachment, and difficult to master since each attempt carries more risk.

There's the grind people desire.

I know some might say, "but how will new players learn their jobs?" To which I ask, how will any of us learn our jobs? In the next few months SE will not only change, add and delete abilities from classes, but they'll and the job system.

Certainly, we're not all going to go back to level 1 just to grind again to "learn" our new classes and jobs. We'll do that exactly how new players will. By adapting and experiencing fun content with friends.

People seem to get hung up on leveling being the game.

2. Grouping

What's so "normal" about six-member parties other than that being the number in XI? They have a plan, and it involves using four to eight members.

3. Quest

I'd hardly call them worthless. More like "reasonable." I, personally, wish there were repeatable quests that gave just as much exp.

SP from quests was a huge help in getting my MRD to 50. Between those and levequests I got to level on my own schedule instead of shouting for hours to try and build a party only to discover any viable camp was already taken like in XI.

I'm not sure why it should bother anyone if they make leves/quests a viable option for gaining levels. With the upcoming changes like the claim system and exp chain bonuses, parties still will hold superiority over the solo route. But the glacial pace at which one could solo in XI -- when the player base would often ostracize certain jobs making partying nigh impossible at times -- did more harm than good.

4. Crafting

Don't really have a counterpoint. If someone has designed a bot that can successfully craft through the minigame, kudos to them.

5. Sense of acomplishment

It's really in the eye of the beholder. I know some of the more vocal folks on these forums sigh if anyone mentions Darkhold as a challenge. I personallt find it very challenging.

So when I was finally present for a kill, and recieved my Helm of the Lone Knight, I wore it proudly. Even if it isn't exactly the best for that slot. I felt a great sense of accomplishment, and it was delivered through challenging content instead of arbitrary time sinks.

6. Endgame!!

On its way, of course. But you've got to build the basement before you can build the roof.

A. HNM

What else was there to do in the pointless 72 hour wait between dynamis entrances?

Id rather do hnm where people botted then do gay dungeons and other instanced content that is easy and the gear will just become obsolete with a new patch.

The dungeon's sexuality aside, why does something being instanced automatically make it easy?

The only real challenge in XI's HNMs was getting a claim, which was a matter of cheating and proximity to the servers. There's nothing fun about waiting for three or more hours to see your target pop claimed.

Even if you did get a claim, the challenge was over. After that, it was a matter of having enough people to cast cure on the tank and black mages/archers to kill it.

XI was a game designed around spending your career chasing after a handful of items. That's why a lot of what they added over the years were sidegrades at best. It worked fo XI because of the fanbase it attracted early in its life. But XIV needs to be a new game for a new generation.

Instances and raids can be more challenging and more fun than HNMs ever were. The exclusivity allows for better development and the guaranteed chance to participate on one's one pre-planned schedule means more people will be interested in playing.

B. Open world content-

Holy freak was sky and sea amazing.... I mean seriously years and years people spent doing those things.. It offered so much content and was so well done. It let linkshells compete against each other in certain ways. All I will say is if there is no sea/sky in this game I will most likely quit.

Both sky and sea were in a way "instanced" content with public hubs. I quote instanced because they weren't truly instanced, it's just that you could reserve an area for you and your party.

Even the jailers were force spawn mobs.

The only thing that wasn't "private" to the spawning party were the pop items, most of which had miserable drop rates. In the early days it took months sometimes to even fight the NMs just because of competition and drop rates.

Personally speaking, that's not something I ever want to go back to. The absorbent amount of time it took for so many people to get one person a reward was insane.

C. Dungeons- Plain and simple if I wanted to do instanced dungeons id go play other mmos. Not only was darkhold horribly done, it was just a bunch of copy and paste tunnels that offered nothing but repetitiveness. Oh and please do away with gear dropping from chest before the freaking bosses... really??? You want to reward people just for putting a group together and running in a kiling a few lvl 50 mobs to get a few pieces of gear? What a joke. My favorite thing on 11 was that gear was hard to obtain but it made it worthwhile once you got it. A dungeon here and there is ok, but if this is the main focus for endgame content, again I will not play.

The best gear comes from the highest risk. If a group only ever takes the time to get to the first chest, all they're ever going to get are some r50 mage feet. How is that game breaking?

But ultimately that's the point. Once again, easy to start, difficult to master. A few friends can net some exp and pop a few chests. The best of the best can speed run and kill Batraal in the special time limit.

It sounds less like you want to play XIV and more like you want to play XI. Yoshi-P has stated that the game will focus on instanced content. It's a core part of all the things they're changing in patches 1.18-1.21.

As far as Darkhold being "copy and paste." How different can a cavern be? I feel there more than enough unique landmarks in it. Stalagmites, claustrophobic areas, agoraphobic areas, small waterfalls in the wide open areas. There's lots to see if you take the time to look.

D. Make endgame acess for certain things actually hard/worthwhile to obtain..

Hard to argue that something should separate the men from the boys. But in XI it was pointless time sinks. Few things in XI were truly hardcore. People only convinced themselves of that while they stared at their screen unblinking for 10+ hours waiting for a mob to spawn purple.

Instead, it should be something actually challenging. Give everyone a chance to step up to the plate, but be unrelenting in content at which they take a swing.

JUST TO PUT THIS IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS, US FF FANS ARE HARDCORE AND WANT HARDCORE CONTENT NOT THE SAME CONTENT IN OTHER MMOS.

Speak for yourself. I've been an FF fan since I had my NES back in the day. I put seven good years into XI. I want casual. And by casual, I mean I want a fair shot at doing something meaningful on my own schedule.

XI required a minimum of three hours per session to get the most mundane tasks done. I've stuck around in XIV because of the potential in being able to hope on with only an hour or two to play and being able to do something other than watching a moogle spin.

E. Instanced content- There is a place for instanced content such as something like a dynamis, nyzle isle, salvage, ect.. but please make them fun/memorable and something you want to keep coming back to. Please stay away from instanced dungeons.

Again, Yoshi-P has said instances are the future of XIV.

And again, they can be more fun and more challenging than anything XI had to offer.

Sorry if you don't want to do Darkhold or Toto-Rak again, but I find myself doing them on a regular basis. I've even leveled a few classes to 25 just for the fun of being the minimum level in Toto-Rak.

F. Meriting- One of my favorite things about ffxi. Plain and simple I loved it and i wish this game would even go further in detail with it.

Materia seems to be the start of that, though I did enjoy the concept in XI, despite the majority of it being useless. The trouble was endgame min-maxing mentality dictated what merits players were expected to have which sucked all the fun out of it.

[weeble]

Why is it that you think people don't want a FF11-2 are automatically someone who want 14 to become a wow clone? I don't want a ffxi clone or a wow clone, I want ff14 to be its own game.

also, you can't claim that you don't want a ffxi clone while in the same paragraph saying that what this game needs is to become a ffxi clone :P

i want the "soul" of the game to be ffxi'ish yes, i not made the wow statement as a be all be. it is to some, and no matter how you look at it, mmo's take from other games. if not from ffxi then what games? it's not like it gonna be 100% original. the battle system feel more wow to me, the quests feel more wow, leves for sure feel wow to me, the dungeon feels wow to me, the placements on the bosses and stuff feels more wow to me, the solo almost everything feels more wow too me. so what do you mean not like wow? if people break down the game into tiny pieces and chose ffxi or wow, they will say wow.

having similar things, or a clone whatever the thought process is yeah. ffxi all the way b4 "any mmo" just saying wow was the worst example i can think off lol.

oh but also lets not make this a wow vs ffxi thing it's not. sorry, also lets pick out something from peoples post that would make the thread relevent to the op instead of the one thing that wouldnt change anything if wasn't on the post. no need to back and forth the useless points.

in reality no matter how you look at it there is alot of people who want the type of game play ffxi had, and was expecting it and even with a empty launch was thinking it would go towards that.

[Biggs]

Do you know why grinding was actaully a good thing people? I think many of you forget one important thing when you talk about how much you hate grinding. Grinding taught people their jobs in a party dynamic. After hours of playing as a bard in different party setups (or tank, or healer, ect.) you learned what sort of things to expect with changes in party line ups. Your a healer that just had a drk join your party, then you know from experience to prepare regen spells instead of bombing out cure 3's. Your tank is a ninja instead of a paladin, then you eased up how much you spammed cures to allow him/her to hold hate better.

Listen, I am not for pointless time synchs. I think random number generators for gear is inexcusable. I have little desire to spend hours upon hours just grinding off of dodos or crabs or other weak ass mobs that no one would really learn anything meaningful from by killing a million times. But there IS a happy medium between people that hate the grind and people that understand its purpose. It was a medium I was hoping SE was going to bring to XIV which they sadly have not. And thats making grinding FUN. HOly freaking crap, the cats outa the bag. But how do you make something that we are all going to have to do a million times throughout the course of the game fun you say? Frankly I don't see how this is actually that hard to see, but clearly people at SE can't seem to grasp this concept, so hopefully (but doubtfully) they are paying attention.

In order to make grinding fun over and over again, (deep breath), HAVE US GRIND OFF THINGS THAT ARE EXCITING!!! News flash SE, grinding off fat birds, or crabs, insects and sheep isn't fun. Even in the cases where we are grinding off something cool, like raptors or the occasional beastmen, IT ISNT FUN WHEN ITS 6 on 1. There is little strategy required in 6 people taking one thing down for xp (unless its a giant or dragon of course ). Provoke, stab, heal repeat: BORING. Aren't there pirates in this world? Isn't the country on the verge of world war? Why can't we grind off a party of Garleans? Lets see how my party of 6 homies does against a trio of Garlean special forces dudes coming at us at the same time. How about starting a fight with a solo pirate you find only to have him pull out a whistle or put a shot in the air that calls up 4 of his buddies to join the fray? What about stumbling across a cave full of mithra thieves? These are the types of fights we all read about in books we love and these were the types of fights the characters in fiction we grew up with overcame to become the heroes we know and love. These are the experiences we search for when we buy games like this, and frankly, the technolodgy is clearly there to make these things a reality, and believe me, the desire is there on the part of the players to want to play this way.

So people that hate the grind, stop begging SE for quick and easy xp, and instead, start demanding a smarter game that challenges the conventional ways we have been doing things for years now. It was my understanding before this game came out that thats what they were trying to do with this title. Instead they chose to give us a dog and pony show with a new name and look that just disguised more of the same.

[Bled]

This has just gotten silly now, each opposition has made its points a million times over.

It is painfully clear what direction Yoshi is taking the game if you don't like it or don't care to see where it ends up just leave. As much as i enjoyed FF11 and argue that random number generators for drop rates are basic to gaming, FF14 will not emulate FF11 plain and simple.

posts like these (better written ones) have been around since beta, yet nothing in this game resembles a push towards the form of FF11.

Talk about beating a dead horse.

[weeble]

i think the reason behind it is simple, they not after wow players or ffxi players. we can all come for the ride or not, i think (opinion) there major goal is what made people keep coming to a mmo even years and years later. and this is a horrid thing to be pre empting easy gaming for new players.

[Bled]

i think the reason behind it is simple, they not after wow players or ffxi players. we can all come for the ride or not, i think (opinion) there major goal is what made people keep coming to a mmo even years and years later. and this is a horrid thing to be pre empting easy gaming for new players.

They all ready stated in multiple posts that FFXIV is SE's attempt to reach all people of all demographics, and pull them into MMO's. I personally strongly disagree with this marketing stratagem however they have stated that they want to cater to both the casual players and the hard core MMO vets.

No mystery there.

[Rutelor]

Games should not rely on time sinks to retain players. Each day it passes I am more convinced the worst enemy FFXIV has, second only to Square-enix himself, is FFXI players that are still stuck in an era of gaming that is no longer realistic or feasible.

No longer realistic... or feasible? Speak for yourself! Perhaps you grew up and got a life, but we haven't.



Seriously, I think everybody changes, and perhaps the generation that had time to spare when it wasn't doing their homework and was too pimply to get good sex, is now married, with children and awesome credit card debt. That doesn't mean there aren't others that have, or choose to steal, the time to devote to gaming. This whole idea that "things" have changed so much that a game that was practically adored two years ago has suddenly become untenable is ridiculous.

If XI stands depleted of its former population nowadays, it's because of the "Casualization" it underwent, not because its level of complexity had suddenly become poisonous, or because "the matrix" suddenly entered a singularity that made time scarcer, and life more (or less) fun. You just got older, but look back, and forward, there all those other still willing to play for hours.

[Bled]

No longer realistic... or feasible? Speak for yourself! Perhaps you grew up and got a life, but we haven't.



Seriously, I think everybody changes, and perhaps the generation that had time to spare when it wasn't doing their homework and was too pimply to get good sex, is now married, with children and awesome credit card debt. That doesn't mean there aren't others that have, or choose to steal, the time to devote to gaming. This whole idea that "things" have changed so much that a game that was practically adored two years ago has suddenly become untenable is ridiculous.

If XI stands depleted of its former population nowadays, it's because of the "Casualization" it underwent, not because its level of complexity had suddenly become poisonous, or because "the matrix" suddenly entered a singularity that made time scarcer, and life more (or less) fun. You just got older, but look back, and forward, there all those other still willing to play for hours.

Spot on good sir +1