Is "Traditional" a cop out?

[Malakhim]

No, I literally mean gameplay.

Combat is awful (which is why it's been a major focus of change since like early Feburary). Menu system was a disaster at the start, now it's passable. Leve system still sucks. Crafting is boring. Gathering is boring and slow. Early market wards were for masochists, now they're simply annoying. Controls are unintuitive and awkward for keyboard. LS system blows. Can go on for centuries.

In fact, these are the things people most common things are complaining about. Do you even read the forums or play the game? Or do you just assume that since you're alright with current gameplay that everyone is as well?

There's hardly any need to be snide.

I've been reading these forums since they opened on day one, and one thing that I'm surprised to see(due to reading other forums) is a consensus among A LOT of players that they enjoy several of these things, and as such, would disagree with your original point.

I don't recall any other game in the main FF series having a system as active as this. Maybe FFX-2's was faster and more interesting with the combo mechanic, but you still had to wait on commands and turns. There are also several pages worth of people saying they don't actually "spam 1" all the time. That's an argument I'd rather leave in that thread. You should read it some time.

[Wolfie]

There's hardly any need to be snide.

I've been reading these forums since they opened on day one, and one thing that I'm surprised to see(due to reading other forums) is a consensus among A LOT of players that they enjoy several of these things, and as such, would disagree with your original point.

I don't recall any other game in the main FF series having a system as active as this. Maybe FFX-2's was faster and more interesting with the combo mechanic, but you still had to wait on commands and turns.

"A lot" is an extremely vague term in this case, because "a lot more" people would agree with me.

I'm arguing with cold, hard numbers here, that you can see in the poll results that SE released:

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

Only 6.6% of the people polled thought of gameplay as the most appealing part of FFXIV. Auction house, a fix for market wards, was the 2nd most requested addition to FFXIV. 72% of the people expected overhaul to FFXIV gameplay. The 2nd most requested fix was the combat system, behind lack of content, and ahead of market wards. Only 16% of the people like the current bonus point system.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a douche here, but you're clearly looking at this from a very biased standpoint. Gameplay is the WORST thing about FFXIV. It's broken and crappy and needs fixing. It's been criticized up and down about it since release, by professional reviewers, amateurs, current players players, former players, prospective players, trolls, cats, whatever. Even SE and Yoshi themselves released information that this is true.

[Malakhim]

"A lot" is an extremely vague term in this case, because "a lot more" people would agree with me.

I'm arguing with cold, hard numbers here, that you can see in the poll results that SE released:

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

Only 6.6% of the people polled thought of gameplay as the most appealing part of FFXIV. Auction house, a fix for market wards, was the 2nd most requested addition to FFXIV. 72% of the people expected overhaul to FFXIV gameplay. The 2nd most requested fix was the combat system, behind lack of content, and ahead of market wards. Only 16% of the people like the current bonus point system.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a douche here, but you're clearly looking at this from a very biased standpoint. Gameplay is the WORST thing about FFXIV. It's broken and crappy and needs fixing. It's been criticized up and down about it since release, by professional reviewers, amateurs, current players players, former players, prospective players, trolls, cats, whatever. Even SE and Yoshi themselves released information that this is true.

These numbers are what led me to believe that nobody liked the stuff in the first place, but then I waltz in to the appropriate threads here, and to my surprise, plenty of people(at least those who have posted) enjoy things like the aforementioned combat and such.

Keep in mind that all those results are the combined percentages of all regions. If you look at the combined numbers for each region separately, then things aren't so obviously unanimous. There's still a wide margin of people who don't agree on all the issues you're presenting or at least not huge numbers pointing in any direction. Using those polls won't give you the best picture for that reason and several others.

[Wolfie]

These numbers are what led me to believe that nobody liked the stuff in the first place, but then I waltz in to the appropriate threads here, and to my surprise, plenty of people(at least those who have posted) enjoy things like the aforementioned combat and such.

Keep in mind that all those results are the combined percentages of all regions. If you look at the combined numbers for each region separately, then things aren't so obviously unanimous. There's still a wide margin of people who don't agree on all the issues you're presenting. Using those polls won't give you the best picture for that reason and several others.

I'm not really sure you understand how this works.

You pretty much just contradicted yourself here. Of course that when you walk into the "appropriate" threads, people will be praising certain parts about FFXIV's gameplay. Those threads are made BY that 6.6% that like combat, FOR that 6.6%. You are not going to find more people that dislike combat than people who like combat, in a topic praising combat; and vice versa.

The polls are pretty much the best, most unbiased, and definitive statement on what's the status of the game; because the polled population has a gigantic sample size and is representative of the ENTIRE USERBASE. There is no better picture than those polls. Certainly not doing fuzzy counting on how many topics you saw about how "combat is awesome".

[Malakhim]

I'm not really sure you understand how this works.

You pretty much just contradicted yourself here. Of course that when you walk into the "appropriate" threads, people will be praising certain parts about FFXIV's gameplay. Those threads are made BY that 6.6% that like combat, FOR that 6.6%. You are not going to find more people that dislike combat than people who like combat, in a topic praising combat; and vice versa.

The polls are pretty much the best, most unbiased, and definitive statement on what's the status of the game; because the polled population has a gigantic sample size and is representative of the ENTIRE USERBASE. There is no better picture than those polls. Certainly not doing fuzzy counting on how many topics you saw about how "combat is awesome".

I haven't been walking into any threads titled "petition for no auto-attack", that's for sure.

There also is a much better tool to use than polls, and that's actually talking to people instead of getting non-descriptive multiple choice or true/false style questions.

[Wolfie]

I haven't been walking into any threads titled "petition for no auto-attack", that's for sure.

There also is a much better tool to use than polls, and that's actually talking to people instead of getting non-descriptive multiple choice or true/false style questions.

That's not a better tool.

I can't believe you're saying that polls with a gigantic sample size and PURPOSELY NON-LOADED questions are more biased than a person going on a forum, reading "appropriate" topics, and mentally tallying up the differences in opinions.

Are you trolling me?

[Malakhim]

That's not a better tool.

I can't believe you're saying that polls with a gigantic sample size and PURPOSELY NON-LOADED questions are more biased than a person going on a forum, reading "appropriate" topics, and mentally tallying up the differences in opinions.

Are you trolling me?

No, statistics will only get you so far and most social scientists will tell you that if you want the best information, you don't wait for the source to come to you, you go to it. Of course actually putting that to practice is expensive and uber time consuming, which is why it isn't done extensively but most agree in an ideal setting, it would be the best method. What better method is there than a forum where people can post ideas?

Also, keep in mind that while a bunch of people answered the polls, that's all that number is: people who responded to the poll. That doesn't include people playing the game and people who aren't, or people posting on this site.

Yoshi did say that the responses were in the "tens of thousands" which can't account for a huge player base since the game sold upwards of 600k copies on release. And assuming that "tens of thousands" is actually indicative of the player base, are you going to say that 25 to 30%(average) of the different regions populations are wrong on what is inherently something subjective?

[napalmninja]

I haven't been walking into any threads titled "petition for no auto-attack", that's for sure.

There also is a much better tool to use than polls, and that's actually talking to people instead of getting non-descriptive multiple choice or true/false style questions.

The problem with talking to people, is the amount of people they would have to talk to. One thing to consider is that the forums, while a great addition, may only contain a small percentage of the people that polled.

And to be fair, the polls were descriptive enough for the people polling to understand what each answer meant. Each answer was a definitive yes or no. In this case majority rules and unless a few people who hated fundamental gameplay made thousands of different accounts, then the polls don't lie.