Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Xlantaa]

Why not make FFXIV more like FFXIV and forget the damn FFXI?

I want to play FFXIV, not FFXI. If I want FFXI, then Isub for FFXI. For the love of god, stop trying to turn this game into FFXI.

[loreleidiangelo]

If groups are losing health fast enough to unavoidable damage they would.

When I say remove telegraphs, I mean remove those attacks and replace with bigger auto attack; not just remove the warning.

I don't think designing encounters to be like T2 enrage will make healing any more engaging than it is now. Even assuming it's tweaked to have actual mechanics and single-target damage going out rather than a stationary object spamming High Voltage, it still wouldn't solve anything because it would be stupidly hard to balance. Too much outgoing AOE healing needed and SCH will get the axe. Constant flip-flops of heavy single-target healing and AOE healing just means the two healers will flip-flop who "gets to" DPS. Both happening simultaneously and frequently would be too severe a drain on resources for a BRD/MCH to handle (maaaaaybe. If tuned right, this could be intriguing, but then that means mechanical diversity in fights might fall by the wayside because people will die if the healers ever have to stop casting to move/for any reason).

Just so I don't seem like I'm being arbitrarily contrary, here's how I'd do it:

-nerf healing potencies and CDs across the board, so that both healers have to WORK get to get a group back up from near-death to "safe" levels (this would still allow them to adjust to mechanics and use cooldowns accordingly, they just wouldn't be able to strong-arm HP levels so raid busters would actually require tactics and have some "oomph")
-nerf healer DPS so it doesn't contribute as much and people don't feel "pressured" to do it (awful tactic IMO, won't solve boredom of healers at all tiers of content, will just make leveling harder and let lazy people win)
-design encounters with way more incoming damage, but adjust MP costs so that healers can keep up without having to roll 4 BRD/MCH comps (limits mobility severely by requiring healers to always be casting or wipe)

These are all valid solutions, but I feel like option 1 gives the most encounter design flexibility at the development level, though I know the backlash over a universal nerf would be harsh as HELL. I'd welcome it, to get the joy I feel at playing a more restorative/supporting role back, but I certainly don't expect others to do the same.

Well, this is pretty tangential to the OP. Sorry for the derail (but kinda not sorry cuz LOL POSTIN IN A TROLL TOPIC)

[PandAlt]

I tried to talk about this in a way with my post from a few weeks ago, but then people thought I was trying to MAKE IT XI and I wasn't but it has been brought up before probably in other ways as well. Was a pretty decent discussion imho
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-of-XI-fix-it

[Brannigan]

Make FFXIV more like WoW by adding gear with interesting stats, classes that have procs and stuff, and dungeons that don't suck.

http://www.wowhead.com/guide=4149/a-...lasses-paladin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTM5EdMVbwU

[Zafrei]

How about making it more like GW2 - more horizontal progression and less gear treadmills?

[Aryalandi]

To those saying FFXI is dead I still play the game and there are still people around, not to mention that there is a plan to remake it to be playable on mobile devices along with its spinoff FFXI grandmasters. So to anyone saying that it is dead that is sort of hilarious. Less populated certainly, the servers are down to a few hundred on at all times of day *shrugs* that said it still has that many players a decade and a half after its release in spite of there being so many games with better graphics that are F2P.

All of that out of the way there are a number of things XIV could learn from XI. To name a few~

Events: one of the huge things that people are always going to complain about is that every event is ruled by fates, almost every single event. Final Fantasy XI made every event unique, from the summer event where you would /dance along with an npc to power up her attacks while fighting a fun-spoiling villian. To wandering around in a magic costume giving and receiving candy to/from npcs.

Or the stolen samurai armor quest where you needed to knock around a bunch of thieves outside of the cities with as many other people as you could gather, or the scavenger hunt or goldfish scooping or stealth quests, or the valentine's quest where you needed to smack the male lead of an in-game play to keep him from wandering off to flirt with npc girls. All of them were unique and many of them encouraged interactions with other players.

Quests in general: Many quests in FFXI give you an insight into the day to day lives of the worlds inhabitants, all the Npc's have stories, jobs, families, and yes they have troubles~ one womans husband is a guard who is frequently outside of the city walls on patrol, she asks you to take him medicine because she worries about him being alone out there.

A mithra (miqo'te) asks you to take a letter and a gift to her daughter in their home in the city slums~ you can choose to open the letter and read it (mind you the lady will know that you did it) which turns out to be a loving exchange between the mother and her daughter promising that she is doing her best to get the two of them out of that situation. You can later find out that she has infact been resorting to thievery to try and improve her daughters quality of life.

Or there is a humble gate guard that starts up a quest chain that brings a historical figure from Vana'diels history in to the present from an era of civil war. And you get to slowly see this man decide to turn against his own side in order to establish the peace the current era enjoys as a result of seeing how much better things are, it is one of the most amazing questlines in the game and it is entirely optional.

The list of quests just goes on and on and all of them have the power to make you /care/ about the random Npc's you come across. And the best part? All of them /remember/ that you helped them, and treat you as such rather than going back to not knowing you exist. And beyond that you can literally just run in to fun little insights in to day to day life for people at random, like talking to an npc that sparks a cutscene that had the cities religious leader come out to give a speech, there is no quest or anything it is just there~

The character gets involved during cutscenes: not so much at first, but starting by CoP and steadily growing from there you can expect to see your character getting fairly frequent dialogue choices and being spoken to by the story characters like a living breathing part of the story, a friend~ who actually has an opinion that matters.

^ Heavensward is getting there with the dialogue choices

Community: Long story short a lot of the time it feels like there just isn't one. Because why should there be when anything that you need done can either be done solo or through dutyfinder? It is not uncommon to walk through the game feeling like a solo player among other solo players or very small groups rather than a part of any sort of in-game community because there is no real need for anyone to interact outside of their FC's~ some of which are literally flaunted as being built up for nothing but the bonuses available and are /still/ solo-oriented.

Some of my fondest memories of FFXI are simple moments where someone would come along and save somebody else from a bad situation just because, then stand around and chat, possibly even becoming friends. You could generally expect that most of the people you come across are going to be friendly and helpful because there was a strong possibility that they may end up partying together at some point. Sure sometimes you would come across someone rude but generally speaking that sort of person wasn't around very long because eventually nobody would party with them.

Dutyfinder takes that sense of community away entirely and allows for players to pretty much be toxic beyond reason to deal with /because they can be and will still advance/ those sort of "i don't have time for mistakes you f***ing noobs!" types that you are sure to run in to atleast once every few dungeons.

Or the types who run palace of the dead with you only to turn around and deliberately die on the last floor so they can grind weapons without discussing the fact that they plan to do so ahead of time, why should they care? You are just some random person who happens to be in their party so it isn't like it matters if they royally wreck things for you and everyone else.

My most recent random chat with people waiting around in the high level hubtown? Immediately treated like an unwelcome attempt to be social~ use tells, or join a party together, don't you dare be social in /say I am much too busy standing here waiting for dutyfinder to send me off on my daily roulette to deal with people being nice to one another.

A great deal of the content in XI was originally geared twards making each servers community in to a community, only now that the population is lower have they inplimented things like Trust magic to help players play through content solo, yet even now with that going on you can still expect random instances of fun with total strangers.

Dealing with RMT: FFXI has a fairly large commited task force whose entire goal in life is to get rid of rmt, you send in a much easier to fill out report and within five minutes you can expect that your report has been read, investigated, dealt with. You can literally time it so you know the exact moment the rmt in question has been gotten rid of~ because you will get a thank you letter as that persons name gains a red ball of death and the character is suddenly erased from existence.

On my blue mage i formed the immortal lions, big group of people who would on occasion go around in full blue mage artifact gear being spooky while helping the task force to make RMT disappear, i did 124~ reports myself 123~ of which i got to see the person deleted for, the last was inconclusive.

Point being that there was actually communication between the players and GM's it was easy to access, quickly responded to because they had the manpower to do so. And you could actually get to be on friendly terms with the GMs and task force because again~ community

Now I could keep going all day but it would be silly, do I think that FFXIV should be FFXI 2.0? /no I do not/ i will be playing FFXI until it shuts down but that does not mean that I want it to replace FFXIV, they are two different things. I am grateful for the things in XIV that came from or were inspired by XI, like the races we play, and many of the monsters we fight. And I /loved/ the crossover events and the fact that Iroha stayed in Eorzea since she is literally your xi characters number 1 fan/student and her whole event was just a heartwarming rush of memories for me but overall I think they should remain separate beyond things XIV may borrow from in the future

That~said:
Do I think that XIV could /learn/ anything from XI? yes I do, all of those things that I listed I believe would be improvements to the game in general. Things that could add to it without overshadowing what XIV has established and which could add to the overall experience of playing.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

I think the problem is with how the genre has changed, MMOs were a place of massive group play where guilds had goals they worked towards and everyone who took part in the progression left with a sense of achievement and community. XI in its golden years (03-08) did a great job at encompassing the game with content which produced lasting social cooperation, and WoW too during its earlier days?. MMOs for the last decade have been moving away from that leaving us games resembling a single player experience with an online option.

[Leigaon]

Maybe I'm just as bad as everyone else but I can see some good things coming from XI, still most of it has already been said. Yet with all the good that came from FFXI there were still plenty of problems, even with the good parts.

Mobs in XI worked on TP. And even then you didn't know what ability they were gonna use. Totally random.

That's true, mobs did work on TP. You sort of got a feel for it though once you played enough and anticipated, or maybe I got very lucky guessing when a Goblin was going to use an attack. Still, you didn't have the giant indicators, but you did have the longer casting times and they said in the chat "XXXXX readies Tail Blow/Fireball" you knew what you were getting into. Did you have time to react? Sure! It was random so a Goblin would use Bomb Toss or Goblin Rush etc... but after fighting for so long you knew how to react to it just a fluently as we do now with these indicators and knowing what's coming at what %. I knew to make sure barfira was up, or that I needed to AoE stoneskin the party with titan or get back and get ready for the cures.

So even though it was random, you have been killing Goblins since..forever, and knew how to react. In the end, you get the same thing as you do now with XIV. I'd only change the indicators, like Titans plumes, something that looks natural. Or WoD, where the ground gets messy before something eats you.

The call for subjobs and expanded gameplay on certain jobs was a good idea but it sort of fell through. Like others said, you were forced to run as SMN/WHM. Even the end game bosses, there was a set up way to do things. There were chainspell stunners, people building up TP in the background and working off of the MB. While skillchains and magic bursts were wonderful, it would be another thing we have to wait on. The forbidden melee RDM (Guilty of being one! Up to 55!), playing PUP (PUP/THF, PUP/WAR..PUP/WHM main healing puk parties..) but like others said the way they were made it didn't always work. Warrior was meant to pick up any weapon, use the mobs weakness (blunt, slash etc) to get the dmg boost and help with SC, but was best to stay with certain weapons due to how their ranks were. RDM, jack of all trades, got spells so late and lacked gear and their skill ranks. When you really saw something new it was awesome though. I remember seeing SAM/RNG just destroying flying mobs in XP pt's. BST's were solo, and my friend would be a BST yet, being in parties he would rock. Just blew they had that Pet XP reduction so early on..

Horizontal progression was wonderful, you expanded on the job. Yet in the end I'm blinking to run through enfeebling / enhancing / healing / elemental magic, or through every...single..staff as I summon avatars just to save a few ticks. I will always love XI, and remember how I got the weathers to unlock summoner. Yet when I think about what they should implement, I realize either it's already in the game in some way, wouldn't be as good as we think it would be or if brought in could work but the rework would just be insane.

I always wondered, if instead of getting traits like Enhanced PoM would we be more happy if our relic did the same thing???

I love the casual side to this game, I do believe it moves too fast and we don't get to appreciate the beauty these guys have put into this game because we're forced to grind so much. Maybe some things from XI could come to XIV, but when you bring in something good you always have to counter with balancing out the bad. Nothing comes without a negative impact of some sort. I do think the player base is ready for more in depth, and there will always be a "best' way...but that balance, is what is the hardest part of all.

[odintius]

Don't even really consider this a mmo really it pretty much a hub that you que in with random people in duty finder and go into instances with for the majority of players the rest have found groups to que up with and do instance content that way. Its more like wow because it easy and quick content so people can get in and out with a reward though the rewards in wow/ffxi was allot more meaningful IMO. /shrug

[Skivvy]

Maybe I'm just as bad as everyone else but I can see some good things coming from XI, still most of it has already been said. Yet with all the good that came from FFXI there were still plenty of problems, even with the good parts.

Never a bad thing to be open-minded People are so unwilling to admit that XIV could be improved if they borrowed an idea or two from XI. Of course XI wasn't perfect, no one is claiming that, but this is why you don't try to copy the bad bits.

So many people are claiming "nostalgia" as if it's a winning argument, but it's not. That game does certain things far better than XIV. Just like XIV does certain things better than XI. No game is perfect and can always be improved upon.


Comments like this the following do not help this particular conversation:

Shout half a day to get a group to kill Hektaeye for ohat? Yeah i'm all game! \o/

Sure, if we were debating all the pros and cons of the old XI, I can see why that may come up - but why on earth would we be trying to adapt some of the negative features the game had?

I'm not quite sure why, but it seems like people are unable to accept the fact that XIV can be improved upon, and heaven help you if you mention XI. If it makes people feel better, I'd love if they implemented some things from GW2 and AA too! Build myself the perfect MMO! lol.