Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Velhart]

The reason a more dangerous world would be an inconvenience is because mobs that can kill you fast if they're not related to a quest or have nothing to drop is just more busywork the average player will have to do just to avoid it and get where they need to be. Having dangerous monsters for the sake of it isn't really good to begin with. People want everyone to engage in the open world more, but this would make people do all they can to avoid it. Didn't FF11 players do a whole bunch of things to avoid getting aggro all the time? So much for open world danger if you go out of your way to avoid everything.

It was exactly that. Almost no one traveled through the open world like you should. Most people used oils to sneak past enemies to not fight them or used a Chocobo if allowed to. Stuff like that is fun at first, but if you need to get somewhere, it becomes inconvenient extremely fast. No one enjoyed walking back from the jungles trying to sneak past Goblins that could kill you.

Not to mention people were willing to pay WHM and RDM's gil just to teleport them to certain locations. Mages made bank off that. That is because people did not feel like travelling through the world since it took so much time. Even myself paid mages to port me. No one wanted to walk to Xarcabard.

[Skivvy]

It was exactly that. Almost no one traveled through the open world like you should. Most people used oils to sneak past enemies to not fight them or used a Chocobo if allowed to. Stuff like that is fun at first, but if you need to get somewhere, it becomes inconvenient extremely fast. No one enjoyed walking back from the jungles trying to sneak past Goblins that could kill you.

That's a bit of a slippery argument. While trying to survive sneaking through dangerous areas was probably not something that people looked forward to specifically, it adds to the challenge of the game. Adds another layer if you will.

The viewpoint of "it's inconvenient, we don't need it!" can be applied to many things in an MMO. For example, we still have to run quite a bit in this game. It's inconvenient and takes time. The mob packs that we run through barely bat an eye, so what is the point? Perhaps we should be given bot location hacks? Obviously I'm taking that argument to the extreme, but where exactly do you draw the line with things being time wasters and adding to the feel of a game?

Shouldn't the journey be part of the adventure?

[Velhart]

snip

That would only be the case if you had no means of getting past. It is human nature that people want the most convenient way possible to get a task done as efficiently and as fast as possible. People would in fact get sick of traversing through and people rather spend the gil they barely have on oils and powders just to not deal with it.

Content in this game is built upon accessibility, which is a very good thing. Note that accessibility does not mean easy. It means the content is present to those without having to deal with unnecessary crap to engage it. You don't have to go through three zones and kill mobs with 99 Kindred Seals just to do one fight you will likely die to in Ifrit's Cauldron. No, its accessible via Duty Finder, which in turn allows developers to make the fights themselves more interesting and hard. FFXI was a challenging game in it's own right, but the inaccessibility was a huge part of that challenge.

Accessibility means more players can get in on the content. Taking that away will lose customers, absolutely guaranteed.

[Ibi]

The big point missed is can avoid not will avoid. Ever played a sneaking game like Assassin's Creed or Thief? It feels rewarding to choose whether to engage or avoid using in game systems.

In Assassin's Creed or Thief the sneaking around is the actual game play. That's a big part of why people are playing the game in the first place and the game as a whole is designed around it.

In an MMO, having to sneak around is usually just put there as an obstacle to make it take longer to get to the actual game play.

That's a bit of a slippery argument. While trying to survive sneaking through dangerous areas was probably not something that people looked forward to specifically, it adds to the challenge of the game. [...] The viewpoint of "it's inconvenient, we don't need it!" can be applied to many things in an MMO.

FFXI is a poor example of that though, because the only challenge it added was "Do I have enough Silent Oils/Prism Powders/etc. in my inventory?" You'd just put up Sneak and Invisible and ignore the mobs completely.

And as far as inconvenience goes, there's a difference between dealing with inconvenience that's already present and specifically requesting to be further inconvenienced. You can pretty much guarantee that whatever inconvenience someone is requesting, there's going to be a substantial portion of the player base that likes that aspect of the game just the way it is and would really rather not have it be made more difficult/time-consuming/etc.

[Sandpark]

In Assassin's Creed or Thief the sneaking around is the actual game play. That's a big part of why people are playing the game in the first place and the game as a whole is designed around it.

In an MMO, having to sneak around is usually just put there as an obstacle to make it take longer to get to the actual game play.

In FFXI sneaking around and pulling enemies was the actual gameplay(combat oriented versus quest hubs). And the big part of why people played the game in the first place was the "Open World".

FFXI is a poor example of that though, because the only challenge it added was "Do I have enough Silent Oils/Prism Powders/etc. in my inventory?" You'd just put up Sneak and Invisible and ignore the mobs completely.

And as far as inconvenience goes, there's a difference between dealing with inconvenience that's already present and specifically requesting to be further inconvenienced. You can pretty much guarantee that whatever inconvenience someone is requesting, there's going to be a substantial portion of the player base that likes that aspect of the game just the way it is and would really rather not have it be made more difficult/time-consuming/etc.

You didn't have to even touch sneak or invisible. You could strategically move around and weave between most enemies to pull amazing feats.

To me hundreds to thousands of quest littered throughout the world is more inconvenient than actually participating in events and combat. Should they remove quest givers to convenience people who feel as I do? It's the same issue I have with the combat in this game and gathering in Dragon Age Inquisition. Busy work(multiple thousands of button pushes versus strategic button presses in reacting or enacting) that takes me out of the core of an mmorpg which is combat. I am not saying crafting and other things are not important.

[loreleidiangelo]

No forced grouping for me, thanks! I like knowing that my friends spend time with me because they like me, not because of some creepy totalitarian mutual co-dependency system. I'd hate "having" to bring someone along just because we needed a body, or because they have some class/role as their main that we really need to be able to do something. Didn't BRD, RDM, WHM and some others basically have their pick of the litter for groups? I'd hate to have to tolerate someone with too much sass simply because they're one of 10 guys with the job geared on my server. (You already kinda have to do this for Savage statics, with jobs like WAR and SCH...let's keep it out of everyday activities, shall we?)

If you're having trouble making connections in this game, "forcing" people to group with you isn't going to fix that. It might on the surface, but it'll be a connection totally devoid of any real meaning.

Incentives for grouping, like buffed exp for quest turn-ins or rare/more abundant drops from mobs? Sure, okay. More content revolved around flexible group sizes and low barriers of entry like Aquapolis? All for it. But as soon as this game forces me to play with some nyerk just to get even the most basic and tedious of things done...I'm outta here.

[dinnertime]

...

There's a lot more jerks from the Duty Finder though. More likely over there because they're people from another server and you'll probably never see again.

[Ibi]

In FFXI sneaking around and pulling enemies was the actual gameplay(combat oriented versus quest hubs). And the big part of why people played the game in the first place was the "Open World".

Sounds like we played XI in very different ways and for very different reasons.

You didn't have to even touch sneak or invisible. You could strategically move around and weave between most enemies to pull amazing feats.

You could avoid using them if you felt like arbitrarily making it take longer to get where you're going, sure, but people very rarely did.

And I think you may be overselling things by describing "getting past mobs without aggro" as "amazing feats".

To me hundreds to thousands of quest littered throughout the world is more inconvenient than actually participating in events and combat. Should they remove quest givers to convenience people who feel as I do? It's the same issue I have with the combat in this game and gathering in Dragon Age Inquisition. Busy work(multiple thousands of button pushes versus strategic button presses in reacting or enacting) that takes me out of the core of an mmorpg which is combat. I am not saying crafting and other things are not important.

Like I already said, there's a stark difference between dealing with the inconveniences that are already present and requesting that additional inconveniences be added.

When you start playing the game, you're either already aware or quickly find out what the existing inconveniences are, and can make the decision to either keep playing in spite of them or, if they're too much for you, go play something else.

[Jonnycbad]

Except EXP in FFXIV is mostly doled out in Dungeons which have pre-determined enemy placement and level-appropriate loot in chests. Along with auto-healing, auto-revival, leveling in FFXIV is seamless and easy. In FFXI if you leveled past your camp which had a narrow range of 2-4 levels, you gimped everyone's EXP and had to take a hike. Also, if you were undergeared, it didn't slow the party down, it CRIPPLED the party. If you had a 60% hit rate because you didn't skill-up your weapon or bring accuracy gear your weaponskills would miss and you wouldn't kill fast enough to maintain the EXP chains. In FFXIV, you can be 20 ilvls under the lvl for the dungeon and still be acceptable as long as you can dodge AoEs because everyone else will pick up the slack NP, also because the stat gains on equipment 1-50 are like +3-5 each piece, so having a few pieces from 20lv ago with +1 or +2 made no difference in performance (unless you were a tank and had gear with poor defense)

[MilesSaintboroguh]

That's a bit of a slippery argument. While trying to survive sneaking through dangerous areas was probably not something that people looked forward to specifically, it adds to the challenge of the game. Adds another layer if you will.

The viewpoint of "it's inconvenient, we don't need it!" can be applied to many things in an MMO. For example, we still have to run quite a bit in this game. It's inconvenient and takes time. The mob packs that we run through barely bat an eye, so what is the point? Perhaps we should be given bot location hacks? Obviously I'm taking that argument to the extreme, but where exactly do you draw the line with things being time wasters and adding to the feel of a game?

Shouldn't the journey be part of the adventure?

Not if I have to go through the same area for the millionth time and avoiding the same mobs for the millionth time. Journies are fun as a first experience, not as a chore as routine as your day job.