Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Sandpark]

How do you plan to accommodate the mass amount of people the open world portions? How will you maintain the toxicity of clashing with other groups and the server stress of so many in a area?

I imagine with Phasing. SE already does some of this and most modern mmos go heavy with the phasing. Since all content wouldn't be vortexed into the same area, wider player populace around Eorzea, and numerous servers. And since this game uses a GCD which I don't like normally, it adds to server stability since no one can zing off 1000 AoES one after the other.

[Velhart]

I imagine with Phasing. SE already does some of this and most modern mmos go heavy with the phasing. Since all content wouldn't be vortexed into the same area, wider player populace around Eorzea, and numerous servers. And since this game uses a GCD which I don't like normally, it adds to server stability since no one can zing off 1000 AoES one after the other.

But you still clash with others who can easily ruin your night. Why would you pick that over instanced which the only people who can ruin your night is the ones you took with you? I recall entire nights ruined because too many LS's were in Sky, Sea, or take a spot in Dynamis.

[Istaru]

But you still clash with others who can easily ruin your night. Why would you pick that over instanced which the only people who can ruin your night is the ones you took with you? I recall entire nights ruined because too many LS's were in Sky, Sea, or take a spot in Dynamis.

I have to agree with you, there was a significant level of endgame interpersonal conflict that I don't care to see again.

[Sandpark]

But you still clash with others who can easily ruin your night. Why would you pick that over instanced which the only people who can ruin your night is the ones you took with you? I recall entire nights ruined because too many LS's were in Sky, Sea, or take a spot in Dynamis.

If I play with fear that is not playing. There are a thousand reasons that could ruin a night and they don't even have to be in game. Phasing would fix competitive PvE for the most part. Even now nights get ruined sometimes as you state.

[Velhart]

If I play with fear that is not playing. There are a thousand reasons that could ruin a night and they don't even have to be in game. Phasing would fix competitive PvE for the most part. Even now nights get ruined sometimes as you state.

You are not answering my question. Why would I pick this type of game play that clashes with other people when I can have an instance of the game thing and not conflict with others? Why would I pick a feature that can ruin my night because of other people instead of a instanced group where that is not an issue? I have a feeling you can't give me a very good answer.

I guarantee you if Sky, Sea, or Dynamis had a choice to be instanced, people would most definitely of taken it. Too many nights our LS's plans were cancelled because of frustration of dealing with other people. Doing things like Einherjar or BCNM/KSNM were ever rarely the case because there was no real clash. Even SE agreed to an extent and made HNM Kings have force pops.

[Skivvy]

You are not answering my question. Why would I pick this type of game play that clashes with other people when I can have an instance of the game thing and not conflict with others? Why would I pick a feature that can ruin my night because of other people instead of a instanced group where that is not an issue? I have a feeling you can't give me a very good answer.

I guarantee you if Sky, Sea, or Dynamis had a choice to be instanced, people would most definitely of taken it. Too many nights our LS's plans were cancelled because of frustration of dealing with other people. Doing things like Einherjar or BCNM/KSNM were ever rarely the case because there was no real clash. Even SE agreed to an extent and made HNM Kings have force pops.

So what I'm taking from this is that games can change to keep up with the needs/desires of their player base. Perhaps one day XIV will add some spice to the world that is Eorzea. :P

[Shurrikhan]

You are not answering my question. Why would I pick this type of game play that clashes with other people when I can have an instance of the game thing and not conflict with others? Why would I pick a feature that can ruin my night because of other people instead of a instanced group where that is not an issue? I have a feeling you can't give me a very good answer.

I guarantee you if Sky, Sea, or Dynamis had a choice to be instanced, people would most definitely of taken it. Too many nights our LS's plans were cancelled because of frustration of dealing with other people. Doing things like Einherjar or BCNM/KSNM were ever rarely the case because there was no real clash. Even SE agreed to an extent and made HNM Kings have force pops.

For starters, shouldn't your comparisons be to the systems already in XIV where this can be a problem (Hunts, FATEs, and Diadem), or where that problem is (albeit awkwardly) avoided, such as in leves?

Sorry to answer a question with a question, but are these open world interactions condemned to be ever disappointing just because someone else can have an affect on the resources or tasks available to you? The same concepts are largely lauded in other MMOs, wherein the players must make an effort together in order to keep a given zone functioning, or where world PvP can push opportunities for players in their respective factions for better or worse. Are those people just all crazy for enjoying that element of risk and/or (forced) community?

[Jynx]

Are those people just all crazy for enjoying that element of risk and/or (forced) community?

There is no free lunch I should say in this regards. We pay one way or the other for interactions like this, and it's just a matter of how we pay that dividend that matters to some.

As a fan of the forced interaction of players I was a staunch advocate of enjoying the open world of FFXI, much of it's content could be enjoyed by anyone you ran into on the map and that shared interaction/struggle knit a tightly woven community. They even had their own primitive solutions to some of the issues people came across in such a world.

BCNM fights were "Instanced" boss fights you could access once you have traversed the open world area, much akin to many other storyline and other quests would have a open world interaction mingled with a closed instance. The main issue was that the instances were not really instanced as they were a separated arena, of course now such things can be solved as we have instances now aplenty.

Some people however want to nix all the middle-manning and just get to instanced content, that's how you wind up with our glorified lobby world now.

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I wont lie and say I enjoyed being locked out of dyanmis because it was "Full" but even then things like the dynamis system presented players with challenges they had to solve as a community and many did with shared callendars to organize the event. God help the man who decided to try and break that scheduel you would find your entire linkshell black-balled by the community because you didn't just ram a few buttons and meet up with anonymous people your actions had a profound effect on the world.

This could of course be for good or for ill but I happened to like that aspect of the game. I don't play to just que up in a dungeon I play to be part of a community.

[Zojha]

Are those people just all crazy for enjoying that element of risk and/or (forced) community?

Preferences don't make people crazy - however, playing a game that does not have these elements over one that does against one's own preference and better knowledge does seem a little crazy. I mean, one of the main reasons I am not playing guild wars 2 right now is the horizontal progression, but that just means guild wars 2 is not a game for me (as much as I adore the Asura), so I naturally picked another with a different model. The market is pretty diverse after all, so everyone should be able to find a pretty good fit (although 100% fit is likely never achieved), which in turn sends signals to companies.

I mean, don't get me wrong - monitoring the market, reacting to trends, adjusting the product to the customer's needs and serving profitable nichés are good things! But you also have to consider that not all customer needs and nichés are compatible and it's often better for everyone involved to have different needs served by different games.

[Shurrikhan]

Preferences don't make people crazy - however, playing a game that does not have these elements over one that does against one's own preference and better knowledge does seem a little crazy. I mean, one of the main reasons I am not playing guild wars 2 right now is the horizontal progression, but that just means guild wars 2 is not a game for me (as much as I adore the Asura), so I naturally picked another with a different model. The market is pretty diverse after all, so everyone should be able to find a pretty good fit (although 100% fit is likely never achieved), which in turn sends signals to companies.

I mean, don't get me wrong - monitoring the market, reacting to trends, adjusting the product to the customer's needs and serving profitable nichés are good things! But you also have to consider that not all customer needs and nichés are compatible and it's often better for everyone involved to have different needs served by different games.

I really meant that question to be more clearly just rhetorical, but fair enough. Good points.

My concern is when an entire design philosophy (e.g. anything but pure instanced gameplay hub worlds) is outright rejected by a given set of the playerbase when it may have far less effect on them than they assume. And the "there are other games you could play" advice, while generally accurate, isn't effective in the discussion of broadening any target audience, with or especially without sacrificing quality within its so-called niché. Yes, there are other games that have more interesting open world models that might appeal to me or even less openly interactive ones that might appeal to others, but those models are just a part of what make their games. I can't play with my Asura, female humans models, practical but attractive starter gear, gliders, lore-filled world, or even my concept art hype from GW2 without its overlying endgame meta, Fractals, Ascended Gear, etc., but that doesn't mean that the two parts necessitate each other; the prior does not necessarily cause the latter. And at the same time I cannot presently play with the animations I so love from this game with the semblance of a living, immersive, or emergent open world, but that is not to say that there is something in the art assets that prevents or makes unfitting any of those things. If anything, XIV has had a much shorter time and total update output compared to most of its spotlight competing MMOs to show that its development has been in the direction of making XIV all it can or should be. Its niche is, necessarily, less a process of self-tailoring or purposed reiteration towards a final goal, than other, longer historied MMOs. And even then, at least to me and seemingly to many others I've read from on this forum, its updates show comparatively lacking proof of long-running or manifest design. Any so-called "best fit" in whatever systems or niché to the assets that otherwise make up XIV has yet to be solidified. It is a game still in development, as almost every MMO is to some extent. At least it still has the chance to seem genuine and ambitious about that development, as opposed to, say, the push and pull of various decisions, take-backs, reshapes, and reskins that WoW's design iterations have become notorious for.

But that's not even the biggest thing. To return to the beginning, let me just reiterate that focusing on any given niché is not as necessary as many make it out to be. There are various shades between whatever two extremes that each side can read as favoring of meeting the needs of their side, rather than as a muddied compromise. Phasing is just one such example. Instancing and open world don't have to be in conflict; nor, even, do personal resource use and community effects on resources (see personal mining nodes, tracks, or suggestions made on such systems). In other cases, one side can be supplied without harm to another. Look at so-called "non-combat" abilities that have nonetheless built up identity for numerous MMO classes. The only possible conflict they could have with the combat abilities is bar space, which XIV has shown minimal care about as is and still have available solutions such as staged triggers (LB>RB or RB>LB, etc.).

To say that a game is necessarily one niché or another when it has so much that is yet untapped denies it the ability to progress. To deny entire player types access to a game's assets, still conceptually divorced even if packaged with those niché-like systems, when you could appease both sides is financially unsound. And to stop short of feeling out the proper balance of such systems, and appealing to a maximum number of player types—not just the mean, not just the mode—based on those assets that really make your game... that stops short of the ambition I'm fairly sure we'd all want from an MMO.