Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[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.

[Zojha]

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.

In the extract I quoted, you were talking about having desirable facilities be available/unavailable depending on things like content participation/PvP, or more plainly put, risk, as well as "forced community". This is something that is not compatible with the desire for convenient access to facilities and content as the matchmaking systems provide and trying to appease both groups is a futile effort - either the facilities are insignificant enough that people not interested can ignore them, in which case the people enjoying such a concept are disappointed or they are so significant that you push players into a concept they want nothing to do with, leading to them being disappointed.

Now you are talking about open world content in general. That is a different thing altogether, because, as you say yourself, interests do not necessarily clash, unlike in the previous example - a quite important and relevant difference, wouldn't you say? Thus, I get the feeling you misunderstood me - I say if two concepts are not compatible, such as forced community and optional community or resource competition and free access to resources, they are best served in different games, because any attempted compromise can only be unsatisfying for both sides and likely will end up appealing to neither.

Forgive me when I don't address the rest of your post, because it's working under a faulty assumption and merely serves to reassure the readers that there is compatibility - a case in which I, at least, show no opposition in the first place, provided the implementation is financially feasible. It's where desires necessarily need to clash that I feel people should, in fact, play a different game, if it's particularly important to them.

[Shurrikhan]

Now you are talking about [open world]* content in general.

Forgive me when I don't address the [rest of your]** post...

* I wasn't even that specific. ** Not even from the start.

If a post doesn't refer back to two quotes prior, perhaps that's because no direct connection was intended?

It was a reply to your quote, which was also quite general. Do you see a single mention of open world gameplay in your quote? It was aimed at unwillingness to consider other models for a game, or to try to find ways to appeal to both sides of a given spectrum in a game's own way; open world vs. closed world models, so to speak, were only one such example given.

In either case, we return to this crux:

I say if two concepts are not compatible, such as forced community and optional community or resource competition and free access to resources, they are best served in different games, because any attempted compromise can only be unsatisfying for both sides and likely will end up appealing to neither.

I did not misunderstand you, nor by including a quote to provide thread-context for my thoughts did I mean to imply that you were in disagreement with anything I said. I agree that at times some concepts may be incompatible, for instance. I just can't find something to actually be necessarily incompatible until that determination includes looking at the particular and possible (where moving towards an positive outcome even in other ways for that added effort) circumstances of the game. You can treat it as habitual skepticism if you like, to be taken with no more importance than "half-empty; half-full"; I just dislike when things are considered certain by prior implementation or general design without yet being placed in scenario. To others, that'd just be pragmatism; I find it wasteful.

I realize therefore what I've written may not have been much use to you, but if you'd like concrete ideas for how open world immersion and community interaction and instanced convenience can play out together, I'll need surrounding theme and assets of, say, the zone and expansion in which that model would be introduced. As I said, to me it's paramount that a game use what assets it has or that the model work hand and hand with them. I'd rather show how they shape each other than argue impression in a vacuum, a tedious and rarely completed process.


:: I apologize if my quote range lead to any confusion. Your quote itself seemed general enough to me that I assumed your main point, alike to the "it's where desires necessarily need to clash that I feel people should, in fact, play a different game, if it's particularly important to them" argument above, which I may have equated to some extent with the "there's always another game out there for you" common retort, was not limited only to the open world, phasing, and instances-only discussion before it.

[Sandpark]

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.

Phasing. You don't have to compete against hundreds of others and people can still get their open world fix.
http://support.enmasse.com/tera/channels

There were times I would go up into Sky alone and solo stuff I wasn't supposed to. But I couldn't solo everything. It was amazing for the option to run into people and have an experience of community, not an event of community. An example of event type is everyone going to a huge peace/love festival like The Burning Man, and even though there are thousands of people, you are really only interacting with who you came with if you are staring at your phone and the people two feet in front of you the whole time.

Having a zone with interconnecting areas and the ability to get lost, gives you the Christopher Columbus feeling you can't get with bread crumb trails and lobbies. Not saying I don't enjoy my share of instances. But when a game puts all it's eggs in one basket and shuns another, that is a limit on what someone might consider fun.