Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Dorander]

I recorded myself playing XI as a first impression. I spent 1 hour just wandering aimlessly because I, literally, had no f-n idea what I was supposed to be doing. I even tried fighting something because, eventually, I found out how to get outside. I couldn't even figure out how to use my combat spells... I quickly quit the game after that and never looked back, lmao.
I recorded something like 2-hours of me just saying "what the hell am I supposed to be doing?", "where am I?!", "Where's the quest NPC?!" ... "Where is everyone?!?!"

You pretty much nailed FFXI perfectly. It really is nothing but 75+ hellish grinding levels of boring. Along with the fact that if you die you lose massive chunks of exp, and can even delevel, negating hours of grinding because something big and evil (yes they had random agressive mobs that were like 10-15 levels higher than the average mob just wandering around, even in high traffic areas) just so happened to walk into the path of where you were trying to get to. That's the kind of 'over world danger' these crazies want. I say hell 'to the F' no to that noise.

Nothing at all tells you what/where/how to do anything, and you couldn't even 'jump' for years to get around in the environment (seriously, they only put jumping in not to long go).

Back in the day 'Window mode' was not a thing, and 3rd party windower software was frowned upon and even led to account suspension.

So, "Where am I? Where's the quest NPC!?" etc:

You had to ask other players in chat. FFXI had a very congenial and social community, this was partly due to the shared JP/EN servers and auto-translate, but mainly though it's because you had to engage socially in order to not just get things done, but know where to even go. You couldn't always 'look things up', your best resource for game-related issues were the people playing with you.

So to that conversation of open-world social engagement in XIV and the MMORPG genre, the biggest change: Window'd Mode and Google search.

I never played WoW except once at a friend's house, remember doing one fetch quest and thinking that it was so cheesy seeing flag markers over an NPC's head.

That's not realistic! lol

This right here is why it's crap. Having to constantly shout and ask people to even know where a simple fetch quest is, is completely rediculous. Why bother even having those quests if they are that buried in a sea of npcs for a negligable reward? Let alone bother with any sort of 'required' story' quests so you can use basic functionality like airships.. which took real life time to get from one place to another.. just sitting there.. idling.. waiting to go from Juno to San d'oria.. wasting time doing nothing.

Everything was a massive time sink. It took like a week to even get a chocobo license to use the chocobo taxis. Because the quest was literally: feed a chocobo, wait 20 hours to do it again, and hope he likes you a bit more till his affection got to max. Let's also not forget that if you were unlucky enough to get into a medium to low pop server and wanted to level, if you didn't get into a party by the time 'prime recruiting time' was up, your day was lost and you might as well log off.

[Lorielle]

Snip

It's hard to take anything you say seriously when you tag anything FFXI related with the tags attached.

[Skivvy]

It's hard to take anything you say seriously when you tag anything FFXI related with the tags attached.

lol, I noticed those a few days ago. It's hard for some people to be objective.

[Katchoo]

Along with the fact that if you die you lose massive chunks of exp, and can even delevel, negating hours of grinding

snip

Everything was a massive time sink. It took like a week to even get a chocobo license to use the chocobo taxis. Because the quest was literally: feed a chocobo, wait 20 hours to do it again, and hope he likes you a bit more till his affection got to max.

Look i don't disagree with you but you need to stop over exaggerating.

The chocobo quest you had to feed it four items, one every GAME DAY. Second, while losing exp when you die is the dumbest thing ever it was hardly "hours of grinding" to get it back. The only time this kind of thing happened was if you were doing Dynamis, content where you would probably die several time over a three-isa hour period.

[Dorander]

Look i don't disagree with you but you need to stop over exaggerating.

The chocobo quest you had to feed it four items, one every GAME DAY. Second, while losing exp when you die is the dumbest thing ever it was hardly "hours of grinding" to get it back. The only time this kind of thing happened was if you were doing Dynamis, content where you would probably die several time over a three-isa hour period.

Forgive me for not remember it exactly. Suffice it to say, it took far longer than necessary JUST to use a chocobo taxi. Before you could even do that rediculous quest, you had to get to Juno first. Which, even then you had to be level 20 to even have a chance to get there, let alone pick up the quest. Let's not get into all the hoops you had to jump through just to get an airship pass.

So over exaggerating.. hardly. Especially if all I remember of it years later is the obsurdity of how long and tedious things were to achieve the most miniscule of basic functionalities. Everything was a chore and a half.

[Katchoo]

Forgive me for not remember it exactly. Suffice it to say, it took far longer than necessary JUST to use a chocobo taxi. Before you could even do that rediculous quest, you had to get to Juno first. Which, even then you had to be level 20 to even have a chance to get there, let alone pick up the quest. Let's not get into all the hoops you had to jump through just to get an airship pass.

Okay i'm just being pedantic at this point but i just can't help myself.

First, how is that quest any different from the one in FFXIV? Both quest you need to be level 20 and in fact if anything you could say the FFXIV was worse. You had to grind out 2000 GC seals (until they recently changed it) which lets face it was a pain without a Choco whistle to take you between FATEs and were also seals you would rather be spending on ranking up.

Second, level had nothing to do with getting to Jeuno. Being level 20 hardly made your chances better in fact anybody with half a brain switched to a level 1 character so that if they did die they would not lose exp on their main.

But i agree, everything was a chore and a half ... but that was kind of the point. It was very much of it's time, and the chore was worth it for the immense sense of satisfaction you got from the small victories that built your character ... at least at the time that's how it felt.

These days i would much rather have fast travel and all the other countless comforts a modern MMO provides. Do i look back and reminisce about how wonderful FFXI was? Yes. But do i want all the pain that entailed? No. Lets face it, most people loose their cool if you wipe on a boss in Weeping City, WoD or w/e imagine the rage of having to run by foot half way round the world after a wipe.

[Alaltus]

This right here is why it's crap. Having to constantly shout and ask people to even know where a simple fetch quest is, is completely rediculous. Why bother even having those quests if they are that buried in a sea of npcs for a negligable reward? Let alone bother with any sort of 'required' story' quests so you can use basic functionality like airships.. which took real life time to get from one place to another.. just sitting there.. idling.. waiting to go from Juno to San d'oria.. wasting time doing nothing.

Everything was a massive time sink. It took like a week to even get a chocobo license to use the chocobo taxis. Because the quest was literally: feed a chocobo, wait 20 hours to do it again, and hope he likes you a bit more till his affection got to max. Let's also not forget that if you were unlucky enough to get into a medium to low pop server and wanted to level, if you didn't get into a party by the time 'prime recruiting time' was up, your day was lost and you might as well log off.

If i got lost i would use FFXIclopedia to to answer any question i had, better than cluttering the screen with tons of junk. Those massive time sinks are gone, you feed the chocobo every minute now. You can even jump but i don't think it has any use, never see anyone use it. You can solo to 99 easy now using trusts. They have a free log in week right now too. Though you shouldn't complain about having to be social in a MMORPG that is pretty much the point of the genre.

Very interesting, guess they changed their minds about the expansion thing. Or do they mean mini-expansions like they did in the past?

Until they overcome the ps2 architecture probably new story content that takes place within the current established areas. There are tons and tons of areas in XI so i don't mind that.

[Velhart]

If i got lost i would use FFXIclopedia to to answer any question i had, better than cluttering the screen with tons of junk. Those massive time sinks are gone, you feed the chocobo every minute now. You can even jump but i don't think it has any use, never see anyone use it. You can solo to 99 easy now using trusts. They have a free log in week right now too. Though you shouldn't complain about having to be social in a MMORPG that is pretty much the point of the genre.

This was not a good thing. People were overly dependent on FFXIclopedia. For good reasons, but we were. The quests were way too vague, even on a starter level.

[Alaltus]

This was not a good thing. People were overly dependent on FFXIclopedia. For good reasons, but we were. The quests were way too vague, even on a starter level.

Well a motivation to keep the wiki updated isn't exactly a bad thing but yeah they could have done with having more detailed quest descriptions in the quest/mission menus.

[Velhart]

Well a motivation to keep the wiki updated isn't exactly a bad thing but yeah they could have done with having more detailed quest descriptions in the quest/mission menus.

It isn't a bad thing either to not tell you exactly where to go and fun to figure it out, but the game a lot of times gave you nothing to work with at the beginning.