I might get hate or banned but hey w/e

[LineageRazor]

I disagree with the notion that Abyssea killed FFXI. If anything it revitalized it. FFXI was already an old, old game by the time Abyssea came along. Folks were already getting very tired of the horrendous grinds in the game. When Abyssea was added it was something completely new, that had never been seen in the game before. The progression system there was unique: Defeat special NMs to acquire superpowered buffs that only worked in the Abyssea zones. Use those buffs to defeat even stronger NMs to get still stronger buffs. And the exp system was totally overhauled in those zones, as well - important, because not a lot of folks would have been happy with the idea of progressing from level 75 to 99 in the same way. Given the enormous amounts of exp required for each level past level 50, there needed to be a shortcut - and Abyssea's experience system provided one.

One downside to Abyssea that I will admit is that it encouraged sloppy playstyle among players. Ninja subjob, once practically a defensive requirement for all DPS, disappeared almost overnight - not because it wasn't useful, but because in Abyssea you didn't need it. Healers had practically infinite MP thanks to the superbuffs, and the DPS superbuffs meant that monsters tended to die too fast to inflict much damage anyway. Players got accustomed to playing without NIN shadows to protect them - and then often got spanked outside of Abyssea when the healers had to actually ration their resources.

The road to 99 did have another undesirable effect, but that wasn't related to Abyssea at all: Paladin became the only viable tank, and White Mage became the only viable healer. Healers gained Cure V and Cure VI, pretty much the only way to cure effectively against high-level notorious monsters, and all the other jobs that had filled in to heal up to that point did not receive anything comparable. SE greatly relaxed the requirements on Relic weapons, and this allowed Paladins with Aegis, the ultimate shield, to become commonplace. Monsters were tuned accordingly - and soon Aegis Paladins were the only tanking class that could handle the damage.

Abyssea was something completely new to FFXI. While I wouldn't necessarily want to see Abyssea in FFXIV (though, really, Diadem is suspiciously similar) this game really could use something new. It's tread the same, safe formula for long enough!

[Lulu89]

It always amazes me how people love and praise XI for it's challenges and hardships, and then we have XIV where nobody wants to be bothered with a grind at all; so everything gets dumbed down.

Ya but it not the XI players QQing, it the new age gamers/kids

[Leigaon]

It always amazes me how people love and praise XI for it's challenges and hardships, and then we have XIV where nobody wants to be bothered with a grind at all; so everything gets dumbed down.

I will admit, I do not take on the challenging content for XIV like I did with XI head on, though when I did things like going after my carbuncle mittens or dragon staff, these were things that I had some sort of value. I was able to hold onto them for a long time. This is where both games could learn from each other to make something in the middle.

Say for the carbuncle mittens, in the land of FFXIV you got the offering in a dungeon that's guarded by a mini boss spawned. You can either duty finder it, or ask a set of friends to help you get it real quick. You and FC mates team up and go in, gather the spawn item.

Now you need a group to spawn the NM, gather your team of 8 by the classic design of asking for help through your FC. Your friends might schedule something or you might have enough demand to make it a week night event. You grab your mittens.

Now comes the problem of you having this one item you will need or will benefit you for a long long time. Since we don't have gear switching, why not make it an ability that can be spirit bonded and added to future gear. Since prepet cost means nothing in this game, so making this something else such as Radiant Shield : + 10s duration..but that's just thinking off the top of my head.

You're right though, I sometimes think about how people, including myself, talk about XI but don't realize how good we have it in XIV.

This game is not FFXI-2, though it very much used to be. We got FFXI-2, it was called FFXIV 1.0. It didn't work, so they tried something different. If you want to compare games, compare those two :P

You know you're right, I was taking time to look at the 1.0 abilities yesterday and here is an example, archers had an ability that let your weapon skill become a LoS ability. That would have been wonderful to add in. Rather than spamming quick nock you could make venom bite a line of sight attack, or when blood letter is triggered. Or there was a gladiator ability that made your sword shine and deal light damage, and put blind on the enemies around it. In large pulls, a longer blind would help I the long run.

Or the MDR ability that made any mob casting stop. Say, again in a large pull or group of 3 where everyone decides to AoE at the same time..every now and then you can stop them.

But also one thing I think I notice not just from XI to XIV but 1.0 to 2.0 is the lack of debuffs (Paralyze, Blind etc...) or anything that could be seen as preventive Blind for instance causing the mobs to miss the tank so they take less damage..

[Keramory]

See here's the thing about Ffxiv and ffxi. In ffxi the world was bigger then YOU. Yeah you became a hero but if you traveled carelessly even as the highest levels there were creatures out there who could murder you. It humbled the hell out of you. In this game, you just herp derp around without a care in the world at almost any level let alone endgame. I think these perspectives greatly influenced the games

[Xaimera]

See here's the thing about Ffxiv and ffxi. In ffxi the world was bigger then YOU. Yeah you became a hero but if you traveled carelessly even as the highest levels there were creatures out there who could murder you. It humbled the hell out of you. In this game, you just herp derp around without a care in the world at almost any level let alone endgame. I think these perspectives greatly influenced the games

^ this right here.

This game needs to be waaaaaay larger and waaaaay harder please. The fun about XI is lots of stuff could kill you no matter the level.

[Lambdafish]

This game is not FFXI-2, though it very much used to be. We got FFXI-2, it was called FFXIV 1.0. It didn't work, so they tried something different. If you want to compare games, compare those two :P

I agree with people saying the game needs to be harder, less cookie cutter and formulaic, and have more lasting rewards, but mechanically and design wise, this is nothing like FFXI and should not have any comparison (otherwise we get mechanics forced in for nostaligia sake that are nothing like people remember)

[Mithrahn]

This game is not FFXI-2, though it very much used to be. We got FFXI-2, it was called FFXIV 1.0. It didn't work, so they tried something different. If you want to compare games, compare those two :P

I agree with people saying the game needs to be harder, less cookie cutter and formulaic, and have more lasting rewards, but mechanically and design wise, this is nothing like FFXI and should not have any comparison (otherwise we get mechanics forced in for nostaligia sake that are nothing like people remember)

And again, the reason it didn't work wasn't because it was FFXI-2 but because most people's computers couldn't handle the processing power required.

Edit: As an added note, the FFXIV as you know of now wouldn't even exist if legacy players never help keep 1.0 alive for everyone else.

[Atoli]

I wouldn't mind a more dangerous world (I even called for that in some other threads), but in general, at least to me, I nearly instantly dropped FFXI after trying it, because it was NOT FUN.
It was horrible, confusing and unfair. I never met any nice and helpful person in my 2 weeks with the game and threw it into a corner full of frustration after a while.

I really like the concept FFXIV has going for it:
I can play the game like a single player FF game and then, when I'm done with the story,
I can have those hard, bonding fights where we laugh and die together with people of my chosing.
It's called a static and raid content

Way better than having to trust my life with some random stranger I sure as hell won't like in the long run.

[Lan_Mantear]

It wasn't so much that I disliked the idea of subjobs and how that whole thing worked, it's just that you couldn't be a "real" WHM without also spending an assload of time leveling up a subjob that, frankly, I didn't give a crap about at the time. It felt like a really artificial way to keep me playing.

The same can be said for leveling 2 additional jobs to get the appropriate cross class skills in XIV.

[Ibi]

It always amazes me how people love and praise XI for it's challenges and hardships, and then we have XIV where nobody wants to be bothered with a grind at all; so everything gets dumbed down.

Challenge means something completely different between the two games though.

FFXI's challenge was primarily in how inconvenient things were, rather than the actual battle content being difficult. That's not to say that all the fights were completely devoid of difficulty, but you could reasonably expect to get through even the toughest mission battles in less than a dozen attempts. The vast, vast majority of them wouldn't take more than two or three attempts.

In FFXIV, it's not unusual to put in over a dozen attempts on a given fight in a single sitting, and not be at all surprised if you don't advance your group's overall progress by even a single phase.