"Leave XIV Alone!" ~ Dragon Age

[Elexia]

Yeah it's mostly because gamers have become so..fickle about things this and last generation that there's almost no room for originality in major companies or risks without extreme backlash. I believe this is exactly why games like Super Meat Boy and Minecraft got popular because they're from "nobodies" (no not Kingdom Hearts nobodies.)

If a commercial company made Super Meat Boy, you'd get shit for it not being a graphical marvel. If it was made Bioware, you'd condemn their graves for daring to not make the events driven by dialogs and so on. The FF feel is indeed taking risks and originality, since FFIII was a big risk in throwing in a job system, FFIV? Taking it away, FFV? readding it with the 'subjob' type system where you can equip an ability from mastered jobs on any other and so on. FFXI was the biggest risk, first online FF game and built around a FF game the west has never played unless you imported or played a translation patch of it (FFIII).

So the way I see it, the developers want to open their eyes, but the second they do they'll get a blast of "NO MAKE IT STANDARD" light. They're getting there (FF feel), but it's hard to when it comes to MMOs, since people expect bland, "been there done that" style MMOs that plagues the genre now.

Tera is Korean, and has been Korean long before it even announced a western launch so why would it be developed for western appeal?

It was designed to try to mass appeal the western MMO type, it still has a grind, there's no denying that, but it feels too much like a western MMO from the get go, otherwise lack of content alone isn't enough to turn Korean players off of an MMO because they'll gladly grind the same content out because that's the gist of most of their MMOs currently out, i.e RO and Aion.

[Sarchy_Warchy]

Its called final fantasy because each game is a new and different world with different gameplay. Thus the final game with that world.

[grandm]

Its called final fantasy because each game is a new and different world with different gameplay. Thus the final game with that world.

i found where i got my quote. read this then tell me again why its called final fantasy

http://uk.retro.ign.com/articles/870/870770p1.html

[Synfrag]

So the way I see it, the developers want to open their eyes, but the second they do they'll get a blast of "NO MAKE IT STANDARD" light. They're getting there (FF feel), but it's hard to when it comes to MMOs, since people expect bland, "been there done that" style MMOs that plagues the genre now.

This is dead on. They tried to do it and immediately in the western Alpha/Beta they were assaulted for the stamina system, convoluted class identities and lack of cohesion to WoW standards. I hate to use that reference but it is really what started the mass hotbar phenomenon. There are some others deviating from it as well, we have Tera with the FPS type targeting and GW2 with the live action command and no healer situation.

There is so much hype about the non defined roles system in GW2 yet it is exactly what XIV tried. In the end it proved to be too convoluted for the mass public and everyone pushed SE into defining roles back to the MMO standard format of DD/Heal/Tank/Suport.

SE has always said there was a 50/50 element of the series with retaining legacy and developing new gameplay mechanics. Really where XIV went wrong is it went more like 10/90 where the only retention was the setting. All of the fantasy was lost, the progression was lost and anything familiar went out the door. On top of that battle mechanics were changed and all of this added up to the garbage it was when it was released.

Had the game launched without the horrid physical flaws that it has such as server lag, market system, group search and UI issues the rest could have been forgivable in the short run as they developed the "Feel". Or vice versa, had the "Feel" been on spot and the functionality flaws existed, again it would have been forgivable in the short run.

But we all know that's not how it went. We had both the lack of any excitement coupled with the terrible functionality that has lead to this complete redesign of the entire game. We can only hope that Yoshida et al see this the same way and attack both fronts. It looks like they do but we won't see it in any 1.x versions it will only come to light in 2.0

[Darkvalkyr]

I feel sad that every time I talk about XIV to people they always look at me funny.

As if XI was bad enough.