Surprisingly, The outdated MMO is WOW, not FFXI/XIV1.2

[Shurrikhan]

I respectfully disagree. I think that players who want more "old-school" type games will continue to be disappointed that FFXIV doesn't fit their mold, but players who like ease of access, catch-up mechanics, and MMO gameplay without the older associated attached strings of no-lifing/serious time commitment will be satisfied and continue to play. Basically the exact same status quo we have now.

I really can't stress this enough - no MMO game style is BETTER than the other; they're literally just different. I say this as someone who has played and tried nearly all of them. Could XIV work on improving when it comes to long-term goals/longevity? Sure, but it's never going to BE a game where you have to sink hours a day into it to remain relevant. The developers absolutely want people to be able to pick it up and play without a ton of time or stress involved. They don't want gear that you have to grind 3 months for in order for people to let you into a party, even if that gear will theoretically last you for six more months. Barriers of entry for this game are meant to be minimal, and tbh there's nothing wrong with that, even if it's not what some people enjoy.

This. Moreover, features do not necessarily command style, unless that style is something shallow or tangential. A game being "hardcore" or "casual" or "free of hand-holding" tells you virtually nothing about the game itself. If that's the only style an MMO may have, such that any addition of features that wouldn't equally fit that summary would break down its "identity", that game has long since been lacking in actual identity.

That said, I do think that, as long as you define what you're looking for or what equilibrium you're trying to maximize, we can definitely say on a feature by feature basis, given the contexts surrounding them, what works better in reaching those targets. And in almost no cases have "catch up mechanics" in themselves gone wrong in MMO designs. That said, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive with gear longevity, and yet that's the conflict we're shown here in XIV.

[ShanXiv]

forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/356964-Please-Reconsider-MSQ-Changes
forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/360092-I-m-not-sure-I-can-do-this-again.

While i definitely didn't read all 90+ pages I feel like I got the idea of the thread I'll toss in my own anecdotal evidence and thoughts.

I played 1.0 when it launched and then quite for a long time before coming back to 2.0 after HW had launched. When I finally got to these two dungeons they had already been around for a long time. Up till that point I had happily watched all the cutscenes and read most of the dialogs that came up through the MSQ. When I queued for the first dungeon and was met with all of the speed runners and scene skippers I did not like it. Being that I played a healer I felt it was necessary for me to skip the scenes and keep up with the group. I really had no idea what was going on in the run. People were mass pulling everything, ignoring mechanics, and standing in AoE. It was just a mess.

The next dungeon was even worse. People skipped all sorts of mobs in front of transporters, didn't wait for others to get on elevators, and again ignored mechanics. I was expecting some of this due to my last run but it was still very frustrating. After that run was over I went to an inn and watched all of the scenes. Watching them in the inn was not nearly as enjoyable as seeing them in person and in context but it got the job done.

Fast forward to when I hit 60 and started running the MSQ daily and I found my self resorting to the same things that I disliked. I skip cutscenes, ignore mechanics, and sometimes stand in AoE. I do at least wait for people to get on elevators and help explain things if someone asks a question.

With the recent change to the MSQ Roulette I won't say that I will never run it again, but I will say that it will be at the bottom of my list of priorities. Having to take that long to complete a run I have done hundreds of times before is not my idea of fun. Having fun is the reason why I play this game. I really do hope they come up with a better solution soon.

I may have rose colored or tinted glasses but I was eager to play XIV during 1.?? It was fun and exciting. The community seemed more involved and they didn’t spoon feed you every little thing. Before the servers went down for 1.0 you had to deal with the difficulty of primals, dungeons etc. I don’t think I’m ready to give up just yet but I am hoping they make another mmo in the future that goes back to those roots.

Modern people asked for easy & fast contents, instant gratification, but they forgot this is a sub game,
you are expected to keep playing it,so SE can keep making money from you,not play & leave.
and it requires development time to make a content，to polish a content

So thats what you get now:Play 100 easy,simple,short & fast,lower quality, same old dungeons every month, highly repetitive & boring.
instead of 50 slower & longer, but higher quality,more challenging, memorable & fun dungeons and open world contents.

And modern people refuse to wait 5-20 more minutes to form a party themself or look for a party,
so you have a DF feature, and the more horrible things: everyone is a random,impatient, unkind, rude and self-seeking stranger(what's this like? the fallen human, something mentioned in the Bible? I don't know)
or like a npc, a toxic community and the loneliness.

Delicious food, every wonderful things, require time to make & wait
Don't want to wait?then here you are：Some fast food, some genetically modified junk. this is the natural law,
oh.. what a good modern life...

[Nedkel]

A big part of the FFxiv success is that it has been released on consoles.
I believe consoles playerbase builds up around 30% of the total playerbase for this game if not more.

[Altena]

If you so desire, you can change XIV quests to the oldschool MMO style of having to read everything / look at guides on the internet to find out where to go / what to do..
Here is how you do it -
1. Open your HUD layout mode and right click the "Duty List" so the text is purple & it is hidden form your UI.
2. Upon accepting a new quest, open your Journal and click the box on the right until it shows a red "crossed out" icon.

This will remove all quest hints.

You are suffering from the blindness that is associated with nostalgia.

*EDITED after reading a little more of the thread:*

Furthermore.. Why are you just suggesting to increase wait times? Why shouldn't someone be able to queue up to a dungeon and just get matched / jump straight in as soon as the party fills? Why needlessly extend the wait time?
As much as you may not like it, SE is a business, and this game is a revenue for them. Making parties "fill slower" for the sake of (I still don't know why) whatever it is you're trying to achieve - reduces their market audience as people with less time are less inclined to do content / stay subscribed.
The key for a successful game is accessibility. And whether that be your taste or not, the game core systems need to cater to as many platforms, and as many varying levels of playtime as it can in order to make the most amount of money.

These "big, epic quests" that you are talking about are in the game. You just need to actually read the text and follow the quest chains through. They are simply split up into smaller quests to allow people to complete them in stages.

As for the quote you referenced, regarding the 2x MSQ dungeons she is talking about - that "issue" has been rectified since.. And we are now forced to sit through the cutscenes.
As for the little lala, he is indeed looking at 1.0 through rose coloured glasses. The primal fights weren't as difficult as the fights in this game - they were just made more difficult by the clunky combat system of 1.0, animation lock, max of 15 FPS on the best PCs, and crazy bad latency even for people that are playing from the basement of the data centre.
The "Dungeons" were still "gather everything and burn it". The relic quest chain actually required you to complete both those dungeons in under 17 mins (about on-par with dungeon completion times in ARR and beyond).

I really think nostalgia has blinded you somewhat.

[Hestzhyen]

I love the DF, won't lie. A huge part of my job is chasing after and gathering people up... I don't like doing it, and I certainly don't want to do it in my off-time. I'm glad the days of /shout LFG for every little thing are gone.

I would like more persistent content that doesn't get outdated within a patch cycle. I know this game is all about recycling content but some consistently relevant, epic adventure type instances would be welcome. A lot of people like MMOs for the challenge and the fond memories of finally beating that epic boss - not everyone wants to cap tomes with the latest copy/past content and play dress-up every week. Maybe Eureka will capture that essence? I know a lot of people are hoping it'll be everything they dreamed of; I'll be happy if it's reminiscent of older games where you're plunked down and let loose to go die a bunch while you figure it all out. Tough but (ideally) fair.

[Adventica6]

Yep that's the thing with ffxi, when you finished a quest or got lucky on a HLNM drop you felt really accomplished. The only quest I felt any sort of accomplishment in ffxiv was the relic quests.

A big part of the sense of accomplishment in ffxi came from having to manually shout and form parties, here you just get things handed to you with duty finder/Pf/ etc.

When you camped that boss for days and finally it spawned and you got the tag + the loot, that's where the adrenaline of accomplishment comes from, not capping tomestones.

If anything is out of date it's the spoon feeding gear treadmil / ilvl powercreep of xiv, now that is outdated, not xi, as for wow, that game was outdated 10 years ago.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yep that's the thing with ffxi, when you finished a quest or got lucky on a HLNM drop you felt really accomplished. The only quest I felt any sort of accomplishment in ffxiv was the relic quests.

A big part of the sense of accomplishment in ffxi came from having to manually shout and form parties, here you just get things handed to you with duty finder/Pf/ etc.

When you camped that boss for days and finally it spawned and you got the tag + the loot, that's where the adrenaline of accomplishment comes from, not capping tomestones.

If anything is out of date it's the spoon feeding gear treadmil / ilvl powercreep of xiv, now that is outdated, not xi, as for wow, that game was outdated 10 years ago.

Is that a sense of accomplishment, or a sense of relief? wondering if the 2 are getting mixed up here lol. "Yes, I finally got a party together after 3 hours to go from level 15 to level 16. yay!" yeah, not feelin it.

People already complain with 10 min DPS queues, and when they dont get their drops after 5 runs in 1 week. Can you imagine the outrage going months without a drop? Oh wait, that happened in coil already...

[Stanelis]

Is that a sense of accomplishment, or a sense of relief? wondering if the 2 are getting mixed up here lol. "Yes, I finally got a party together after 3 hours to go from level 15 to level 16. yay!" yeah, not feelin it.

People already complain with 10 min DPS queues, and when they dont get their drops after 5 runs in 1 week. Can you imagine the outrage going months without a drop? Oh wait, that happened in coil already...

You only had long waits to get partys at some level ranges though, and this issue would be non existent with the moderns server architectures that can be put together. Furthermore, there are some activities in FFXIV for which you'd typically have to wait a long time to get a group together.

Also, should we talk about the grinds for relics in 2.X and 3.X ? For which you had to grind hundreds of dungeons/fates to get a weapon that wasn't even better that what you could get elsewhere more easily. At least when you grinded/camped a NM/expected a drop from somewhere in FFXI that was for something relevant, and not for a generic item upgraded 1 month later.

[Sesera]

A big part of the sense of accomplishment in ffxi came from having to manually shout and form parties,

So this game is so bad that you enjoyment comes from wasting hours and hours begging for people to join your party.
No thanks I'd rather go out and see some friends at this point and I sure hate going out.

[Kewitt]

There are many things I liked about ffxi the big one was the feeling of final hitting level cap.
Finally getting that nm drop.
Clearing Alex while it was still 75 cap after 2 to 3 try a Sunday for 5 weeks in a row with a static.
I liked wow because leveling was quicker vs ffxi but all that has changed. It's quick in every game.
Now the reward changes every patch with new raids. It's not as good as a feeling but it's still there.

My fc has setup a cross server fc alliance with I think 18 fc over the aether data centre. The committee is great and we now have 2 raid leaders running raids every day. I never had that in ffxi or wow. In ffxi I ran a 55 active member LS it was a lot of work playing events for that many people but it never felt like a family which the friends I've made in dbh feels like.

Final as an adult with 2 mortgages and a family I don't have time for some think like ffxi 75 cap or even wow or ffxiv 1.x