This video tells you why some people thought FFXIV 1.2. is a better MMO than 2.0

[Sandpark]

The problem I have with FFXIV right now is that it feels like any idea used by 1.x (or XI most of the time) is inherently bad. And it's just sad because some of them were very interesting and may have been the reasons why some of us even were attracted by an FF MMO in the first place.

The very idea kept lots of them away even before XI launched so I'd say the bad reviews only beat an already wounded horse

The problem I have with FFXIV right now is that it feels like any idea used by 1.x (or XI most of the time) is inherently bad. And it's just sad because some of them were very interesting and may have been the reasons why some of us even were attracted by an FF MMO in the first place.

The very idea kept lots of them away even before XI launched so I'd say the bad reviews only beat an already wounded horse

There are two types of gamers.

The Rules gamer and the Role gamer.
The rules gamers want jobs and no classes, without jobs all of their characters blend into a generic adventurer class who acts as a sort of everyman. Without racial modifiers, choosing a race becomes a cosmetic choice with no lasting impact. Without strict faction memberships, guild quests become senseless and arbitrary. They love the strict combat script of this game that role gamers call jump rope.

The role gamers dislike a game having too many arbitrary rules, they feel hemmed in. If they can't choose a role they find desirable, the game is not worth their salt. Roles should be defined by decisions not rules.

On one hand, the rule gamer is right:
If you don't have rules and statistics, if you don't have attributes, classes, racial modifiers, and skill requirements, your role is undefined. That isn't role-playing, that's pretending the way kids pretend.
There's no hard limit to push up against, no consequences for your decisions, no meaning to any of your actions.

On the other hand, the role gamer is also right:
If the rules prevent you from playing a desirable role, what's the point of playing?
If there are too many arbitrary rules restricting your freedom of choice you're not really playing a role, you're just following a script. It might be a good action game, or a good strategy game, but it's not really a role-playing game if you can't make basic decisions about things like your character's skill development, what kind of armor they wear, or whether or not Derplander the WOL can reject his destiny and live in the cities as a drunk pimp with a Lalafell girlfriend and a gambling addiction.

1.0 was mostly role and little rule, now we swung over to the other side. All rule and little role. A great game has to have a balance between role and rule.

Guildleves remains as a repetitive sidequest and material gatherer option, in the most boring way associated with fetch quest rpgs, only they removed the long walk to return quest giver. It has basically been untouched since the beginning of 1.0 for the most part.

It has/had the potential to be a fast easy way to jump in and out of different styles of content solo or in a pre made group.
https://guildleveideas.webs.com/

My issue with fates, GW2 dynamic events, ESO anvils is immersion. Immersion is a suspension of your senses or beliefs.

So you can have immersion whether you have convenience or not, but that requires developers to think about what their mechanics mean. Which unfortunately for MMO’s tends to rarely happen.

There is too much “weird MMO crap” going on for me to get truly immersed the way I would with a single-player RPG.

By “weird MMO crap” I mean all the stuff MMOs seem to need to have to be MMOs.
Things like enemies that simply stand around all day in the same spot, never moving, simply waiting for someone to come and kill them.
And ones that respawn faster than their predecessor’s corpses de-spawn.
People standing around waiting to be the hero who saves the village by slaying the monster, only they can’t because someone else is slaying it right now (but don’t worry, there will be another monster along in a minute, and the village will need saving again).
Bar patrons who bounce up and down on the table for hours while waiting for this mysterious “group finder” thing to “pop” and yelling at the other patrons to queue.

I mention the immersion thing because that is something XIV Hamlet and FFXI beseiged got right. If it happens constantly and very conveniently, it is immersion sapping and loses it's flair and oomph. The wildlife and enemy AI from 1.0 was amazing and immersive. They had reasons to exists beyond being your experience points or a means to an end on a quest or material farm. Sure, some of their tendencies were weird and annoying, but it made the world feel more like a real place.

Fast travel, I love it and don't want to see it go. But it's whole point was to not force a player to waste time seeing the same static environment they have been through a thousand times. Maybe if the environment was not static, I wouldn't mind a temporary or out of the blue reason for it to be limited for a time being? Maybe the aether gets plugged due to an ominous storm, maybe the fog gets so dense it renders my mini-map useless for a bit, maybe the sun and moon get so eclipse I can barely see two feet in front of my face, or maybe at night a new race of vampires and evil beast come out to feast on my rotting corpse? If it is static, do not touch my convenience with a ten foot pole, thank you. Idk, perhaps there is random treasure chest that spawn rarely with a mini game to unlock it? What if once an eorzean month or year, a crater opens in the Sagolli desert and some ancient ruins reveal a lost civilization?

[Penthea]

The thing about WoW is very few will admit the game was riddled with bugs and issues, and the community was what made it great. A community that will never come back, I doubt the classic servers will last all that long. MMO's that never get content may as well be dead.

I played Vanilla WoW and I don't share the "it was so much better back then" sentiment.

Some things were better but the game as a whole was not. Even back then, before I was very familiar with mmos, I felt some things were missing or not done correctly.

I'll be shocked if the Classic servers stand the test of time. Vanilla severely lacked content. It was literally get to max lvl, maybe do some pvp, and maybe raid. I really wonder what players are going to do when they have exhausted all the vanilla content. Will they demand the servers be updated with the expansion released after vanilla?

I also wonder how they're going to deal without having QoL that we take for granted now. There was no transmog (glam) until several expansions after vanilla. Your pets and mounts took up inventory space so you could only have a handful at most. Hunters lost a bag slot due to needing to use a quiver, and they had to buy ammo daily. You could only have one class specialisation active at a time, resetting the points cost a lot of gold. There were very few teleports in the game so unless you were a mage, getting around could take up a lot of time. There was no duty finder tool, so getting a group for a dungeon could take over an hour, and getting to the dungeon could be an extra 20 minutes. I could go on for ages like this.

Oh definitely. It's a gimmick and one that has no staying power. However at least with WoW they had the unofficial, private vanilla server and the outrage generated by it's closing to propel them into making it a reality.

The thing with private servers is they're often not a true incarnation of the classic game. They frequently add things like xp buffs, different class balance to the original game, or add the missing QoL like I mentioned above. People who played on the private servers won't be playing the same game as Blizzard's official classic version.

And yea it is a gimmick.

[Stanelis]

I think a better topic would be to discuss how 2.X design was better than 3.X and 4.X design. Because I played a few <50 dungeons while leveling my war these last few days and it struck me that

1) some <50 dungeons are actually more interesting and challenging than most >50 dungeons, and were more than just a few trashs mobs in a corridor then the streamlined boss design we have now,
2) tanks actually have to handle tanks mechanics (such as grabbing adds quickly, moving the boss around depending on mechanics, knowing which trash pack to pull) and aren't just subpar DPS who cast mitigation cooldowns to handle generic tank busters.

I mean, I hadn't done dungeons like dzemael darkhold in a while, and the shift in design is really noticeable. One may only wonder why was the game's design so streamlined after 3.0.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I think a better topic would be to discuss how 2.X design was better than 3.X and 4.X design. Because I played a few <50 dungeons while leveling my war these last few days and it struck me that

1) some <50 dungeons are actually more interesting and challenging than most >50 dungeons, and were more than just a few trashs mobs in a corridor then the streamlined boss design we have now,
2) tanks actually have to handle tanks mechanics (such as grabbing adds quickly, moving the boss around depending on mechanics, knowing which trash pack to pull) and aren't just subpar DPS who cast mitigation cooldowns to handle generic tank busters.

I mean, I hadn't done dungeons like dzemael darkhold in a while, and the shift in design is really noticeable. One may only wonder why was the game's design so streamlined after 3.0.

darkhold was a 1.x dungeon, as were aurum vale, cutters cry, and thousand maws of totorak.

they still have some of the old style to them. also, no one really ventures into the side rooms. hell, ive had people tell me they never open the first room of totorak to get the photocell.

if no one goes there, why spend the resources on it?

[Stanelis]

darkhold was a 1.x dungeon, as were aurum vale, cutters cry, and thousand maws of totorak.

they still have some of the old style to them. also, no one really ventures into the side rooms. hell, ive had people tell me they never open the first room of totorak to get the photocell.

if no one goes there, why spend the resources on it?

Having completed the old version of these dungeons, I can tell you they are nothing like their older iteration (aside from arts). Also, it isn't a simple matter of linearity or having "side rooms", it is the gameplay that is totally different. As an example, in post 3.0 dungeons, when did you have as a tank to move a statue to a glowing spot in order to kill it ? (that's just an example, I m not saying it should be in any dungeons). Since when did you have to make a dungeon boss kill its adds with one of his aoe, like in this level 50 dungeon with edda ? This sort of design simply cannot be found after 3.0

What I mentioned about the dungeons (the lost city of karn or the amdapor keep were designed the same way) could also be applied to the coil of bahamut, that was much more problem solving oriented than the content we had since 3.0.

[Enla]

The thing with private servers is they're often not a true incarnation of the classic game. They frequently add things like xp buffs, different class balance to the original game, or add the missing QoL like I mentioned above. People who played on the private servers won't be playing the same game as Blizzard's official classic version.

And yea it is a gimmick.

Not even remotely disagreeing. Even with all those things in place however, to Blizzard all that matters is that a good number of people were using the private vanilla server. Which showed interest in potentially making their own, sans the actual reasons why people preferred the private server in the first place. It makes sense for a company to try and cash in on that while they can, even as they misunderstand why people liked it in the first place.

[Tint]

One may only wonder why was the game's design so streamlined after 3.0.

Yes, I like the lvl 40 dungeons too, especially as tank.

They streamlined the dungeons not after 3.0, they started to streamline them at 2.2. The reason is Pharos Sirius, wich was added in 2.1. This dungeon had punishing mechanics, trash wich would wipe you when you pulled them together, damage stops, proper stuns were important and there were dps and heal checks. It was actually a lot of fun!

However, whenever this dungeon popped in the roulette people left imediately. Others who were late to the party didn't even unlocked the dungeon, so they would never get in their roulette.

After that they changed the roulette, so that you have to unlock ALL dungeons to be able to queue for it, and they also nerfed not only Pharos Sirius, but other level 50 dungeons as well, and they started to streamline the dungeon design more and more.

[Penthea]

Not even remotely disagreeing. Even with all those things in place however, to Blizzard all that matters is that a good number of people were using the private vanilla server. Which showed interest in potentially making their own, sans the actual reasons why people preferred the private server in the first place. It makes sense for a company to try and cash in on that while they can, even as they misunderstand why people liked it in the first place.

Oh yea I completely agree, I'm just saying that Blizzard's version of classic servers is going to be different to those unofficial ones. They're not going to put in all the extra goodies you usually find on private servers. Some players are going to be disappointed when they find this out. I look forward to seeing people getting a harsh reality check on what playing classic truly means. Assuming Blizzard are faithful to it, of course.

[Reynhart]

Also, it isn't a simple matter of linearity or having "side rooms", it is the gameplay that is totally different.

My guess is that this is a consequence of "plz nerf AV its too hard", "plz nerf AK it's too hard", "plz nerf Sirius it's too hard", "plz nerf Chrysalis, it's too hard", "plz nerf Steps of Faith, it's too hard". By nerfing again and again instead of pushing people to get better, you come to a point where you don't have much room for interesting design. To be fair though, they managed to keep several trials really interesting, if not better than those of ARR.

And on top of that, we also need to consider that 2.x was new. At that time, every mechanic was a novelty, every boss was a novelty, etc...but going through HW and SB, you see some mechanics used more and more, you see bosses using the same kind of 3D model with the same attacks even if the texture are "new".

I've said that quite some time ago...I don't think the formula of XIV is bad per se, but any formula can become less engaging after several years. But, at fanfest, Yoshi-P said that this formula was mandatory if they want to keep the same pace for updates, and they can only make a few new content apart from that.

[Sylvina]

2.0 is better in every way. Not even a argument really. 1.0 was a mess and if 2.0 had been 1.0 the game would have been better off since the mistake wouldn't have happened.

2.0+ story is also fine. Its standard for the PC in many MMOs to be a renowned hero. deal with it or play a game with a different story?