As an FFXI player, thank you for Limited Jobs and BLU SE

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Can't believe I'm letting myself get sucked into this discussion, but-

There's probably some truth to XIV 1.0 failing due to trying to emulate some elements from XI, but in my humble opinion, that was far from the cause of the downfall of XIV 1.0. Yes, I see the documentary, I see what they're saying, and it is a sound explanation, but I can't help but feel like that's not the whole story either.

As someone who has played XIV from the start of 1.0 and spent time playing XI prior: there were actually very little similarities I could find between XI and XIV; I remember initially being disappointed by that realization. The only few things I recall of XIV 1.0 seemingly carrying over from XI were the races being basically spiritual successors of XI's (down to having no playable male MithrasMiqote or playable female GalkasRoegadyns), most of the same crafting classes (bonecraft seemingly got replaced by armorer), some monsters being updated models of XI's and... Really, that was all I saw...

I don't ever really recall anybody complaining about the game "trying to emulate" FFXI. Heck, there were no classic "jobs" to speak of that the franchise was known for until Yoshi-P took the reins. For the longest time there were no mounts, not even chocobos for the players. XIV 1.0 even tried to go out of its way to do a physical level for characters separate from each level of their classes. They were trying to flaunt Guildleves the same way they flaunted FATEs for ARR's release.

As far as I could tell, the actual criticisms I saw of XIV 1.0 were nothing that was borrowed from XI. The most prevalent complaints that I recall were as follows:

• The experience fatigue system to slow players' leveling speed if they were leveling a class "too fast/long without taking a break" in some misguided attempt at keeping "no-lifers" from pulling too far ahead of casuals.
• Leveling your physical and class levels were clunky.
• The equipment repair system was awful and required you to not only have the proper crafting class leveled to repair the gear, but carry throw-away mats specific to each type of gear (type of cloth, leather, ore, etc.) just to repair. And the NPCs to repair gear for you initially didn't even take it to 100%.
• "Copy-Paste" terrain.
• How graphics-intensive the game was and how hard it was for many computers to handle it.
• The Black Shroud.
• Big open zones full of nothing.
• There were quite a few monsters that were placed in areas that were way too high a level than they deserved to be, like a level 50 monster that could be dragged to the main city gates that would linger until somebody high enough would stop by and rid the newbies of it's presence. Some moderately-high monsters were placed in areas that would frequently see lower-level player traffic that could actually block passage (think about those high level Eureka mobs that are blocking your path and won't go away).
• I mentioned no mounts, right? Don't think we got the chocobo for quite some time.
• No Auction House/Market Boards/item Search Functions. If you wanted to sell something, you literally placed your retainers in wards that players had to physically visit and examine random retainers hoping to find the item they want being sold. Wards even had a cap on how many retainers could be placed inside. If all wards were filled, you couldn't sell anything via retainers. A search function was added after Yoshi-P took over, but it was still clunky and had limited ward space.
• There was no endgame for some time after launch. There were a handful of initial "Notorious Monsters" you could kill in a group for crafting mats, but I think you could count on one hand how many there were.
• The crafting system seemed... "Upside-down." For example, starting out you could craft some armor and equipment... But the raw mats (like thread, ingots and cloth) were for some reason a higher craft level than the armor you could actually make with it.
• Oh, Archers were limited by ammo, of course. And starting out I don't think stacks of items even went up to 99...

And that's only just what I recall right now; I know there was more. If you ask me, the game failed more because it was a glorified beta test/ incomplete game that they thought they could just patch the problems away eventually and a mish-mash of half-baked ideas, not because they decided they could emulate XI and have instant-success. Heck, I think if they even put effort into emulating even some things that worked for XI I'm willing to bet less people would have ragged on it.

Thank Altana for this post. I was about to write a big wall post in my sheer frustration at people trying to rewrite history with ignorance on the subject by people who either weren't there or who didn't pay attention to either game enough.

FFXI has absolutely nothing to do with why FFXIV failed because it didn't even appeal to FFXI fans. It doesn't even matter what SE says at this point cause SE has said a lot of things regarding FFXIV 1.0, but what we do know is people still pay for FFXI to this day but didn't want to pay for FFXIV 1.0.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Thank Altana for this post. I was about to write a big wall post in my sheer frustration at people trying to rewrite history with ignorance on the subject by people who either weren't there or who didn't pay attention to either game enough.

FFXI has absolutely nothing to do with why FFXIV failed because it didn't even appeal to FFXI fans. It doesn't even matter what SE says at this point cause SE has said a lot of things regarding FFXIV 1.0, but what we do know is people still pay for FFXI to this day but didn't want to pay for FFXIV 1.0.

It's what the devs were saying in the video. Why shouldn't I trust them?

Also, trying to emulate FFXI doesn't mean it succeeded. It obviously didn't, and they obviously tried new stuff too. But FFXI is not completely unrelated to FFXIV initial launch. FFXI was the whole drive behind SE wanting to do a second online game and rushing it, thinking they had it figured out. That doesn't mean the FFXI itself is responsible and I never said it was.

Look, I'm willing to admit that I didn't play either FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 (I'm not completely in the dark either, because I've read plenty about them), but I know what the devs said about how one influenced another. The director was even the same. I have no reason to distrust them.

But fine. I'll believe you, since you were there. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions based on claims by the devs that are inaccurate. Didn't mean to frustrate you and I'm not being facetious.

However, I'll still stand by the idea that FFXIV shouldn't try to be like FFXI. They're different games, and FFXI is still around for those that want to play it.

[whiskeybravo]

Hard to take the OP seriously after the first sentence to be honest:

One of my issues with this game was that the jobs being locked into only three roles made for very repetitive gameplay

Did you really level BLU? It's the definition of repetitive gameplay. And not even the good type.

[Teraluna]

As an FFXI player, thank you for Limited Jobs and BLU SE

If you're pleased with the Blue Mage here, then it must have been bloody awful in XI

[KokonoeAiyoko]

It's what the devs were saying in the video. Why shouldn't I trust them?

Also, trying to emulate FFXI doesn't mean it succeeded. It obviously didn't, and they obviously tried new stuff too. But FFXI is not completely unrelated to FFXIV initial launch. FFXI was the whole drive behind SE wanting to do a second online game and rushing it, thinking they had it figured out. That doesn't mean the FFXI itself is responsible and I never said it was.

Look, I'm willing to admit that I didn't play either FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 (I'm not completely in the dark either, because I've read plenty about them), but I know what the devs said about how one influenced another. The director was even the same. I have no reason to distrust them.

But fine. I'll believe you, since you were there. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions based on claims by the devs that are inaccurate. Didn't mean to frustrate you and I'm not being facetious.

However, I'll still stand by the idea that FFXIV shouldn't try to be like FFXI. They're different games, and FFXI is still around for those that want to play it.

Because that's from the perspective of a company and not the consumer player base. In their mind, they probably thought "we failed cause FFXI", but I remember those times I remember being on this very forum in those times, and most were complaining it wasn't as good as FFXI and a plethora of other issues.

I quit FFXI to jump ship to FFXIV 1.0 only to return to FFXI after a few months, which by the way I stopped playing 14 1.0 after one month and felt like I wasted my 80$ on the collector's edition. I went out of my way to buy a GPU just to play that unoptimized mess that couldn't event alt-tab. It wasn't FFXI, it didn't fail because it was trying to be FFXI.

Like there's even threads from back then wishing it was more like FFXI like this one.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...rst-release%29

-

And well, as for what you said on the final line. At this point in the game, we've gotten constant rehashes of the same content over and over, and SE does one thing to try to differentiate things a bit to give us unique content and it is met with scorn. Perhaps the execution can be better that is true, but when you have a game that has remained relatively safe for a long time with each expansion, it's ok for SE to shake things up a little bit. It's not like BLU is going make this game completely different, it's just another flavor added on to help make the game more diverse instead of stagnating with repeated design concepts from 2.0's launch.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that most people find level 50 jobs incredibly boring as is, I'd reserve final judgement until BLU is at 70-80.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Hard to take the OP seriously after the first sentence to be honest:



Did you really level BLU? It's the definition of repetitive gameplay. And not even the good type.

You seem to misunderstand, it does it in a different way. New things are good, I don't want to keep playing the same exact thing over and over. A common complaint with this game and justified.

[Mirakumi]

It could raid. If they gave it a set rotation and job gauge like every other job and balanced it around a set tool kit, learing all their abilities by leveling up with a few thrown into job quests.

The current version of blue mage not so much. Trying to let it do both with one design isn't going to work out very well. They would need to restrict and rebalance it to fit into the end game raiding scene. And the work required to do that would defeat the purpose of making it a limited job in the first place.

Just don't let it have LB and raise and its limited ;p

There is many ways to make it less viable - no ways to buff the PT, no ways to give mana back save for mana shift.

They could make it raid playable but that one dps that only cares about himself lol

[Arrius]

As an FFXI player, thank you for Limited Jobs and BLU SE

If you're pleased with the Blue Mage here, then it must have been bloody awful in XI

8 self-buffs, 5 Passives and 176(!) spells.
And about 80%+ were TP based and quite gimmiky.

[JBee]

(Some light spoilers ahead in case anyone cares)

I like that they tried something new. I had fun for a minute in the middle there, when I was in the process of unlocking new skills with people, and getting to actually use them. Most of the abilities are just normal attacks with a little flair on them to make them feel special, and that's fine really. Most of the super fun ones like Tail Screw either don't work on certain mobs (So much for 'cause it's silly to lv5 death something' as a reason), or they are super low RNG and are more likely to get you killed.

Pros:

- I do love that in the Masked Carnivale it is a perfectly viable and accepted means of success to blow yourself up as long as you take the mob(s) with you. That's clever, and I like it.
- I love how a lot of community building the thing has brought to people. Not always, but quite a bit. I joined a lot of PF groups of 4/4 swaps to try to get everyone skills, and there were only a few paranoid outliers. Mostly, it was fun grind, but a grind.
- I enjoyed the 45-50 duo'ing with another random BLU I met in Mor Dhona the most out of my time playing it. We were very close in level, and we were just rocking through mobs in fun and interesting ways before we moved to Northern Thanalan.

Cons:

- No Duty Finder. You are stuck using friends (who at the beginning were either trying to do it as well and willing to help, or who weren't doing it and would spare some time to blow up Tam Tara for you) or PF (which went from zero to toxic on some things pretty fast). This led to a lot of waiting around for more people willing to come in. Titan Hard group forms and 4 BLUs sit around waiting for 4 other people to come in and be willing to NOT get their skill for x runs. I think this skill took me 60 runs total to get, roughly? I didn't count. Finally got it in a group I set up where we did 4/4 and we switched every 5 runs whether skill learned or not, so that everyone would have a chance at it. Found a way around it, sure, but with DF would have been tons easier to deal with.
- The Masked Carnivale is a meme. It's a schtick. Maybe I didn't get far enough into it for that to hold true, but after 8 floors, I'm not interested in doing more or repeating those again. The water cannon + lava slime floor was enough for me to realize, yeah this is terrible content.
- This has brought out so many levels of negativity and vitriol in the community, I wish they hadn't introduced BLU in any form at all. I've read through posts for months, and one current theme I've seen over and over again... "I don't care you don't get what you want, as long as I get what I want." It's pretty gross. People who are all, "Stop complaining it's not a full job, maybe we want NEW THINGS - but as long as I get what I'm looking forward to (DANCER) that's all that matters." How self absorbed and asinine can you get.
- The EXP Flip Issue. I don't count this as a con because people leveled fast - literally who cares someone beat a Lord of Verminion match faster than you, huh? My issue was how it brought out the worst in people. I saw time and time again the last few days how someone would be using this to level (sure, fine) - by railroading over literally everyone else in the area, regardless of who was where or when. Untagged mobs are fair game, yes, but there's also not being a tool. If you see someone actively killing a limited area, there are other places to go. Same goes for PL'ing. If you see one ore more people in an area you were wanting to use - running in and just railroading over everything is more the issue than the fact that you are powerleveling a character. I think a lot of people missed that.
- People fell for it. People fell for this Limited Experience because it was new content and they wanted something new to do. They did it, and the zones were smushed together with a sea of rhotano rage, and in so doing all but guaranteed more of this eventual disappointment is coming. I played Beastmaster in FFXI because it was a challenging method of self-reliance play (way way back in the day), and already in this forum people are calling for it to also be a Limited Job to turn it into a Pokemon style Gather-Em-Up. That's not what the job was that I played. At least their decision to do this in 14 was based on "trying to stay true to the job" or something.

I'm done posting about this. Negative or Positive, done is done.

BuT aS lOnG As I gEt MiNe I dOnT cArE.

[whiskeybravo]

You seem to misunderstand, it does it in a different way. New things are good, I don't want to keep playing the same exact thing over and over. A common complaint with this game and justified.

True. Before BLU, people actually participated in undersized content. After BLU, they just sit there while the 1 or 2 lv70s do all the work.