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

[Valdegarde]

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.

I agree with everything you said, but this is the part that hurts the most. I'm trying to be as collaborative as I can these days, but it still bothers me. I'm better understanding and empathizing with the viewpoint of those players who felt like their specific version of FFXIV would be satisfied with something wildly new and particular and niche like this, but frequently it seems to be at the cost of the dashed hopes of many other players.
Edit: Just had another instance of this in another topic. I really should back away from these forums for a while...the hostility and entitlement is ridiculous.

[Lambdafish]

maybe because XI and XIV belong to two vastly different generations of MMO that simply don't mix? So many are just sick and tired of the nostalgia crowd wanting to shovelhorn in outdated mechanics and elements, especially after the mess that is Eureka

[Cidel]

I can only base myself in the words of the developers themselves in documentaries/interviews like the one presented above (I mean, they're the ones who fixed it), where they admit that they thought they had this whole MMO thing figured out because of FFXI, got cocky and failed miserably because a lot of game design philosofies that worked before didn't work anymore.

Oh, I understand that you specifically don't mean to pin the entire blame on XIV 1.0's failure on them trying to "copy" XI, but I also know that many people do- as if XIV 1.0 was designed to be XI 2.0; it wasn't. If anything, I was trying to set the record straight on that misconception.

Now as for the fact that the devs do reference XI in their interviews:

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.

This is my take-away from the interviews as well. It's less of "we tried to emulate XI and it failed XIV 1.0," but more "we made assumptions of what we could get away with because of our success with XI and the excuse of the Final Fantasy franchise name."

Unfortunately, you can see based on even just some replies in this thread that the default reaction of a part of XIV's playerbase is to ridicule FFXI at every opportunity and somehow find fault in it every time the devs in charge of XIV make a bad decision. Like, for example, Eureka:

maybe because XI and XIV belong to two vastly different generations of MMO that simply don't mix? So many are just sick and tired of the nostalgia crowd wanting to shovelhorn in outdated mechanics and elements, especially after the mess that is Eureka

First of all, I have absolutely no argument against the first sentence of that quote, and actually wholly agree with it. My issue is the part I italicized and is a reoccurring misconception I keep seeing being brought up about how terribly-informed the devs have been about designing Eureka. Does it borrow some elements from XI? Yes. The worst elements that most rational fans of XI never wanted to see brought back from the dead. In this situation the "nostalgia crowd" must be the devs themselves because they hand-picked the aspects of XI most vets would cringe at amidst the mass of other, more reasonable requests like XI's glamour system or endgame content such as Nyzule Isle. It's as if- many years from now, should SE make another FF online game, they hand-pick this BLU debacle and glamour system circa 2016 as the things to emulate from XIV. Suddenly, the players of that new online FF game turn around and claim that putting those unpalatable elements of XIV into the new game is the fault of the nostalgic XIV crowd...


And just because this is a BLU thread too, after talking about 1.0, I've come to realize something. This limited BLU in many ways is an allegory of FFXIV 1.0. Think about it:
-Both were released seemingly incomplete with the promise of "we can just update it later."
-Both had a lot of outcry from the pre-launch about the direction.
-Both have arguably minimal (if any) "endgame," with the first point being the rationalization.
-Both have "stopgates" of sorts implemented to attempt to dissuade players from getting to said "endgame" to realize there isn't much of anything there (primal/trial spell RNG vs. exp fatigue system).
- Both imposed seemingly pointless restrictions on the basis that they thought they were doing something "different."

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Yeah, it probably isn't fair to judge FFXI based on how the devs pick bad elements from it to try them on FFXIV (talking about whatever they put in 1.0 and stuff they put in Eureka). I can agree with that, because as I said before I believe FFXI is doing something right to have so many loyal fans, and I quite enjoy FFXI's story.

However, when you say:

Does it borrow some elements from XI? Yes. The worst elements that most rational fans of XI never wanted to see brought back from the dead. In this situation the "nostalgia crowd" must be the devs themselves because they hand-picked the aspects of XI most vets would cringe at amidst the mass of other, more reasonable requests like XI's glamour system or endgame content such as Nyzule Isle.

Isn't this still a somewhat good reason for players to be worried about the idea of making "FFXIV more like FFXI"? Since, according to this, the devs have shown they're not that good at choosing the good elements of FFXI to apply in FFXIV (like the "you lose EXP when you die" thing in Eureka, which I'm not a particular fan of).

[Cidel]

Isn't this still a somewhat good reason for players to be worried about the idea of making "FFXIV more like FFXI"? Since, according to this, the devs have shown they're not that good at choosing the good elements of FFXI to apply in FFXIV (like the "you lose EXP when you die" thing in Eureka, which I'm not a particular fan of).

Oh, for sure. Now I'm not even confident the devs even have a clue what the XI fans liked about XI. And personally, I do not want XIV made "more like XI" (nor is that feasible), but simply that there are successful aspects and content of XI that could be replicated here.

[ReiMakoto]

Was this moved from the general forum, or am I going mad?

[Saefinn]

Okay, looking at the FFXIV hate. To the arguing that it is objectively bad, a word with a subjective meaning ‘bad’ can’t be objective, what you mean is you and people who agree with you hated it, that’s fine, I hate WOW and have tried it many times, so I can appreciate we will all have our hates, even when plenty of people disagree. Hell even what is considered good game design is subjective.

If it’s success was purely on it being an FF title, FFXIV would not have been such a massive flop to begin with, even then 1.0 had people who genuinely like it. I still play XI from time to time because I enjoy it, I don’t believe it was perfect but there was a lot that I loved about it. The same with XIV.

As for how much it grossed in the first year, it was still not the flop XIV was. XI grew and XIV rebuilt from the ground up to be the two final fantasy titles to make the most money. So they must have done something right. How well something does in the first year is not necessarily a measure of its success, but perhaps is the kind of thing to make shareholders and investors feel easy.

[TheHeavenAbyss]

Was this moved from the general forum, or am I going mad?

I've been using just the "New Posts" option, so I never noticed where this thread was. But, I mean, there are so many Blue Mage threads that some confusion is to be expected at some point lol.

[Kabooa]

Okay, looking at the FFXIV hate. To the arguing that it is objectively bad, a word with a subjective meaning ‘bad’ can’t be objective, what you mean is you and people who agree with you hated it, that’s fine, I hate WOW and have tried it many times, so I can appreciate we will all have our hates, even when plenty of people disagree. Hell even what is considered good game design is subjective.

Game design itself is rarely subjective. Much of game design can be objectively looked at and errors pointed out, even in an early design stage.

For example, the moment Blue mage and its capacity was announced, it didn't take playing the job to realize what was going to happen to it the week it released. You'd level, you get your skills, and you'd beat the Masked Carnival and then not have anything to do with it afterwards.

We just didn't know the timescale. I honestly thought leveling would take longer, and Blue Mage would be dead to me within a month until the next content patch.

Turns out I hit that point on day 3, and I sincerely hope you all love sitting in a corner while someone else does your primal fights.

[splinter1545]

maybe because XI and XIV belong to two vastly different generations of MMO that simply don't mix? So many are just sick and tired of the nostalgia crowd wanting to shovelhorn in outdated mechanics and elements, especially after the mess that is Eureka

Eureka has nothing to do with outdated mechanics. It was horrible game design that was it's downfall. Sure, they took inspiration from XI - the leveling portion of it, anyway, and turned it into end game content with no depth. They could have expanded and done so much with Eureka, but, like most content that we get, they decided to do the bare minimum and expand on it later.