"Final Fantasy XI-2" AKA: "Let's all flame each other because someone mentioned FFXI"

[AdvancedWind]

Hello, boys'n girls. Stay a while and listen! Be warned, this post is somewhat long and quite meta. Expect a few grammar erros here and there, sorry for that.

TL;DR, V1: Just skip to the end and see the questions
TL;DR, V2:
Let's try to stop making such a fuss just because XI was mentioned in these forums, and let's discuss just how "far" should SE actually try to "copy" - for a lack of better term - XI and what ideas from that game should be avoided at all costs.

Everyone! Peace and love!

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As many of you are probably aware, the majority of Final Fantasy XIV players have played the previous MMO entry in the series, in other words, Final Fantasy XI. As such, it's entirely fair (in fact, expected) to make comparisons to that game and hold XIV to it's standards. After all, now that SE has several years of MMO experience, the players would expect a "better", or at least "more polished" game than it. Up to this point, I think we can all agree.

However, every once in a while, someone somewhere commits the ultimate sin of mentioning Final Fantasy XI in a thread, request an feature using FFXI as an example, and other similar posts. When that happens, you can be sure another post will come in and say something about "Final Fantasy XI-2". Heck, I often do that! (and put ffxi-2 tag on the tag cloud. )

Then, the thread may or may not devolve into a flame war between people that want FFXIV to be more like XI, and people that don't. And what I personally think is that both sides do not get what each other means / wants and ultimately the thread goes completely off-topic and becomes either XI circlejerking or bashing.

Here in this thread I want to try and pinpoint two of the most common misconceptions both sides seem to have about the other, and try to spark some discussion and useful feedback at the end. So, let's start.


"Someone used Final Fantasy XI as an example; He just wants HD Final Fantasy XI!"

No, you dolt. Final Fantasy XI is, as I've mentioned, the MMO the majority of posters are more familiar with; even the official players' polls shows that a huge number of XIV players have at least some experience with that game. Therefore, whenever someone wants to use another game as a base for what he is talking about, Final Fantasy XI is the obvious (and smartest) example to use.

Heck, even if someone IS saying something like "Final Fantasy XI's auction house was very practical, and I wish XIV could take a thing or two from it", doesn't mean "PLEASE COPY PASTE FFXI'S AH HERE AND CALL IT A DAY, THANK YOU".

Ok, sometimes it does.

"Why shouldn't SE take the good parts of Final Fantasy XI and improve them? Why are you all against them using their previous MMO as a basis for this one?"

The thing is, there are a few people who actually say stuff like that. However, that kind of argument is often thrown whenever a poster comes in and says he deliberately does not want <feature> to be like it was in XI. When people say, for example, that they don't want 24 hour NM spawns, it's just that: They do not want 24 hour NM spawns.

It's not like they say they are against implementing anything from XI. They are against that specific feature or philosophy from the game. In fact, it actually means they consider that a "weak" part from XI and are asking for that "error" to NOT be repeated. Overall, I think that there are very few people that indeed want XIV to be as different as possible from its predecessor.

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With those two common misconceptions hopefully cleared, we can move on to a few questions related to Final Fantasy XI and what XIV can learn from it.

How much of an influence do you think Final Fantasy XI should have on Final Fantasy XIV?

Do you think it's good idea to directly port and update XI systems (for example: Skillchains), or should Square Enix try to actively avoid doing stuff like that and come up with entirely original systems that have little resemblance to their previous MMO?

Do you think that making Final Fantasy XIV similar to XI / older MMOs would make the game more successful than trying to conform to more "modern" mmo standards?

If you could name one single feature, idea or w/e from XI that you think XIV should follow as close as possible, what would it be?

Similarly, do you believe there's something about Final Fantasy XI SE should run away as fast as possible and make it / keep it completely different from that game?


Extra questions:

If you did not play Final Fantasy XI, what's your general idea of what the game is like based on what you know / heard about it?

If, before FFXIV's release you had the choice between SE making an entirely new MMO or just upgrade FFXI's graphics / specs, which would you choose?


Also:

Do you think they should just rename Lalafels to Tarutarus since almost no one calls them lalafels anyways?

[Issac]

In my TS, almost everyone uses the old race names.

[SeraviEdalborez]

If you could name one single feature, idea or w/e from XI that you think XIV should follow as close as possible, what would it be?

The search engine. In its entirety. With the XIV addition of showing all class levels.

[Elexia]

The search engine. In its entirety. With the XIV addition of showing all class levels.

^ Perfect example of SE taking what worked in XI and making it better, XIV's still has a few quirks, but it's essentially the same without text commands with the added bonus of what we asked for in XI (seek on multiple jobs etc.)

My pick would be ZNM. You buy a pop item to fight a decently tough NM, he drops the pop item (and loot) for the next NM in his path and so on so forth till you get to the big boy NMs that drops the best loot.

Similarly, do you believe there's something about Final Fantasy XI SE should run away as fast as possible and make it / keep it completely different from that game?

Would have to say....

Salvage. It was a good idea but poor execution due to way too low of drop rates and reliance on a system that has other benefits and uses (Assaults and Nyzul all shared a tag just like Salvage does requiring assault points which requires Assaults excluding Nyzul to be.)

[Renshi]

I call them Falafels. Anyway!

Good point there, we should just suggest and see if things are good-seen by the Dev team, and see if it pleases our eyes or hammer our heads. It's still suggestion, and it'll be seen good or bad based by the people, so bring it on!

[RemVye]

Maybe it's just me, but I rarely see a thread dissolve into a flame war because of then mention of FFXI. I have seen people say "just make it ffxi-2 and more people would be happy" which is probably true, lawl. The typical response would be "i don't want ffxi-2".

Anyway... I think what people truly mean when they say "I don't want ffxi-2" is they don't want the time-sync bad parts of it. They would happily take the good parts. That's where the true debate comes in... some people loved 24-48 hour NM spawn times (F THAT!) and some people like myself did not; as one example.

I don't care what SE does as long as I'm having fun in the moment. You never know when you could wake up and have that realization that "this game isn't fun anymore" then just stop playing. Which I've seen happen to a lot of people lately, Hell it's happened to me in other games.


Personally... from FFXI - I liked the NM / boss fights, great quests, storylines, AH, search feature, different zones... a lot of stuff. I'm putting my faith in Yoshi-P and so far I have few complaints that aren't blatantly obvious (e.g. "MOAR CONTENT NAO!")

[Xatsh]

Se needs to take what worked in XI and bring it over to XIV. Despite what the mass populous of the mmo community believes. Outside the grind and HNM there was many elements in the game that where better done then competitors.

The skill chain system and Group combined attack systems should be brought over in my opinion.. now they should not be a replica of XI's system but SE should not rework it from the ground up. The bottom line is this, XI was one of the most successful long term mmos ever developed... do not fix what is not broken, if anything expand on it. Abandoning everything that worked is what caused the initial XIV to fail hardcore to begin with.

As for the copy WoW or copy oldschool question. You have to decide do you want to focus on your fanbase or do you want to focus on the broughder market. Fan base it is a nitch community (with FF it is very large, XI had a ton of supporters ready to jump on the game), with this mentality you will never get 1-2 million subs but you target the 10-15% of the mmo market which despises mainstream which no one else is targeting. Copy WoW and you will get a Boom of intial sales and the game then quickly dies out, this has happened to literally every game outside WoW that was made in western design. My personal preference is use the old school model and add new school elements for those who dislike the grind mentality and Open world bosses and such. There are about 30 WoW clones out there now F2P and P2P, making a WoW clone (quest based leveling, Solo focus, instanced everything, raid focused endgame only, and simplified everything) stands very little chance of standing out and being successful long term.

What to copy in XI? Simple the endgame structure XI had. There was a 75 cap for 8 yrs which allowed SE to add absurd amounts of valid content. Literally to do everything in endgame that was valid one time in XI it would probably take 60-80hrs of strait playing, most game are pushing 10-15hrs at most (WoW included). SE needs to copy that and have the variety it had making everything instanced is bad. In before the camping is bad comment.... that was only ~20% of endgame in XI, and considering the endgame in XI was about 5 fold as large as other mmos... you could not camp nms and have easily 6-8hrs of stuff to do a day. The western design of negating content and slow level increases is one of the biggest flaws in all mmos world wide, negates everything before it. (As most say Leveling is not fun, so cap it out and add the fun stuff)

What to stay away from is also simple forced grouping as the only means of leveling. Now grouping should always remain vastly superior then Soloing but there must be an outlet for those not able to level with groups.


Extra questions:

1) N/A

2) Pre-Abysea I would of been happy with upgraded graphics and some more modern elements to appease mainstream gamers, Post-Abysea well that killed everything that made XI better then the competition honestly, in this case I would prefer XIV. So depends on the time frame the question is in.

[Gramul]

Things I liked about XI:
-Required teamwork ensured you had to treat your peers with at least some amout of respect and really helped to tamper the comunity
-Quest lines that where long and involving. I like the popcorn quests that we get with XIV, but I'd like a little steak now and then too.
-Many varied environments that where a challenge to get through at early levels. Felt like an actual adventure when you finally got to places like the dunes or Jeuno (sp?) for the first time.
-Interesting story, with ending!

Things I didn't like:
-Forced group play made it virtually imposible to solo at all. I wouldn't mind if it was extra hard, but looking for groups, expecially late in the games life, was super frustrating.
-Forced grouping also meant playstyle expectations you had to comply with if you expected to work with any serious player. Most of the time thay where just trying to help, but I don't think many of them knew how to teach without coming accros as condecending.
-The completley ruined economy. Want to try crafting out so you can have armor to fight stronger enemies to get more money to spend on crafting supplies? Sorry, you're to poor to participate. Go farm crystals and we can talk later.

Really, the tightly knit comunity was its biggest strength and weakness.

[Platinumstorm]

If Square wants to grow a consumer base for the game they shouldn't rely on FFXI because it's filled with old MMO conventions that are sloppy, unpolished, and don't work well anymore. I'm hoping they can set out to create their own mold.

[lackofwords]

How much of an influence do you think Final Fantasy XI should have on Final Fantasy XIV?

1. Minimal at best. Meaning concepts from FFXI should be observed and studied as an example, but should not be a direct carbon copy. For general essential concepts such as the "Search" system, World Map, and Chat system, it can't be avoided that they have the same features, simply because they have to. However, they naturally tweaked it a bit. You can see much more information about a player in FFXIV "Search" feature than FFXI (unless if they've changed in the recent years in FFXI). Similarly the "Party" feature is a better version of FFXI's "Auto-group" feature.
   
   However, influence is not used like this; FFXI has 'Skillchains' we should have them here too. FFXI has 'time traveling' in their story, we should have it here too. FFXI has 'gear swapping', we should have it here too, and so on.
   
   Nor is it just slapping a different skin on top of the same concept. Personally, I really hate when developers makes ideally the same game but placed in a different context. (E.G. Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion / Fallout 3)
   
   

   Do you think it's good idea to directly port and update XI systems (for example: Skillchains), or should Square Enix try to actively avoid doing stuff like that and come up with entirely original systems that have little resemblance to their previous MMO?
2. Similar to the first question, I would not want a direct carbon copy of the same system. Mainly because if I wanted to play that exact style, I would just stick to FFXI. What made things like 'Skillchains' fun was you usually perform it with another player (exception: SAM of course) That sort of enjoyment from teamwork can always be executed a different way, and does not necessarily have to be 'Skillchains'. Such as similar enjoyment by combining spells in FF:Crystal Chronicles.
   
   

   Do you think that making Final Fantasy XIV similar to XI / older MMOs would make the game more successful than trying to conform to more "modern" mmo standards?
3. Neither. Whether if it is old or modern does not matter. Instead, they should already have a clear idea of what kind of game they are aiming for, rather than just jumbling together a bunch of neat ideas from other games.
   
   

   If you could name one single feature, idea or w/e from XI that you think XIV should follow as close as possible, what would it be?
4. Level-sync concept. I don't really care about the actual syncing, but more about the idea that anyone can play together regardless of how many hours they have clocked into the game. I think it's an essential concept that should be in any MMO. There were little steps that FFXI took that allowed players of different levels to play together, such as the level caps, large scale PvE, but those were specific events and missions rather than something that was a large aspect of the game, leveling.
   
   Note; all of those applied a slightly different way of playing together
   Level requirement - forcing players to meet a certain requirement
   Level cap - allowing higher level players to still play with lower level players at similar levels
   Large scale PvE - (Besiege, Campaign Battles) no real level requirements for anyone, just play together.
   Level sync - locking players to a certain player's level, which can be applied to almost any situation.
   
   

   Similarly, do you believe there's something about Final Fantasy XI SE should run away as fast as possible and make it / keep it completely different from that game?
5. A similar reply from the previous question, locking/forcing players progress to be similar in order to play with each other. Remember from all those missions where you had to be either ahead or in the similar story progress in other to play with someone? Notice, as the game aged they eventually done without a lot of these limitations. E.G. CoP level caps, progress in mini-expansion/add-ons such as ACP. It's understandable that they did not want to spoil the story, but at the same time it was extremely frustrating to find people on the exact same page as you.
   
   An interesting solution might be creating missions which does not have be completed in a linear path. Such as that one path in CoP Three Paths where the order of completion does not matter, but create it in a larger scale.
   
   I'm not saying obliterate all limitations, because these requirements are needed sometimes. Such as level requirements for fights. It creates a goal and milestone for the player to obtain.
   
   

   If, before FFXIV's release you had the choice between SE making an entirely new MMO or just upgrade FFXI's graphics / specs, which would you choose?
6. Although, it would have been nice to have FFXI upgraded to shiny eye-candy. It does nothing for my gameplay. I left FFXI because it was getting stagnant. So, entirely new MMO.