FFXI vs FFXIV Difficulty

[Haydest]

I disagree with you OP. While I agree on some levels that XI had a harder difficulty than XIV--leveling as you have highlighted should not be the main focus of making thing difficult: bosses and end-game encounters should be where challenges lie.

Do you know what the difference between XI and XIV leveling was? You couldn't beat anything by yourself and this situation became progressively worse as you leveled; even matches were a 75/25 at level 5, eventually raising to be a 50/50 shot by your teens, and by the time you finally reached that long journey of 75--you were lucky if an easy prey didn't kick your ass. Where was the fun in that?

Of course there a few exceptions to this rule: as long as you had a ninja subjob or had some means of throwing extra layers of protection (Red Mage, for example) your chances of soloing increased.

The other reason was capped EXP--for the longest time. When your exp bar reaches 5 digits and you're still receiving the cap you did at level 15, it's no wonder why it took people several months to a year to get to cap. Getting there twice? Not many people wanted to go through that tedious grind again, let alone once--this is the main reason why people are more likely to level several jobs in XIV.

You need to get out of the Everquest-Era mentality; MMO's are mainstream these days and no one is going to want to play a game where the fun does not begin for them until 6 months into the subscription, and yes...for a game like XI and XIV, end-game is essentially where the fun is for a majority of the people. The old type of model does not sell, at all--and this is EXACTLY what SE (Wada) needs, especially after the original XIV launch fumble.

P.S. Emperor Palpatine shot lightning out of his fingers, so your point is moot.

[Petdo]

The OP might look at other people that have no life and play game for 24/7 and envy them.
The DoH/DoL class take too much time to lv up ( without helping hand of cause! )
If people can play only 2-3 hour per day, it will take around 40-50 days to finish 1 DoH class
So it take around 9-10 month to reach all DoH classes ( assumed you play everyday! )

DoL is a time-consuming class too because you have to walk around to find node and that count as time sink too.
I bet it might take some 4-5 month to reach lv 50 of all DoL classes

DoW/DoM is kind of easy if you have PLer.
But finding dedicate PLer that will PL you every class to 50 is very hard ==' Who gonna help you for many many hours and he go nothing in return? ( If you are REAL girl it would be another story :P )
So lvl DoW/DoM class might take another 3-4 month at least for soloing and PTing sometime.

So total time is around 1 year+ to reach all 50 classes,
And this game also released for more than 1 year, no wonder why ppl reach all 50.
But for new player, it will take another 1 year to lv up everything. And I think that's the correct pace.
After 2.0 launch, SE might lift lv cap and everything should be good-to-go again

[faris]

DoW/DoM is kind of easy if you have PLer.
But finding dedicate PLer that will PL you every class to 50 is very hard ==' Who gonna help you for many many hours and he go nothing in return? ( If you are REAL girl it would be another story :P )

Oi, I take exception to that!
I'm a girl and I've only got two 50s, but I haven't ever been in a PL group. (Call me ridiculous, but I like playing rather than standing there.)

[Petdo]

Oi, I take exception to that!
I'm a girl and I've only got two 50s, but I haven't ever been in a PL group. (Call me ridiculous, but I like playing rather than standing there.)

You can use girl power to charm all men to help you!

[faris]

Nay, lad. I'm a solo player.

[JakeRoon]

took me a year to get a level 50 i thinks it's JuuuuUSsSttt right.

[Zaaku]

I disagree with you OP. While I agree on some levels that XI had a harder difficulty than XIV--leveling as you have highlighted should not be the main focus of making thing difficult: bosses and end-game encounters should be where challenges lie.

Do you know what the difference between XI and XIV leveling was? You couldn't beat anything by yourself and this situation became progressively worse as you leveled; even matches were a 75/25 at level 5, eventually raising to be a 50/50 shot by your teens, and by the time you finally reached that long journey of 75--you were lucky if an easy prey didn't kick your ass. Where was the fun in that?

Of course there a few exceptions to this rule: as long as you had a ninja subjob or had some means of throwing extra layers of protection (Red Mage, for example) your chances of soloing increased.

The other reason was capped EXP--for the longest time. When your exp bar reaches 5 digits and you're still receiving the cap you did at level 15, it's no wonder why it took people several months to a year to get to cap. Getting there twice? Not many people wanted to go through that tedious grind again, let alone once--this is the main reason why people are more likely to level several jobs in XIV.

You need to get out of the Everquest-Era mentality; MMO's are mainstream these days and no one is going to want to play a game where the fun does not begin for them until 6 months into the subscription, and yes...for a game like XI and XIV, end-game is essentially where the fun is for a majority of the people. The old type of model does not sell, at all--and this is EXACTLY what SE (Wada) needs, especially after the original XIV launch fumble.

P.S. Emperor Palpatine shot lightning out of his fingers, so your point is moot.

Here is my view on it. Everyone is trying to be like WoW or pandering to casual play or free play with micro transactions. FFXI was set apart from the crowd because of its incredibly difficult game progression. True it did turn off COUNTLESS possible players. Hell I remember getting frustrated just trying to install the damn game. In the end though that is what made FXI unique and those players who did last a month, stayed for years and years and years. Sure the model is not going to net as many subscribers as an easier client but the ones you do get will pay out the nose until you shut down the servers.

FFXIV tried to go the way of the casual and look what happened. They already have a die hard core player base in FFXI who would just kill for a FFXI-2 plus whatever new blood they would lure in with this new shiny games challenging difficulty. Without a doubt they would be in much better shape then we are right now. It is only because SE is stubborn as mule this project didn't flatline 2 months after launch.

Going back to what they know, what their fans like, and at this point is the safest route is to make this more like FFXI. A fact we're seeing with each new patch as they begin to move back to the original design.

[Tonkra]

FFXI in a year most people only had one or two jobs capped with maybe one craft capped and sub craft to sixty.

FFXIV in a year people have all jobs and crafts capped.

Yoshi-P please make the game more difficult, if I'm level 20 and a monster is level 20 then we should be even match to each other and not a one sided fight which I'm guarantied to win. If a monster is my level I shouldn't, unless being real skilled, be able to take on 3-6.

Please make it difficult to where a party actually needs a tank and cant get away with 7 DD and a healer, each DD soloing a mob well enough that the healer only needs to throw one heal at the end of their battle.

Please make it to where every class has to pull out their weapon to "cast", even Lord Voldemort needed to use his wand to cast a DD spell. Point being there is no fun in not having to worry about down time weather it be a party or an important fight.

In the end the game needs to be more difficult. At the moment its not very motivating to get something done when you're almost guarantee a victory.

I hope you read this Yoshi-P and thanks for you're time.

well... lv 85 lv cap against lv 50 lv cap?...

not really fair comparison isnt it?

have you played FFXI since jp release or after the lv cap has been raised after addons?


and difficulty is not the perfect word for it... its more about grind "timesink" compared to FF11

[Haydest]

Here is my view on it. Everyone is trying to be like WoW or pandering to casual play or free play with micro transactions. FFXI was set apart from the crowd because of its incredibly difficult game progression. True it did turn off COUNTLESS possible players. Hell I remember getting frustrated just trying to install the damn game. In the end though that is what made FXI unique and those players who did last a month, stayed for years and years and years. Sure the model is not going to net as many subscribers as an easier client but the ones you do get will pay out the nose until you shut down the servers.

FFXIV tried to go the way of the casual and look what happened. They already have a die hard core player base in FFXI who would just kill for a FFXI-2 plus whatever new blood they would lure in with this new shiny games challenging difficulty. Without a doubt they would be in much better shape then we are right now. It is only because SE is stubborn as mule this project didn't flatline 2 months after launch.

Going back to what they know, what their fans like, and at this point is the safest route is to make this more like FFXI. A fact we're seeing with each new patch as they begin to move back to the original design.

You are dead silly if you think FFXIV flopped because the game was trying to be casual; if ANYTHING the game is far more casual now than it was at launch. Rested EXP bonus that is far superior to the utter-crap system that was Guardian's Aspect? Increased EXP through leve's and the implementation of power-leveling? Whether you argue PLing was intentional or not, the dev's seemed neutral about it to the point that it still exists today.

AF armor is far more accessible in this game than it was in XI; if you played during NA launch you practically had to beg high level Japanese players to help you finish it because lord knows your static party and LS was likely not strong enough to complete the body piece NM.

FFXIV flopped because the game was shipped incomplete that only a small percentage of PC users could even run; the PS3 version was not even done at the point (still isn't, arguably speaking) and alienated a good proportion of players. The UI was clunky, there was terrible server and input lag as well as possibly the worst implemented player market in the history of MMO's.

Once again, stop mistaking that long grinds, and tedious boredom equals to hardcore whereas simplicity must mean casual. I did 4 years of HNMLS in FFXI and at least 5 years of WoW raiding before my real life situation forced me into a less reliable schedule. There were a number of encounters in both that games that I could have said were challenging and also say they were easy.

People stuck with XI because of the people they made connections with and because of the terrible RNG (not ranger) system that made them kill Fafnir 97 times to get a Ridill, not because it was hard. Let's not count how many times (and hours of sleep lost) it took them even claim the HNM.

Don't believe me? You can still find the livejournals of plenty of these 'hardcore' FFXI raiders online. If you slowly go through their entries, you'll find that by the end--most of them agreed that the game just became a tedious job.

[Fouluryu]

Ruh roh

HERE WE GO

inb4 if you like FFXI so much why don't you marry it

inb4 before people need to read your troll replies damaging people's IQ's. Leave their opinions and their expressions of the game as they should be.

But seriously, Noble's reply has a valid point. To make the game more challenging they could try raise level cap and increase bar exp amount needed to gain level.