Fighting Desperately...

[Bunto]

I feel like people whining about this shit are just mad they can't waste 4 years grinding to be a unique snowflake in a video game.

[Riv]

Part of the ease is that they mark everything on a map for where you need to go, that's some serious spoon-feeding. No one even had to figure that stuff out. FFXIV does -try- to make it harder since they stepped up Dlvl when they dropped mob levels in some places, but that just led to all the broken stats vs. Dlvl arguements like "HP > ALL!" "Block and Meva are useless" and so on.

Short of taking enough damage to one shot, any job can tank in XIV. It just takes two curas instead of one to push their HP to full before the next attack lands. That wasn't at all feasable... feasible? (sp) in XI at all unless half your party was whm or rdm to cure bomb. but with hate decay like it was your mages would die very quickly.

Bring back utsusemi in its pre-nerf goodness! when one shadow would absorb AoE magic, and shadows lost didn't drop your hate and yada yada! (that there's a joke!)

I disagree with the map marking. What did the majority of ppl do when they had to find where to go for a quest in XI? Looked it up on the Wiki, ZAM, KI or something of that nature. So since it was done anyway, i'd rather it be done in game and save me the trouble. With a world as large as this, do you really want to scour the entire place on foot looking for a random "???" or whatever? I would not consider that fun, nor do i consider looking it up online to be enjoyable either. The only problem i have is what happens when you arrive at most of these destinations....easy fights or some other stupid crap, with the exception of the AF quests which were all very nicely done.

I agree with your tanking statement for the most part. I would not say that "any" class can tank, but pretty much any melee with full hp materia would stand a fairly good chance. It saddens me that sacrificing actual tanking stats in favor of full HP build to just eat whatever damage comes your way while being cure bombed is a viable solution to certain fights.

[Galoot]

Not really Bunto, it's our way of venting our frustration of not having the same experience we were expecting when getting into FFXIV. I feel that all of the negative posters didn't have the wherewithal to push through levels and actually work towards something, just want everything handed to them. But seriously congrats on Lv50 THM, how long that take you? Three or four days? I wouldn't mind going back to how slow it was in the beginning when it took us 3-4 months to level something to 50, but the "whiners" spoke and the whole system turned into PL fest. What's the accomplishment in leveling when you can max everything in a month...

[Sasagawa]

I feel like people whining about this shit are just mad they can't waste 4 years grinding to be a unique snowflake in a video game.

Bunto I respect your opinion but I wasn't whining just stating my own feelings at no point have I said I dislike FFXIV just that I feel the Class/Job system feels cheap.

Ultimately it comes down to play styles

I want to be engrossed in a game and feel as though I can be the best PLD WAR or whatever that I can be through hard work and time spent learning to play the job to the best of its abilities and that for someone to catch up to my level they would equally have to spend time immersing themselves with the job, much like how if ou play BF3 you get owned at first but over time you keep on improving in skills knowing what to look for and how to play the different classes within a squad. Essentially FFXI gave this team cohesion throughout the game not just in a few unique end game scenarios and it actively encouraged you to work as a team at all times putting the multi-player into MMOS.

FFXIV does this at very unique areas usually dungeons or raids (hate that word), but to be honest it is not quite on the same level. I think the most fun fights I have had in FFXIV have been Moogle and Ifrit. Some people will chalk this up to lack of content but tbh if you ever played ffxi the rush of being in a great party set up while leveling and chaining up to 6/7 was an amazing rush. you just don't really get that at the minute on FFXIV

In addition

The level milestones the anticipation of getting to 30 o unlock your first job then further to 41 to get your AF weapon then to 50 to do your limit break. all fantastic goals to aim for, again something FFXIV doesnt really have at the moment. my hope is that post 50 it becomes very hard to level and we see people have to dedicate time to reaching 99 WAR or THM. but we will have to wait and see .

[Xoo]

I used to really like XIV, but then...

[KiriA500]

I used to really like XIV, but then...

[Dinh]

Thing is that people who played XI were expecting XIV to be similar in the sense that, yes, it did take forever to get something to max level. But the false sense of achievement was greater. You felt like you accomplished something, which, in my opinion XIV does not deliver. Same goes for camping that NM because you WANTED to, no one held a gun to any persons head and said that they HAD to have leaping boots or an emp pin. But when you got them you had a sense of accomplishment whether or not you really knew it. Most people would say that they were just glad they were done camping that NM... but really think about it.

Now to all the people who are saying that if you like XI so much go back to it. I say to those people, if you want a casual game go f***ing play WoW or Rift and leave Final Fantasy to what it is. In comparison playing FFVII (I'm using 7 cause everyone seems to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread...) AVERAGE playtime was 40-50 hours. That being said, do you really think that doing what little quests there are as far as main storyline and leveling 1 class/job to 50 takes 40-50 hours? Maybe, if you don't use anima, read every line of dialog, and have an hour long seizure in there from time to time.

Now, I'm fully aware that that game is single player and certain factors do come into play such as waiting for a party invite, constant server maintenence, and other excuses of the sort. But, the problem is that "Final Fantasy" is stamped on the title screen of this game, which, pulling from the way the games were through 13 iterations with some sequels that shall not be mentioned, is synonymous with hours upon hours of gameplay and story depth. The story may not be the greatest but at least there was one with information holding it all together and throwing the player into the story to make them feel as they are involved. XIV does none of that.

tl,dr Shortened Version. This is Final Fantasy, if you want something casual, go play something else.

[Niqote]

I returned to FFXI when I took a break from FFXIV last year, I stopped playing in a month.
Why? It takes 2 days to get a job 1-90 then you farm the same NMs over and over and over and over and OVER for pages for your AF3. Unless you want to run around solo/duoing old story content then it's all you can do. The End D:

I have faith in the direction FFXIV is going, if you are so dissatisfied I recommend you do what I did and take 5-10 months break from it and come back all fresh and new ^_^

[Riaayo]

This, Riaayo, again, from page 1:

It's all about what I personally enjoyed and preferred. Challenge it may not necessarily have had, but if XI was easy, then this game is for mongoloids. No offense to any mongoloids in the community.

Ifrit is like, baby's first raid encounter in terms of the mechanics WoW has been using for years, and it's still more interesting, engaging and complex than anything XI ever had.

You know I see people from XI constantly say WoW is easy when they've never played it or only lvl'd and didn't raid on it, or that XIV is so much easier than XI... and yet I see people that talk like that get raped by eruptions on Ifrit all the time because they've never experienced other games or are just use to standing around mashing a macro on an XI boss.

XI took forever to do everything and punished the hell out of you for any mistake and often even for no mistakes. This game doesn't take as long, but in all honesty probably has more challenge in some of its fights than XI ever did (but not by a whole lot yet).

Comparing XI to, say, WoW (or other boss encounters in general), is like comparing walking 100 miles (XI) to walking 1 mile in knee-high mud. It's not that walking 100 miles is all that hard, it just takes forever. Walking through mud though? That's actually a pretty rough challenge. Both of these will deter people who "can't make the cut"... but most people who give up on the 100 miles are smart enough to not waste their time, while the people who give up on the mud just can't overcome the obstacle.

All this said, XIV DOES need to be harder, but not "XI hard." It needs to be REAL hard, and I don't believe the XI community knows real hard as much as the hardcore WoW community does (not saying the casual crybaby WoW players do).

[myoozek]

I want to be engrossed in a game and feel as though I can be the best PLD WAR or whatever that I can be through hard work and time spent learning to play the job to the best of its abilities and that for someone to catch up to my level they would equally have to spend time immersing themselves with the job, much like how if ou play BF3 you get owned at first but over time you keep on improving in skills knowing what to look for and how to play the different classes within a squad. Essentially FFXI gave this team cohesion throughout the game not just in a few unique end game scenarios and it actively encouraged you to work as a team at all times putting the multi-player into MMOS.

FFXIV does this at very unique areas usually dungeons or raids (hate that word), but to be honest it is not quite on the same level. I think the most fun fights I have had in FFXIV have been Moogle and Ifrit. Some people will chalk this up to lack of content but tbh if you ever played ffxi the rush of being in a great party set up while leveling and chaining up to 6/7 was an amazing rush. you just don't really get that at the minute on FFXIV

In addition

The level milestones the anticipation of getting to 30 o unlock your first job then further to 41 to get your AF weapon then to 50 to do your limit break. all fantastic goals to aim for, again something FFXIV doesnt really have at the moment. my hope is that post 50 it becomes very hard to level and we see people have to dedicate time to reaching 99 WAR or THM. but we will have to wait and see .

Sasagawa, you bring up some very good points. I think there's a sense of urgency on players' part to hit all jobs to 50, which then, in turn, strip players of a uniqueness in a part environment. XI seemed to embody this better, insofar as encouraging players to pick a class/job and BE that, as opposed to being able to do everything. When I signed up for XIV, I chose the MiQote specifically for AGI/DEX buffs as I wanted to be the ARC/RNG type. But - it's all irrelevant now! >.< And apparently, though I don't know how much truth there is to this, stats don't nearly play as big a role as they did in XI, though I could be wrong. It seems that this class/job-uniqueness has been flattened as a result of there being nothing else to do except the 5~7 or so dungeon/raids, and leveling.

And, to further emphasize your point, the lack of milestones while leveling also severely strips players of a sense of achievement and reward when you can level from 1~50 without ever having to break away from behests and leves. I like the idea of there being milestones, where in order to progress past 25, you do totorok or something (capped at 25 mind you!, so 50s can join and demolish everything while you just follow and stay out of harm's way), and to progress past 35, something else, etc. It seems to be improving with the addition of jobs (at least in concept), however the fact that jobs can piggy back off your class level strips current players with 50s the ability to level something new.

I've iterated this point before in some previous post I think, but my fear is that as SE releases new content leading up to 2.0, that because the content is so limited (result of limited dev resources for non 2.0 content) that everyone floods it and then asks "Now what?!" until new content is released and the cycle repeats. I also fear that if they release 2.0 and reset everything (to better level the playing field so existing players don't feel so over-achieved with 50 everything) that it'll upset them and cause a mass exodus from the game, which is a valid concern and fear, methinks.