We Need that Feeling back of "CoP"(first release)

[Frein]

But again, this point is moot. Yoshi has already told us his approach on this matter. "Main Storyline" quests will be single-player capable. Grand Company quests are supposed to be designed for party content. It's a good compromise, though I still beleive that creating a difficulty meter in order to allow players to progress at their own pacing (A note to Zakku, you're full of it when you state they can't balance difficulties on fights. They did it easily with Leves, they can do it for instanced fights as well. Heck, there's already two versions of Primals guess what - you fight the weaker version for the story, and the harder version for the loot. The system already exists!)

Let's be honest here, do you consider the laughable main story quests interesting as far as gameplay goes? I don't. I also don't consider them mandatory. I think it's a great tragedy that the quest to save the free nations from the Garlean invasion is so easy your black mage could auto-attack through it. To be honest, a lone character produces such one-dimensional gameplay any "solo challenge" would simply be a gear check, which is the problem I have with soloing in MMOs. They're just terrible single-player games and trying to cater to players who try to play them as such is, I believe, one of the most significant causes of early MMO decline we see so often these days.

Also, look at Ifrit: We have the easy mode Ifrit, so that everyone can "beat" the story, but are you really satisfied with your triumph over a weakling that dies in 10 seconds? Is anyone? I don't think so. The L40 Garuda at least lives long enough for you to see her, but I'd be surprised if anyone has ever wiped fighting her in a L50 group. And there are a lot of very bad players in this game. It just really dilutes the epicness of a boss to have an easily trampled noob mode available. Even though Garuda 2.0 is a longer fight with more phases and the stats are obviously much higher, it's still the same thing you already downed easily.

Since very early in its life WoW has had content that only a small fraction of the playerbase is able to complete (though not really sure how it is since WotLK). Sure, they make their old content obsolete all the time, so players progress through it faster than they did through CoP, but there is always that hardcore boss most people only get to see in videos until much later. My point is, FFXI isn't the only successful MMO to introduce content designed to be very difficult for most players.

[Zyph]

Even though Garuda 2.0 is a longer fight with more phases and the stats are obviously much higher, it's still the same thing you already downed easily.

Wasn't that essentially what Divine Might was to Ark Angels?

IIRC Divine Might was an epic optional content fight, and it produced a very satisfying feeling.

[Monzcarro]

Let's be honest here, do you consider the laughable main story quests interesting as far as gameplay goes? I don't. I also don't consider them mandatory. I think it's a great tragedy that the quest to save the free nations from the Garlean invasion is so easy your black mage could auto-attack through it. To be honest, a lone character produces such one-dimensional gameplay any "solo challenge" would simply be a gear check, which is the problem I have with soloing in MMOs. They're just terrible single-player games and trying to cater to players who try to play them as such is, I believe, one of the most significant causes of early MMO decline we see so often these days.

Also, look at Ifrit: We have the easy mode Ifrit, so that everyone can "beat" the story, but are you really satisfied with your triumph over a weakling that dies in 10 seconds? Is anyone? I don't think so. The L40 Garuda at least lives long enough for you to see her, but I'd be surprised if anyone has ever wiped fighting her in a L50 group. And there are a lot of very bad players in this game. It just really dilutes the epicness of a boss to have an easily trampled noob mode available. Even though Garuda 2.0 is a longer fight with more phases and the stats are obviously much higher, it's still the same thing you already downed easily.

Since very early in its life WoW has had content that only a small fraction of the playerbase is able to complete (though not really sure how it is since WotLK). Sure, they make their old content obsolete all the time, so players progress through it faster than they did through CoP, but there is always that hardcore boss most people only get to see in videos until much later. My point is, FFXI isn't the only successful MMO to introduce content designed to be very difficult for most players.

It's odd to me that you brought up WoW, because that game seems like the perfect example of balancing casual and hardcore content. The bulk of what could be compared to FFXI's storyline is gathered through questing as you level, and is virtually all soloable. Then when you get to the more challenging content that requires grouping (dungeons and raids), apart from a few exceptions they all have normal (aka easy) modes and heroic (aka hardcore) modes.

It's hard to talk about WoW in comparison to other games, because it's success is pretty unique, but I'd say WoW has gotten to where it is by remembering that not all gamers play at the same level. Casual gamers want to see the game too, and instead of locking them out from huge chunks of content like pre-updates CoP did in FFXI, the WoW team provided a way for players of all types to progress through the story, while allowing a way to increase difficulty for those who sought the challenge.

Yes there are still raids at the very top that most casual players will not have access to, but those amount to a very small portion of the game, and comes no where near the complete fun-block that was CoP. Long prep-times involving farming rare items, long travel times to every corner of the world for a CS telling you to go back to where you started, long periods sitting in Jeuno begging and pleading for people with the specific set of jobs you needed to have a chance at completing the fight, only to lose because of a tiny mistake or an unlucky encounter with the RNG, which meant you had to repeat the entire process again. Sure the story was great, but many times I felt more enjoyment out of never having to do a certain fight or mission again, as opposed to enjoying clearing the content. If I wanted to beat my head against a wall there are far more efficient ways to go about it.

In all my time playing WoW, I never had a moment where I felt I couldn't progress in some way. I wish I could say that about FFXI, and I hope I can in FFXIV.