I wouldn't mind FFXIV becoming a WoW clone in the casual/hardcore appeal if...

[Gramul]

It was. You didn't have gear swaps to save you, you had to learn how to work with everyone in the group because class stacking couldn't save you (barring what happened at Sunwell Plateau and during Bastion of Twilight), and everyone had to be coordinated.

Mechanically, XI's fights were ridiculously simple. This I blame on the dated engine and limitations on what you could do with a boss fight. Best examples is the new Dynamis Lord fight, which is only "hard" because he splits into three, one of which is the real one, and if you kill the wrong version, he explodes and wipes the raid. That's not hard; that's turning a boss fight into a Russian roulette game.

hard
   [hahrd] Show IPA adjective, hard·er, hard·est, adverb, hard·er, hard·est, noun
adjective
1. not soft; solid and firm to the touch; unyielding to pressure and impenetrable or almost impenetrable.
2. firmly formed; tight: a hard knot.
3. difficult to do or accomplish; fatiguing; troublesome: a hard task.
4. difficult or troublesome with respect to an action, situation, person, etc.: hard to please; a hard time.
5. difficult to deal with, manage, control, overcome, or understand: a hard problem.

It may not be based on any strategy or skill, but it's hard.

Patience is a skill, and very few things test it these days. But I get that. If people don't have the patience to deal with something like that, why bother pandering to it?

[fusional]

It was. You didn't have gear swaps to save you, you had to learn how to work with everyone in the group because class stacking couldn't save you (barring what happened at Sunwell Plateau and during Bastion of Twilight), and everyone had to be coordinated.

Mechanically, XI's fights were ridiculously simple. This I blame on the dated engine and limitations on what you could do with a boss fight. Best examples is the new Dynamis Lord fight, which is only "hard" because he splits into three, one of which is the real one, and if you kill the wrong version, he explodes and wipes the raid. That's not hard; that's turning a boss fight into a russian roulette game.

again, 100% agree.

i spent 6 years grinding FFXI endgame, and i laugh at the stuff people say in these threads because 99.9% of them would've been absolutely eaten alive by Firefighter, Alone in the Darkness, pre-nerf Vashj, nearly anything in Sunwell (twins anyone?)...

it took the most elite players in the world weeks/months to even make progress on a lot of those bosses/achievements, much less beat them. meanwhile people were clearing Bahamut V.2 in a few days... clearing garuda and van darnus (hard) in a day or two, clearing ifrit extreme in a week...

don't get me wrong, i enjoy the fact that yoshi and co. are trying to give us some bigger challenges (they've really done well with rivenroad hard, considering the limitations of this client/engine), but the fact that people on these very forums are complaining about these being extremely difficult or even nearly impossible while saying WoW is super easy...

just lollllll

[Priya]

In Wow, you can have half your party completely oblivious to whats going on and still win, even if the fights required more mechanics.

This isn't true in Heroic Mode raids (often considered WoW's "true" endgame these days). Even in an expansion as piss-poor as Cataclysm, it's not true. Normal dungeons, Heroic dungeons, regular raids, and raid finder? Yes-- good players can carry the hell out of dead/bad ones the majority of the time. However, you can't do heroic mode raids with idiots pre-nerf, and it can barely be done post-nerf (you still won't be finishing the entire raid if people cannot execute their roles in the fight or its mechanics).

again, 100% agree.

i spent 6 years grinding FFXI endgame, and i laugh at the stuff people say in these threads because 99.9% of them would've been absolutely eaten alive by Firefighter, Alone in the Darkness, pre-nerf Vashj, nearly anything in Sunwell (twins anyone)...

it took the most elite players in the world weeks/months to even make progress on a lot of those bosses/achievements, much less beat them. meanwhile people were clearing Bahamut V.2 in a few days... clearing garuda and van darnus (hard) in a day or two, clearing ifrit extreme in a week...

don't get me wrong, i enjoy the fact that yoshi and co. are trying to give us some bigger challenges (they've really done well with rivenroad hard, considering the limitations of this client/engine), but the fact that people on these very forums are complaining about these being extremely difficult or even nearly impossible while saying WoW is super easy...

just lollllll

I see you and I are 100% on the same page <333333333

mouf hugz.

[Zumi]

I have played FFXI pre and post abyssea and WoW would have to agree WoW's endgame has so many more mechanics and things to look out for and pay attention for that it takes a lot more skill and awareness to beat these fights then anything FFXI offered. WoW offered Normal and Heroic mode raids now the heroic modes are considered the real raids and about 1% of the playerbase even beats these. The majority of the players are fine with doing Normal modes or now Raid Finder.


FFXI on the other had pre abyssea people say it was hard it wasn't hard because the content wasn't hard due to the amount of skill it took it was hard due to bad drop rates and 72+ time spawn hnms. I wouldn't call FFXI's endgame hard at all it was just a timesink. For example 1% salvage drop rates on lv35 pieces. 3+ day Nidhog, Aspi, KB camps. More or less this was all fixed in abyssea you put in a reasonable amount of time and you get your gear. You want something a bit more grinder go for an empyrean weapon which took maybe 10x as long as getting gear but you can see the progress you are making.

[Ricky]

WHy do you PPL make threads like this,huh? To piss PPL off, that's it!

I never played WoW, I don't care about it, I would rather play "Mobinogi" or "Wakfu". FFXIV is not WoW so forget about it already.

Because even Yoshi-P considers it the gold standard for MMOs. Because it is. I love both games although I haven't played WoW in about 1.5 years now, but WoW was and still is a major success and it's a good idea to try and emulate its success.

[Byakko]

again, 100% agree.

i spent 6 years grinding FFXI endgame, and i laugh at the stuff people say in these threads because 99.9% of them would've been absolutely eaten alive by Firefighter, Alone in the Darkness, pre-nerf Vashj, nearly anything in Sunwell (twins anyone?)...

it took the most elite players in the world weeks/months to even make progress on a lot of those bosses/achievements, much less beat them. meanwhile people were clearing Bahamut V.2 in a few days... clearing garuda and van darnus (hard) in a day or two, clearing ifrit extreme in a week...

don't get me wrong, i enjoy the fact that yoshi and co. are trying to give us some bigger challenges (they've really done well with rivenroad hard, considering the limitations of this client/engine), but the fact that people on these very forums are complaining about these being extremely difficult or even nearly impossible while saying WoW is super easy...

just lollllll

Are you comparing the difficulty of WoW to XI or XIV? Because no one is saying XIV is hard. Also, you aren't the only here who has played both. A lot of people played XI and WoW and have different opinions. It may have taken weeks for elite players to beat some bosses in WoW, but there was plenty of stuff in XI like that too. Dynamis Xarc was no joke in its time. If you were killing Dynamis Lord TWO YEARS after NA launch that was still considered quite a feat.

Everything in WoW is so pigeonholed. The roles were so cut and dry. XI's battle system allowed players to be far more creative, and to accomplish things in small groups by being far more skilled and taking on multiple roles. I highly doubt your average WoW raiders would have been able to duo Serket, or take down Fafnir with 8 people way back when. Tanking in WoW is also a complete joke. I tanked WoW and XI endgame, and in WoW I barely even had to pay attention. It was pretty much impossible to lose hate on anything. WoW just required gimmicky tactics that made everyone move around on bosses to try and catch half the people who were sleeping, but even if they died you probably wouldn't wipe anyway.

[fusional]

dynamis lord wasn't really hard at all. people just didn't get enough attempts on it due to the extremely long lockouts and the fact that you had to run through dynamis for hours just to get to him in the first place. and over time when LSs got a good 30-50 attempts under their belts, they figured out the zerg strat and the rest is history. while you can argue the average LS took more than 30-50 attempts to get him down, 30-50 is what most 'high-end' raiding LSs in this game will take to down Rivenroad (Hard). average LSs obviously a lot more. is Rivenroad (Hard) difficult compared to other stuff in FFXIV? yes. is it difficult compared to stuff in FFXI? sure. is it difficult compared to Firefighter 25 in WoW, or any number of other encounters?

no. not by any stretch of the imagination.

once again, it's clear you're speaking from a position of inexperience. and before you go any further, know that if someone who had only ever played WoW and never really experienced much of anything of note in XI or XIV said there was absolutely *nothing* difficult in either of those games, i'd disagree with them every bit as strongly.

fafnir was a joke. and you think the average WoW raider couldn't duo serket? well your average XIV player couldn't even make the cut in your average WoW raiding guild- and neither would most XI players. i don't speak from a position of ignorance, either. i had full martial set, full earthen set, full neptunal set, full homam set, hauteclaire, ridill, bahamut's mask, shadow ring, shadow mantle, full af2 for all of the jobs i played- the only thing that eluded me before i quit was defending ring simply due to ridiculously low drop rate. i tanked bahamut v.2 before tp burn. i straight tanked kirin before tp burn. i regularly solo tanked byakko as NIN and PLD both. i held nidhogg for 10+ hours with just a few people before enrage timers. solo tank proto ultima? i had trouble staying awake. blah blah blah. all of that i considered patently easy compared to healing Yogg Saron 0 keepers (alone in the darkness).

the only things TRULY difficult in XI were AV and PW.

i experienced everything XI had to offer before i quit, i experienced everything WoW had to offer before i quit, and so far i've experienced everything XIV has to offer. WoW's endgame raiding experience as a whole soundly trumps the other two, period. and i know with absolute certainty if you'd ever even attempted any ulduar hardmodes at all you'd be hard pressed to disagree.


thinking kara or gruul's or blackwing descent are equivalent to "WoW endgame" is tantamount to calling ifrit (hard) XIV endgame, or sky triggers XI endgame. you've only scratched the surface, and assuming everything from that point on is no different is absolutely foolish.

this is a pointless argument, though, because every single example i can think of from a difficult raid in WoW you likely haven't experienced, so you'll just disagree anyway.

the bottom line is simple- yoshi looks to blizzard as providing a solid blueprint for making an MMO successful for a reason, and he is absolutely wise for doing so. he is also wise in understanding that you can't just directly copy, and you can't neglect key factors just for the sake of trying overly hard to be different. he understands that a successful MMO needs to do right what WoW did right, while maintaining its own identity and providing enough content for any kind of gamer to feel satisfied.

all this baseless hate for WoW (and the illogical, off-base comparisons) is not only futile- it's downright ignorant.

[Kiote]

My original post was not designed to imply that the hardest fights in WoW were somehow easier than the Hardest fights in XI. I was simply pointing out that there is more than one kind of Hard.

FFXI had community vs. community competition just to start most of the fights. Then it had severely overpowered boss skills that had to be diverted or mitigated just to maintain the fight. It also required healers and support to maintain the entire party not just the tank. Damage Dealers had to use the right type of damage at the right time while maintaining a strategic level to enmity. The sacrifice for have such a heavy focus on players ability to maintain there roles or risk the entire party was a lack of multiple Boss mechanics in a single fight. If the boss was moving, you weren't doing it right.

WoW on the other hand very rarely requires players to compete against one another just to start the fight. A group could take substantial losses and continue the fight so long as the tank and main healer survived. By many peoples definition of hard, this makes things a lot easier because it is simply harder to lose. WoW on the other hand implemented a large variety of Boss mechanics that added multiple dimensions to a single fight. Where in FFXI for any single boss every party member only needed to learn a single series of maneuvers, in WoW most bosses require the party to change tactics during the fight. The trade off being, if you Screw up, you can recover.

Both of these games, at there pinnacle, were very hard. The type of hard was simply different. You can enjoy having to learn in depth strategies or you can enjoy having to never make a mistake, but you cannot say that either of these games were easy.

FFXIs community is born out of the grind, however. They did not like things being handed to them. Everything was worked for and Earned. There is a sense, and it's not entirely unjustified, that WoW handed you everything. Nothing in the game require significant effort until endgame.

[fusional]

...group could take substantial losses and continue the fight so long as the tank and main healer survived.

stopped reading there. you're not describing WoW raiding, you're describing heroic dungeons. i don't think you really know what you're talking about.

[Mavera_Totori]

Sorry, I played FFXI when I was younger, when I hadn't a girl, a job and other thing that need responsibility.
I am still pissed how FFXI evolved during the years: Most High-End Linkshells became arrogant and not so social how they always said. When you couldn't attend to a Dynamis run sometimes, ppl were pissed. Ppl were in hurry to get their stupid relics. And it was too time intensive.

I want to have the chance to reach everything that is possible in the game. Without having to farm 2-3 years for a weapon.

And what the hell WoW has lost here?