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

[XxOstiaxX]

Some people like you want everything handed to them with little to no effort. Why do you want to hold others back because you can't play as much? Whats going to keep more active people playing if there is nothing for them to achieve? WoW has infected the MMO playerbase with this mentality that no one can be better than anyone else so as to not hurt anyone's feelings.

Also, comparing the endgames of WoW and XI, all I know is I saw a much higher % of max level players completing the final raids of every WoW expansion than I saw people clearing the more difficult dynamis, killing wyrms, sky, sea etc.

OPs solution satisfies both aspects of the player base, why do so many have a problem with there being more time consuming/difficult content for people who play alot. XI had the strongest community of any MMO I have played because it had a very active, loyal playerbase that stayed with the game for years. SE should be trying to keep those people around. If we get 6 millon subs who login for 30 mins a week a la WoW, do you guys really think that is going to improve the game?

You saw a higher % of people completing wow end game, because obviously you are bad at math..... A game with 10-12 million people vs a game with 500K.... Now think about it....

[indira]

casual or hardcore how about none.
we need content thats fun to do plain and simple if it makes you want to do it thats good stuff, if you feel like omg not again thats bad content. when your stuck grinding things or if the game turns into a number cruncher its just another blah mmo thats overflowing on the market.

[XxOstiaxX]

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.

Dint you get the memo ? Alone in the dark, can be completed with just one tank and a healer brah!

[Zumi]

WoW is not very forgiving on mistakes. It was like you make a mistake you wipe run back to the zone redo the fight, you were back in the zone ready to repull in like 3-5 min. FFXI is much more forgiving with mistakes but often you had long lockouts to redo bosses in the event you did wipe, dynamis lord 3 days, salvage 1 day, limbus farm another pop set 2 weeks.

FFXIV is a different kind of hard. More to do with lag and stuff. I beat all the Uldar hard modes at lv80 cap Firefighter, even 0 light yogg, all of heroic ICC. I didn't have an issue playing WoW at all 40-50 MS lag wasn't that bad. Couldn't really make any progress on Garuda, AV, or CC. If it wasn't for the lag I don't think the fights would be that hard in FFXIV. Had a group of people who played FFXI and WoW they mostly quit FFXIV due to dying to mechanics that shouldn't of died to.

Stuff like Garuda was beyond annoying still never killed it. We got to the point where she does her conal wind attack looks like people moved out of LoS but well they still died.

In my guild people just didn't want to play the game because it seemed broken. We saw similar stuff during Ifrit, getting hit by circles that we moved out of, getting hit by cracks which we were not standing in. People getting hit by mogs flare from across the room, although this wasn't much of an issue because it wouldn't kill you most of the time but it was still annoying.

[Wolfie]

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.

Did you even play FFXI man? You've got this whole thing backwards. In FFXI you could HOLD monsters to change their respawn timer or wait for the rest of the LS to show up, and everybody carried reraise hairpins because it was incredibly hard to wipe in FFXI.

In WOW, there are strict rage timers, fight mechanics, and limited in-combat ressurects that punish the group heavily for deaths. There is no wipe recovery in WOW: you wipe, you start the fight over from scratch.

[Babydoll]

I dont want a wow clone.. I want to see what Yoshida can do from his own influences

[Duelle]

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.

False. FFXI is the most hybrid unfriendly game to have ever hit the MMO market. "Creative" in this case meant "having the right jobs for the content or you were SOL". Liked how Summoners were in previous FF's (destructive powerhouses with avatars)? Too bad, you're a curebitch until the leader calls for you to use Astral Flow, after which you return to being a curebitch. Like Red Mages and their versatility? Too bad, you're the group's refresh-whore and you better enjoy spamming refresh and haste on your party. Liked Puppetmaster enough that you want to full time the job? Too bad, you're a loljob and should have a "real" job leveled for endgame and events. The list goes on. Let's not pretend the game encouraged creativity, because the exact opposite happened. And before you mention it, soloing in an MMO built around party play is meaningless.

and i know with absolute certainty if you'd ever even attempted any ulduar hardmodes at all you'd be hard pressed to disagree.

I can vouch for this. You take me back when you mention firefighter. So many memories, so many wipes. XD

WoW is not very forgiving on mistakes. It was like you make a mistake you wipe run back to the zone redo the fight, you were back in the zone ready to repull in like 3-5 min. FFXI is much more forgiving with mistakes but often you had long lockouts to redo bosses in the event you did wipe, dynamis lord 3 days, salvage 1 day, limbus farm another pop set 2 weeks.

Indeed. Theres also the fact that you can't rez people unless you have a Druid or Warlock, both of which had a combat rez, the limits on potions and how fights are tuned so that most of the class cooldowns are one-shot per fight (or every other fight in the case of Bloodlust/Heroism). And the fact that trash mobs respawned if you took too long.

I didn't have an issue playing WoW at all 40-50 MS lag wasn't that bad. Couldn't really make any progress on Garuda, AV, or CC. If it wasn't for the lag I don't think the fights would be that hard in FFXIV. Had a group of people who played FFXI and WoW they mostly quit FFXIV due to dying to mechanics that shouldn't of died to.

This is true. The few times I've fought Garuda I could tell the server and client discrepancy is pretty pronounced. Irks me a bit because Garuda is pretty much Sapphiron meets Hagara the Stormbinder meets Auriaya. That's why I am hoping for better response times between the client and the server in 2.0. Dying to the lag boss is a million times more aggravating than dying because you screwed up during the fight.

Which describes a lot of newer MMO boss fights -- if you're unable to dodge (hence: dodge a bullet) you're dead. If you're unable to find a weak point in x amount of time (hence: dodge a bullet) you're dead.

This is an overly simplified way of saying "people need to know the boss mechanics in order to win". Which is fine.

Arch Dynamis Lord was basically a fight where you had a strict 33.333% chance of winning once he split because you have to kill the "right" one in order to win the fight. Without any indicators as to which would be the "right" one. That entirely removes skill and gearing out of the equation and replaces them with sheer dumb luck. That's what I meant by Russian roulette.

[Wolfie]

I dont want a wow clone.. I want to see what Yoshida can do from his own influences

WOW clone is such a dumb term. FFXIV will never be a WOW clone, because literally everything about the game would have to be thrown out.

The fact that Yoshida is doing research into the market and what the typical MMO consumer is like does not mean that this game will turn into RIFT or SWTOR.

[Andrien]

I just want to log in and have fun on any job/class I choose, I don't want frustration. If there is going to be a long process to archiving something "hardcore" at least I hope they make that process fun too.

[Sontawila]

I don't mind it being accessible, but it should become more difficult as the game progresses. Yeah it might mean that you have to invest more time to get where you want, but that's how anything in life works.

In life, not in gaming.

What you call "difficult" in FFXI is no more than a colossal time waste that no one should endure. I understand that some people feel the urge to justify wasting their life trying to acquire that "special" relic/item and in most cases spend 7+ years (SEVEN+ YEARS) playing everyday just to be burnt out and never realizing their goals.

FFXI holds a special place in my heart since it was the first MMO I played for 2years and there are lots of great aspects that I'd like to see adopted here but endgame content is not one them.

I'm all for more difficult content that actually require skills and close coordination (Garuda was a step in the right direction) but NEVER will I want something like FFXI's endgame BS.