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

[Orophin]

Actually, what people considered hard in XI was the fact that you couldn't recover from a mistake in a Boss fight. You had to do it right or you lost. Once you knew how, it was easy.

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

How can people keep using the Argument that WoWs content was so much harder than FFXIs until it was nerfed and then compare it to nerfed FFXI content? Your logic astounds me..

I'm convinced you never actually did any heroic raids in WoW. 25 man ones were HARD. I mostly did 10 man and there was still little room for error. If someone died and couldn't be res'd you were typically screwed due to enrage timers.

"Difficult" should not be confused with "poorly designed". You're talking about Dynamis Lord kills in a period of time where 8months earlier WAR was tanking things by spamming barspells and PLD was a main healer.

I'm so glad I stopped playing FFXI way before that happened. My PLD would be a sad panda.

i just want to point out that most of the people i see calling WoW easy and FFXI hard(er) still struggle with junk like garuda. and most of the people i see calling FFXI easy and WoW hard(er) have absolutely no problem with stuff like garuda.

there are exceptions, of course, but this seems fairly common.

I think you have the right of it. I played FFXI through most of ToAU and while I was never heavily involved in endgame or in any super hardcore LS's, I think most of the "challenge" was in how long it took to do anything.

Fast forward to me starting WoW in TBC when SSC and TK were current content. The pacing of that game was so much different. (faster) Encounters were so much more mobile and you had to be very reactive to things going on. I played WoW up through the end of WotLK while tackling some of the hard mode raids (mostly 10 man, I never got in a guild that could handle 25 man) and I'd like to think that during my experience of playing that game that it has made me a better player in some regards.

Anyway, to contribute to the subject of the original post, I want the opposite. I want truly challenging fights, not campfests that take hours at a time. I just don't have the kind of time to play anymore like I did in FFXI. Boss fights should maybe be 30 minutes long TOPS for truly hard fights. The 10 minute fights I've found to be perfect for stuff like Ifrit, Garuda, etc. I don't want to do speed runs to get awarded extra equipment. (which it sounds like they're getting rid of) I'm not opposed to 3 hour long dungeons with multiple fights, but I also don't mind the shorter single encounter ones or the hour long ones.

I also want to know that I'm going to eventually be rewarded for my effort. Garuda was a good step in this direction awarding tokens with the chance of a weapon drop each fight. Ifrit and Moogle were just frustrating for me. I did Ifrit over 100 times and got a sword, axe and 3 cnj staves. While I know that's more than some people got, it's still ridiculous. I think I did Moogle a couple of times and didn't play anymore until the next major content patch because I wasn't going to go through that again.

I think if they can establish good systems for difficulty vs time-sink and a good loot system that rewards participation, the endgame should be something all players, hardcore and casual, can enjoy.

[TimonLoon]

All of these were steamrolled (by people posting in this thread) within days of spawn mechanics, etc, being figured out. The only that that artificially lengthened a "world first" type kill on any of these is a lot of them having unknown spawn mechanics/pop items that we had to figure out just to enjoy because SE was too lazy to release a continued stream of content. Instead, we got mystery box spawn systems and RNG drops.

Ebon Panels. That is all.

[XxOstiaxX]

Actually, it was the willingness of the Development team to not sacrifice Solid Gameplay Mechanics and Lasting Content for the sake of Catering to casual players.

FFXI fans actually enjoyed doing HNMs a hundred times and Running Up 100 Floors of Nyzul Island because when you finally got it done, it felt like you did something. You didn't just win and forget it until the next raid in three months where you replaced all the Top Tier gear you worked so hard to obtain.

FFXI was the last of the Unforgiving Hardcore MMOs. Most people didn't give up on it until they gave in to the Casual Playerbase which they never actually needed.

Stop taking things out of your ass, first XI developers did not "Willingly" ignore the casual market, for there was NONE! *Gasp* XI was the successor of Everquest, it was a game meant to attract the same type of player, since it had the same type of mechanics, don't pretend like they went into a meting and said: "Well there is a huge casual market that has not been tapped, but we shall ignore it, because we want to deliver unforgiving mechanics and keep with the times."

Because that was not what happened.

[Dawiichan]

Most people here that are calling FFXI easy played post-CoP. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a joke too, post-CoP. However, WoW is also a joke now. I'm definitely not saying that it was before, WoW had extremely challenging content pre-WoTLK(though WoTLK did have some as well). However to say FFXI was a joke because you played after the best time to play is like saying WoW is a joke because Cata made it a joke. It seems more like people are using conflicting arguments because they played in different eras. Most people that played WoW and considered it amazing was during BC age(I miss BC, amazing content. However, I came back in Cata and was disappointed). Most people that played FFXI and also considered it amazing was during the CoP age(CoP gives me joyous nightmares).

I think this just proves that over time companies have made their content much easier, meaning that comparing/analyzing the two could potentially be conflicting if not done the right way. Which is why Yoshida has to find the middle point. Get what was good from FFXI, but not ignore what was good in WoW. With roots like this, creating its own identity will become much easier, since the foundation will (hopefully) be thoroughly completed.

[Skull_Angel]

Actually, what people considered hard in XI was the fact that you couldn't recover from a mistake in a Boss fight. You had to do it right or you lost. Once you knew how, it was easy.

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

You got it backwards, dude. My LS was the recovery master when it came to trying new content in FFXI, can't pull that shit in WoW w/o restarting a portion of the instance.

[Aceofspades]

Steam Punk is a genre too and it combines these two things, sorry. Plus it's a combination that has been used in FF previously (XII for example). No one is saying there will be light sabers, but the Garlean Empire has been said to be technologically advanced since the very first time they were mentioned. It's not like S-E has suddenly decided to incorporate s-f elements into the lore. The only thing is that until now there weren't many things in-game that would show that side, for which I would blame the 1.0 ver. and it's hangover story.

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but saying that they aren't showing taste because you don't like the setting they have chosen for their game is ridiculous, sorry.

Personally, I don't know how come you never came across any similar settings, since there are many great examples of it in literature, movies or video games.

Additionally, mixing genres is always acceptable to a degree, that's how new genres come into life too. I don't know where do you get your ideas from.

I get my sense of "taste" for games from what I would precive as "realistic" . Again, if we are bringing knives to a gun fight, wouldnt make sense on a realistic stand point. soo far, even tho it stretchs logic to its limit, the game has not breeched that important "that just dosent make any sense" point. At least in my mind. 90% of the contents sugests a time line along the lines of the cruisade erra, adding machines and space ships is quite a strectch, the only thing that makes this acceptable logcialy is the use of magic to power said machines. Wich actually makes perfect sense, and thus far the enemy has yet to utilize weaponry that would be unconciveable for the current civilization to have a fighting chance against or possably mimic. Even books and movies that share the same mix of jenres have a sense of logic behind it. Fighting beasts and monsters with magic and armored mele is not a stretch of the mind, however fighting armies of a technilogically superior civilization with a smaller, more inferior armed army , can be a stretch if not done right, story line must include exploited disadvantage by the inferior army to level the playing field. Wich the story line has done thus far. But if we are fighting armored machines with spearmen on chocobos, and are capable of winning with ease, now thats a stretch, and even tho the idea is fun, its not logical. maybe its just me, but i like a sense of logic in the game or I wont play it long, hense why i didnt play wow, made no sense to have epic boss after epic boss, each being "the worst the realm has ever seen" I liked how SE incorperated a almost never ending conflict with the beastmen in xi. At anyrate, the game is enjoyable thus far, and soo I currently have no complaints, but using a train is a bit of a stretch when heavy plate armor is considered to have defensive values. Just dosent mesh well in my opinion, but neither do space ships lol, soo long as we arent mixing modern warfare with ancient war fare , i can put up with most any mix.

As far as the current setting for the game, again , thus far, im comfortable with but to stretch beyond what they currently have would be REALY stretching it. Kinda like saying , "we can abliterate armies from hundreds of miles away with a push of a button, but... lets go put on some heavy armor, bows and arrows and risk losing in open , primitive, warfare just because."., just dosent make any sense lol.

[Kiote]

Stop taking things out of your ass, first XI developers did not "Willingly" ignore the casual market, for there was NONE! *Gasp* XI was the successor of Everquest, it was a game meant to attract the same type of player, since it had the same type of mechanics, don't pretend like they went into a meting and said: "Well there is a huge casual market that has not been tapped, but we shall ignore it, because we want to deliver unforgiving mechanics and keep with the times."

Because that was not what happened.

Apparently you have no Idea what your talking about..

There were more than 3 MMO ever made man. FFXI is nothing like Everquest. They literally do not share a single mechanic.

There has always been a casual player base, the difference now is that WoW showed the world how big it can be when you make the easiest game on earth.

Prior to that, Devs did not care about casuals because they didn;'t expect them to pay to play.

[lordvr]

Well, from what it looks like from the Demo.. the only things that has a WoW "Feel" is the UI, idn why some of you feel the "game" itself is becoming a WoW clone. but Alrighty then .

We don't know how end game will eventually turn out, but the ui/ quest hub leveling scheme / content finder / pvp arena | bg type system all look to be exact copies of wow.

[Kiote]

All of these were steamrolled (by people posting in this thread) within days of spawn mechanics, etc, being figured out. The only that that artificially lengthened a "world first" type kill on any of these is a lot of them having unknown spawn mechanics/pop items that we had to figure out just to enjoy because SE was too lazy to release a continued stream of content. Instead, we got mystery box spawn systems and RNG drops.

Its very obvious from your post that you only played FFXI toward the end of it's pre absseya life cycle. It is simply a fact that nearly every single piece of content you listed when undefeated for months after release. Just because you didn't play it until well after it was nerfed doesn't mean it was easy.

The vast majority of FFXIs content actually had really high drops rates. Most bosses dropped multiple pieces of high end gear every kill. If you got screwed over by your LS on every drops that's not SE's fault. The only reason people spent months trying to get a single piece of gear it because most EG content took very large groups of people and most LSs failed to win more often than not until content got nerfed.

Why in the world would SE have released a constant stream of content when people could barely complete the content they did release? FFXI's biggest plus was that when they did actually release knew content, it didn't instantly make all your previous gear and achievements completely useless. Something you will never get from a WoW clone.

[Firon]

I played FFXI for 7 years pre cop nerf and everything i always thought the game was easy, I mean I was playing XI while playing my ps2, GC, DS, and other things cause it was so slow and easy to play.

While i didn't play WoW or many other MMO's I still find the current XIV not too hard but it does serve a challenge. I been so focused on Darklight i just started Garuda, after like 10 attempts can get her to phase 3 every single time just have to work out the kinks now. I think Darkhold would destroy most FFXI players all day.

I mean look at this final boss for them in the last exp pack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUgFFQqUJDM
He just floats there like 99% of XI fight's no dynamics to them at all.