Letter to the Producer, from an average gamer

[Manbearcow]

I'm really not into the idea of new MMO(RPG)s having to meet "the current MMO standards". I'm failing to understand why every single MMO out there should have the exact same features - isn't that boring? People keep using the WoW playerbase and all the money it makes as an argument, but how many games have you seen succeeding using the same WoW patterns ("the standard") in their design? In short: why do some people want all the MMO games to be identical in their game (especially combat) mechanics?

Not everyone is a fan of the fast action combat. It's not because they can't do it (at least not for everyone) but because they prefer slower, more strategy oriented combat (I'm not claiming XIV combat is more strategic than WoW combat here, I'm just saying that's the direction some of the XIV players would like it to evolve). Many others have written about this in this thread so I don't feel the need of repeating everything they have said.

Here's a good thread about this subject.

Let's face it, an MMO is an MMO. If I wanted to play something different, which I am, I would play League of Legend or Minecraft, etc. If an MMO doesn't have some mechanics that are recognizable to regular MMO players, then MMO players will not play it. I'm not asking for FFXIV to become a WoW clone. But things like the right click/ left click and escape button should be universal. I mean really, how many games do you know don't open the main menu when you hit escape. Having to figure out which tiny icon on the bottom right of the screen lets you quit a game does not make it player, or new player friendly.

Having working mechanics won't make FFXIV a clone of another MMO. Content, not mechanics, should be what makes FFXIV different from other MMO's. It already has better graphics than most games. It's not like FFXIV can replicate WoW's combat system with all its different character resources, like mana, energy, rage, runes, etc. FFXIV has a decent enough system with mp, tp, and the introduction of limit breaks.

The combo system, while fun at times, is fairly clunky, particularly when you miss or are soloing. Sure I can walk to the left of a target to start a combo chain while I am soloing a monster, but is it worth my time? The combo bonuses, at least at my current level are not even worth the effort for the most part. For example on the marauder, in the amount of time it takes me to build enough tp to use the brutal swing combo after the heavy swing combo, a monster is usually already dead, or the heavy swing combo is just about up. Do the bonus damage multipliers even work? I know it is RNG, but the bonuses are fairly unnoticeable.

Not everyone is a fan of fast action combat, but the majority of gamers are. League of Legends, the most played video game in the world is fast action. WoW, the most subbed mmo is fast action. Slow paced games are for the cell phone. Slow combat in an MMO caters to a very small population of gamers and the issue with FFXIV now is that it has a very small population of gamers.

Preferring slow combat isn't the same as preferring more strategically oriented combat. Doing less in the same time frame simply requires less thinking, ie. strategy. You can't mask slow thinking with notions of greater strategical orientation. You can have just as much, and much likely more, strategy if a game requires faster decision making. For example, the best real time strategy games are not slow paced. Puzzles are slow paced. Facebook games are slow paced.

Again, incorporating working system mechanics doesn't make one MMO a clone of another. MMO's are inherently similar and it is the content and the way it is presented that makes or breaks a game.