What 1.0 and Tanaka did good

[Madruk]

Pretty sure people could have gotten past the leveling system if there had been no fatigue and actual content to experience other than the lolsolo through main questlinelol.

The game was pretty much developed in a vacuum with no clue how the outside world had changed after FFXI's release.

[Tonkra]

Did well.

/10ch

well my interest was zero back then, if they would not have announced 2.0.

what we had ingame? guild leves.. and.. guild leves?

an exp curve stop? great..

a software mouse that was HORRIBLE.. almost unplayable game in the beginning.. NO CONTENT AT ALL.

[Orophin]

There could have been multiple combinations of classes, and while cookie cutter builds would certainly appear, other builds could still be viable. As it stands now, whether you put your stats "right" or "wrong" doesn't really change anything.

It was actually worse than just simply creating cookie cutter builds. Gladiators had to level EVERYTHING to be effective whereas other classes could get away with much less. Creating class specific abilities and implementing jobs was the best decision in my opinion.

Pretty sure people could have gotten past the leveling system if there had been no fatigue and actual content to experience other than the lolsolo through main questlinelol.

Something about beating on Efts 30 levels higher than the 15 people you were fighting with HOPING for a skillup, while the CNJ sits back and cure spams capping out SP every fight just doesn't sound like a good leveling system.

The only vision that I shared with Tanaka was how he split the different Disciples up into actual classes and intended for all of them to participate in content together. Now I tend to side more with Yoshida where a miner shouldn't be trying to defeat imperials in the main storyline, but it would be nice to see more actual content for gatherers and crafters, apart from Hamlet, to tie in with what DoW/DoM are doing.

[Velhart]

The storyline and the World's lore was very fascinating and was the incentive to keep grinding, just to see what happens next. I look forward to where the actual main story goes in 2.0 and better environments to get more into the story.

I liked the concept of the Armory System, unfortunately it was just horribly executed. If they took more time to work with it instead of rushing it, it would of been a very interesting and fun system. It felt like you had control of what you wanted to make your character into. Like I said, unfortunately it was horribly executed and taken advantage of and stats didn't really matter.

[Gail]

The stamina bar was a nice attempt at an alternate way of combat. The Battle Regimes, again another good idea just the execution and how they worked, just didn't work out well.

The storyline has been pretty good. CoP is very hard to beat though, for me.

The Dalamud presence of doom lingering in the sky is a very nice touch.
It's there always and the player can't ignore it.
The storyline is very much Tanaka's baby I think, or at least it was all planned while he was in charge. If you check out the very early concept art for XIV it has all the Dalamud meteor before and after landscapes.

Either way I think he had a hard job pushing the game.
Recently I'm thinking this path the game has gone has been the way it was meant to be.
That is, the game was always going to be a struggle until 2.0.

[ArnoMorley]

I had a lot more fun leveling disciplines of war/magic under Tanaka's XIV, with the exception of behest/leves leveling wasn't as mechanical as it is now. There's 0 challenge to it and it's entirely too fast so there's 0 sense of accomplishment.

I actually miss it, I remember killing goblins for 200 sp at like 48+ was good solo exp.

Also I'm with the OP, I liked all the cross class abilities and character customization of the old version. Think perhaps 3 bars of actions was too many though...


Tanaka's version wasn't a terrible game, it's biggest problem was the UI, horrible inflexible programming and lack of content.

[Ingolf]

I find it hard to answer that question. The game is more refined now that Yoshida has taken the helm, but back then even things like the fonts were horrible.

Yoshida just seems to have a far better natural grasp at aesthetically pleasing game mechanics (the popups when you go into a dungeon, or get a light/full party).

Tanaka made a bland game which I bought with FF hype.

[Soukyuu]

It was actually worse than just simply creating cookie cutter builds. Gladiators had to level EVERYTHING to be effective whereas other classes could get away with much less. Creating class specific abilities and implementing jobs was the best decision in my opinion.

That just means it needed adjustments. It would probably work out much better if they didn't rush to release the game. I just can't agree with the "replace/remove everything that isn't working well" instead of trying to fix it. We had it happen with mob AI, physical levels, stats and now armory being phased out in favor of jobs.

I'm just glad mob AI is going to come back with 2.0 in one form or the other...

[Shurrikhan]

TL;DR:
Armory system and physical levels. You shouldn't feel like someone drained your body back to when you first laid hands on a weapon just because you took out a claw instead of a wand. If only the armory system had gone much further in how it translated across classes, perhaps in use of concepts too, rather than merely exact abilities, people probably wouldn't have stood for it's loss.

Though the Tanaka abilities may have been slow to "cover all their bases", such as a basic attack, basic defense, basic opportune strike, they at least felt class-specific from the beginning. Skewer felt more "Lancer" than anything current Lancers get until Doomspike.

Nostalgia:
I loved that if I wanted I could be a dodge-centered kiting archer who used air-fist head-bashes fired from my bow after dodging ranged attacks. Or I could be a line-driver stacked with Skewer and Doomspike atop my usual Puncture, and just enough tp growth to use all three without CD overlap.

Points of Possible Improvement:
The weakness was that some of the abilities should have varied further from similar types, i.e. Skewer-Doomspike-Puncture. Puncture could be anti-armor, and the damage dealt ignoring armor would deal additional shrapnel (projectile) damage to enemies behind the target, while Skewer remains the strongest full line-up, with no armor bypass, and Doomspike deals a portion of the damage as shadow, percentage growing as the physical damage is eclipsed by enemy defense.

Or, on the other side, it could have used categorical modifiers. For example, physical linear and single-target attacks would continue to bypass previously ignored armor when fired at the same target from the same area and side of enemy. Maybe linears could also affect the far side. This would do more for battle positioning, in my opinion, that the arbitrary "sides-back-front" system where people simply run over 90 degrees at interval, and back to standard position, with zero regard to their party needed.

* * * * *
Revision Idea for Battle Regimen:
Imagine this with a revised Battle Regimen system. Rather than being locked into a party-wide attack chain, this simply allows you to select "systems" to build on or players to build from, such as casting Aeroga on a Fira system, with some unique effects atop the larger obvious ones. Or you can cast Aero on a Lancer, extending the reach of his next attack. Cast on Fleetfoot, to cause dodges to deal air damage to enemies on the far side of the Pugilist.

Magic wouldn't be the only thing chaining together with other magics or physical either. It's just that the physical-physical combination effects go off mostly automatically. For example, two Red Lotus attacks made on the same enemy from opposite sides, by the nature of the original spell, would cause the AoE to expand further to the sides, between the attackers, instead of going out the far side. Two Skewers from the same angle would share some of the damage loss from armor, to a sum greater than if they'd been attacking more separately. Attacking from different sides, however, would reduce the enemy's dodge chance.

All it requires is some mechanical changes put into place. Things like... parrying or blocking an attack has a matter of force, atop the simple RNG, and that the chance of being able to make any of the three physical mitigation types (dodge, parry, block) is also based within timing, such as from attacking with the parrying weapon. It should take account and advantage of a larger variety of factors that more greatly then involve your party or internal strategy and skill.

Massive Disclaimer:
That said, this revised Tanaka idea probably couldn't exist on a Tanaka server framework...

[Dannythm]

Armory system and physical levels. You shouldn't feel like someone drained your body back to when you first laid hands on a weapon just because you took out a claw instead of a wand. If only the armory system had gone much further in how it translated across classes, perhaps in use of concepts too, rather than merely exact abilities, people probably wouldn't have stood for it's loss.

Though the Tanaka abilities may have been slow to "cover all their bases", such as a basic attack, basic defense, basic opportune strike, they at least felt class-specific from the beginning. Skewer felt more "Lancer" than anything current Lancers get until Doomspike.

I loved that if I wanted I could be a dodge-centered kiting archer who used air-fist head-bashes fired from my bow after dodging ranged attacks. Or I could be a line-driver stacked with Skewer and Doomspike atop my usual Puncture, and just enough tp growth to use all three without CD overlap.

The weakness was that some of the abilities should have varied further from similar types, i.e. Skewer-Doomspike-Puncture. Puncture could be anti-armor, and the damage dealt ignoring armor would deal additional shrapnel (projectile) damage to enemies behind the target, while Skewer remains the strongest full line-up, with no armor bypass, and Doomspike deals a portion of the damage as shadow, percentage growing as the physical damage is eclipsed by enemy defense.

Or, on the other side, it could have used categorical modifiers. For example, physical linear and single-target attacks would continue to bypass previously ignored armor when fired at the same target from the same area and side of enemy. Maybe linears could also affect the far side. This would do more for battle positioning, in my opinion, that the arbitrary "sides-back-front" system where people simply run over 90 degrees at interval, and back to standard position, with zero regard to their party needed.

* * * * *

Imagine this with a revised Battle Regimen system. Rather than being locked into a party-wide attack chain, this simply allows you to select "systems" to build on or players to build from, such as casting Aeroga on a Fira system, with some unique effects atop the larger obvious ones. Or you can cast Aero on a Lancer, extending the reach of his next attack. Cast on Fleetfoot, to cause dodges to deal air damage to enemies on the far side of the Pugilist.

Magic wouldn't be the only thing chaining together with other magics or physical either. It's just that the physical-physical combination effects go off mostly automatically. For example, two Red Lotus attacks made on the same enemy from opposite sides, by the nature of the original spell, would cause the AoE to expand further to the sides, between the attackers, instead of going out the far side. Two Skewers from the same angle would share some of the damage loss from armor, to a sum greater than if they'd been attacking more separately. Attacking from different sides, however, would reduce the enemy's dodge chance.

All it requires is some mechanical changes put into place. Things like... parrying or blocking an attack has a matter of force, atop the simple RNG, and that the chance of being able to make any of the three physical mitigation types (dodge, parry, block) is also based within timing, such as from attacking with the parrying weapon. It should take account and advantage of a larger variety of factors that more greatly then involve your party or internal strategy and skill.

That said, this revised Tanaka idea probably couldn't exist on a Tanaka server framework...

I love it, now we won't probably see anything like that any time soon.

I'm glad to see enough people understood Tanaka's vision. It's a shame it was so badly carried over the game.