Immersive and deep, or archaic and annoying?

[Sixmp]

Oh yes. This. Anything like this should be an MMO standard. The simple idea of a world being immerse should stand on things like this just like weather effects.

[Zantetsuken]

"Hey let's go fight Fenrir!"
"Yeaaaaaah!"
*Enters Fenrir BCNM*
"Ok, we all know wha-"
"Uh..it's Darksday..."
"...Shi-"

Good times.

Awesome bragging rights when you beat Avatars on their elemental days though ^^

It was like a built-in hard mode.


Yeah, I really miss most everything the OP has listed -- I think Yoshi was too heavy-handed in nerf-hammering out the environmental/elemental aspects of this game. Maybe it can be stressful for casuals at first, but you can use the 1-50 leveling path to introduce this stuff as they progress.

Most (non-WoW) players are far more adaptable and intelligent than SE gives them credit for... ..actually, never mind... It's obvious why they did this. :/

[Keres]

I don't understand the preoccupation with elemental weaknesses. Okay, so you're now spamming Thunder instead of Fire on something. Now the gameplay is suddenly super-immersive, deep, and challenging?

Not to mention that if you want four different spells for each weakness, that's 24 spells just for your basic actions, not counting any of the utility abilities or non-elemental skills. You'd need a LOT of hotbars to play BLM. :P

Also, while I like unique monster behavior, the 1.0 aldgoats running up to you, blocking your camera, and getting tagged by AoEs constantly (while they were 5+ levels higher than anything else in the area) was just annoying, and not interesting in any way.

[Tupsi]

I don't understand the preoccupation with elemental weaknesses. Okay, so you're now spamming Thunder instead of Fire on something. Now the gameplay is suddenly super-immersive, deep, and challenging?

It's more like this:

While not every FF game had absolutes in weakness/resistances many of them went with the route if you cast Fire on Fire based enemies they either:

1. Absorbed it.
2. Brushed off most damage unless your BLM was well leveled and using x enhancing weapon i.e Fire Rod.

So while for example you "switch to thunder instead of fire"...GOOD. You're doing something different instead of the default use Fire. XI's design was great in that regard but SE made a lot if not most families slightly weaker to Thunder and Ice magic so no matter the enemy you get better returns on Thunder/Blizzard since they had the higher overall growth compared to Earth, Wind and Fire on some enemies. (That's changed now.)

It's pretty much a staple in FF games for enemies and bosses to have "extreme strengths or weakness", heck in any RPG, even in XI - Yes you didn't use EVERY skill 100% of the time, but you had the options - In true FF fashion they could have made a dungeon where when you normally used Tier III-IV magic, you'll get better returns on Tier 1 and using weaker gear.

Just...so much lost potential because people fear "being excluded" by elitist players and SE catered to it.

[Maza]

+1 for sure. Scared the crap out of me the first time a dodo just started following me for no reason lol. Gooda timesa

[Shadowblind]

This, a thousand times.

Seconded. All those ideas sound so awesome, ESPECIALLY the elemental weaknesses. That's practically standard for JRPGs.

[Dreamer]

Sadly, ARR went the McDonalds route with the remake. Depth, uniqueness, and everything even mildly inconvenient was tossed to the wayside all in the name of accessibility to as many people as possible. Welcome to 2.0 - the stuff the OP mentions won't be seen again, at least in this game.

[PallasLloyd]

everything even mildly inconvenient was tossed to the wayside all in the name of accessibility

Are we playing the same game?

There are tons of inconvenient and annoying things about this game. Most of them are technical and design issues though and not "fun" things like monsters following you around and having to know which spells to use to do the most damage to certain enemies.

[Horg]

All of that is very cool but they'd have to write the AI logic to support all of it, that would lead to some immense costs including man hours and exposure to additional risk (more stuff to break and have to support). Would definitely be cool though, maybe they can implement this as the game matures?

@Tupsi - I am an elitist, sometimes I'm a jerk too, but I know most of us mean elitists would actually love to see these features.

[Sadaharu]

My only complaint is the size of the world compared to 1.0. Mor Dhona is only about 1/3 the size it was (makes sense, the Battle of Carteneau occurred in the bottom half of Mor Dhona). Coerthas however was hugely reduced in size. It was a massive region with 5 different areas to explore, and ARR only implemented 1 of them.

Also it seems like all underground areas were removed / converted to instances. 1.0 had areas similar to like Crawler's Nest in XI. Just an underground cavern/maze with mobs and levequests.

http://www.ffxivinfo.com/maps/eorzea.php