Quote Originally Posted by Blitz0309 View Post
They can try something new and exciting... but what they have now isn't that. Don't get me wrong, i love FF games, but in some aspect you should stick with the classic. You are bringing the same name, so people are going to expect some of the elements to be the same. If they wanted to go this whole classless bastardized adventurer route... they should of called it something other than a final fantasy.

Market wards... great idea. However since they released a beta game, people are sick of them and demand an AH (and hopefully an actually auction house and not the 11 system). Even making them searchable and basically turning them into an AH... its just to late.

Armory system... horrible idea. It takes away classes and gives you this melting pot of abilities. It limits additional "classes" down the road as its weapon based.. it allows you to wear any gear you want even if its not for your class or level.

Camps and porting around... sorta mixed. I like the idea of trying to get people out into different areas but they just seem crowded and annoying most of the time. And warping to crystals is a great idea to save time, but it seems to take away a bit of the game. What was wrong with having whm's port people with spells?

In my opinion they sort of took the road that the people covered in tattoos, gauged out earring, and underskin implants take to be "different"... they went too far with it and failed. Sure a few people will love the idea... but society as a whole is laughing.
Completely backwards.

Market Wards... terrible idea. AH works, just use a better one than FFXI.
Armory system... great idea. At least the "change jobs as needed" aspect. Gives a great excuse for not swapping gear in combat like in FFXI, so no crazy gear set management, but provides much more flexibility to be on what job is needed.
Camps and porting around... porting is fantastic for getting around, removes reliance on any particular job for travel, and cuts out a lot of mindless running around.

And I don't think "society as a whole" cares about MMOs. The biggest criticism of most new games is that they're just clones or tweaks on WoW. FFXIV is definitively not that. And with about an extra year of development (Tanaka never should have rushed to beat Cataclysm to market) it would've been sufficiently compelling on launch.

Then again, Yoshi-P is a much better choice for an MMO director than Tanaka, so maybe it's for the best.

The biggest problems are in the abysmal game engine that is Crystal Tools (looks gorgeous, but implemented poorly and far too demanding on GPU hardware), the lack of content, and the spammy battle system. Two of the three can be fixed easily. Crystal Tools, we're stuck with.