Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Magis]

They're glue now. Horse glue.
The glue that forces this community together in cacophonic harmony.

How many watershards needed to synth Horse Glue?

[Duelle]

That's just it. Base mimicry isn't effective, and this game is pandering to the lowest common denominator.
People didn't stop playing those other WoW rips because the funding went dry. People stopped playing them because, at their core, they where the same game they've seen a thousand times before.

False. Those games managed to screw up on several levels in development, implementation, design or (worst of all) made bad blood with its playerbase. In some cases they were extreme niches, which did nothing to help them meet whatever projections they had.

You're blaming the wrong thing. Stop it.

[Reoin05]

After reading many of these threads, WoW was a well made MMO in its own right, targeted at a younger population, FFXI was targeted at experienced gamers, more so hardcore end-game, with some nearly impossible content in its old days. This discussion will never end because FF players do not want to play WoW or we would have, or would still be. FFXIV not holding to is brand/content nearly bankrupt the company. So saying that FFXI sucked is stupid. It made the company a lot of money and people still pay it. WoW was a great game for its targeted subscription base, granted you could find more 6 year olds on that game than probably any other MMO out there. This game has VERY little community, unlike FFXI where you had to play with others and it was fun to get to know them, and the end game is a joke atm, yes it just came out, but its sad they rushed us to it. Even the crafting system shows the easiness of this game, 100% hq? lol try to HQ end game equip in FFXI then come talk to me.

[ArcheustheWise]

False. Those games managed to screw up on several levels in development, implementation, design or (worst of all) made bad blood with its playerbase. In some cases they were extreme niches, which did nothing to help them meet whatever projections they had.

You're blaming the wrong thing. Stop it.

No, true. He's completely right, ive asked multiple people over several games when they "failed" why they thought it did and the majority of answers was "it was because they are just trying to be wow". Most others just had to stop mmos for awhile because they needed to get rl priorities in order. And a couple people here and there stated what you did, the implementation. But imo that's not whats the prob here...

Which goes to show you, why try and be wow when people can go play wow... Gramul is blaming the correct thing. ITs time for mmos to get off this stupid gear treadmill skinnerbox kick is been on for 10 years since wow... its REALLLY old. Its actually older than wow. The point is, technology has gotten quite a bit nicer since then, we can do better things. Companies just want to make an easy buck.

[Reoin05]

Completely agree, if trying to be like WoW worked, why have all the games who tried failed, why are people leaving this and going back to WoW, and more than that, why have people NOT left FFXI and came here? because they left their roots and tried to copy cat instead of making a good quality mmo with a community like FFXI had.

[MageBlack]

What feature of in WoW is there that was unique to WoW that all these games keep "stealing"? And which of those features has FFXIV taken? Honestly the only distinct feature WoW had was its talent trees and job specialization. Something FFXIV has not copied.

I have my ideas of why people think this but I dont want to put words in your mouths. I'm sure there are many different answers for these questions.

[Duelle]

No, true. He's completely right, ive asked multiple people over several games when they failed what they thought personally of the game and the majority of people said it was because they are just trying to be wow. The other small focus of people just had to stop mmos for awhile because they needed to get rl priorities in order.

Sigh am I really going to have to go through the list again? Some of you have short of memories...

Age of Conan: Tiny niche market because you're not going to be into Conan unless you've read the books. Limited its playerbase even more because of naked boobies. Bad launch and needed several patches before it became passable. Went FTP.

LoTRO: Niche market again, seeing that they tried to capitalize on the popularity of the movies while having a heavier foundation on the books. Problem is most people just saw the movies and didn't give two shits about the books, so the sense of context was not really there. Went FTP.

The Secret World: Niche market yet again, with darker and heavier themes but it being set in present day means most people who are into these games (who incidentally like fantasy) weren't too into it. Very meh gameplay. Nothing kills immersion (yes, I actually used that word) more than being able to repeat story quests over and over again instead of seeing new areas with their own storylines. Not much in terms of actual advertising. Went FTP.

Champions Online: A poor rip-off of City of Heroes using a mostly-unknown IP as its foundation. Not counting that the game bad karma from originally being Marvel Universe Online (before Marvel chickened out and decided to not give them the rights), lack of content and lack of retention mechanisms (having an actual story would have helped) hurt this one. Went FTP.

Warhammer Online: A game sold for PvP but had the most broken PvP I've ever seen. Removed content and classes. The fact that the game launched without the Hammerer and Knight of the BLazing Sun was a blantant sign of it being in complete. The Bright Wizard fiasco had more to do with people leaving the game than borrowing from WoW's design (which is ironic seeing that Warcraft was a modded Warhammer game before Games Workshop pulled out on letting Blizzard use the Warhammer name for the game that became Warcraft: Orcs and Humans). Shut down.

SWTOR: Bad implementation of a LOT of WoW ideas. Using a garbage engine didn't help. Game launched with a ton of bugs, including engame being unplayable until it was patched later. Hell, the PvP planet had to be taken offline and be reworked because it was crashing servers. The bad blood the devs made with the playerbase didn't help, and the lack of content at level cap did not help (if you think running WP, AK, and coil was bad, try having nothing to do unless you were in a raiding guild to get into EV). Went FTP.

That's six I remember. Sadly, the post I wronte to counter this stupid notion of "using WoW elements led these games to fail" was on the beta forums and those are in eternal maintenance.

To summarize, what hurt these games was them being released in a notably incomplete state, poorly implementing ideas borrowed from successful MMOs, broken PvP that was thoroughly ignored despite feedback on it (WAR and SWTOR), and just bad blood in general. Most developers counted on people putting up with incomplete content and bugs while they got the fixes in, but with the market being flooded with MMOs the level of patience players have is considerably less, and it took companies and developer teams a looooooong time before realizing that.

By comparison, FFXIV launched with incredibly few issues, considering that the only real problem was people not being able to log in due to server congestion. I didn't see any hitches in content until I saw the KB/Acheron bug in CT. PvP has its issues but the devs have already mentioned they're going to be fixed. Neither of these are gamebreaking like being unable to clear endgame due to the the zone bugging out like in SWTOR, not to mention the one-class-kills-all mess seen in WAR. We have a good foundation of lore, so the problem Champions had won't be plagueing us anytime soon. When the major point of contention from people on the forums is that they want to be different for the sake of being different (because that's the only leg you and your ilk have to stand on), I think from a design perspective the game is to be pretty solid.

Which goes to show you, why try and be wow when people can go play wow... Gramul is blaming the correct thing. ITs time for mmos to get off this stupid gear treadmill skinnerbox kick is been on for 10 years since wow... its REALLLY old.

A skinner box involves randomly NOT giving you a reward at the end of the road. A skinner box is what we had in 1.23, where most of the times you got dark matter from dungeon runs with a less than 2% chance of seeing a piece of darklight after speedrunning the damn dungeon in under 18 minutes to get the max number of chests. A skinner box is going 0/79 on an NM drop in FFXI. ARR, WoW, Rift et al follow gradual progression instead of a skinner box.

PS: Guild Wars 2 from what I'm told tried to get away from the gear treadmill then had to go back to it due to the lack of said treadmill screwing with its retention rate. So there's your answer right there.

[Gramul]

False. Those games managed to screw up on several levels in development, implementation, design or (worst of all) made bad blood with its playerbase. In some cases they were extreme niches, which did nothing to help them meet whatever projections they had.

Really. All of them. In the past 10 years. Every single one.
Yet somehow, XIV is the one exception that will be free from obscurity.

Sigh

Please don't.

[Velhart]

What feature of in WoW is there that was unique to WoW that all these games keep "stealing"? And which of those features has FFXIV taken? Honestly the only distinct feature WoW had was its talent trees and job specialization. Something FFXIV has not copied.

I have my ideas of why people think this but I dont want to put words in your mouths. I'm sure there are many different answers for these questions.

Doom was clearly based off Wolfenstein's design, but which one is considered the more popular franchise of the two? How often does a developer do something genre defining? Not much. Even Yoshi-P said in an interview once that you shouldn't be completely original just for the sake of it, and takes a genius to completely reinvent the wheel. Take what works and improve upon it. Gaming in general can be summed up as taking what works and make it better. That is how Final Fantasy has been so popular over the years.

[MageBlack]

Doom was clearly based off Wolfenstein's design, but which one is considered the more popular franchise of the two? How often does a developer do something genre defining? Not much. Even Yoshi-P said in an interview once that you shouldn't be completely original just for the sake of it, and takes a genius to completely reinvent the wheel. Take what works and improve upon it. Gaming in general can be summed up as taking what works and make it better. That is how Final Fantasy has been so popular over the years.

That was what I was getting at. Thanks for jumping to the end of my argument...