Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Diadumenos]

My god this thread needs to end. The game is out. It will never be revamped as much as it was when it was in redevelopment. It is what it is. Why waste your breath asking for something that will never ever happen?

Never say never. *cough FFXIAbyssea cough*

[PSxpert2011]

Never say never. *cough FFXIAbyssea cough*

Abysea was what is known to most of the hard-core FFXI players and veterans as the Vana diel Apocalypse.

Now think about it, use your own common philosophy and compare it to FFXIV and youll have A Realm Reborn, just like FFXI.

I'm seeing a trend here... (maybe it's just me)

[Tazo]

Abysea was what is known to most of the hard-core FFXI players and veterans as the Vana diel Apocalypse.

Now think about it, use your own common philosophy and compare it to FFXIV and youll have A Realm Reborn, just like FFXI.

I'm seeing a trend here... (maybe it's just me)

Thats exactly the way I see it. Abysea was released to appease the casuals and as a result the game died.

[Obysuca]

Thats exactly the way I see it. Abysea was released to appease the casuals and as a result the game died.

It was also probably an attempt to kill off XI and make people go to XIV, seeing as how it was shortly before XIV's original release, which was a mistake by SE, they even admitted to it. How is killing off your cash cow and hoping people jump to the new one a good idea? lol /SElogic

[NefGP]

Thats exactly the way I see it. Abysea was released to appease the casuals and as a result the game died.

I actually don't entirely agree with that. It wasn't so much that Abyssea ruined everything, as it was just destroying too much content all at once. I'm a big fan of XI's approach to gear, but even I found myself eventually saying that it was silly that Byakko's Haidate were still the best TP pants in the game. Abyssea was fun, the gear was awesome, and it was the first real content in XI that rewarded players for their time spent - for too many years XI relied far too heavily on the RNG being outright brutally cruel. What finally killed my interest in XI was void watch, for 2 reasons:


Abyssea was just such a fun power trip where even EXPing or Meriting was a blast with little to no job descrimination like we'd had in the past, and the devs had gone right back to "Grind your soul away for eternity for a singe item" with the whole bullcrap about needing 1000 plates for the 95 upgrades on Empyreans. Empy weapons had started out as a wonderful, accessible alternative that still required effort but nowhere near on the scale of Relic or Mythic and then turned into something far worse. And more recently, the Delve weapons which just outclass everything by leaps and bounds was the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of my friends who stayed behind as I moved on to XIV (patch 1.17 at the time I think).


I don't think either game has gotten gear progression entirely right. Even though I side more with XI, there's got to be a healthy balance we can strike here. Obsoleting older content and gear with each new patch is a terrible approach that ultimately deprives players of having a wide variety of activities to do at endgame, something XI had in spades. Conversely, never making anything at all that's better than older gear is equally depressing as at some point people will become tired of the old content, however fun it may have been.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. What's the best way to tackle the issues of power creep & content? How can we give players who want to have the activities they enjoy remain relevant without things becoming stagnant for those who want something new? There are way too many people on here arguing for 1 side or the other, when it's a false choice to begin with. There are plenty of other issues as well, but I feel these are the most pressing by far in terms of the long-term health of the game.


I don't want to see older events and gear simply thrown away each update - I liked having a persistent goal in XI, gear to work toward that I knew wasn't just going to become trash shortly after getting it. That made getting friends together to go after it easier and more exciting. XI did a pretty good job of making the content fun (for the most part anyway) even if the drop rates were generally crap (it wasn't all smiles and sunshine, I did a loooooot of complaining over XI back in the day so no, it's not all rose-tinted nostalgia so please stop insinuating that.)

I don't see why that necessarily has to conflict with folks wanted to experience new content and go after new shinies on some kind of regular basis either, though. Doing it every patch is a bit much though. It's like the people who spend $800 on the new iPhone, only to ditch it for the next model that comes out. That really shouldn't be the standard.

Furthermore, why is it us XI vets are the jerks, exactly? Where are you pulling this whole notion that we simply want to hold the rest of you back for our own gratification from? If you actually played XI you'd know that you were never forced to do any one event, that was the whole point of horizontal progression - to give people options for what they wanted to do. It only sucked if you really wanted a specific item and hated the event, and generally that wasn't a fault of the content's design so much as the devs just relying too goddamn much on the RNG and beyond crappy drop rates (seriously, who the hell thought that having a less than 1% chance on anything was a good idea?! I don't care how good the kraken club was that was still an absurd thing to do.)

How about looking at yourselves the condescending attitudes that have been directed at us? How about stopping with the finger pointing and name calling. What is so horrible and wrong about having a sense of accomplishment? It's hilarious how some people on these forums whine about the game being easy mode, and that everything is spoon fed to us and then turn around crying that Titan is too hard, or that they have to have their new shinies right away because they already got bored with their current ones.

THAT is precisely why Chains of Promathia was so brutally difficult for people who didn't take the time to learn the game and prepare for each mission accordingly. The fights were challenging but not impossible for a dedicated group that actually bothered to find out what they needed to do, like farming polymers for the airship battle or salts for the bomb etc. It also kept the bad kids out of end game until they learned to be better at the game, if ever.

Seriously how many people were complaining - heck still are, really - about people going into Titan or other events and causing wipes for the party because they can't do the fight? Do you know how many PF groups I see on a daily basis on Excalibur where it's all "Know the fight or don't join" (paraphrasing here, it's usually much ruder than that sadly...) heck people are even abusing the heck out of the vote-kick system. Now a good chunk of that is old fashioned elitism, which nobody cares for. But part of it stems from the game being way too lenient pre-50, and then using item level as the only real barriers (if you can call it that) of entry into content.

I'm all for accessibility, it IS still a game after all and should be treated as such. But maybe we need to have a more serious separation of content - stuff purposely designed for the average player, and then events tailored to the serious/hardcore crowd. Right now Coil is the only form of the latter and even then it's not really the case; Enemies were generally pretty OP in XI, but it did at least force us to make the most of our tools. XIV seems to simply just rely on nonsense like landslide where if 1 person doesn't move fast enough, it screws everyone over. There's no skill in that, especially when lag can be a major factor. That's just as dumb as Pandemonium Warden spamming astral flow over and over or Absolute Virtue having access to every single Super Ability.

[Doo]

Whether someone views FFXI as being challenging or not really depends on when they played. Pre-Abyssea was full of challenging content when you had to do things without being over geared, over leveled, carried, and there wasn't as much info available. If you still thought it wasn't challenging, then you're probably one of those super skilled players that wouldn't find any challenge in a majority of games. That's why I don't even bother to argue when someone says it isn't difficult there's just no point in doing so.

[Imapooonu]

PAGE 100!!!!!!

Praise the sun

\o/

[Beetle]

Really want to see what yoshi p says in his live letter. have hopes i fixes this game but probably isnt gonna happen

[Blackheart]

i have to give credit where it is due, as much as i don't want ARR to be more like 11 i have to admit getting af in 11 was...pretty hard, was no way i was going to get it on my own at the time, and even 1.0 presented somewhat of a better challenge then in ARR, and to be honest...i did like the difficulty and wouldn't mind more like it.

[R0llingThund3r]

Every patch more and more like WoW. I quit playing WoW due to their lack of engaging content. Fortunately for SE, I have an FC to run, so I can't just quit on them.