Empty Promises and what needs to be changed in FFXIV

[Zezlar]

Now I probably will be the first negative nelly on these forums but this HAS to be done because I really want to love this game. Square-Enix you are my favorite game company and you have been for a very LONG time but this game is NOT Square-Enix standards. I'm not going to hold your hand and make excuses for you anymore.

There are just so many things wrong with this game and were constantly hearing. "Sorry, Sorry" "Please give us more time" "Hold on a little longer"

Square, you had 5 years of development. 5 YEARS. Now it's been over 5 months since the launch of the game and you're STILL telling us that. This game is really HUGE step down from FFXI which was made with passion and love. FFXIV is certainly not, at least it definitely doesn't seem that way.

Now i'm asking you the community along with me to tell and help Square-Enix in the time they need it the most. We need to point out the problems and give them guidance. I'll start and boy this will be long. This is only some of my problems.

Missions - The actual Missions (I have no idea why you named them Quests, it's awful so fix it) are great. The voice acting isn't half bad and the story is pretty decent for what I have completed so far but we only get like 8 per city state? Seriously? Come on, offer more, and LOTs of them. We want story, this is Final Fantasy that's why most of us are here!

Sidequests - You did exactly what most of us wanted you to not do and you blatantly lied in our faces. "These quests will be diverse and vastly different while offering story to give insight in a seemingly dead world" is basically what you said. Well SE these Quests are no way in HELL vastly different. Collect and kill X and X is the same no matter what way you want to spin it. Also where's that story that we wanted? A small excerpt of text is NOT what we wanted. Go back and look at a standard XI quest. THAT is what we want, not this.

Graphics and Animations - The graphics for FFXIV are GORGEOUS. There's nothing else that can be said about that so one would expect really cool animations with those shiny graphics. WRONG. The animations are extremely poor and bland. The FFXI animations from 8-9 years ago look better. You need to re-do almost every single weapon skill and magic animation in this game. They are poor and there is no excuse for this.

Chocobos and Airships - Where are they? We're still waiting

Zone Size and Copy/Paste - This is probably one of my biggest issues with the game. I'll start by saying that it is absolutely un-acceptable and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. These zones are way to large. Once I have stepped out into a zone and walked a few squares I have basically seen everything give or take a few decent view spots. There is so much copy paste in these zones. Things are just turned and moved around. There are two and utterly useless camps (ex. the silver bazaar) in these huge zones. There are aetheryte camps all over these huge maps but what's the point? I don't want to explore them, they are boring.

Make zones smaller and add LOTS of variety. I want a desert, a volcano, ice caves, castles, catacombs, etc.... What we have now is just bad. I don't really even care if you need to go back to FFXI zone sizes and make me load every time I switch to a different area. It is a necessary sacrifice.

Class Distinction - Every class feels the same. I can hop on a Gladiator and feel like i'm playing a Lancer. There's just no feel to it. It doesn't feel different in the way XI did.

(This one below is my personal opinion and I know many people will not agree with me but I would like to say it)

Physical Level Bonus Points / Physical Level - Do me a favor and eliminate them. In an effort to make classes more distinct make certain stat builds per class for each level like you did in XI

Auction House - Your efforts in the Market Wards shouldn't go unnoticed because they actually have improved a lot. However an Auction House is still that much better.

Party Search Command - I will kiss everyone at Square-Enix if you just PLEASE bring back the /sea all command

Crafting - I know you wanted to make a player driven economy but there is seriously too much of an emphasis on it. Everything you do in this game requires a crafter for some reason or another, even the holiday events (which is next). Please tone it down a little with the heavy crafting emphasis.

Holiday Events - I thought your events in XI were bad and that they couldn't get any worse. You guys surely did prove me wrong. Bells in every event. Ring a bell.... Woo!! Nothing like the spirit of Christmas by ringing a bell! I'm EXCITED!!!! In terms of XI, these events are (No Thanks)

Battle System - To put it simply - it's extremely boring. I don't really feel like sitting around mashing the X, A, or 1 key over and over. There is no strategy it is simply button mashing. Monsters are either really over powered or extremely easy. The poor animations and the mashing just makes me want to vomit. I am on the side that is in favor of the Auto-Attack (which I know is controversial).

I know that you wanted to make XIV strongly different from other MMOs including World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI but you aren't really doing so. You're holding onto certain FFXI elements while basically copying WoW ones as well. You wanted to move away from FFXI, but did you really have to take all the love and passion for your game away as well? You took everything that was great with FFXI and turned it away. I know there are a lot of people out there who doesn't want this game to be FFXI-2 but guys FFXI is on a level that FFXIV can't even hope to achieve in its current state. I have high hopes for you Yoshi-P but so far all I feel is empty promises.

What are your guys/gals thoughts? What needs to change?

[Zezlar]

Hooray, Rani and Orthrus in an hour. I r Excited!

[Sephr]

Oh look, new and unique thread with issues not brought up before.

Directly talking to SE and acting like you're bringing up concerns they haven't seen before is naive at best. It's been done, whining and stamping your feet isn't going to speed things up and certainly isn't going to make them take your threads into consideration.

You want things to be better? Start constructive discussions about an aspect of the game you feel strongly about. You're not appealling to their sensitivities by saying they're your favourite company (for one thing, most of them worked on all kinds of different projects, Square Enix is made up of many, many people, not just one big entity).

[Malakhim]

Oh look, new and unique thread with issues not brought up before.

Directly talking to SE and acting like you're bringing up concerns they haven't seen before is naive at best. It's been done, whining and stamping your feet isn't going to speed things up and certainly isn't going to make them take your threads into consideration.

You want things to be better? Start constructive discussions about an aspect of the game you feel strongly about. You're not appealling to their sensitivities by saying they're your favourite company (for one thing, most of them worked on all kinds of different projects, Square Enix is made up of many, many people, not just one big entity).

Have to agree with this one.

[Cesaru]

Well since the Battle System / Class Distinction thing is currently being worked on along with the addition of more content / quests I think some of the complaints will eventually be solved.

The sidequests were definitely a bit weak on the story that I was expecting but they function well as sidequests...There is just little to no incentive to do them as they offer no SP, little story and the rewards are meh.

I am all for the additions of chocobos / airships...it just doesn't seem right without them.

I think the current market system could easily coexist with an Auction House. The Market Wards could be used as permanent bazaars while the Auction House does Auction House stuff. Then they could add a timer to disconnect people that are idle for long periods of time to help server congestion. They would still have to fix the market wards crashing issue though.

I don't mind the large zones but the fact that is just a giant copy/paste is sad.

[Zezlar]

Oh look, new and unique thread with issues not brought up before.

Directly talking to SE and acting like you're bringing up concerns they haven't seen before is naive at best. It's been done, whining and stamping your feet isn't going to speed things up and certainly isn't going to make them take your threads into consideration.

You want things to be better? Start constructive discussions about an aspect of the game you feel strongly about. You're not appealling to their sensitivities by saying they're your favourite company (for one thing, most of them worked on all kinds of different projects, Square Enix is made up of many, many people, not just one big entity).

It wouldn't be brought up again if half these issues got fixed or even acknowledged. I'm going to assume your on the bandwagon of making excuses because it seems that way. Also thanks for not contributing to my thread in any way shape or form, so please in the future do something else with your time.

[Nharil]

Do you have any idea what goes into developing an MMO? Them stating it's been in development for 5 years means next to nothing. They could have allocated 2-3 people to pre-production, concept and visualization of world art for 3 of those 5 years before actually starting true production. 5 years just sounds better in PR terms for advertising purposes.

The dev team has done a FANTASTIC job turning an unfinished-yet-released-anyway product into something interesting in a mere 5 months. You say they've had 5 extra months like it's an absurd amount of time but when it comes down to it, MMORPGs are an absolute beast to develop and things take time to change. Yes, it was a horribly-failed release and yes, it shouldn't have even entered beta until Winter or Spring 2011 but it really does you no good to just sit behind your monitor and wag your finger at the development team now that everything is said and done.

For a Japanese company to even attempt this sort of revitalization has been nearly unheard of up to this point so it would behoove you to just take a break from keeping up with the game and go find something else to take up your time while they work things out.

[Malakhim]

It wouldn't be brought up again if half these issues got fixed. I'mgoing to assume your on the bandwagon of making excuses because it seems that way.

The problem is that most of your post is made up of the "wah wah wah I want it NOW!" attitude of a 4-year-old. And the rest of your post that might contain valid arguments are ruined by your vitriolic tone and the aforementioned attitude of your other points.

SE is already aware of most of what you're getting at, and Yoshi P has mentioned as much in interviews and his letters from the producer series. Most of this stuff isn't a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

"Sidequests- You did exactly what most of us wanted you to not do and you blatantly lied in our faces. "These quests will be diverse and vastly different while offering story to give insight in a seemingly dead world" is basically what you said. Well SE these Quests are no way in HELL vastly different. Collect and kill X and X is the same no matter what way you want to spin it. Also where's that story that we wanted? A small excerpt of text is NOT what we wanted. Go back and look at a standard XI quest. THAT is what we want, not this."

A lot of ffxi side quests didn't have cs. Only some. Also it takes actually a long time to make rendered cs. Even if its a min long. Also no one in ffxi that I knew even did quests. Only ones ppl did were the mandragora cornette quests. The yag necklace quest, and the sheep moss quest. I tried doing the Star oinion brigade questline (one of few quests with cs) and barely anyone knew what I was talking about.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

"There is just little to no incentive to do them as they offer no SP"
Sorry this mindset keeps rubbing me the wrong way.

Quests in ffxiv will not (at this moment) will have any sp rewards.
The reason: this is a multi class 1 character game. Only 1 class 1 character games have exp rewarded quests. These quests tend to be a one time only. So if you did all the quests as say, a fisherman, you wouldn't have any quests for the other classes. And if they made said quests repeatable it would get boring, and abused players would just spam one quest to level up.