Group Quest Design Fail

[Fly1ngSqu1rr3l]

Every winter, I play an MMO. Ever since Dark Age of Camelot, cold weather = MMO time for me. Some people put on ugly sweaters and Christmas music. Me, I load up an RPG.

Overall I’ve enjoyed a little downtime with FFXIV, due to the sheer beauty and complexity of the world. However, I’m convinced that the designers don’t actually play their game in the state it’s in now – they may have played one incarnation of it, but it’s been rebuilt from so many layers of so many games (since the first MMO version) that some of the things they’ve built absolutely don’t work together anymore.

Group Quest Design Fail
I'm sure it's been said, but I'm new to FFXIV and there is one major glaring flaw in the quest system design (other than it being full of horrible, mind-numbing menial job quests).

Main Line quest chains which require grouping for instances is in general, a terrible idea. It makes them impossible or painful to complete on low population servers, especially late at night. It's alienating to players who may NOT want to have to group with strangers to progress through the storyline portions which aren't augmented at all by completing with a party (the animations and dialogue are always about your character and not your group). It's also horribly inconsistent with the rest of the quests that encourage, if not _require_ solo questing (can't bring other players, even be IN a party such as a fate group, or even have a companion deployed - game can't even figure out to dismiss your pet, it blocks the sequence altogether which is silly).

Now, put this in the way of L1-L20 players from getting their mount. You can be Level 50 and skip completely beyond the main quest chain, but you won't get your mount. There are 4 instances requiring you to find a party that block you from joining a Grand Company in order to obtain the mount quest in the first place; a particular slap in the face for Collector's Edition buyers who already have a mount, just can't get the skill to learn how to use it. I was level 28 before I got my hands on my mount due to the difficulty getting instance groups during the times I could play.

Pub groups are hit or miss. Many MMOs give you the option to skip them entirely because of the human factor called terrible players. Having to wait for a tank and a healer to complete an otherwise soloable quest line was a bad decision. Forcing bad players into groups with normal players is also awful and a bit socialistic. This is likely a design that contributes to players making less progress, spending less time in the game and possibly dropping subscriptions out of frustration. All this is your reward for having unknowingly chosen a low population server, not wanting to deal with a free company, or for only having time to play late at night.

Add to this your server crashes and reboots. In some cases, several hours waited to find a group, finally acquired, then to get booted in the middle due to server maintenance which hits, yet again, in prime playtime for many subscribers (11PM PST).

So on top of your games as a service issues (haven't played an MMO that reboots servers this often - memory leaks?), the core progression element of your game is fundamentally broken as it is built on top of a grouping system that isolates and excludes players who would otherwise, spend more money subscribing to your game if they could just reliably play when they wanted to or could find the time.

+ loot itemization for quest rewards is a joke. Why are you giving players items they can purchase from vendors when in all likelihood, they have more Gil than there is anything worth spending Gil on below L30? Do you have such an incredible endgame that players will put up with these bad design choices just to get to L50? Probably not. Look at your telemetry for how many players don't hit every dungeon and see more than 50% of your game content before they unsub.

Levelling in FFXIV is the least fun of any MMO. PC vs. NPC Level Imbalance
To cap this all off, is the complete lack of feeling an increase in power/ability as you level. From L1 to L35, one thing has held true. Mobs 2-5 levels lower than me can still take hits better than I can from mobs 2-5 levels higher than me. The skills between levels are a) very widely spaced out and b) aren’t spectacular upgrades from any perspective. Armor and weapons are also painfully underwhelming. The best item I got was an item 15 levels lower than me for two reasons: it had the best rigging model and it had better stats than an item equal to my level. The level sync system feels designed specifically to further cap any excitement you have about getting more powerful.

Bad quest progression, few reasons to celebrate in the levelling process, awful group mechanic, a host of decade-old MMO rookie mistakes present in a 2013 product, topped off with the worst games as a service maintenance schedule I have ever seen puts FFXIV at the top of my list of games I want to love, but have legitimate reasons to hate. If it weren’t winter and for my 9 year old liking the FF universe for his first MMO, I’d break up with you, Final Fantasy.