Wy XIV is failing as it's improved...

[Rowyne]

http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/

... I'd really like to know if this is legit. Having insight to what happened behind the scenes of the games that make you say, "What the hell were they thinking when they released this?" is priceless. I really wish there was such a post like this for FFXIV to answer some of the burning questions.

I played Warhammer for six months before I just couldn't stand it anymore. It had miles of potential, but was released buggy and unfinished, with a lot of missing content (sound familiar?). The game wouldn't straight out crash if you alt+tab, but it was close (it had a very hard time recovering). There were supposed to be three starting cities for each faction, but it was released with only one on each side. The professions were the worst most anemic excuse for a crafting system I've ever seen in an MMO. It was definitely an afterthought. And the regular quests were horribly bland, nothing but kill x number of y. And I mean, literally nothing but. The only things they got right were the public quests, the RvR (PvP), and the Tome of Knowledge (which was this amazing bestiary, achievement and quest tracker). But half the public quests bugged out and the PvP class balance was way off and not addressed for months on end. Warhammer also initially made the same mistake SE did in terms of communication and feedback - they originally refused to implement official forums. They finally caved, but not before putting a lot of people off.

Again, some of the specifics may be different, but a lot of it sounds very familiar. I wish the game developers in so many clueless companies could sit back and watch from our vantage point. As gamers, we see the same trends in what makes an MMO fail. And it keeps happening, over and over, to the point it makes me sad and sick.

If this blog is a true account of someone on the WAR dev team, it actually does break my heart to hear of the years of blood and sweat that went into the game, only to have no choice to release something that's not ready, or be fired. Greed and arrogance from the higher-ups win out in the end.

Western MMOs do not typically recover from failed launches. Never EVER release something before it's ready. It will most likely spell certain death for the game.

[Eekiki]

I'm not so sure this is true. Of course, we are both just speculating, but I really think SE is taking the stance that letting XIV fail is not an option because it is part of the FF franchise and because they want to salvage their reputation. I'm sure keeping the game up and running for no monthly fee rather than closing down and going back to a closed alpha/beta state is quite expensive but it is a cost they are willing to eat to regain player trust and make xiv worthy of its number in the FF series.

If that were true, SE would eat their pride, pull out all stops, and work out a deal with Mistwalker to bring Sakaguchi onboard to salvage the project. No one knows Final Fantasy better than him, and combined with Yoshida's MMO experience they could turn this into something truly special.

[Eekiki]

Game needs like a better chain system or boost your stats when your playing your class correctly.

1 dislike I have is I cant use the currect skillchain system with my 360 controler since theres no way to hit the Skillchain button on the 360 controler. I gotta get up and click on the mouse toget a SE working. Since I have toget up I dont skillchain. Thats another thing SE needs to do is update the gamepad controls.

If you play your game on your keyboard thats fine but I need a good gamepad for this game.

I use a 360 controller, and I have no problem doing battle regimens. I think you may just need to configure the buttons.

[Cyruance]

So the question I have for the community is: is the current team's solution to FFXIV just modeling it after MMO systems that have already proved successful in other MMO's, making it yet another copycat MMO? I know they're going by the feedback they received but is this really the solution? Will this really make it successful? And to the current development team: If you are just revamping things based on other MMO's systems (like the auto attack) what will make FFXIV unique? What will make me want to play FFXIV's auto attack instead of another MMOs auto attack system? Many believe that FFXIV isn't failing but ALREADY failed. Is making FFXIV resemble other MMO's really what's going to put this game on the map and revolutionize it?

I believe at its heart, Final Fantasy XIV has the chance to be something different, unique, fun and classic Final Fantasy. I'm not saying everything in the game could be amazing. (like the market wards. That really needs to just be dumped. It's just a longer, more tedious auction house) But I just don't want to see it's potential be traded in for WOW mechanics and just become another MMO clone. I hope it one day reaches its full potential. Thanks to Yoshi-P and the entire FFXIV team. i know you're working hard and I hope for the best.

I can't say I agree that throwing out the old combat system should lead to this whole line of copy-cat thinking(FFXI had auto attack after all)... but, I think you're right all the same.

SE builds its games around its own specific, often arrogant, visions - and for the most part they turn out very nice. (I say as a FF fan, which I assume most here are) Recently they've faltered though, perhaps realized they've taken their vision to too much of a niche audience<FFXIII>, and when combined with FFXIV's horrible failure... they probably just said screw it: give people whatever they clamor for, it works for WoW! This is even the case with how FFXI has evolved over the past few years and need I mention FFXIII-2, pretty much a direct, knee-jerk response to FFXIII's criticisms.

SE seems to be changing its design philosophy, moving away from pushing its own vision to attempting to embrace player demands - and its not necessarily a good thing, especially in the MMO context. I would make the statement that they just don't know how to properly combine player desires with their own FF vision so what we're left with is FFXIV as it is now: A Final Fantasy in name only thats trying to emulate what Blizzard does, and doing it poorly. (Don't mean to put a WoW vs FF bend on it, but you can't ignore the influence that overwhelmingly popular game has had on the entire MMORPG industry)

Now this last part is just my personal opinion, consider it dumb/fanboyish if you will, but I'd say Final Fantasy, in all its specific charm, can not exist as some sort of hybrid between FF elements and player demand. Final Fantasy, JRPGs in general even, are all about telling a story, about immersing the player in a dramatic world enriched with lore, music, and meaning. You simply can not create that same feel, that same uniqueness, if you're trying to listen to player demands - which to be frank, basically means appealing to casual gamers in the traditional MMO terminology. IMO FFXIV is doomed to fail as it will neither succeed as a Final Fantasy or as a standard appeal-to-all game trying to follow in WoW's footsteps.

But hey I might just be pessimistic, they might find their groove and manage to create that Final Fantasy magic along with keeping up with player expectations...they're failing hard at the moment, but at least they seem to be trying.

[FromZanarkand]

Final Fantasy, JRPGs in general even, are all about telling a story, about immersing the player in a dramatic world enriched with lore, music, and meaning. You simply can not create that same feel, that same uniqueness, if you're trying to listen to player demands - which to be frank, basically means appealing to casual gamers in the traditional MMO terminology. IMO FFXIV is doomed to fail as it will neither succeed as a Final Fantasy or as a standard appeal-to-all game trying to follow in WoW's footsteps.

I totally agree. I share the same fear for XIV (And Final Fantasy games in general). As for FF games in general, I think if they just take it back to its roots (maybe like FFIX? With some changes of course) they'd get a wonderful response and it would officially be the return of Final Fantasy. With XIII, it wasn't like XIV where they just didn't put in the work. Their visions and ideas for how to revolutionize JRPGs just wasn't great. They just need to go back and rethink it.

But as for XIV, yeah we all know it was half-assed and just never finished. Maybe never will be. It wasn't so much a problem of vision as it was a problem of vision execution. (except for the market wards vision. That can officially die) I agree that by compromising with traditional MMO standards, which they might end up doing, it will be harder for it to have that FF magic. I don't think it's impossible. If the story came first and was intriguing (and FF-like) and ranking up to get through the story wasn't such a pain that'd be a strong start. And if it was rich with FF lore, (*cough* Chocobos) plenty of summons and FF classes (which I know they're planning on implementing) then XIV might just have a fighting chance.

[OmegaNovaios]

So the question I have for the community is: is the current team's solution to FFXIV just modeling it after MMO systems that have already proved successful in other MMO's, making it yet another copycat MMO? I know they're going by the feedback they received but is this really the solution? Will this really make it successful? And to the current development team: If you are just revamping things based on other MMO's systems (like the auto attack) what will make FFXIV unique? What will make me want to play FFXIV's auto attack instead of another MMOs auto attack system? Many believe that FFXIV isn't failing but ALREADY failed. Is making FFXIV resemble other MMO's really what's going to put this game on the map and revolutionize it?

SE isn't adding auto attack to FFXIV to copy MMOs, they are adding auto attack because many people have asked for auto attack for these reasons:

1. It worked in FFXI and actually served a purpose(which is vastly different from auto attack in other MMO since it's not really a viable option and generally ineffective in other MMOs). Many people who play FFXIV are FFXI fans and either want to see FFXIV head into a FFXI-2 or they want to see it far exceed FFXI. Either way auto attack is the superior system.

2. There are serious issues with not having an auto attack such as not being able to cast Cure, use Diversion, or use Feint in very time specific situations because you have been to busy trying to build TP and thus cannot interrupt your regular attack queue. A regular attack does not need an action to perform. It is far too basic to even be considered in formulating tactics and requires no thought process to executing (such as blinking your eyes). Also, some people don't want to bother using battle regimens because it would interrupt their TP build (in very many cases battle regimen is not used as opposed to FFXI whereas Weapon Skillchains were used in nearly every party).

3. SE said that the future that FFXIV is going in is impossible w/o auto attack (probably because reason #2 would be in an even worse situation should we keep the current system since we would have more actions equipped at a time that are dependent on timing and bothering to waste time on an inferior action is just cumbersome to the enjoyment of the game). Also, SE might have battle regimens in mind for defeating very strong mobs for additional content in the future and non having auto attack is going create issues among many players for a couple reasons:
A. Some people aren't going to want to interrupt their precious regular attack spam
B. Some people are going to feel like they aren't doing anything waiting for other players (usually more casual players) to join in the battle regimen so it can finally be executed.

IMO auto attack is needed more in FFXIV than in FFXI for the sole reason that EVERY class has more than 5 actions total that can be used effectively whereas in FFXI many melee classes stuck to 3 Job Abilities and 1 Weapon Skill to use so they were stuck waiting on auto attack for maybe 30 seconds in between Weapon Skills (mages/jack of all trades classes had many actions to choose from with the auto attack system in FFXI and never felt this way) and so you don't run into issues stated in #2 because there isn't an auto attack. In FFXIV EVERY class is like this (including melee classes) so your not going to be waiting 30 seconds for Weapon Skills. Actually should you not choose to use any non-damage actions while playing the game your not evengoing to wait 5 seconds between Weapon Skills due to the much faster paced combat system compared to FFXI (as can be seen in the auto attack video and you can expect this to even be improved upon later).

With auto attack SE can expand the battle system in many directions, but w/o it the only thing that will change is the action setup you are using and we will forever have the previous issues because no matter what will occur we will be spending 25-50% of our time hitting the regular attack action to build TP which is the core of a big portion of all actions available.

[Cyruance]

But as for XIV, yeah we all know it was half-assed and just never finished. Maybe never will be. It wasn't so much a problem of vision as it was a problem of vision execution. (except for the market wards vision. That can officially die) I agree that by compromising with traditional MMO standards, which they might end up doing, it will be harder for it to have that FF magic. I don't think it's impossible. If the story came first and was intriguing (and FF-like) and ranking up to get through the story wasn't such a pain that'd be a strong start. And if it was rich with FF lore, (*cough* Chocobos) plenty of summons and FF classes (which I know they're planning on implementing) then XIV might just have a fighting chance.

As a lore obsessed person, I fully agree. This ties to a post I made in the giant, elephant-in-the-room thread(One to Fifty, One Zone) - an emphasized, fleshed out story from the start would have done wonders for this game. Its a key element of the Final Fantasy experience, one pushed to the extreme in XIII, and it serves a definite purpose in focusing the vision. Zone progression, mobs, areas of interest, quests, classes, characters - everything could be tied together and given focus and meaning with well established lore to serve as a foundation and context.

Generic classes, cities without charm/personality, massive empty zones(with no progression), lack of impending danger - few roaming beastmen / a great enemy that only materializes as a couple of NPC's in a couple of missions, daily quests(excuse me, levequests) instead of real quests... If they had any great story for the world from the get-go, as defines a mainline Final Fantasy, it definitely was in no way reflected in the game.

To address your suggestions, it seems like they're getting there with things like summons(Ifrit battle is supposedly in the works, though he is the only primal that really appears in the game so far ignoring leviathan), ff classes are indeed in the works, and airships/chocobos/etc. can be added as time goes on - its the story that worries me. The world is already made, and barring something radical like a complete world restructure/reboot, its going to be hard to retroactively give the game lore and a plot that really meshes with the world. If they even prioritize it in the face of now more tangible gameplay issues.

[indira]

they should of learned from there last MMO and built from it, people still play that one >_>

[weeble]

also on top of the points i made i'm starting to think making a game casual for the sake of casuals is ruining mmo's, they are turning out these way to easy crapfests that most players run away from, then all that is left is people running around like chickens with there heads cut off. then most of them leave to, slowly but surely little by little.

[Wolfie]

also on top of the points i made i'm starting to think making a game casual for the sake of casuals is ruining mmo's, they are turning out these way to easy crapfests that most players run away from, then all that is left is people running around like chickens with there heads cut off. then most of them leave to, slowly but surely little by little.

This post takes the gold medal for the "what the **** did I just read" competition.