Anyone Else Feel Betrayed?

[Seif]

Am I the only person on this planet who loves both games?!

I think XI and XIV are great in completely different ways. They're so night and day different that even comparing the 2 seems pretty redundant.

Sure I'd LOVE to play game with the sense of danger and atmosphere like XI someday but does it mean I can't enjoy a game like XIV?
The close mindedness of frankly both groups in this battle saddens me. If you can see good in only one or the other then trust me you're denyong yourself from having great gamin experiences and memories.

[Kittra]

Am I the only person on this planet who loves both games?!

I think XI and XIV are great in completely different ways. They're so night and day different that even comparing the 2 seems pretty redundant.

Sure I'd LOVE to play game with the sense of danger and atmosphere like XI someday but does it mean I can't enjoy a game like XIV?
The close mindedness of frankly both groups in this battle saddens me. If you can see good in only one or the other then trust me you're denyong yourself from having great gamin experiences and memories.

It's not so black & white as that for a lot of people unfortunately.


I hated quite a bit of what FFXI forced on people back in the day and then later forced again with the Abyssea expansions, but the good parts ultimately out weighed the bad, so I stuck with it for 8 years.

In the case of FFXIV though (keeping in mind that the game has only been out as "ARR" for a couple months) I see far more bad than good and it irks me to no end that they didn't fix many of the problems that should have been priority #1 on the reboot.

Seeing the good in something doesn't really work if while you're looking at it, that dense cloud of bad is hovering in front of everything making it difficult to see.

The good and bad will be different volumes for each person who looks at it so there will never be a "perfect" formula for how to do things right. Much like I'm colorblind and have difficulty seeing things in a "vibrant" atmosphere with a lot of color which results in me hating a lot of "good looking" things, a person with perfect vision will have no problem enjoying something while still being "blind" to those things that only color blind people can see.

Currently, the number of people without color blindness out weighs the number of people with it, so everything is designed with the normal masses in mind, much like the gaming industry has been doing for the past 10 years.


Now you might think I'm nuts because I liked version 1.0, more specifically version 1.23, but it was because I absolutely HATED all the previous versions and 1.23 was showing a lot of us that the game was moving in the right direction. Many of us took that as a sign that Yoshi-P would do wonders with A Realm Reborn and he has... but it's not at all what, at least I, expected. I subscribed for 6 months in hopes that, just like all the versions leading up to 1.23 were improvement after improvement, we would get the same after a while of ARR being released. How do I feel about it? I feel like someone flew me up 20,000 feet on a private jet (never flown before but I'd love to), opened the hatch and then just threw me out...

I've seen it said "It's just a game, get over it." but they need to realize, many of us have invested in this game (not just money) for 3 years now, and when you spend that kind of time on something and it fails to meet your expectations, especially after seeing all the improvements up to that point, you will end up some of these or maybe all of them: depressed, disappointed, angry, sad, confused, or indignant.

[NefGP]

Yep. Hours of actually enjoying the old world (it wasn't perfect and the reboot was absolutely needed but it wasn't without its charms), trying to convince the seemingly infinite haters out there who'd written the game off because of the initial launch (XI suffered the same stigmas as well though not to the degree XIV did) and pledging my support through subscription fee in the hopes of seeing more of what I liked from 1.17 and onward. The lifetime legacy discount was just icing on the cake, and I genuinely thought to myself "In the end, this will be a way better game than XI ever was AND I won't have to pay as much for it in the long run! WOO HOO!"

Like Kittra said, the game was steadily improving and things were really looking up. The final fight with Darnus was awesome, and really set the stage (or so I'd hoped) for ARR. However what we've gotten (and what appears to be on the horizon) is just a general collage of elements from WoW and all the MMOs that tried to topple it and failed because they couldn't grasp the sorry truth - that WoW was just like the Nintendo Wii; Blizzard had captured lightning in a bottle and there was just no way to replicate that kind of success. It was a 1 of a kind that try as they and others might, could not be repeated.


And now when I look at this game, I see YP following that same doomed path, using the FF franchise to sucker people in. I know the devs are capable of better, they proved that with 1.23 so why aren't we getting it? Why are we being given more of the same? The answer doesn't lie in simply copying XI either, but I do think there were many lessons to be gleaned from it that have been blatantly ignored.

[Annie]

It been 2 year since new team took over, first direction change are from 1.1 to 1.23, and 2nd direction change FFXIV ARR 2.0, both had it own uniqueness, FFXIV ARR clearly win on grab money over 1.23 on launch, but will it able to keep player stay subscription and attract new player ? are the real question player and Dev Team looking for.

I for one like to enjoy content over Ilevel gear, sure, it help to get some great gear, but to sharing game experience with other players are the solo reason I play MMO.

Current FFXIV ARR are Ilevel content drive MMO, you wouldn't had much memory of your Lv 1-49, 2.20 is around the corner, only thing that I will remember are weekly mythology cap and coil, everything else is SR, I can barely remember the people in my own FC.

And that I pray, hoping the game doesn't heading direction of Ilevel drive MMO, nothing else to look back for.

[NefGP]

Well that's just it, the game has become too materialistic.

When did it all become purely about the gear, rather than enjoying the actual game? Yeah the gear is usually what drives people to try stuff initially and what we want out of it, but I feel like too much emphasis is being placed on the shinies at the end rather than simply enjoying the experience. And that's only made worse when you finally do get that shiny, and then you have no reason to do it anymore and are stuck waiting for next event to come out. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately leaves content with little to no meaning.

It also means there's never any real difficulty or challenge anymore, it's simply about gearing yourself properly. CoP was great for that, because while the battles were rough, they weren't impossible - they merely required people to prepare for them and learn the mechanics of each fight. In general, if you played smart in XI, you did well. ARR so far has largely just been 'make sure you have the best gear and avoid the big red circles as you mindlessly spam the same 3 buttons over and over.'


You don't have to really concern yourselves with things like elemental weaknesses, making sure buffs are dispelled and the right enfeeblements are on the boss, no pre-emtpive magic like barspsells etc.. a lot of the depth of strategy has been axed and it's sad because XI's combat system was very basic.

[synaesthetic]

What.

I played FFXI for four and a half years. The battles did not require that you be smart. They required that you be geared and have friends. FFXI enemies were virtually mechanic-less until you got up to the stronger NMs at the level cap. By that virtue, even the weakest bosses in FFXIV are more challenging than FFXI enemies, which are not difficult to defeat if you meet the conditions for defeating them.

Additionally, about the gear thing--try adding tough endgame content that doesn't actually reward players with anything. Watch how fast this forum goes nuclear.

[Nysneirdre]

They copied the standard MMO clone game. Same UI, clickable skills, fast leveling to cap, then you start your gear gating grind. It's the same crap with every single MMO. The only thing different here is the armory system. Hopefully when EQ Next comes out it will be different. These games are all built to last about three months before people burn out.

I could type out a massive post but what's the point. It's all been said before already.

[synaesthetic]

They copied the standard MMO clone game. Same UI, clickable skills, fast leveling to cap, then you start your gear gating grind. It's the same crap with every single MMO. The only thing different here is the armory system. Hopefully when EQ Next comes out it will be different. These games are all built to last about three months before people burn out.

I could type out a massive post but what's the point. It's all been said before already.

It's much more preferable to games where you can't do anything alone, you have to schedule everything, leveling takes literal years and the bulk of the content are tank-and-spank giant eff-off dragons that require 120 people to kill.

The funny thing is ya'll tryhards want FFXI Redux rather than A Realm Reborn, and if you actually got what you want, the vast majority of this game's players would quit and go play RIFT or something. Then the game would shut down and you'd be SOL.

[Aegis]

The funny thing is ya'll tryhards want FFXI Redux rather than A Realm Reborn, and if you actually got what you want, the vast majority of this game's players would quit and go play RIFT or something. Then the game would shut down and you'd be SOL.

To be fair, the only games I have seen that use that model have lasted for years and years. We see lots of this style of game go out of business or go F2P all the time.

It's much more preferable to games where you can't do anything alone, you have to schedule everything, leveling takes literal years and the bulk of the content are tank-and-spank giant eff-off dragons that require 120 people to kill.

I find those games preferable to games where you queue with strangers for everything, levelling takes days and the bulk of the content is twitch and maintain rotation that is outdated in 3 months.

The giant tank and spank mobs in XI were limited to 18 man parties. Higher-participant content was mostly add management, not tank and spank.

[Ketra]

FFXIV AAR feels like a massive lobby(uldah) (waiting for queue) with a lot of rooms(aka Duty Finder). It doesn't feel like an MMO where exploring and adventuring is concerned.

A lot of players like to say that
"SE is updating with more content. Just be more patient"
"This is a game for casuals. Hardcore players should stay away."

What I feel is this world is massive but it doesn't make players want to explore. I forgotten how it felt when I had to travel with my friends on a journey to the next town. Learning which way is safer. Along the way we find amazing sceneries and death threatening monsters.

"Adventures in Eorzea" doesn't fit FFXIV. "Park and Queue in Eorzea" makes more sense to me right now.

All this isn't about how FFXIV is made for casuals and whether there is not enough content in the game. It's how SE decided on how FFXIV is to be.

I don't feel connected to this FFXIV and the world. I am just grinding raids weekly and doing dailies.