This game seriously needs direction.

[Ashthra]

I decided to point out the obvious.

By the time I hit 25 in FFXI, I had survived the Buburimu deathrun, survived the Jeuno deathrun, got a chocobo license, got an airship pass to a far off realm, got a subjob, and got myself to Rank 3 with Sandy. By the time I hit 25 in WoW, I'd survived the Menethil deathrun, got Cat Form, survived the Bear and retarded Aquatic Form quests, and endured my first ganking in Raven Hill Cementary. By the time I hit 25 in Aion, I'd gotten my wings, gotten my first stigma, finished all the campaign quests in Altgard, and got my license to enter the Abyss. By the time I hit 25 in Rift, I'd purchased a mount, unlocked all of my extra souls for the Warrior class, completed major storyline questchains in two zones, and fended off a dozen invasions from all angles.

So I'm closing in on 25 in FFXIV, and I'm still in Thanalan, doing leves, because finding good grinding spots feels like I'm playing darts while blindfolded. I'm almost 25, I've opened up and fiddled with every class, I've done a few of these important quests in LL, but I'm still wandering around one of the four entirely too large zones looking for things to kill (that are 7-9 levels above me, because they actually offer decent exp). I'm wandering around because what else am I supposed to do when I finish all my leves? Play on an alt? Grind some DoH/DoL classes for a bit? That's neat and all, and I do enjoy that a great deal, but I'm not feeling a sense of progression during any of this. This isn't even sandbox type gameplay -- there's no sand in the box; it's just an IOU with a promise of sand some time later.

The zones are so large that nearly all of its real estate is wasted (and their size makes the copypasta aspects of it very, very blatant). Camps could be great quest/group hubs, but they're not, because you can't get leves there, and behests are mindless zergfests. Mob level spikes are the strangest of all, for me -- Mor Dhona has a section teeming with level 30-33s that would be perfect for grinding on, but to get there, I'd have to brave areas with aggressive 40-70s [i](via Coerthas), or aggressive 50-55s in narrow corridors that make sneaking past nearly impossible (Black Shroud). "That means it's a high level only area!" Of course, but the same strange phenomena happens in all the other zones -- all four of them.

I'm not asking for an on-rails themepark wonderland, but FFXIV lacks pretty much anything in the way of definition. I'm still leveling my little Miqo'te because I'm still largely enjoying the act of leveling, but it really feels like I'm on a treadmill. The carrot on the stick mentality may not be the best thing the MMO genre has going for it, but FFXIV has no carrot to speak of. Here's hoping Yoshi-P and co can bioengineer one before long. XD

/QQ

[Physic]

game needs content and progression oriented play, story wouldnt hurt either. the game as it stands is just about leveling, that it. just level.

the main story is ok, but fairly short, not to involved and requires little to no effort to complete usually. its also more like you are watching some one elses adventure. and its not even finished.

battle whatever, the game has needed content from day 1, and they havent said much about adding real content/progression.

[allenshu]

game needs content and progression oriented play, story wouldnt hurt either. the game as it stands is just about leveling, that it. just level.

the main story is ok, but fairly short, not to involved and requires little to no effort to complete usually. its also more like you are watching some one elses adventure. and its not even finished.

battle whatever, the game has needed content from day 1, and they havent said much about adding real content/progression.

New stories, enemies, items, and maps, are the solid contents which require "real" cost and energy to develop/finish.

So before SE can finish those what they should have done in the beginning, they sent a new face to be friend with players in order to buy more time (because now we are "friends"), and told players what should be fixed first in a very interesting way - votes. Using a question-oriented survey, SE made most players believed there are something else should be fixed first before players can really understand what they were playing.

Thus, something ridiculous happened one by one in the days we suppose to see real game contents: change SP gain calculation in a very unconsidered way, adjust enemy size, add needless targeting systems, put aggro icons on top of enemy's name, add some 3D font effects to appear here and there, adjust party size, make some icons bigger, etc. These so-called "improvement" in these days with all the patches have one common thing - cheap. Most of them are simply change some parameters in the game program.

The best part is, now SE already made most players believe battle system is one big problem and needed to be fixed. Based on the recent information, they are not fixing, they just replace with something old.

It's simply like, say you bought one new car with unique technology and equipments, but you don't know how to control it and there are indeed some function not working well. You went to your car dealer talked about this, then he asked you back what you wanted for a car with a list of questions. You checked those you already knew and told the dealer what you know about a car based on your past driving experiences. Then the dealer said, "Good! We will made your car just like that!" In the end, you drove an old 2-hand car home happily and still so thankful that you made a good friend.

[Gramul]

SE made most players believed there are something else should be fixed first before players can really understand what they were playing.

Okay.
1. Please work on your English grammar.
2. Having to work on larger parts of a project before you can move on to spesific details within a project is a basic law of design. The smaller stuff that they released (enemy size, effects, quests, targeting system) are things to hold us off whilst they work on the biggest areas that need changing and the areas that take the most time to plan out and reconstruct.

We're not driving home with anything because the car isn't finished yet.

[allenshu]

Okay.
1. Please work on your English grammar.

Thank you for your reminder and patience for reading. I'm not a native speaker, and I wrote this while watching a movie Will pay more attention next time =)

[Gramul]

Thank you for your reminder and patience for reading. I'm not a native speaker, and I wrote this while watching a movie Will pay more attention next time =)

Thank you. I appreciate that you have taken the time and effort to learn our language and that you are working to improve your skills as an English communicator.

[Cendres]

When I first started to read your post my impression was : "Oh boy here we go again.."

But as I kept reading you've illustrated why I am sad, so let's QQ together.

[Kailok]

I believe your worries have already been stated, and answered, here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Zone-Long-OP

You can find the link to the answer from the dev in the OP.

[giftforce]

You are pointing out the obvious in the OP, but even that goes over the heads of some people around
here, and perhaps over the devs too.

[Gramul]

I'm not feeling a sense of progression during any of this. This isn't even sandbox type gameplay -- there's no sand in the box; it's just an IOU with a promise of sand some time later.

The zones are so large that nearly all of its real estate is wasted (and their size makes the copypasta aspects of it very, very blatant). Camps could be great quest/group hubs, but they're not, because you can't get leves there, and behests are mindless zergfests.

I cannot agree with you more on these points. The sandbox allegory is especially poignant.

It feels like they where expecting us to make our own fun and adventures in favor of developer crafted progression by providing tools and settings, but they really did not give us much to work with.
Hopefully that will change in the coming updates and we can have things that give us that feeling of progression that's missing.