Rant,Rambling and Drivel: Is it Fun Yet?!

[TheUltimate3]

in other words you just want a super casual game where they give you the best gear like candy. oh well

That isn't exactly a counterargument...

[Tupsi]

(And I I completed my first relic yesterday, and I feel quite pleased with myself. Is that not a sense of accomplishment?)

Sure, I did a few relics back to back recently... when before Relics were an actual achievement and long time goal and were actually worth more than just being a higher stat weapon, which mind you, has artificial barriers to fully upgrade (myth cap) for now. You know what else sucked?

Having my Relic Weapon go from this:



to this:



Basically taking out the point of doing the relic in the first place. Now, if they weren't required to get into Coil (activate it in general) and SE actually allowed you to craft alternative weapons or boosted (and readded) the Skirmish Weapons alongside the Titan weapon, you really would have no reason to get it unless you got the +1(Zenith), and even more so you can completely by pass it with the Primal Ex weapons in concept.

[TheUltimate3]

-snip-

I...I'm not sure I'm following. I assume the first image was from 1.0 and the second is from 2.0? If so, while I'm sure your sense of accomplishment was diminished (as you said), I felt very proud of myself for getting my first. My goal when I started was to have the entire white mage set and as of yesterday, that goal was completed. And I am happy. I feel I accomplished something. Maybe you don't, and maybe my goals are low (which I'm sure you are thinking) but I felt like I accomplished something.

Sooo /shrug different people feel they accomplish different things?

[Tupsi]

-snip-

It actually strengthens the argument that this game basically hands things out to you, which is why anything can be an accomplishment by definition, but this game is just so...basic that it doesn't really feel like an MMORPG. Different strokes/folks and all that, but the first image is from 1.23, the version everyone thought they were getting with 2.0 only better but instead it everything was just..thrown out essentially.

I don't personally feel my accomplishment was cheapened, as it's just a video game - however it just feels odd that what used to actual goals are no more than a higher stat weapon when if you look at any other FF game (including XI), weren't ultimate and relic weapons usually obtained after a long series of (Usually) challenging quests or sometimes tough side bosses? In ARR the only difficult part of relic is the people you play with.

So when someone brings up the relics in this game or a counter to 'challenge' and whatnot, this version really did tone down almost everything to the point even the F2P MMOs from Korea sports more challenge and long term goals...and even better itemization.

[Deviant1]

in other words you just want a super casual game where they give you the best gear like candy. oh well

Funniest thing is that you started the rant on what is Fun & now are hardcore vs casual.
Hardcore isn't about spending hours playing the game to prepare to play the game. Also no where in my comments did I say that I should have BiS just handed to me.

I am just not the type who thinks that farming trash for 50g a pop to fill the wallets of others is fun. Not even to mention the fact that anything I would want I can either make myself or have a fc member make.

I don't think that forcing 10min to get anywhere is fun either.
When new zones are opened, I will go running through them to see what is there. After that its meh.

SE cannot make this game fun, they can only inhibit it. The people who are in my fc, friends list or even occasional df pt make it fun. Your suggestions just make the game 'work' & I do that enough hours of the week, thanks.

[LineageRazor]

Again, I must reference XI. Look at the amount of depth in the lore there. And yes, a lot of it was available at launch.

While I don't mean to defend the storyline for FFXIV (it's a bit wretched), FFXI had FAR less at launch than FFXIV did. The main scenario ended with the defeat of the Shadowlord (and it took a couple updates before that content was even released), the entirety of the world consisted of four cities, about a dozen overworld zones, several dungeons, and a bunch of quests, only a few of which provided any lore and were mostly fetch quests or talk-to-the-npc.

To be sure, the zones and dungeons were in general larger than the areas we have in FFXIV, but they were also more boring, both in appearance and in the fact that traversing them took so long.

Don't take this to mean that I don't like FFXI - I loved it, and still play it fairly regularly alongside FFXIV - but FFXI had more content at launch than FFXIV? Absolutely not. It had less, but folks were far less likely to complete everything because it took so much longer to DO anything.

I just wish FFXIV's storyline was as interesting as the Shadowlord storyline was. The cliches in FFXIV run fast and furious, and I don't think there was a Garlean NPC who I coudln't tell exactly what they were going to do long before they did it. ;_; The primals are kind of cool, though; I enjoy how each seems to have different motivations while still resorting to brainwashing and enslaving their patron races to do it: Ifrit wants conquest and to be worshiped, Ramuh and Titan both want to protect their people, and Garuda's just flat-out insane. Yeah, the Beastmen are far more interesting than the evil empire.

[Trancery]

OP, I agree with everything you said. Thanks for laying out a well-written argument for why this game is just one lobby connected by LAN.

I find it extremely hard to log into this game but for some reason I'm still paying. I guess I enjoy drinking and doing dungeons and socializing more than anything so this still provides some of that fun.

Starting to care less and less though, and the next patch looks to be nail in the coffin for me.

[SpookyGhost]

in other words you just want a super casual game where they give you the best gear like candy. oh well

Something a lot of people should have realized coming into ARR (whether from 1.23 or fresh), and has even been stated multiple times, is that FF14: ARR is WoW for Japanese people. Japan never got to experience a WoW-style casual MMO, especially not a Final Fantasy one, that's why the design of the entire game shifted toward making it way more casual friendly than the previous incarnation. That's the reason that vertical progression exists in it and that it's SO incredibly linear. If they ever decide to add any traits to gear or make any actual horizontal progression gear, then I'll be surprised. If this isn't what you want out of ARR, then you should honestly unsub - because if there's one thing SE has shown time and time again it's that they will stick to their guns as long as the sub count stays above what they expect. Yoshida came on to fix that problem and, at first, he had the idea of simply improving the game - however that quickly devolved into reshaping the whole thing and turning it into what we have now. No matter how many times you suggest to make things more difficult, more diverse, more hard to find/afford gear you won't get any of it. An easy example of this is Housing - it goes COMPLETELY against the casual philosophy and EVERYONE freaked out over it. That's the majority of the playerbase, that's the game this is.

[Zezlar]

I wasn't throwing out is argument. I was asking for suggestions. I didn't see any suggestions in his rant. It was just a rant. Suggestions are nice.

(And I I completed my first relic yesterday, and I feel quite pleased with myself. Is that not a sense of accomplishment?)

It may be to someone who is newer, but the people in 1.0 realize how laughable the "relic quest" is now. Yoshi-P said it would be more enjoyable, and just like most of his statements these days it was a lie.

[Musashidon]

It may be to someone who is newer, but the people in 1.0 realize how laughable the "relic quest" is now. Yoshi-P said it would be more enjoyable, and just like most of his statements these days it was a lie.

that is opinionated. i found it quite enjoyable and from what i heard about 1.0 (cause i never played it) i would have hated that time sink.

in the end the argument is over which time sink is better a time sink that is limited so you have to play for so long to get the stuff even if it's not that long every week or a time sink where you have unlimited chances to do it but with a low drop rate and other things it just takes a long time.

either way it's still easy just people prefer one over the other, but it doesn't make either easier or harder then the other.