Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
Seeing that some of those major changes to class design brought on by level cap raises made the game a lot better for me (read: I was a ret paladin), I beg to differ.
I forgot about the economic implications. Thanks for bringing that up.
I call it as I see it. And I saw a ton of "situational" gear and "macro pieces" tossed into FFXI because of the developer's fears of outdating stuff from the land kings and sky.
I fail to see the problem. Players get stronger, mobs get stronger, so you need stronger gear. The stuff that got you through kil'jaeden wouldn't have gotten you through the Lich King. It would make no sense if it did. I've done the gear grind myself, so again, I fail to see the problem.
You do realize that all that hinges on gear swapping, a mechanic that is currently not in game, and I hope with every ounce of my being does not make a return in this game, right?
Now I know you're grasping at straws. The e-peen is the same. hell, the elitism and everything attached to it are exactly the same. The only difference is that one involves higher level gear and the "getting stronger" that comes with it, while the other one is simply part of a stagnant and already-over growth cycle.

Something I'd like to toss in is that if Yoshida's team is looking to increase the level caps bi-annually, this means more likely than not the developers will release content to back up that decision on a regular basis. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

PS: Not to be harsh, but the amount of people dominated by their FFXI nostalgia is a little scary.
Blizzard to it's credit on WoW screwed up a lot but also spent a lot of resources making it what it is. Not many other companies can do that, and those that did try it end up failing badly because following blizzard doesn't mean you are blizzard.

I can't imagine how much man power talent and resources it needs to pump out that much stuff and revised that much on a seasonal basis. But then WoW has enough subscribers to keep it afloat.

One look at WoW clones tells you how many pitfalls trying to do that an do.

FF11 did a lot more on a lot less, to their credit as well, and for it's era does have a pretty amazing subscriber base.

It's knowing when to be smart, FF14 just wasn't smart enough when it was conceived.

1-2yrs is close to an old school timeline which is quite fine in terms of working out, the problem is what do you and how do you fill those 1-2yrs. Shallow content is shallow content. WoW showed us how millions of lines of quest text is easily skipped over and disregarded because it's never going to be used again.