Will this game differentiate itself from other MMOs, post-changes?

[Kirth]

It's hard to see people try to make valid arguments here for keeping the game the way it was: broken and boring. This game was beautiful, but that's all it had going for it. Now the developers are really adding new content and more refined features and you guys want to keep it shackled to poor design for the sake of being different? I'd consider myself an even-keeled kind of guy, but it's frustrating to see more and more of you work under such grand assumptions that haven't been substantiated. The game is changing for the better. I hope the dev team keeps pushing ahead with its agenda.

[PSxpert2011]

Putting to much effort into updating the game made by the original DevTeam and Tanaka, now it's a copy cat MMOut... Start charging and see how many player will switch back to just playing FFXI or maybe WoW.

I'm not even playing that much anymore... I have FFXI already, with my jobs at high level.

[zaviermhigo]

I think its funny that a lot of the people who didn't play XI, don't understand SE limitations. That's one of the only things XI was good for it made you understand why you were getting what you were getting. This game is classic SE to me. Even in XI they tried to half ass westernize stuff at times. That's what this game is and still is, a half ass westernization attempt. I do think under tanaka they had a eastern expansion planned out though. But for now we're stuck with something boring its the beginning of the game. Just like XI's first year, which is not an excuse.

[BlaiseLallaise]

As much as I hate to admit it, I don't think any amount of fixing, whether FFXI-like or WoW-like, will be enough to pull them out of the hole they got in. First impressions have a profound impact, and as we all know, they didn't have a good one. Even with a release on PS3 being like a second first impression, the initial bad taste will still be in the mouths of those who tried and hated it back in September.

As much as I would like to see FFXIV become a big player in the MMO market, I just don't think it's possible at this point.

[Riposte]

If anything, auto-attack seems to be less important now more than ever. Consider Tera and Guild Wars 2 and the general direction towards more action based combat in MMOs of the east. Manual attacking doesn't need to be spamming "1". For example they could have made single attacks more meaningful(slower/tactical) or made using a variety more important or added a combo system. But that's neither here or there. Whether going auto-attack is good or bad isn't the issue here.

[Betelgeuzah]

What they keep saying is that the foundation will be traditional, while the additional layers (like BR and positional aspects, the job/class system and character stat growth) will make it stand out.

All MMO devs say things like this, though. What makes me optimistic, though, is that they can't exactly turn the game completely around and create something exactly like any other MMO. They can try, but I doubt they could pull it off. The game still has and will have a certain unique feel to it.

What helps is that nothing is a pure rip-off (from outside the franchise at least) and in a traditional SE fashion everything that is borrowed is implemented in a way unique to this game. Yes, we have features like an exclamation mark now, but it's not a huge, yellow cartoonish one. It's the FFXIV exclamation mark. The job system won't be called 'talent tree', and even the combat, when AA is taken into account, still is something of it's own rather than an exact copy. It's all speculation at this point, but I see normal attacks still having a larger role in this game than other games where it's just little extra DoT. Their "raids" have a time limit which already create completely different, arguably superior or inferior atmosphere. Hopefully the concept of "trash mobs" is also left for other MMO's.

At the end of the day I think it comes down to content and the special quirks they will work on in the future like solo combos and positioning. plus the focus on creating a compelling world with a huge potential. Even if players only care about epic lewtz in the long run, IMO a world and a story that draws you in and make you actually care about advancing until you get hooked is just as important.

[Seikninkuru]

It is hard to argue that the game isn't in a better place now. However, I'd like to play devil's advocate since I've been thinking about this recently.

We have seen that the focus of the game has changed in order to revive it. Fixed-sized dungeons(raids) are displacing scaling guildleves as the game's main content(while guildleves being more targeted towards solo play) and more importantly the combat system is changing from stamina management for manual attacks to auto-attack(where attack speed will likely become the most important stat for melee, in time). There are also a bunch of smaller things, like trying to define class roles for party makeup and equipment. Now I personally think of all of these ideas were poorly implement(e.g. the attack system coming down to spamming 1 because of very plain encounter design/player vs monster interaction). Still FFXIV was quite unique, if also broken.

Now it seems the best strategy is to scale back FFXIV's "weirdness" in order to make it a more traditional MMO(maybe even more so than FFXI, in its earlier years). I wonder if this is a good thing, considering how many MMOs on the market look alike mechanically. It is hard argue that it isn't a better idea, since very few, if anyone, liked the older design(whether it was truly flawed and just very poorly implemented is also impossible to say). Why would anyone who isn't already playing play FFXIV if it isn't very different? It is going to have a handicap no matter how you slice it(and a poor reputation). I guess graphics comes to mind.


P.S. I bet this game could really benefit from being released on the Vita, assuming that takes off in Japan and elsewhere. That would at least get a platform-based quirk, which I believe helped FFXI a lot before and after the MMO popularity boom.

The game offers nothing worthwhile for a subscription once battle changes and progression changes go through. It's sad that the majority of the playerbase is too stupid or blind to realize it, but whatever.

I sure as hell won't pay a sub for what they're giving us.

[Betelgeuzah]

The game offers nothing worthwhile for a subscription once battle changes and progression changes go through. It's sad that the majority of the playerbase is too stupid or blind to realize it, but whatever.

I sure as hell won't pay a sub for what they're giving us.

What is "worthwhile for a subscription"? The game itself should be good enough to justify the initial cost, but longevity will determine whether it's worth paying a sub for.

Simply said, if you give a damn about the game growing in size and scope (meaning you enjoy something about the game enough to give a damn in the first place), then it's worth the sub fee until you no longer do.

As much as "gameplay" is put on a pedestal these days, it's a flawed mindset to assume it's the "end-all" objective of an MMO to have great gameplay. People are rarely satisfied with just the "gamey" aspect of games, and this holds true for MMO's especially. Bayonetta didn't sell much even though it's gameplay is considered top-notch (few million I think? Still.) And let's not even mention Vanquish. On the other hand "games" like FlOwer and Journey are praised although they're not games at all really.

It's especially true considering MMO's don't offer much of a good gameplay until you hit the level cap. Something has to make you want to get there, and the 50-80 level "tutorial" gameplay catering to the lowest common dominator is hardly enough. Not to mention it's telling that mobs outside boss battle are called "trash", and people always talk about the bosses when they praise an MMO's gameplay. That's a lot of crap to go through to get to the "good gameplay".

Sadly, XIV is more or less trying to imitate that mindset. Thankfully Yoshida can't take it all the way even if he wanted to.

[Aramyth]

It doesn't need to differentiate itself from other MMOs.... It already did that and failed miserably at it. All the dev team can do is push forward and add changes that the playerbase want. They got all kinds of feedback from players during beta and when the game first launched. I'm sure that all of the changes since launch have been based off what players have been asking for.

As for the game being a WoW-clone, aren't most MMOs? Also what are you referring to? The UI? Instances? Raids? EXP from Quests?

I don't see a problem with wanting to implement a UI that WORKS and players LIKE, compared to WoW wanna-be, but wanna be a unique snowflake POS UI we have now. If people want some EXP from doing quests, is it really that bad?

Get out of the old FFXI mentality of doing a whole lot of working for little reward. Even FFXI itself is/was moving away from that. But I agree having items (like relics) that are hard to obtain or missions that are hard to get through (CoP post nerf), but not everything has to be hard and give the player nothing for their work.

I don't think this game will ever recover from its miserable launch though. The image of FFXIV is too tainted. As an example it'll be about a year before we get (watered down) Chocobos; something that should of been in the game at launch. Not to mention the game was released for PC but the controls catered to using a controller and the mouse/keyboard controls were clunky and laggy, which are also still not fixed in about a years time.

So whocares if FFXIV is DIFFERENT. It's about getting the people who playing now to start a subscription when the time comes, this game will hardly seen an increase of players anytime soon, even with a PS3 release.