Thread: Oldschool = (Do It Yourself + Timesink)

Full disclosure: I played FFXI for seven years or so, starting in 2004. I love FFXIV, but for different reasons than I loved FFXI.

When I started playing FFXI, I was completely taken in by its graphics, its community, and even its timesinks. It taught me the ferry arrives in 15 minutes, you need to have food to go levelling, and be careful ninjaing past Valkurm Dunes goblins. I took it all without questioning it, because this was my world and I wanted to go on adventures in it. And when it came time to do Divine Might, I /shouted and rallied my friends until we were herding 18 cats, which to me was the bigger challenge than the actual boss fight itself.

I'm glad that I have those memories, and I think the world needs more sandbox (or sandbox-ish) games. FFXI and EVE Online are "niche" titles, but with surprisingly loyal players. And if FFXI's slowly shrinking while EVE's slowly growing, it's partly because FFXI's based on 10-year-old tech and went neglected for years.

I'm not sure it's possible to build into a game, by design, the kinds of emergent gameplay those two have to offer. I don't think you can queue up in the Duty Finder, for the kind of unforgettable experience that was my friends and me beating FFXI's Ultima with 10 seconds left on the timer. I don't think scripted, themepark games should replace sandbox ones, and I think it's sad that 1.0's fans and SWG's fans lost theirs (multiple times, in the case of SWG).

But I also think they're unfairly romanticized. And I think sandbox fans like me tend to gloss over their faults, and give other people the sense that we think we are better than "casual" gamers, which are really just "anyone not as invested in ___ game than I am."

I think we should stop doing that.

For every one who has glowing memories, there are a lot more who remember a bewildering and frustrating game. For every one who remembers discovering how to beat a tough boss fight, there are a hundred who looked it up on FFXIclopedia (or Erecia's guide, remember that?). Sometimes you want to do it yourself, but you want to be told how to do it. And sometimes, you just wish the darned ferry would get here already.

For every day I spent having awesome adventures, I probably spent ten getting my head handed to me in Valkurm, or running around doing tedious crap and waiting for JP midnight. We don't remember this stuff as well, but they're all that the people who quit remember, which is why FFXI and EVE both have so many haters. Not because the "casual" gamers weren't "hardcore" enough to "learn to play," but because the games disrespected their time and money investments, and failed to fulfill the promise of being an awesome Final Fantasy / Internet Spaceships adventure.

Who made that promise, and how they made it, we could probably argue about. But FFXI and EVE are simply not like the games next to them on the shelves, and someone who bought FFXI thinking it'd be like FFX would be in for a rude shock.

(Just got my FFX/X-2 preorder, BTW. It's gorgeous.)

FFXIV:ARR, I feel, fulfills that promise. Say what you want about it, it is a Final Fantasy game, complete with boss fight and ending sequence. It's just unique among FF games in that you can keep playing after you beat it, unlocking more jobs and teaming up to defeat superbosses, and the developers keep adding new features and storyline quests.

I think their "ideal player" is a core FF gamer, who's new to the MMO world. I think that's the person they design for. And while I sometimes miss not having stuff spelled out for me, I'm also not sure what the difference is between having to research crafting recipes and food stats on FFXIclopedia, and having the game's UI just tell me. Beyond the fact that one of those things makes me do the same work as FFXIV's devs, unpaid.

TL;DR Sandboxes are fun, but people aren't worse gamers than I am because they don't want to do unpaid dev work.

Read the post from start to finish, very good write up. Pretty much sums up my feelings on when I used ton play FFXI. I always tell people that nostalgia is a powerful drug and often tints people's glasses to view the time they cherished as perfect. Hopefully people don't come in and bash you for writing up this unbiased post.

Originally Posted by reality_check

now it's time to grow to like something new. And FFXIV has done this for me.

FFXIV style MMOs have been released constantly the past 5 or so years - People are leaving WoW (the most popular one of them all and the originator of this more "streamlined" style) not because it's a bad game but this style of MMO gets boring pretty fast.

"Growing to like" this style of MMO people already have - Now people want devs to try something different.

That type of game would not survive in today's market.

This type of MMORPG barely survives in today's market because people are tired of them, why do you think people are saying ESO and Wildstar will fail? They aren't bad games at all..they're pretty much exactly like ARR, better in some areas.

I think the one thing people not seem to fully realize is a lot of gripes about "old school" MMOs still exist today just in different forms. So no, the sandbox fans didn't 'gloss over' faults as the OP say, it's more like they tend to remember and love the good, however they tend to get the brunt of hate if they don't constantly say how bad x MMO was.

To me, all those frustrating components in ffxi, are what made it a great game. Having to wait on the fairy was fine. It gave the world a sense of realism. E.g. You knew you were waiting on it because it took 15 minutes to make a complete trip from mhaura* to selbina. So you might be waiting 15 minutes, or it might show up in 3 because it left a while ago... And then actually being on the fairy and having it get attacked by pirates was the most epic (albeit scary to a level 10) thing that happened in that game. One of my fondest memories was the first time I went to dunes and took the fairy. It got attacked by pirates and sea horror spawned and completely wrecked everyone on the ship. It landed and there was just this big pile of dead bodies at the zone out from the fairy. It sucked sure, but at the same time it was great. It was things like the fairy that made the world make sense, and you felt connected to it, like a piece of the puzzle.

Questing in FFXI was also great. Sure the UI sucked, and it could have had a better quest log (just so you remember what people said), but There were no markers on the map, there were no exclaimation points. You had no idea what quests were in the game and who gave what quests. You had to figure it out for yourself. Just talk to somebody and use it as a clue for who to talk to next.

Leveling in FFXI to me was the most fun of all. Leveling up required a party, and you could do skill chains and magic bursts to optimize exp per hour. It was so much fun. WHen the game first came out, it was fun exploring trying to find the best camps per level to exp with and the right class combinations per level to exp with. It took skill.

Imo, I didn't view anything in ffxi as a time sync except for crafting. Everything else was fun and I enjoyed doing it. Time syncs don't matter if your having a good time doing it. We all play games to have fun. To me it doesn't matter how much I get done in 4 hours, as long as I had a good time doing it.