Old FFXI minds vs New Generation ideas

[bsphil]

There are too many people that played ONLY FFXI or ONLY WoW in their MMORPG career. I might be a little extreme in saying this, but I doubt any of them can really have a balanced idea on what a modern MMORPG needs to succeed and be really enjoyable.

Luckily Yoshida's favourite MMORPG is DAOC... that alone gives me quite a bit of hope for the future.

I played FFXI for years and also attempted to play WoW, Aion, and AoC during that time. None of them were remotely as interesting to me as FFXI was when I started it, and as a result I didn't play any of them for more than a month each.

[MaxWinter]

I played ff11 a long time but i would not mind to see radical changes to the way ff14 plays and presents itsself as a online final fantasy.
For some reason i keep thinking of final fantasy 9 and how alive that game felt compared to 14 which is atm not quiet there.

[Heartfire]

I've played FFXI for several years, and I also played WoW for more than I'd like to admit. I agree that I don't want the game to be a part-2 of FFXI, but you would think that they would have learned what worked and what didn't.

I understand that they want to be completely new, and unique. But the wheel is round for a reason. If people stopped complaining that adding a feature or two that previous MMO's had would "make it a clone," then we might get somewhere.

[Abriael]

I understand that they want to be completely new, and unique. But the wheel is round for a reason.

Ah, the usual saying "the wheel is round for a reason".
The flaw in it is that MMORPGs are on a completely different level of complexity than a wheel. The more complex something, the more viable ways there are to work with it. There's still plenty room for innovation in the genre. The problem is to appease to an audience used to a stifling, stagnant market, and carefully educated to be refractary to innovation.

[kukurumei]

Ah, the usual saying "the wheel is round for a reason".
The flaw in it is that MMORPGs are on a completely different level of complexity than a wheel. The more complex something, the more viable ways there are to work with it. There's still plenty room for innovation in the genre. The problem is to appease to an audience used to a stifling, stagnant market, and carefully educated to be refractary to innovation.

For any innovation there are decades of failures. Less romanticizing, this is reality. You may think those ideas are great, but once they are put into the practical world, you'll realize they are stupid and full of consequences. Hey look FF14.

What are they an ice-cream company that releases a new flavor every month?

[Gath]

For any innovation there are decades of failures. Less romanticizing, this is reality. You may think those ideas are great, but once they are put into the practical world, you'll realize they are stupid and full of consequences. Hey look FF14.

What are they an ice-cream company that releases a new flavor every month?

People seem to think that a new "flavor" should come out every month, no matter how dried out the ideas for it is.

[Abriael]

For any innovation there are decades of failures. Less romanticizing, this is reality. You may think those ideas are great, but once they are put into the practical world, you'll realize they are stupid and full of consequences. Hey look FF14.

I look at Final Fantasy XIV and I see a lot of innovative ideas that work really well, or that have the potential to work really well (the armory system for instance), faulted by people that lack logic and insight in place of other, and unrelated areas of the implementation (lack of challenging content, lack of general content, lack of polish, lack of proper balancing and so forth).

And given that the MMORPG market has been, in the last 5-6 years, so stagnant that the level of boredom has reached the indescribable, I'm very eager to see those innovative features polished and refined, freed from the chains of the other problems of the game.

If I wanted just another WoW/FFXI/Everquest/Whatever clone, I'd play WoW/FFXI/Everquest/Whatever. They're all freely available in the market, and the ones that are so foaming at the mouth to play a game like that can easily go play it. I'm sure there's room in the market for ONE game like this one, and I don't see why the ones that enjoy it should be deprieved of the possibility.

[gifthorse]

For any innovation there are decades of failures. Less romanticizing, this is reality. You may think those ideas are great, but once they are put into the practical world, you'll realize they are stupid and full of consequences. Hey look FF14.

What are they an ice-cream company that releases a new flavor every month?

People said you could never have action-oriented combat in an MMO because of latency. See TERA, Darkfall, Blade & Soul.

People said you could never plant your own trees and crops anywhere you liked nor change the environment. See Archeage Online.

If those companies didn't dare to be innovative or adventurous, we would just have the same old thing over and over. You might say they risk failure by trying to be innovative, but they also lose everything by not doing so. Nobody wants to play this same old Everquest treadmill crap anymore.

We don't want a square wheel instead of a round one, we want a freaking hover craft.

[JakeRoon]

I concur as well, you managed to sum up my sentiments exactly.

I wonder if you two (Rowyne and IrishFae) would be willing to discuss this further on our podcast this week? We'd love your input?

[Zouga]

I played FFXI for around 4 years and LOTRO for a few years after that. Tried WOW, hated it, played GW for awhile but thats not a real mmo really. FFXI will always be my favourite game in terms of social structure, battle strategy, economy and possibly even questing. I loved how in FFXI you quested to get subjob, chocobo, airship, advanced job, armor etc... at least the first time round. Quests that played a major role in developing your character and adding heaps to the social experience as most of the time you needed help. As a SAM in FFXI I wish they had used the skillchain system in FFXIV.

Variety of environments was great in FFXI to, but LOTRO beats any game I've played hands down for most seemless, stunning environments. I find FFXIV repeditive and boring, theres no destinations outside of cities and camps. If you go sightseeing, once you've seen one fraction of those huge areas you've seen it all. The environments ingame should be characters in their own right! Turbine really created Middle Earth in LOTRO, great job. FFXI (and all FF preceeding) has environments that drag you deeper into the games storyline/atomosphere. I don't get that with FFXIV.

All that aside, Armory system is great, crafting is cool, base storyline seems to be very FF although not enough content. I do enjoy playing FFXIV its just disappointing when I do, not because I wanted FFXI-2, I just expected it to blow my mind thats all lol (not a big ask from Square as every FF I've played to date has). FFXI is more "next gen" than FFXIV if you take away the graphics.