Fix your game

[Ecosmith]

My apologies, I don't wish to cone across as complaining about stuff all the time unjustifiably. I'll try to be more positive about stuff I like in my remaining 3 weeks.

The weather is great, for example. Really good weather in this game. Rain, sun, even fog, I've seen. Haven't noticed any wind, but that's quite hard to do in a game I guess. But the weather and day/night cucles in FF14 are v cool. The night sky is especially gorgeous.

[Gnova]

Fixed that for you.

- Quests are just disguised grinding, turning a MMO to a single player RPG with a chat client. 99% of the time I would choose to group up and kill mobs in a XP camp over doing endless side quests. Unfortunately this has been removed from the equation by giving too much xp for completing quests compared to killing mobs and removing group/heroic mobs out of open world content.
- Running instanced dungeons for XP is no different than old school XP group camping except the entire group moves for ten seconds between fights instead of only the puller travelling between fights.
- The whole devs are lazy/creatively empty arguement is as false as ever. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of devs work in MMO development and have been looking for a solution to leveling and player retention for over a decade. Even single player RPGs use the same mechanics and they are not tethered with creating game balance and player retention.

[Gnova]

My apologies, I don't wish to cone across as complaining about stuff all the time unjustifiably. I'll try to be more positive about stuff I like in my remaining 3 weeks.

Some real things you could be positive about instead of snidely complimenting the weather mechanics.
The crafting system is fantastic.
The main storyline is great.
The atmosphere in dungeons has been handled very well.
The clothing/armor designs are nice without being ridiculous.
The ability to play every class/job on one character is a nice change.
The roulette system which significantly lowers wait times for people doing lower level content has been done very well. When queueing as a tank or healer I don't think I have ever waited for more than five minutes for a dungeon pop.
The class balance seems to be pretty well done. I like that I don't cringe when one tank class joins a group over another.
There are multiple ways to earn XP (quests, dungeons, fates, leviquests).

[Ecosmith]

- Quests are just disguised grinding, turning a MMO to a single player RPG with a chat client. 99% of the time I would choose to group up and kill mobs in a XP camp over doing endless side quests. Unfortunately this has been removed from the equation by giving too much xp for completing quests compared to killing mobs and removing group/heroic mobs out of open world content.
- Running instanced dungeons for XP is no different than old school XP group camping except the entire group moves for ten seconds between fights instead of only the puller travelling between fights.
- The whole devs are lazy/creatively empty arguement is as false as ever. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of devs work in MMO development and have been looking for a solution to leveling and player retention for over a decade. Even single player RPGs use the same mechanics and they are not tethered with creating game balance and player retention.

It's very hard to design good narrative delivery in an open-world setting, never mind the immersion-breaking aspect of fozens of players queuing up to kill 'unique' mobs. I appreciate that players such as yoursrlf don't need story to enjoy the grind, but it's a shame MMOs don't cater for all types of player.

[Ecosmith]

Some real things you could be positive about instead of snidely complimenting the weather mechanics.
The crafting system is fantastic.
The main storyline is great.
The atmosphere in dungeons has been handled very well.
The clothing/armor designs are nice without being ridiculous.
The ability to play every class/job on one character is a nice change.
The roulette system which significantly lowers wait times for people doing lower level content has been done very well. When queueing as a tank or healer I don't think I have ever waited for more than five minutes for a dungeon pop.
The class balance seems to be pretty well done. I like that I don't cringe when one tank class joins a group over another.
There are multiple ways to earn XP (quests, dungeons, fates, leviquests).

I haven't yet tried crafting, I like a bit of crafting so I'm looking forward to that.
The look of the one dungeon I've seen some of was indeed very nice, there was a great bit with a water-filled cave where wecwere running about on floating lily pads. You could see down through the water, it was v cool. The opening cinematic dolly shot through the instance was also a great scene-setter (not being sarky here, the dungeon looked really nice).
The clothing and armour does look good at times, but FF14 is sadly following the WoW trend by locking look to gear. As I progressed my MarUder through the Limpopo quests, I upgraded hos gear when better gear dropped, and found myself at various times garbed in:
A pink dress.
A huge yellow woollen sou'ester.
A yellow diaper. This last one seriously boosted my defense, and dropped at lvl 13 or 14. I looked ridiculous.

I appreciate that this is the standard way MMOs (and single player rpGs) do this, but for me, its another way that control over my character is removed from me, leaving me less invested in him and by extension the game. I'm not wearing these pieces hecause I thibk they look good, I'm wearing them purely for the numbers they represent. It means that every player is basically saying 'i dont care what I look like'.

The multi-class/single character thing is fine imo. I actually like class specialisation and the 'old' way of doing it, as I'm an alt-freak, but I see the trend. The Secret World has it too, I played that for a while. I think FF14 does it much beter than TSW btw.

The duty finder is ok for fast xp, but I'd personally rather there were more and better things in the world to do, quests and instances that you could find somewherre, rather than just popping open a window. Whats the point of a world? Still, you dont have to use them, I see. But as they're there, the devs have less need to give us other stuff.

I'm afraid the main storyline has left me totally cold, partly because of the terrible cheesy accent Balderal and the other NPCs use, and partly becsuse of the truly execrable cutscenes. They're interminable, trite, and my character nodding and gurning mutely in slow reaction shots doesn't help at all. It's ironic that the tl;dr crowd has caused text delivery to be reduced to almost nothing, replaced by cutscenes shich invariably take far longer to watch than a few paragraphs of well-written prose.

And my comment about the weather was genuine. The weather and the night sky especially are very cool. I havent seen any weather of note before in an MmO. FF14 generally looks very pretty indeed in terms of its world, architecturr, terrain and atmosphere. There's a bit too much map loading for my liking, I hate the invisible walls, and the cities are woefully laid out (no urban planning done at all obviously) to force longer running about, but its a gorgeous spectacle. Can't fault the look.

[Ihm]

It's very hard to design good narrative delivery in an open-world setting, never mind the immersion-breaking aspect of fozens of players queuing up to kill 'unique' mobs. I appreciate that players such as yoursrlf don't need story to enjoy the grind, but it's a shame MMOs don't cater for all types of player.

That's about as stupid as complaining that an RPG isn't an FPS. An MMO caters to MMO players, what were you expecting?

[Ecosmith]

That's about as stupid as complaining that an RPG isn't an FPS. An MMO caters to MMO players, what were you expecting?

I was expecting it to cater to me; an MMO player. I have no idea what you are implying, I'm afraid. This isn't Diablo, it's an MMORPG.

[Niwashi]

That's about as stupid as complaining that an RPG isn't an FPS. An MMO caters to MMO players, what were you expecting?

Most MMOs, including this one, are RPGs. They're all about the quests. Sure, there are a number of other things going on as well, but it's all centered around a story and the quests that make up or expand on that story. Of course it's going to be judged on how well it delivers the story which it exists for.

Personally, I think it does a pretty good job on that for the most part, which is the whole reason I like the game well enough to still be here. But it certainly could do better in many ways. In particular, I'd like to see a lot more quests available. The first 15 levels on your first class are by far the most fun part of the game precisely because that part you can do entirely with quests. I'd like to be able to complete the remainder of the game largely though quests as well.

In some cases, the basics of quests already exist. Leves are essentially just quests with all the fun parts taken out. I really think it would be better if they added the NPC interaction about the purpose of the leve and made them regular but repeatable quests. Guildhests could also be improved significantly by having a bit of exposition added, at least for your first run through each one, sort of the way dungeons and trials have a wrapper quest that gets you into them for the first time, guildhests could as well.

[Gnova]

Most MMOs, including this one, are RPGs. They're all about the quests. Of course it's going to be judged on how well it delivers the story which it exists for.

In some cases, the basics of quests already exist. Leves are essentially just quests with all the fun parts taken out.
.

MMOs are all about combat and character development, not quests.
Quests are I portent to some but if you don't have the dungeons/raids or a good combat system a MMO is doomed.
I'll take a game with quality dungeons and well balanced classes over quest hub Christmas trees any day.

I would argue the opposite about leviquests. They are your basic side quests with the boring parts removed. I still don't like them either.

My preferred method for leveling a character is to never leave the dungeon queue since that is the best way to get a MMO experience in this game (ie playing with other players).

[Gnova]

I was expecting it to cater to me; an MMO player. I have no idea what you are implying, I'm afraid. This isn't Diablo, it's an MMORPG.

He is saying that pretty much all of your comments about the game point you towards single player RPGs and away from MMOs.
You are complaining about standard MMO mechanics.
The masters of the story driven RPG have tried to create a MMO that is more in line with what you seem to want but it flopped (TOR). It should have been a single player game since it sucked as a MMO. Too many quests, not enough MMO to keep people subbed.