Game content is full of mistakes...much worse than FFXIV 1.23

[Lemuria]

People are very quick to admonish 1.0 because it failed, but people rarely address the actual reasons behind WHY it failed. A lot of the features in the old version were frankly superior to what we ended up with in ARR but were removed to simplify the gameplay experience. The OP isn't wrong when he says that a lot of the complexity from the original has been lost. Classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

That's not to say 1.0 was a great game, not by a long shot. It was plagued by UI issues, great expanses of nothing-much-to-do and more lag than you can shake a modem at. There were however several things it did right, and did well.

Mobs weren't just annoying distractions, they were genuine threats on the field. I can't even remember the last time I died to an enemy outside of a dungeon or Fate in ARR, but it used to happen a whole lot more back then.

Remember elements? Fire, ice and so forth? They used to mean something too! Now it's just "spam fire, cast blizzard to regen, spam fire...". And what about the other skills in our arsenal?

Hit mob for X potency damage is all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day, there's very little to distinguish one DPS from another, just a handful of throwaway unique skills which aren't even that special in most instances.

I have a dream that one day tactics will make a comeback to Final Fantasy (see what I did there?). A day where black mages will have a suite of spells to deal with elemental resistances, instead of spamming the same two elements over and over. A day where people will say, "We really need a <insert job>" because of some unique trait which distinguishes them from the crowd, not just mere job roles.

It may be a lofty dream, but I don't think its impossible with the system we currently have. It just needs some tweaks in a positive direction.

[Duelle]

People are very quick to admonish 1.0 because it failed, but people rarely address the actual reasons behind WHY it failed. A lot of the features in the old version were frankly superior to what we ended up with in ARR but were removed to simplify the gameplay experience. The OP isn't wrong when he says that a lot of the complexity from the original has been lost. Classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

1.0 suffered from an unrefined battle system. I'll still posit that if you ever want to see what 1.0's battle system could have been, all you have to do is look at The Secret World.

As far as 1.23, it wasn't a massive improvement. Nevermind the fact that anything after 1.18 was basically hold-over content. Stuff that we were repeatedly told was to keep people busy and grinding away while they remade the game. Some made the mistake of developing attachment to hold-over content, which is no different from deciding the redshirt of the day is your favorite character - a waste of emotion if nothing else.

Mobs weren't just annoying distractions, they were genuine threats on the field. I can't even remember the last time I died to an enemy outside of a dungeon or Fate in ARR, but it used to happen a whole lot more back then.

You mean when there were lv90 mobs in places meant to keep people from exploring too far out and thus prevent their discovering how incomplete FFXIV was at the time? That's not a positive to the game's design, unless you enjoy watching your character get killed for some reason.

Remember elements? Fire, ice and so forth? They used to mean something too! Now it's just "spam fire, cast blizzard to regen, spam fire...". And what about the other skills in our arsenal?

Sure, let's make black mages useless in anything that is attuned to fire. You know, their combat model's prime element for dealing damage. And I'm sure letting Thundercloud procs go to waste because using them on Ramuh deal 0 damage/heal him would go over very well.

Hit mob for X potency damage is all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day, there's very little to distinguish one DPS from another, just a handful of throwaway unique skills which aren't even that special in most instances.

And thus "let's be different for the sake of being different" makes its appearance. The idea is that DPS classes be comparable to one another to try to prevent groups and raids stacking a specific class. Excluding people and specific classes from content is a major no-no in modern design. We saw people exclude all sorts of jobs in FFXI. We saw WARs get excluded from tanking stuff past HM Garuda when the game launched. Why would we want to implement conditions that would allow similar examples of stupidity to happen?

[Fendred]

Duelle, the black mage wouldn't be designed around rotations if the developers were going for elemental resistances. The black mage would have several different kinds of elemental spells to use in place of fire when fighting something that is resistant or immune to it.

[Sapphic]

Duelle, the black mage wouldn't be designed around rotations if the developers were going for elemental resistances. The black mage would have several different kinds of elemental spells to use in place of fire when fighting something that is resistant or immune to it.

You don't see the pointlessness in that?

Instead of using one button to attack (fire) you just spam practically the same thing that is ice or lightning. Just pointless extra abilities that are fight specific. Fire bolt, ice bolt, lightning bolt. Same potency. What is the point? There would be no "complexity" at all. It would be more limiting if you could only use 1 elemental type on certain fights and not your full arsenal.

[Tupsi]

You don't see the pointlessness in that?

Instead of using one button to attack (fire) you just spam practically the same thing that is ice or lightning. Just pointless extra abilities that are fight specific. Fire bolt, ice bolt, lightning bolt. Same potency. What is the point? There would be no "complexity" at all. It would be more limiting if you could only use 1 elemental type on certain fights and not your full arsenal.

Think back to every RPG that has a caster with multiple spells.

Then think about the situations in which you'd shift around your spells rather than having only 2 truly useful elements while the 3rd is a simple DoT element. All it truly does is open up having more spells to choose from rather than just spamming Fire on Ifrit for example (which by all rights should heal him lol.)

[Duelle]

You don't see the pointlessness in that?

Instead of using one button to attack (fire) you just spam practically the same thing that is ice or lightning. Just pointless extra abilities that are fight specific. Fire bolt, ice bolt, lightning bolt. Same potency. What is the point? There would be no "complexity" at all. It would be more limiting if you could only use 1 elemental type on certain fights and not your full arsenal.

Yay, someone finally gets it.

Back when they were discussing changes to spells before the ability revamp, I figured they would use a ramp up mechanic but for each element. Looking back I realize how cluttered that would have made the ability bars. A concession had to be made for the sake of mechanics, and in a way it's impressive that they managed to give all elements a role within BLM's combat model over making one usable and others rubbish depending on the fight.

Think back to every RPG that has a caster with multiple spells.

Think back to all the cluttered spell lists. Think back to the fact some RPG concepts don't transition well into an MMORPG.

[Felis]

i like it how people mention only the good things about 1.23 and ignore all the bad things it had. The bad things that were unrepairable.

I'd like to point out on 1.0's release week, people ran out in to the fields first day and were absolutely slaughtered left and right by dodos of all things, so much trial and error and you didn't know something was too strong for you until you were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor.

That was because people couldn't see the level of the enemy. Only a color-code that was not even accurade.
Remove the enemy level display in the UI, put some lv 20 enemies into a level 10 area and you would have the same difficulty without changing anything else.

[Tupsi]

i like it how people mention only the good things about 1.23 and ignore all the bad things it had. The bad things that were unrepairable.

Kind of like how the people (most that likely never even played beyond 1.0) only mention the bad but none of the good, some of which were thrown out for no reason other than to mimic WoW (Yoshida's own words.)

[Skivvy]

i like it how people mention only the good things about 1.23 and ignore all the bad things it had. The bad things that were unrepairable.

Of course they're going to mention the good in this type of a thread. I swear, people just can't think clearly when XI or XIV 1.0 - 1.23 are mentioned. They're not saying that want a clone of the games, but rather to try and implement some of the things that DID work for said games. The overworld in XIV is laughable - I think adding some difficulty from the past could only improve XIV.

[Lynneth]

Yeah, I remember when there was a goobbue outside limsa that had the symbol for moderately difficult, or w/e it was, and we had a party of 15 and tried to kill it, and it 1 shot everyone...