Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Estevo]

And honestly nothing you mentioned will be implemented. The world belongs to people, and people in this case is a casual crowd. Those that doesn't really likes being locked out of some zones, run half an hour to a point (nobody but rare minority actually likes this) or having 20 sets for each class where only math guru really can understand what is better and when.
The game kept simple to be more accessible for everyone. And for hardcore there are things like coil, ex and now "professional" hunting.

People en masse likes concepts that wow popularized, like easy travelling, full access to zones, straightforward and easily understandable stat mechanics.

Man... I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like most of your post was unnecessary and rude.

I don't recall Yoshida ever saying this game was made for casuals, ever, and I've spent more than enough time looking at interviews and producer letters. What he did say was that he wanted to cater to both the casuals and the hardcore, oh and also that he was and still is a hardcore mmorpg player himself, so of course he doesn't want ARR to just be a casual game. He also said that he intentionally created the combat and content to be simple in the game, and how I interpret he meant this is that if you start out with a solid foundation then it will be easier to build off of it in any direction, and in that sense the game is full of potential!

With the solid combat system, it's possible to go in any direction with it, whether it be more strategy or action. It may be basic now, but I'd say it has great potential, and that's how you could sum up most of what's in the game right now. Of course there are certain systems that need to change or could be tweaked, but that's another story.

[Zantetsuken]

FF11 combat have nothing to do with quality. It's just boring oldschool, very outdated, design. FF14 combat on other hand are quite tactical and technical,

ARR's combat may be technical, but it is anything but tactical. ARR battles are nothing more than: Perform pre-scripted skill rotation + avoid pre-scripted boss gimmicks.

People en masse likes concepts that wow popularized, like easy travelling, full access to zones, straightforward and easily understandable stat mechanics.

People en masse like Dark Souls as well, which has virtually none of those features. Your point?

I will let my feelings about ARR out after playing in its current state of 2.3 patch. The game is lifeless, endgame is memorizing patterns, the battle system is shallow. There is nothing MMO about this game. FFXI people were running all over Jeuno and using AH. In Mhordona, people are like retainers, they sit and queue DF or PF or some instance. I feel Yoshi ruined FFXIV and it is not fair Tanaka didnt get a second chance because SE rushed FFXIV out to the public. Yoshi got 2 years to work on XIV so imagined what Tanaka can do given 2 years more time.

Being a huge MMO and FF fan, I am HUGELY disappointed in XIV's ARR direction. Copying WOW is the last thing I want to play in an MMO. MMO should be a realm to another world. It shouldnt be consisted of bunch of instances. The combat in ARR is too light and boring. Hard to explain. I prefer less button mash and flashy moves. QUALITY is better than QUANTITY. I rather do cool moves once in awhile than a flashy attack every 3 seconds.

Well put. Agree %100.

Also, don't forget that in addition to 2 years of development time, Yoshi was given a team 9x bigger than what Tanaka had. I don't think SE treated 1.0's development as seriously as they should have - mostly since MMO can be constantly updated and are never really 'complete'. It was only after the sour reception, that they found religion on the matter.

I preferred Tanaka's [direction] rather than Yoshi's most of the time, but I guess the middle ground would be perfect.

I agree. Yoshi has done a spectacular job with the new engine and graphics, the UI, and much of the quality of life aspects of ARR. But Tanaka did a FAR better job with creating an authentic-feeling fantasy world and having the systems of the game serve that purpose. Tanaka was also much more reserved in his management of 'spectacle'. He carefully limited the amount of flashiness at the launch of the game, and would drip-feed it to players over the expected life of the game in order to always have something new to show.

Yoshi was dumping buckets of glowing weapons, gaudy armor, mounts and minions on the players from day 1. This approached can't be sustained without venturing into complete absurdity and obliterating all sense of legitimacy in the world.

The sweet spot would be to have each working on what they do best.

[Gramul]

Yoshi has done a spectacular job with the new engine and graphics, the UI, and much of the quality of life aspects of ARR. But Tanaka did a FAR better job with creating an authentic-feeling fantasy world and having the systems of the game serve that purpose. Tanaka was also much more reserved in his management of 'spectacle'. He carefully limited the amount of flashiness at the launch of the game, and would drip-feed it to players over the expected life of the game in order to always have something new to show.

Yoshi was dumping buckets of glowing weapons, gaudy armor, mounts and minions on the players from day 1. This approached can't be sustained without venturing into complete absurdity and obliterating all sense of legitimacy in the world.

The sweet spot would be to have each working on what they do best.

This deserves a hug.

[Taruranto]

We don't need another FF11, much less 15 years old outdated design practices.
And honestly nothing you mentioned will be implemented. The world belongs to people, and people in this case is a casual crowd. Those that doesn't really likes being locked out of some zones, run half an hour to a point (nobody but rare minority actually likes this) or having 20 sets for each class where only math guru really can understand what is better and when.
The game kept simple to be more accessible for everyone. And for hardcore there are things like coil, ex and now "professional" hunting.


FF11 combat have nothing to do with quality. It's just boring oldschool, very outdated, design. FF14 combat on other hand are quite tactical and technical, this is why such MMO called "theme park". You don't really need a complexity to make something really difficult to master and board games like chess and go prove it.
People en masse likes concepts that wow popularized, like easy travelling, full access to zones, straightforward and easily understandable stat mechanics.

Yes, FFXIV, with his one stat gears, zero personalization, no elemental weakness, almost zero party member cooperation, scripted fight is very tactical and technical. Alright.

[Velhart]

Yes, FFXIV, with his one stat gears, zero personalization, no elemental weakness, almost zero party member cooperation, scripted fight is very tactical and technical. Alright.

I rather carry 10 different elemental rods with me to cast one spell for them each *eyes roll*. While you might focus on one primary stat, you have multiple secondary stats to consider, hence all the BiS guides. Already explained that elemental weaknesses make jobs like BLM OP or useless, already creating situations where said jobs won't be wanted in content (look at both FFXI and FFXIV 1.xx as proof). I am almost always communicating with my team to get the harder content down. In Ramuh EX himself we communicate with each other to know when it is safe to grab the buffs and know who has a shock available for people with terror.

[Tupsi]

I rather carry 10 different elemental rods

Hasn't been the case for XI for an extremely long time now.

[Felessan]

Can I have some of what you're smoking please?

We have 2 million already. Chinese release will adds 2 more. A successful MMO that is not suddenly dropped (i doubt SE will drop it) peak at around 5-6 years than steady decline to about 50% and than stagnation/slow drop until game becomes really outdated and closed.

I redirect to you again to Argumentum ad populum, something popular doesn't mean something good (and most usually it's right the opposite), also, it doesn't mean that something not popular must be good, so it's always fallacious in both directions to argue the quality of something based on it's popularity.

The only reasonable criteria for good - is that people like it. And only measurable criteria for this is number of people that likes it and a period of stay. We have already 2 million people at 1 year timeframe, that is already a long period to attribute it to marketing push.
Otherwise we will be stuck with *definition of good*. Basically I think that FF14 is good as it is and you have no objective meaning to prove it otherwise. And my "good" is that people like it (play it) as it's now.

Any human activity can lead to elitism, I don't see how you intend to have a point there.

You can provoke it, like lockout zones do, or you can try to hamper it like it's done in FF14, where many elitist concepts are explicitly made invalid (like "buy to win" from FF11 where a lot of gear were purchased thus segregating crowd for those who have money and whose who haven't).

And on the design perspective, dangerous don't mean inaccessible, just not a walk in the park like it is now, even if areas pose a challenge, everyone, including casuals, could access eventually to all content.

You think it in a wrong mentality. Dangerous lockout some people, as some people just don't have enough will/dedication to go through several death to pass through. More dangerous zone becomes, more people will be locked out.
The general trend for modern MMO, starts with WoW is that - content for everyone. And unlike Coil where you can add Echo when next turn comes out, it's work rather bad with zones. You either keep them locked out (that is bad) or get excessive stress to adding new zones that costs much more than raid dungeon.

because I've never said that ARR should be exactly like 1.0 or XI were, jsut that it could take ideas and concepts from them and include them in the game to add depth to it

But they do add some elements, like NM hunting was returned to FF14. They just adapt it to the whole concept framework, that all content should be eventually scaled down to be accessible to everyone.

ARR's combat may be technical, but it is anything but tactical. ARR battles are nothing more than: Perform pre-scripted skill rotation + avoid pre-scripted boss gimmicks.

Although I would like as well less fixed rotation, some tactics still in place. You need to adjust known tactics to your own party formation as they not always work as prescribed and sometimes some tweaks required for more comfortable play for your party.

People en masse like Dark Souls as well, which has virtually none of those features.

DarkSouls sold 2 million copies and GTA sold 20 million copies. Got the point?

He carefully limited the amount of flashiness at the launch of the game, and would drip-feed it to players over the expected life of the game in order to always have something new to show.

Flashiness sells much better. And having *actual* content helps keep people in game. You know, a lot of people treat it as a *game*, especially those from casual crowd, and not "a gateway to fantasy world". Currently it's a nice looking fantasy game with some flashy thing going around and some hardcore stuff in which nobody really cares about "world and stuff". And I am fine with that, I don't want to be in the land of elves, I want a high quality theme park MMO with cute Mi'qotes.

This approached can't be sustained without venturing into complete absurdity and obliterating all sense of legitimacy in the world.

I do not care. I like story, I like people, I generally like endgame. I don't like overrealistic "place to escape" and I don't want to be in the crowd that likes to play Tolkien games in the forest.

Yes, FFXIV, with his one stat gears, zero personalization, no elemental weakness, almost zero party member cooperation, scripted fight is very tactical and technical. Alright.

Yes, it is. Pulling out 400+ dps for a bard is not an easy achievement even though bards generally described as "one button" dps class.
General approach is very easy and gives a good result. Yes, it is how it should be. But when you want a little more from a class - you suddenly discovers that secondary stats are not equally useless, that alignment of timing becomes important and that you need to actually watch for a different things to do not a "mediocre" but good dps.

[Taruranto]

I rather carry 10 different elemental rods with me to cast one spell for them each *eyes roll*. While you might focus on one primary stat, you have multiple secondary stats to consider, hence all the BiS guides. Already explained that elemental weaknesses make jobs like BLM OP or useless, already creating situations where said jobs won't be wanted in content (look at both FFXI and FFXIV 1.xx as proof). I am almost always communicating with my team to get the harder content down. In Ramuh EX himself we communicate with each other to know when it is safe to grab the buffs and know who has a shock available for people with terror.

"Multiple secondary stats"... right. Please, you probably don't even believe it yourself. FFXIV terrible gear progression and boring stats distribution is particularly infamous at this point.

[Dannythm]

I'm not going to repeat what many posters have already said through this thread, and what I have been saying over and over since the alpha of ARR started (anyone interested can look at my old posts), but I agree completely, this game would greatly benefit from some added complexity and depth in all aspects (including the story-telling, I miss those lore threads in 1.0 trying to guess what events were in the present, which ones were an echo vision, etc, now everything is spilled with flashing lights and giant arrows "here's the plot!").

Not forced complexity or depth for the sake of it, but adding elements that makes sense in the game universe and makes the game more interesting and overall more long lasting and better.

[Duelle]

Not forced complexity for the sake of it, but complexity that makes sense in the game universe and makes the game more interesting and overall more long lasting and better.

This issue I think is that people don't agree on what level of complexity is reasonable.

For example, I'm against a plethora of unique stats like what the OP is asking for because it's going to create mandatory gear and it's guaranteed to screw up some aspect of class balance. I can get behind set bonuses like those seen in WoW's tier sets, though - bonuses that either enhance things that are already there OR introduce a new mechanic that is relevant to the batch of content the tier set is affiliated with. The catch being that said mechanics would become obsolete by the time the next expansion hits, which is fine since that's what progression calls for.

I'm against multiple stat builds for jobs for similar reasons. Bonus being that you'd have people crying on forums because their Crit build DRG isn't doing the DPS a STR build DRG is. Then the namecalling and shunning that would follow. Those of you so proud of FFXI should know what I'm talking about here.

I'm against certain death in the open world because all you're doing is giving people even MORE reason to use aetherites. There's also the concern over MPKs. There's little room to work with here since most of the stuff mentioned in these threads is bound to piss off a large group of people. Not to mention that it would make leveling miserable.

I can get behind stuff like better mechanics for boss fights. Titan to me has been the posterboy of what I hope the devs do not do moving forward. If anything, they should probably look at something like the Sartharion fight in WoW. Possibly Mimiron and Heroic Lich King if you want to see how far you can push mechanics in a fight without making predictable rotations. BWL Nefarian if you want to be REALLY creative with how a raid boss can react to the raid comp.

As always, what gets me is that people demonize simplicity like it's this cardinal sin of game design. Then proceed to ruin some aspect of the game and piss off a number of people. Some choose to not look at why stuff is designed the way it is and instead cling to whatever (in this comunity's case) FFXI/FFXIV 1.0 nostalgia, forgetting those two games had a plethora of flaws that affected gameplay, progression and balance...well, either that or they simply don't care about balance.