How does FFXIV differ from other Japanese MMOs?

[Lexxuk]

Consider this, one of the biggest games in Japan is Monster Hunter. It's a game where the object is to hunt monsters, you hunt monsters, steal their bones and hides and teeth to make better gear to fight harder monsters. That's all the game pretty much is (and mining, and cooking food), gathering resources to continue playing the game to gather better resources.

This game is more, log in, cap poetics, run wod/coil, or, if you got your gear, wait for the next patch to make all the gear you spent 3 months getting obsolete. Repeat. XI, you could pick up gear at low levels that would last you till 75, at 75 you had different progression routes to gear up, Sea, Sky, Dynamis, HNM, BCNM, Nyzul, Salvage etc. etc. XIV is pretty much devoid of any meaningful content, you're on a giant roundabout and oh look, it's about to start again.

Also with XI, you had gear swapping, as RDM you had a full inventory of gear for swapping to INT or MND depending on the spell you wanted to use, the game wasn't challenging by any means, but when you had to gear up for (as DPS) a TP build and a WS build, just having Item X for slot A isn't enough, you needed item X, Y and Z for slot A. This games pretty much build for the Facebook Games generation.

[Xellos2099]

I have to disagree. FFXIV require good amount of coordinate in the Coil. XI is way over doing it with gear swapping, no body ACTUALLY like it but if u don;t you are shamed upon. Do you remember the day you NEED Scorpion Harness +1 to get an exp pt as Thief? I do and i do not miss it one bit.

[Kallera]

I have to disagree. FFXIV require good amount of coordinate in the Coil. XI is way over doing it with gear swapping, no body ACTUALLY like it but if u don;t you are shamed upon. Do you remember the day you NEED Scorpion Harness +1 to get an exp pt as Thief? I do and i do not miss it one bit.

Now you need ilvl.
*coughelfinbowcough*

[kyuven]

This games pretty much build for the Facebook Games generation.

XI was one of the only games to actually do that.
Even EQ1, which predated it, didn't have nearly as much gear swapping. You still had "sets" for different situations, but you have those here as well, especially tanks.
Also I will continue to argue that promoting in-combat gear swapping was horrid design in FFXI's case. Inventory was already ludicrously limited (you started with 30 slots and could go to 80. This included your equipment that was currently equipped. They later added more inventory options but that was years down the road)
Just because something is more convenient doesn't mean it's dumbed down. Often time even the creators would rather have the more convenient option over the more complex option.

[Catwho]

XI's gear swapping got so bad we switched over to third party programs just to manage it. First XML, then LUA.

Nothing made me cry as much when getting a new piece of gear that I wanted as the fact that I was going to have to open my LUA, replace the piece of gear in probably ten slots, and then test it extensively. I discovered a typo between a piece of gear and its +1 version that way.