Ups and Downs of the new FFXIV

[BlueSin]

I will have to admit right away, that I was not a HUGE fan of the design of FFXI. The only thing that drove me to play it was the Final Fantasy title. FFXIV however, I got very excited for, a new game, a new design. I played almost religiously for 3 months straight but in the end, I just could not get excited for this one either. While substantially different from FFXI, it was also far too similar. Again, because it bares the name Final Fantasy I still keep track of it to this day and give it a week every time a new patch is implemented. But that will only keep me and my fellow fans interested for so long. It has been up and down thus far, so I am going to give my personal feedback in a hope that some of it may reach the development team.

Stop the Punishments!
Okay, I died, my bad. It is painful enough to to re-spawn and have to take a 5-10 minute walk back to where I died not to mention the ridiculously expensive repair cost. But don't gimp me for the run with some stupid debuff. It just makes it easier for me to get picked off on the way back. It takes long enough to level up without having to implement this feature. And if I get rezzed by somebody in a group, don't debuff me! Now not only was I stupid enough to die, but I also have to make my group wait for my return because I am debuffed. For a serious gamer like myself, dying is enough of a blow to moral without needing a debuff, experience deducted, loss of items and/or gold, etc. Just stop the punishments all together.

Speed up the battle system!
Okay, sitting there swinging my weapon every few seconds is just ridiculous. If this had been real battle, I would be dead hands down. I don't mind fighting monsters longer or that are tougher just so I can swing my sword every second or two. Implementing cooldowns to skill usage and eliminating the stamina system was a great start to speeding things up. But more work must be done.

Stop EXP Fatigue (does this even exist anymore?)
I recall at release there was a fatigue system where your experienced points dwindled down to nearly nothing the more you played. That is just plain nuts, I mean I understand it from the standpoint of we don't want level 50s in the first day. But Final Fantasy XIV is a long, LONG level system and when you level one class you are not done yet. I can honestly say it would probably take me a month or more to level a single class to 50, much less a damage/support class, gatherer class and 2-3 crafting classes to be self sustaining. You are talking like 6+ months right there, which is almost enough to make me walk away right off the bat.

Look, a new QUEST!
Where? I understand quests have been added, and that is great. But the days of running into the woods and killing things with little rhyme or reason other than crafting materials and experience are over. Modern day games are content driven, and you usually have some other purpose. If you want to make FFXIV different, then great lets do it. But returning to the days of yore when grinding was common is not different, its a step backwards and much less its annoying. We need to implement a SERIOUS amount of quests, with mega quest hubs offering dozens of quests each.

Mindless Delays
I mention this a little later so I will try to keep this short, but there are these little pointless delays. I am not sure if it is because the servers are in Japan, or if this was intentional so I will add it anyway. I can understand a little delay after swinging your weapon, but waiting like 4, 5 and 6 seconds per swing is just mindless stupidity. Waiting a few seconds for a window to open after I make a selection, same thing. Problem is that I see this delay no matter where I play the game, gaming lounges, friends house, work, home, family's house, etc. It is literally EVERYWHERE, and it doesn't matter how high powered my computer is because I have hit up many.

Whiffs, Chinks & Explosions
This I could have honestly included in mindless delays because that is exactly what it is, a delay, just a different kind of delay. Constant missing, blocks, parries and blowing up my crafting materials. Is my guy half blind or what? I understand these all need to occur throughout the game. But to be honest, I should not be blocked, parried and miss several times all in one fight. Furthermore, I should have an honest shot at not blowing up my synthesis materials. Everything in this game takes so, so long to do and to just have my synthesis materials explode after spending HOURS collecting them, makes me just want to walk away.

Fix Full Screen
This is a section where you should definitely start to see what I am talking about. Some of you cannot play in full screen due to your computer resources, others just because they like it. But those of us who like full screen are again disappointed in FFXIV as we were in FFXI, but even worse. First of all, in full screen you cannot alt tab. So, you do not know where to find a quest, item, etc., or what the exact ingredients to a recipe are and nobody is helping you? Well, then I guess you need to log out all the way to the login screen to look it up, either that or crash your game and risk data loss. And don't even get me started on windowed mode lol. My monitor's optimal resolution is 1920 x 1080, so that is what I run the game in. The window awkwardly fills my screen, complete with window title and all, a portion of it often gets stuck under the windows taskbar, and the right edge of the game spills onto my second monitor. So really, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Open the Crafting Doors!
This one kinda bugs me, and I wanted to get this off my chest. Right now I believe the current synthesis system allows you to save a very small number of recipes. Why? I am sorry but when I make a brand new dish or something in real life, I remember most if not all the ingredients. Now having to discover recipes, that is definitely a COOL system. But I feel like my character is a bit special when he cannot remember more than like 5. I say, keep the list empty until we make it once, then add it to the list.

Adjust the crafting materials!
Alright, I did see on the lodestone that crafting is getting the special touch. But I didn't really see anything in there about this. Right now alot of crafting materials just do not make sense. Newbie level mobs drop materials for level 10+ crafters, why? If I go out into the forest, kill a few baddies, chop down a few trees, I want to create a bow from the sinew, wood & plants. But is that what happens, no! I went to a fan site after spending hours gathering as a botanist and looked up all the things I could make with the materials I had gathered (including from killing). With a full inventory about the only thing I could make was wood chips and lumber. Everything else required professions that were way too high and that didn't even match my profession.

Lets move past the Chocobo
Hey, I saw they are adding Chocobos to the game, not just rentals either, permanent mounts. I will be pretty upset if I only get to ride my 'personal mount' for 20 minutes before it dismounts me automatically and then I have to wait or something. But that is the direction this game has been heading. But anyway, the Chocobo is a trademark mount for Final Fantasy. Thus, it must be included but nothing says it has to be the ONLY mount in the game. Lets come up with a few more, shall we?
*EDIT* And by more I mean something, NOT CHOCOBO.

Conclusion, speed it up and add more interesting stuff. I know you guys are working on it, and I appreciate all the work you are doing. I doubt any of these suggestions will be acknowledged, implemented or anything other than trolled. Even still, I have the right to give my opinion, so there it is. But I would say that only about 50% of the stuff that gets implemented is a step in the right direction, the other 50% is going the wrong way or is stuff that is not important right now. When people return to this game, they are looking at a years worth of lost time because the base game sucked (as most do before patches). They do not want to enter an infinite grind of barely any content. And I am sure that not all but many of those that did the infinite grind to 50 will have something to be proud of, because they did it the hard way, not the easy way.

P.S. - If this suggestion covers some things already implemented, I apologize. There have been so many additions in the game that I forget the half of them, and the other half were really not worth remembering.

[Lienn]

I agree with most of what you said.

[Rubicon]

I don't. But as far as personal chocobos go, Yoshida said that there will be no time limit on those. The rentals will have a time limit. So there's something for ya.

[Jibe]

Nice first post, but all of the stuff you said has been said already in other posts by other people. SE has been made well aware of these problems.

That being said, I agree with you.

[odette]

i'm agree with you, but many people if this game come from ffxi and they dont like GOOD changes, they prefer old obsolets methods, for example they prefer do grinding a lot, they dont like read, they prefer waste of time with loooooooooooooooong time period pop hnm, oooh many people uses bots ranking up like ffxi


another point that SE need to work, no more easy battles with party setup, they demostrated that can ballance all class
like ffxi

[BlueSin]

Thank you all for your opinions. Lets get some more in for added effect.

[MattyWS]

Speed up the battle system? Are you serious? It's already really fast! Think of it like this, we get a nice 300 sp maybe in parties every kill, and late rank around say 45, it's nearing on 90k sp to next level. FFXI was about 200 exp per party kills and even at 75, the exp to the next level was half of what is is in FFXIV at rank 45 yet not even double of the exp gained from mobs. Yet I find myself leveling faster in FFXIV than I in FFXI.. Because the kills are faster. Not only that, you have a crap ton more job abilities to use in FFXIV so you aren't just sat there doing nothing. You gain TP faster so you can use weapon skills all the time.

[Zenaku]

If you speed up the battle system then you wont enjoy much of the battle the speed of the battle system is good.

It's a game you need Punishments for you failing in battle there no reason why this should not happen.

there no more EXP Fatigue

everything else sound good

Chocobo it's Final Fantasy you playing not WoW,AION where you could have more type of mounts. It's a key of final fantasy franchise just like moogles,airship and the type of mobs you see around the game.

You going to get your own chocobo that you most grow from a egg i just hope it would be faster then the 29days in ffxi that was way to much to wait for your chocobo to grow. When you get that you allow to use it how many hours you want and use him again over and over with no limit.

[elementaldivine]

I know what els we could ride.


Moogles..wouldn't you just like to stroll into Ul'dah atop a fabulous fluffy moggle.

I know I would.

I can agree with the death thing. I do hate that, specially when Cure desides to cancel itself. (You begin to cast Cure, Cure casting cancelled)

[unnameduser]

Fix Full Screen
This is a section where you should definitely start to see what I am talking about. Some of you cannot play in full screen due to your computer resources, others just because they like it. But those of us who like full screen are again disappointed in FFXIV as we were in FFXI, but even worse. First of all, in full screen you cannot alt tab. So, you do not know where to find a quest, item, etc., or what the exact ingredients to a recipe are and nobody is helping you? Well, then I guess you need to log out all the way to the login screen to look it up, either that or crash your game and risk data loss. And don't even get me started on windowed mode lol. My monitor's optimal resolution is 1920 x 1080, so that is what I run the game in. The window awkwardly fills my screen, complete with window title and all, a portion of it often gets stuck under the windows taskbar, and the right edge of the game spills onto my second monitor. So really, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Lets take one of the most glaring issues from ffxi and repeat it some 7 years later, brilliant SE!