Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[JimmyDean]

Indeed I am. Like most, I assume.

It shows.......

[AutoWhit]

It shows.......

2 thumbs up for being one of the few that get it!

Probably my all time favorite dungeon, from any game (the vanilla version anyway).

[DragoonSantos]

make it both like wow and ffxi and ff14 shaboooom

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It's casual indeed. Social, not so much.

Hate to say it, but... welcome to gaming in the 21st century. There is a reason Pokemon Go is considered such a cultural phenomenon. People simply aren't interested in being forced to interact outside their discretion. In fact, games that have attempted it often see limited success if any whatsoever. That is in large part because people can be unreliable. I, personally, do not want a game where I have to be social in order to progress. Few people will organize groups for content. They'll merely play something else. Hence why MMOs do not force social interaction; only encourage it. A big turn off back in FFXI was being required to party at early levels lest I get annihilated by a buffalo. I'll make friends at my own leisure, thank you.

FFXI suffered from a complete lack of balance. Certainljobs were unquestionably superior and if you even attempted to deviant from the preferred norm, you would not get invited to parties. This nostalgia obsession with FFXI is simply that: nostalgia. If SE ever did implement some form of horizontal progression in FFXIV, it would inevitably be grinded down to what is mathematically best and any other weapon variance would be relegated to obscurity.

[Kurogaea]

And I am generally discussing my own thoughts and opinions by saying the game is fine. It doesn't need to be more like FFXI or WoW.

You guys miss FFXI, I get that. I really do. You grew up with it; and it was probably your first MMO ever, your childhood, that's fine. But just because FFXIV isn't FFXI, doesn't make it a bad game. Everyone prefers what they grew up with. That's just how the world works. Sadly, the world is growing up through. We're getting new technology, new advancements, new players. Sad to say, FFXIV isn't designed around FFXI players. It's designed around the new gamers of today and the old gamers. A casual social place for the casual social gamer.

Please don't mix in everyone with ffxi fanatics. As much as I didn't like ffxi, there was a charm in that game I couldn't get in this game but I seen in other mmos too. Eorzea's overworlds are big playgrounds with less substance besides the background and lore, which leaves the players to their imagination for rp purposes. Fates are events that can't be altered, they're little stories on repeat. In ffxi I didn't see any of those but the overwolrd would speak for itself. It was dangerous to traverse alone and the land was vast. Dungeons were open and going through those were even more treacherous but exciting. Battles are set like dances now since mechanics and patterns are the only way to increase difficulty. I was never a fan of ffxi's gameplay as it was really stiff, but as far as I can tell the fights were easily mended to the players. There was so many options and choices of strategy and it wasn't revolved around enemy mechanics that if ignored can punish the players by insta wiping or dps checks. Just about all he things I can think of I guess.

[Shurrikhan]

If SE ever did implement some form of horizontal progression in FFXIV, it would inevitably be grinded down to what is mathematically best and any other weapon variance would be relegated to obscurity.

It's not as if that wasn't the case in FFXI already. It's a matter of degree, mathematically, more than it is a difference in any two communities. As you said, XI suffered from a lack of balance. Much of the rigid requirements are only product of that. Some choices were just that inferior. Balance could have avoided that.

If two weapons are more than some 10% apart in output, you'll see vocal community preference towards the better. But inversely, at some point approaching equality both become acceptable. "Horizontal" progression as a 'this is best for this fight', etc. paradigm, where each fight may require gear from a number of others just to be permitted entry, is not really horizontal so much as it is simply many vertical paths. FFXIV could already accomplish this by simply having any second means of achieving a certain level of gear at a certain difficulty. For "horizontal" progression to be truly as named, there needs to be elements of wide access, and/or each of these fights requiring X, Y, and Z gear, must also have a sense of vertical progression between them, allowing you choice of progression paths. If, regardless of overall ilvl, each fight requires very particular prior progression, it just becomes a winding, but still basically singular, road.

Probably the biggest reason we haven't seen hint or trace of horizontal gearing in XIV is that it's not a particularly efficient model. In the end, it's something that allows choice, which means allowing people to potentially skip content you've spent resources to create. If weapon A is as good as weapon B, within whatever precision or playstyle you're likely ever to use either for, there's no real reason to gather weapon B.

And that's not even mentioning how little playstyle variance XIV makes available, even if gear were crucial to that. Aside from Bard and SCH Crit, Speed is about the only the stat with a visible effect on one's rotation, and the latter, sadly, suffers from oversights that condemn its balance anyways.

[AlphaFox]

To be honest I actually would have preferred if they had kept the XI style combat (or 1.0 if you will tho I've only seen video) but just updated it and made it better.

[Enkidoh]

I would welcome the traditional sub-jobs we had in XI, as it gave a lot more flavor to experiment with.

Except this was a complete illusion and came down to using what was considered the functionally best subjob combination for your main Job, in other words, what abilities and stats it would bring to the table. Some sub jobs did little to affect the most important stats on a main job and some couldn't make use of their abilities (BRD subbed was an example of this - because most songs required a musical instrument which could not be equipped while BRD was a sub job, it meant you could only use a small selection of songs that were actually sung, missing most of BRD's important repertoire). If a player even so much as attempted to set a subjob that the community did not consider worthwhile, you were basically laughed out of Dodge and couldn't get into any parties. There was absolutely no room to experiment at all. All FFXIV has done is accept this and taken the blinders off to see this illusion for what it truly is. Technically you could experiment, but in practice you didn't, you went with the 'established choices' (WAR subbed for PLD, NIN and DRK, NIN for pretty much everything, BLM for mage Jobs, DNC later on for soloing etc) - there was no way around it.

And when the development team comes out and says that a Job has actually been used incorrectly by players you know such a system is broken utterly (specifically: NIN and it's use as a so-called 'blink-tank' in FFXI - Tanaka's team never intended for NIN to tank, it was meant to be an enfeebling DPS class with Utsusemi being nothing more than a 'get-out-of-jail-free-card' when they pulled too much hate. Players of course abused this and used it for tanking, then whined when SE tried to actually stop players doing just such a thing by having enemies that ate through a NIN's shadows wholesale). Current producer Akihiko Matsui actually mentioned this was not their intention just recently during a FFXI-version of 'Letter From the Producer LIVE' that was hosted on Reddit (the transcript is on the FFXI forum):

What job’s current play style is furthest from the original envisioning of the job?
A: We originally envisioned ninja to be a damage dealer with enfeebling support, but it turned into a tank! We also originally envisioned dancer to be a support-type job, but it turned out to be really good for soloing.

So it goes to show that players were abusing the Jobs in ways that the development team never intended them for, which is exactly why the FFXIV Armoury System is set up the way it is, it's to stop a repeat of this sort of nonsense from happening again.

Another thing I would welcome is a optional Valkurm Dunes style zone that went back to camp/puller/chain method of exp gains. This was somewhat brought in with Deep Dungeon given the fact it can be ran with any party set up; although the camp method gave a TON of room for social interaction - which is what I miss most of XI.

The trouble with this is that ARR's very design brief right at the start of development was specifically to avoid this - Yoshi-P stated specifically early on that he wanted to move players away from exp parties (seeing the problems this caused in both FFXI and FFXIV 1.0) and onto what he termed "content-based exp", that is, gaining exp through other gameplay means such as quest completion. ARR's very battle system accordingly is designed specifically to stop exp party camping by having enemies 'leashed' to a certain spot (where if you try to pull them away too far they'll de-agro you and run back to their spawn spot with your hate reset). And, given the fact that unlike FFXI ARR is like all good modern MMORPGs and doesn't lock an enemy exclusively to you and thus other players can jump in and hit the enemy even outside of a party, old-style exp parties would rush through enemies more quickly than what you would expect anyway. So basically this concept simply would not work and thus will never be seen in ARR, this was Yoshi decision and he's made sure of it.

As for the OP, Bourne_Endeavor basically summed up my own thoughts on this subject so I have nothing further to add, other than once again reiterating that this game will never be like FFXI - a game that was from a much earlier period of gaming which thankfully the gaming industry has moved on from. FFXIV is a modern MMORPG designed to appeal to more casual time-conscious players. The days of level grinding in the 'Dooms' and exp loss on death and 18-hour straight HNM boss fights like Absolute Virtue have thankfully gone forever. I loved FFXI for the 11 years I've been playing it but I was also not blinded by nostalgia and saw it's many faults and problems even back in it's heyday. The past is passed. Time to move on.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

I`d rather have the illusion of choice and have a balance broken game that what we have respect character customization. I want a VIT/Skill speed off tank Dragoon.

[Magic-Mal]

I`d rather have the illusion of choice and have a balance broken game that what we have respect character customization. I want a VIT/Skill speed off tank Dragoon.

Equal opportunity is why this won't happen. If DRGs could off tank, real off tanks won't be brought to groups. That's bad. Wasn't there a time where people were tanking Ramuh EX with TITAN-EGI!? And then refuse to bring tanks and brought DPS instead? Sounds like something like that would slide in FFXI. Not FFXIV though. It's good they fixed it.