I have distaste for raising a chocobo, after I raised one in XI for 90 days, spent all my gil every week in carrots for the damned thing, got the 2 special movement increasing stories for it, only to find out it had Down's syndrome when it grew up and moved really slowly. That was retarded.
I would like to buy one though. I think the mount system in this game will be good. I also want to ride a Dodo. lol.
Very true, this is a great point that they missed. Jeuno felt like a big accomplishment to me. Beating the R46 mission felt like a very short-lived accomplishment. It would have been more meaningful if it had opened up a new zone or dungeon or anything really. This point you raised is a good one. Normally I try to think through it and estimate if it would have been in a finished version of a release of FFXIV. In this case it seems like the 1-50 would have held without any feeling of accomplishment at all. I can see that they didn't realize this was one of the things FFXI did right.
This right here I think is a premature call. FFXIV, released in September, was like a primitive looking sculpture waiting to be better defined. Tanaka even said role definition was coming. In my analysis they never got around to implementing the battle positioning mechanics, which would have clearly defined roles. So I think it was part of XIV but the game released too soon for this to be present.
You bring up a great point about the abolishment of camp fighting and stress over getting to certain exact zones. Part of the problem with that was that you had to be in that zone to find other party members. I view the aetherial gates as suggested grinding spots this time around. However, the lack of feeling of progression through zones is definitely a part of the bigger feeling of a lack of progression. The scenery just isn't varied enough in the large zones that we have and on top of that, there is no feeling of progression since there is no reason to go anywhere at all in the world. A level 1 can pretty much go anywhere in the entire game world and has as much of a reason to as a rank 50. Another good point.
Regarding your point about the feeling of satisfaction from the main scenario quests I disagree. Whatever satisfaction they would have given me was neutered down by the long wait between missions. I barely have any idea what happened because of the exceedingly long grind between ranks. It took me 6 months or more to go from the first mission to the last. That's too long for me to really grasp it enough for satisfaction. For me the missions were a great experience, all too fleeting. I wish the entire game was like a long mission.. that would be truly amazing. If they would have put as much into it as they did for FFXIII I think they would have something really special on their hands.
lol yeah...










