To those who played FF11...

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Good thing about that is that Valkurm itself was a nice filter for players you knew would give a damn and those who wouldn't and just leave, right there and then. FFXI being that way was an insurance of a healthy community who would work hard for everything. In short, where some people look at it as if it was something bad, I always saw it the other way around. And man, did it pay off, especially when compared to theme park MMO's such as FFXIV.

Valkrum was a filter for people who could put up with BS, or those that just decided to go play games that didn't hit you so hard so early. And before anyone says I wanted to be handed things on a platter, I played Lineage 2 for years. That was arguably just as grindy, if not more.

[Tanathya]

Valkrum was a filter for people who could put up with BS, or those that just decided to go play games that didn't hit you so hard so early. And before anyone says I wanted to be handed things on a platter, I played Lineage 2 for years. That was arguably just as grindy, if not more.

Grindy doesn't mean it's hard. Anyway, whereas you see BS, we don't see it as such. Seems like you're salty about it from the many posts despising FFXI. I didn't like Lineage 2. Oh, well, to each their own!

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Grindy doesn't mean it's hard. Anyway, whereas you see BS, we don't see it as such. Seems like you're salty about it from the many posts despising FFXI. I didn't like Lineage 2. Oh, well, to each their own!

I'm glad we can agree grindy doesn't equal hard. I'm not necessarily salty about my experience in the game, as much as people who say there were no issues with it and people who didn't like it weren't worth playing with if they couldn't get past "a filter"

If I'd had friends or been able to connect with people and get past the Dunes, I probably would have played the game for years.

Forcing party play to continue that early was probably a design decision that hurt the game for many new players.

[Tanathya]

I'm glad we can agree grindy doesn't equal hard. I'm not necessarily salty about my experience in the game, as much as people who say there were no issues with it and people who didn't like it weren't worth playing with if they couldn't get past "a filter"

If I'd had friends or been able to connect with people and get past the Dunes, I probably would have played the game for years.

Forcing party play to continue that early was probably a design decision that hurt the game for many new players.

It's a niche game, and as such, you either love it or loathe it.

[Souljacker]

A sense of control over my character's contribution and what it meant for the party. Right now I'm a black mage who casts fire spells that do the same amount of damage regardless of whether I'm fighting a monster based on the fire element or not. Or I'm a physical dps hitting a rotation that doesn't matter because everyone does the same damage within a certain percentage, and my 'weaponskill' isn't any different than anyone else's. We can't do cool skillchains that close with a magic burst because apparently that, and elemental weakness nuance, and even differentiating AoE spells from ST spells (fire vs firaga) are too much for us to handle. According to the devs, anyway.

Controller use in this game is difficult, mostly because of the twitchy modern mmo design. I wish it was more like XI in that regard.

The story in XI felt a lot more fleshed out. I hate Stormblood. It's predictable and derivative and SE is really starting to overuse the 'is this character REALLY dead?' card so much that I'm just not getting attached to anyone because it doesn't even matter. Everyone will still be there.

In addition, XIV is copying too many elements (poorly) from XI and that disappoints me. Deep dungeon is not Nyzul Isle. The NMs they threw into fates in Eureka are pale shadows of the NMs they were inspired by. Fights in this game are basically make sure you can dance while still hitting enough buttons to kill the boss, and it just gets worse and worse and worse with every boss we see. There's not very much team oriented gameplay with these fights - where you carefully craft your parties to counter very specific abilities the enemy has. You either can dance and hit buttons or you can't.

I just don't know anymore who they are making this game for and there's a million comparisons I could draw here but this post is already too ranty. I don't think the op even really cares about the answers people give. If you love this game, great. Those of us who played XI in the previous decade just don't feel *quite* at home here.

[Lannden]

I played FXI when I was in elementary and middle school (on the off chance that anyone knew Yoh on Midgardsorm, I’m sorry for being such a little brat), being in my mid-twenties with a fulltime job and attending grad school it kind of feels like a lifetime ago but there was a lot I loved about the game that XIV just doesn’t have.
Like others have said, the fact that you were forced to group and interact made a community form quite nicely.
The world felt alive with reasons to visit and hangout in zones other than Jeuno/Whatever the ToA city was called. You almost never see anything happening in FFXIV zones unless there is a hunt.
Finally, there was always something to do. Like others said, there was a ton of endgame content if you were able to you could have filled your entire day just playing FFXI content. You never had to though.