Back from Rift....

[Abriael]

Sorry, I'm just very very stupid and unable to see the most obvious things in front of my eyes.

I assure you though that any attempt to explain XIVs innovations to me will not be in vain.

No one said you're stupid. But I've seen that question asked very, very rarely (if not never) with an honest intent. I'll give you the benefit of doubt though, and I'll give it a start (since I'm limited on time, and explained it too many times for it not to be boring), I'm sure others will continue. The armory system is a quite revolutionary innovation, as it's the only class-based system that allows the player to completely customize their character to their own specs. FFXI paved the way for it, but never really completely opened that door. The system isn't "perfect" at the moment, but it can easily be tweaked to awesome results. Even in it's current incarnation, I (and many others) enjoy it quite a lot more than having to chose a class and being forced to stick to it.
It makes finding activities to do in game quite a lot easier, soloing quite a lot more fun and varied, and grouping quite a lot more flexible.

Another innovation is the parity between crafting and adventuring, even here there's room for improvement (mostly in joint activities between crafters and adventurers), but there's a ton of potential for people that enjoy crafting and end up, in basically every other game, having to bear a ton of time/money sinking only for the future perspective of getting "rich" or at least economically independent.
Crafting in FFXIV is not a "sink", but it's part of the experience, designed to enrich it, and not just to be a "utility" service.

This kind of innovations are what brings a little bit of fresh air, for me (having played MMORPGs with basically the same mechanics for more than ten years, and MUDS with exactly the same mechanic before then), in a market that has become as stagnant as the most rotting swamp, with every developer scrambling to make a clone of wow to get a slice of the wow cake (and without understanding that they will ALWAYS get a very small and short-lived slice until they bring out something new). After decades of playing exactly the same stuff, looking at exactly the same gauges, performing exactly the same actions to cover exactly the same roles, boredom comes inevitably.
Hell, even just having to keep track of stamina to operate my shield manually is a welcome change.

There's more, but work calls.
I'm sure others will continue where I left if your interest is genuine.

[Malakhim]

No one said you're stupid. But I've seen that question asked very, very rarely (if not never) with an honest intent. I'll give you the benefit of doubt though, and I'll give it a start (since I'm limited on time, and explained it too many times for it not to be boring), I'm sure others will continue. The armory system is a quite revolutionary innovation, as it's the only class-based system that allows the player to completely customize their character to their own specs. FFXI paved the way for it, but never really completely opened that door. The system isn't "perfect" at the moment, but it can easily be tweaked to awesome results. Even in it's current incarnation, I (and many others) enjoy it quite a lot more than having to chose a class and being forced to stick to it.
It makes finding activities to do in game quite a lot easier, soloing quite a lot more fun and varied, and grouping quite a lot more flexible.

Another innovation is the parity between crafting and adventuring, even here there's room for improvement (mostly in joint activities between crafters and adventurers), but there's a ton of potential for people that enjoy crafting and end up, in basically every other game, having to bear a ton of time/money sinking only for the future perspective of getting "rich" or at least economically independent.
Crafting in FFXIV is not a "sink", but it's part of the experience, designed to enrich it, and not just to be a "utility" service.

There's more, but work calls. I'm sure others will continue where I left if your interest is genuine.

***, I'm still trying to wrap my head around what people mean when they say stuff needs to be "fixed" in the game, and then never really elaborate on anything objective other than "wah wah no AH wah wah wah".

As far as I can tell, apart from issues with a laggy and unintuitive UI and repair system that was present back in September, the only thing this game really seems to need is more content, which is in the pipe, and to actually be finished, which it most certainly was not back in September.

I'm personally very afraid of what this supposed "battle system overhaul", which to my mind may be entirely unneeded, is going to entail. After how SP was neutered back in October/November, I don't know what to think about it.

[Naqaj]

Thanks for the answer, Abrail. My personal opinion on this matter differs from yours, as you correctly anticipated, but there was no intent behind that question other than to learn what other people find innovative about XIV.
It helps putting the feedback you read on these boards in perspective. Someone who played EQ, DAOC or WOW will find aspects of XIV innovative that someone who got into MMOs with FFXI might take for granted, and vice versa.

No one said you're stupid.

Well, yes, I did! Are you calling me noone?

[Abriael]

It helps putting the feedback you read on these boards in perspective. Someone who played EQ, DAOC or WOW will find aspects of XIV innovative that someone who got into MMOs with FFXI might take for granted, and vice versa.

I played FFXI. A lot (five years). They're still an innovation even over the FFXI system. In FFXI crafting was still just a time/money sink, with no real role other than generating goods and revenue. The job system of FFXI offers the ability to switch jobs, but the degree of customization is actually pretty negligible, as you can chose only a job and a subjob, and the viable combinations of jobs/subjobs are very limited.

From my point of view FFXI was a step in the right direction (systems-wise), but the true full-fledged innovation comes with FFXIV.

[Chezen]

Another innovation is the parity between crafting and adventuring, even here there's room for improvement (mostly in joint activities between crafters and adventurers), but there's a ton of potential for people that enjoy crafting and end up, in basically every other game, having to bear a ton of time/money sinking only for the future perspective of getting "rich" or at least economically independent.
Crafting in FFXIV is not a "sink", but it's part of the experience, designed to enrich it, and not just to be a "utility" service.

I find this part particularly true. I've not known another game (admittingly I'm a bit limited in my MMO experience) where weapons and armor come almost solely from crafting. Usually quests and drops are a very viable if not main source of armor. The crafting in these games become almost pointless as the armor aquired from them isn't worth anything.

I think SE did an outstanding job with the crafting. It's so vast and involved, and so many things require help from other professions, high levels, etc, everyone should have a valid way to make gil and keep the market going. My only complaint is the armor and weapons themselves, which I think need to have more variety.

[Eekiki]

Rift's launch was great, and I was very impressed with the design of the starter area for Defiant.

Without spoiling too much...

You start in this laboratory, and you have to fight your way through the battlefield of the apocalypse to a teleporter. If you do it the way I do it (taking the time to talk to NPCs, read quest descriptions, explore nooks and crannies for hidden stuff) it takes you about 1-2 hours. And once you reach the teleporter, from there you can see across the entire zone all the way back to where you started, and you realize it felt like you traveled pretty far, but to quote Bill from "Left 4 Dead", "Son, we just crossed the street."

It is off to a great start, and there's a lot of potential if they decide--now that they've grabbed a sizable chunk of people from WoW--to slowly deviate from the WoW-clone mentality and start trying different things. If they do it right, the WoW-heads won't even notice they're playing an actual game instead of a gear grinding circle jerk!

[ckb]

Remembered this thread and thought people might get a kick out of the headline.
http://http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/0...to-rift-posts/

[Kimowar]

I did all beta events for rift cept the open beta, trion being a small dev did an outstanding job and I applaud them for they're hit, but I have played mmos for over 12 years now and more titles then I can name, rift is a very complete game, however ....I didnt feel drawn in and i felt the same ole same ole, Asherons Call was my first mmo, then EQ1,I miss the days of real challenges and learning something new almost daily, although content is missing ff14 reminds me alot of eq1 in this aspect. I'm here for the long haul and i have dcuo for the days i'm bored and waiting for more content

[Reika]

Rift was an exact copy of WoW.... It deserves to burn along with all of its developers ><

[Dreamer]

I tried Rift and played for a little while, but it is not that great of a game. Not bad but not good either.

4) Copy/pasted WoWs entire UI and it works very well. This is good simply because WoW has the best keyboard/mouse UI for a mmo ever developed.

I'm not sure it's possible for me to disagree more with this statement. I played WoW for years, and always thought the UI was simply atrocious. Given how popular complete UI replacement addons are for the game, I don't think I'm the only one.

I actually really, really like FFXIV's UI. It's clean, and it's out of the way. Sure, there could be some menu tweaks, and menu lag is still a problem, but as far as just design goes, I like it more than any other MMO UI I've used to date, even City of heroes, which used to be the standard by which I measured all others.

WoW's UI is clunky. There are bars everywhere, you character and target take up a solid 5% of your screen real estate, and there's so much junk crammed down at the bottom of the screen it's covers the entire section unless you're using a high resolution on a widescreen monitor.

In contrast, FFXIV leaves on my screen only what I actually need at that time. If I need more, the menu button is just a keypress away.