Every inconvenience is a challenge.

[Noata]

I personally think there should be very little changes other then adding features for 2.0 for FFXIV. asking developers to waste there time on a world that is vanishing and being replaced seems like a waste of time. Remove anima so a few players can powerlevel for a few months till 2.0, what was i thinking of course we should focus more on what is going away, we can always push the 2.0 release back. The game has had anima from the start, it is nothing new. deal with it and stop griping. Try focusing on the big picture.

OP hits pretty true
I would have to say that humans love to accomplish more then anything else. to feel accomplished. This tends to be justified when danger, risk of life, or required skills to complete. They feel it is enjoyable. The problem with FFXIV is that the content is very spread out and then concentrated at camps. making large landscapre travel annoying. something that may or may not change. gotta wait and see

[ArnoMorley]

What people don't seem to realize is that without inconveniences the "fun stuff" stops being fun. I'm sure most people had a gameshark at some point and will be able to relate to this.

Look at FF tactics (the original, not the crappy little gameboy version). FFT was pretty tough for people who had never played it. But once you started completing missions and unlocking classes it became a lot of fun and was very rewarding, even though there was some pretty unforgiving content such as your party members permanently dying.

Now say you used a gameshark and suddenly you had all the classes unlocked and the characters at the highest level and you mowed right through the game beating the whole thing in a few hours. Which would be more fun, playing the game with or without a gameshark?

That's what has been done to XI and XIV, a bunch of infants that can't handle a little inconvenience want to be at the highest level so they can mow right through all of the content. As a result the games are ruined for those of us who wanted a challenge.

[weeble]

i still don't get why they can't just make separate servers for the 2 types of game players and make them both happy. what is it with companies forcing us all into a one way server when there is many types of players, why not just make a few types. or let people check mark b4 joining what they want or not want in there mmo and it puts you in server with all players playing that same way. something simple, it's not difficult to dumb down a game, so stop make a server first ..then dumb it down for the other servers. you'd probably be surprised when they need to open more and more servers that aren't dumbed down.


etc. check mark X heavy grind O no grind
X all caps O no caps
X no pl'ing O allowed pl'ing
X low drop rates O higher drop rates
X punishment at death O no punishment at death
X mostly party play O less party play
etc etc. but click click go to server that has same and done no? they can probably have many types of groups on same servers and just give them seperate auction houses. just like diablo3 did with keeping there hardcore mode players still on same servers with normal players.

side note, it's a game we are all supposed to die. and it's a mmo we should be dying way more then in offline games. offliners have many difficulty sets, lots play easy, or normal or hard right from the get go. make mmo's the same. let us hit easy normal or hard b4 we enter. sounds feesable and it can't possibly lose them money but make them money on keeping all types of players. not lose some.

[JakeRoon]

i still don't get why they can't just make separate servers for the 2 types of game players and make them both happy. what is it with companies forcing us all into a one way server when there is many types of players, why not just make a few types. or let people check mark b4 joining what they want or not want in there mmo and it puts you in server with all players playing that same way. something simple, it's not difficult to dumb down a game, so stop make a server first ..then dumb it down for the other servers. you'd probably be surprised when they need to open more and more servers that aren't dumbed down.


etc. check mark X heavy grind O no grind
X all caps O no caps
X no pl'ing O allowed pl'ing
X low drop rates O higher drop rates
X punishment at death O no punishment at death
X mostly party play O less party play
etc etc. but click click go to server that has same and done no? they can probably have many types of groups on same servers and just give them seperate auction houses. just like diablo3 did with keeping there hardcore mode players still on same servers with normal players.

side note, it's a game we are all supposed to die. and it's a mmo we should be dying way more then in offline games. offliners have many difficulty sets, lots play easy, or normal or hard right from the get go. make mmo's the same. let us hit easy normal or hard b4 we enter. sounds feesable and it can't possibly lose them money but make them money on keeping all types of players. not lose some.

In Anarchy online you could set these options YOURSELF in your options tab. Simple elegant solution.

[Nuinn]

I'm all for challenge, but I'm also for a user-friendly environment in all aspects, not to be confused with the word 'easy'. Just like the word 'challenge' should not apply only to hard fights.

[byyako]

Challenging game play is alright, having a crippled interface though, is just a waste of time. When you have to type in "/pcmd" for party functions and "/display" to hide your helm on screen, you start to wonder that if the SE team challenge themselves enough to provide a sufficient tools for the players.

It is a game after all, you want the challenges to be enjoyable. Sitting there typing half a day on a keyboard for a simple function is definitely not fun. I don't mind now just because I get use to it but I'd admit its a waste of time and its definitely not an accomplishment.

[Phobos]

Not sure if anyone has expressed this view yet or not, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed the Auction House economy of FFXI. I don't need an npc with fancy decorations and prices that are not shown in an easy to use search feature. I find it easier to "run a business" in a game when I can count on my buyers looking at two things: quality and price. The faster paced economy, in my opinion, actually results in a greater opportunity for the informed seller.

It's rather easy to work with a fast-paced buyer driven economy as a seller. You simply need to have a moderate ability to understand what your competition or buyers are thinking, or put some loopholes to good use. A constant running knowledge of prices of competitors and similar goods goes a long way.

Just a few examples from my experiences as a 100 Bonecrafter in XI:

When augmented gear came out, I proceeded to purchase every single mat available for Igqira Weskits. Through being able to buy every ingredient, I was able to control the market by removing my competition from the seller pool. I was able to keep up with this for a week or two, until somebody finally figured out the solution was to go farm up the materials. I was able to make a decent profit out of it all, the trick being to npc about 50% of the results, and raise the auction house price dramatically. Even after other crafters started being able to make them again, the market did not return to it's regular value for a few months after.

Undercutting other sellers was often pretty easy, and most of the time you'd end up with effective results from doing so. The big issue here, and where most people probably falter in a fast-paced buyer driven auction house system, is that you cannot over-saturate the market while not allowing your competition to unload their goods. The best way to do this was through diversity of goods, and only staying in a market long enough that you don't annoy your competition to the point of lowering their prices to where neither of you can profit.

Updates were typically the biggest thing to spark a renewed interest in a particular piece of equipment. The most recent example of this I can recall is when uncursed gear could get augments, crafting cursed items became very lucrative. Knowing how much to raise prices by is key in a situation like this. This can also go the other way, where for example in XIV, I stupidly bought a silver tricorne which halved in price after this most recent update.


I am finding the FFXIV economy rather easy to get into, though I will say I prefer the Auction House system to what we have now. What we have now is more of a combination of the player controlled NPC market, but with a perfect information economy listing board. I personally would rather have the hidden prices as they were in FFXI.

(TLDR/Conclusion)
I suppose my response to the article linked to by OP, would be something to the effect that, any player that prides themselves at being an effective merchant won't be stinted in a perfect information economy. Any player that feels stinted simply lacks the know-how to thrive in such an economy. I'm not saying people who can't achieve successful results with an auction house system are idiots, they just don't have the experience with such a system to be able to use it to their advantage.

[Peptaru]

I love FFXI bashers, but XIV has a long way to go before becoming a threat to XI. That said, most XI enthusiasts don't think it has merit now, we all seem to reference what it USED TO BE. I don't see many people, if anyone, say that in its current state XI is a breathtaking and wonderful game.... To take a bit of the animosity that the XI haters use, why is it that the people who latch onto XIV want to always put down XI? I play XIV now, not XI. XIV has some good aspects, but it still needs a ton of work. Pointing this out shouldn't instantly lump people into a "XIV haters club" that needs excuses to put it down... XIV can put itself down just fine without help from us. You can't call XIV a finished product, that is why its being gutted and redone. XIV has a long way to go to become a threat to ANY other game. soooo... ya.

[Jadi]

@Peptaru I don't want to put XI down, I have a lot of nostalgic feeling for XI but we have to be real about things too. If Joe Gamer who has never played either was shopping SE titles and he had a choice between XI or XIV what one do you think he would pickup and be happier with?

[weeble]

@Peptaru I don't want to put XI down, I have a lot of nostalgic feeling for XI but we have to be real about things too. If Joe Gamer who has never played either was shopping SE titles and he had a choice between XI or XIV what one do you think he would pickup and be happier with?

all players are different but ffxi was my first mmo and it didn't scare me away or rage me away. i loved it, i played it like it was a rpg but with lots of players. if people are picking offline games they pick from mass amounts of genre's and in them genre's there tons of different options and styles. in mmo's it should be the same but it's really not at all, probably more the opposite. when you pick a rpg or any game offline or with online play in it, do you like to see on the description with over 20hours of gameplay or 100hours of game play and lots of repeatability in the description. i'd pick the 100hrs, fact i love games like fallout 3 cause i could play for 300hrs b4 i get bored of it. that is getting your monies worth in game play. i think that is the difference between ffxi and other newer mmo's ..it's life expectancy. they make em, they die out quick they turn them into f2p and in all that they are still making profits and pushing out a new mmo by time the other is dying, and the speed they push them out is only going to get faster i'm sure.