Quote Originally Posted by gifthorse View Post
Yeah, to be honest, I never thought I'd see the day where FFXIV had aggro-indicators, let alone auto-attack and NPC quests with exclamation bubbles.

It's like they can't make this game into WoW fast enough. Between the upcoming companies (more NPC quests) and auto-attack, it just seems like this game is slowly degenerating into a blandfest.

The Private Company ships and housing, among other things like PvP, all slated for release under Tanaka were reasons why I was still playing the game. It's sad to think that in Yoshi's bid to improve the game, all he has done is broken the combat system.

If there was one good thing that to come out of yoshi's development it was the promise of a more role-oriented spin on the armory system and a "jump" system.

Unfortunately the latter of those has been canned... and who wants to bet that yoshi will destroy the armory system too? Seems to be something he would do.

If you're going to take something from WoW, you don't take the things that make it shit (exclamation mark quests, easymode), you take the things that make it good: wealth of content, jump, etc.

If FFXIV had kept with the active combat system and improved on everything, bringing in Private Companies and giving them something to work toward, FFXIV might have had a chance to compete in the market. As it stands, creating more lame quests, no jump, automated combat, easymode... none of this will give it a fighting chance against the games coming out this year.

I don't mean to be presumptuous, but come on. It's obvious.
First of all, WoW is both more strategic and more complicated than FFXIV in every way except perhaps being easier to avoid repetitive stress injuries. FFXIV is already more 'easy mode' than most MMOs on the market.

It sounds like you need a reminder that this game is a failure right now. Whether it fits with your personal tastes aside, no one is playing this game and it cannot survive in its current state. There is no reason for SE to remain loyal to the handful of people who still play (for free) when they're constantly losing money. There are certain changes that MUST be made if they're ever going to get other people to play this game. The combat system as it stands right now is not only boring, it's pointless. Whether or not there are abilities in the game that allow you to play more strategically, they aren't needed to kill enemies and advance. You can just light strike your way through 100% of the game's content. You can't do that in WoW.

Before people start typing up their regular defensive posts, you can save your 'wow fanboy' comments and your 'you know nothing about game development' comments because they're also irrelevant. This is a business. This game is a failure. Drastic measure are needed and there is no reason to keep this game the way it is right now because they're bleeding to death.

This is a beautiful game with a terrific crafting system. It has unrivaled art direction and design and the animations and story elements are truly well done. There has never been music anywhere near this good in an MMO before. There are core mechanics in place with the graphics and sound that will probably be the best in the genre for years to come, but the game will disappear entirely if they don't add engaging content and better combat/gameplay, implement a worthwhile system for trading goods that people craft/farm, give people something to look forward to at the level cap, and actually instill the player with a sense of accomplishment.

Really dig deep before you try to keep this game from changing, because almost everyone who has played or reviewed it has panned it. This is not a symptom of people wanting WoW 2.0, it's a symptom of bad game design, and you need to let the new dev team try to fix the mess so that this game survives.