Quote Originally Posted by Sasagawa View Post
I want to be engrossed in a game and feel as though I can be the best PLD WAR or whatever that I can be through hard work and time spent learning to play the job to the best of its abilities and that for someone to catch up to my level they would equally have to spend time immersing themselves with the job, much like how if ou play BF3 you get owned at first but over time you keep on improving in skills knowing what to look for and how to play the different classes within a squad. Essentially FFXI gave this team cohesion throughout the game not just in a few unique end game scenarios and it actively encouraged you to work as a team at all times putting the multi-player into MMOS.

FFXIV does this at very unique areas usually dungeons or raids (hate that word), but to be honest it is not quite on the same level. I think the most fun fights I have had in FFXIV have been Moogle and Ifrit. Some people will chalk this up to lack of content but tbh if you ever played ffxi the rush of being in a great party set up while leveling and chaining up to 6/7 was an amazing rush. you just don't really get that at the minute on FFXIV

In addition

The level milestones the anticipation of getting to 30 o unlock your first job then further to 41 to get your AF weapon then to 50 to do your limit break. all fantastic goals to aim for, again something FFXIV doesnt really have at the moment. my hope is that post 50 it becomes very hard to level and we see people have to dedicate time to reaching 99 WAR or THM. but we will have to wait and see .
Sasagawa, you bring up some very good points. I think there's a sense of urgency on players' part to hit all jobs to 50, which then, in turn, strip players of a uniqueness in a part environment. XI seemed to embody this better, insofar as encouraging players to pick a class/job and BE that, as opposed to being able to do everything. When I signed up for XIV, I chose the MiQote specifically for AGI/DEX buffs as I wanted to be the ARC/RNG type. But - it's all irrelevant now! >.< And apparently, though I don't know how much truth there is to this, stats don't nearly play as big a role as they did in XI, though I could be wrong. It seems that this class/job-uniqueness has been flattened as a result of there being nothing else to do except the 5~7 or so dungeon/raids, and leveling.

And, to further emphasize your point, the lack of milestones while leveling also severely strips players of a sense of achievement and reward when you can level from 1~50 without ever having to break away from behests and leves. I like the idea of there being milestones, where in order to progress past 25, you do totorok or something (capped at 25 mind you!, so 50s can join and demolish everything while you just follow and stay out of harm's way), and to progress past 35, something else, etc. It seems to be improving with the addition of jobs (at least in concept), however the fact that jobs can piggy back off your class level strips current players with 50s the ability to level something new.

I've iterated this point before in some previous post I think, but my fear is that as SE releases new content leading up to 2.0, that because the content is so limited (result of limited dev resources for non 2.0 content) that everyone floods it and then asks "Now what?!" until new content is released and the cycle repeats. I also fear that if they release 2.0 and reset everything (to better level the playing field so existing players don't feel so over-achieved with 50 everything) that it'll upset them and cause a mass exodus from the game, which is a valid concern and fear, methinks.