FFXIV is too simplistic and bland

[Quintessa]

To take it even further, the things I discuss are the facts of life.

These concepts reach the entirety of life for humanity as a whole.

In food/culinary arts.

Its like comparing Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to Peanut Butter Pots de Creme.

Now you're going to tell me Reese's cups are a culinary marvel?

Or comparing a Toyota Prius to a Aston Martin. So now you'll say a Prius is an automotive wonder?

People with specified tastes play RPG's, someone who wants something easy and quick and fun to play, play Angry Birds.

These are the absolute basic fundamentals of humanity.

Again, I repeat, wanting FFXIV to be a Final Fantasy is someone who enjoys Final Fantasy, wanting it to become an action game, or a platform game, is not a fan of the series.

I love how each of your comparison examples contain one thing I never heard of. I know what a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup is and I know what an Aston Martin is.

[DrWho2010]

Unless the devs change their way of thinking drastically about how they want XIV to be - the game will never become or move towards what the OP wants. NEVER. (he's been railing on this topic for more than a couple of years now, you'd think he'd get the hint but no.)

when the story ends though, the game in some way will end. however long it lasts will be due to social contacts and finishing of personal goals within the system. unlike XI I can see them "turning off" the game permanently but that's just my pessimistic opinion. by then the next MMO will be in place and i'm sure the OP will again be complaining about it.

[Gameovers]

The only thing fishy, and questionable thing here is how volatile people are just because they don’t agree with me.

What’s worse, is I considered changing to my main because I’m getting tired of the needless disrespect.....

But.... then I remembered part of the reason I’m not.

(Provided information proved to be worthless, read below reasoning.)

The way you and others respond to me is not encouragement to post on my main either. Clearly it’s been proven you aren’t interested in being friendly.

I am about being friendly. Tho that had nothing to do if I agree with you or not. Hint I dont. But that doesn't mean I'm not being friendly.

[jojocrew]

The low levels are a bit bland and repetitive, but higher levels are much better

[ChrisRedfield2]

Wise insight even after 3 years

[UltraPrimarch]

Anybody got some super good drama threads to necro? Let's at least necro on some aged matured full-bodied drama.

[Dzian]

FFXIV is incredibly shallow and bland it’s the cause of so many of the game's issues. And it’s a cascading effect. Jobs in XIV are brain-dead easy to play. And the content is brain-dead easy to complete. You can see videos of players beating current patch bosses using nothing but auto attacks that’s how braindead easy it really is. What that does is it leads to a philosophy of well it doesn’t matter what buttons I press in what order or how I play my job. This then leads to devs looking at it and saying well people aren’t playing this job properly so we need to make it simpler, which only then makes it even more shallow and stupid. It's not that players cant play jobs properly it's just that they really don’t need to. There is no risk of failure. And it just promotes laziness across the board which then promotes bad decisions that make things simpler and even more braindead time and time and again it sucks.

As much as I loved FFXI though and spent nearly a decade playing it. It was by no means perfect. It had its own share of mistakes. The way skills scaled for example killed many options for the sub-job system. And while Xi's jobs were unique and diverse many of them also felt undesirable not because the job itself was badly designed but more because of the monsters that inhabited the world. You can even today go look at Vana'diels bestiary and it won't take long to identify why jobs got left out. Because 95% of monsters in FFXI shared the same weaknesses. Piercing, ice, thunder.. if the monsters were more diverse in weaknesses and resistances many of Xi's job problems wouldn’t have existed.

However one of the best things about FFXI that blows XIV is simply the game world. Vana'diel blows Eorzea away in nearly every single aspect. Eorzea is this static shallow dead lifeless world where nothing ever happens and nothing players do matters. You can see this on so many fronts from Fates to the story. The world never changes or evolves. Take the Naadam segment of the MSQ as an example. The Azim Steppe is exactly the same when you leave as it was when you first arrived. Despite all your actions and influence “apparently” causing a big shift to the balance of power between factions. But nope nothing changes it’s exactly the same as it was when you first went there. The world is nearly always empty when you traverse it because the open world is dead and lifeless even its monsters are jokes hence the very term “trash mobs”

Compare that to Vana’diel in XI where the world is a living breathing dynamic ever-changing and virtually every action players took had some real impact on the world. Even that new level 1 player stepping outside of San d'Oria and killing an orc for the first time had a real impact on the game world and the balance of power. The same is true if that same player stepped out and got killed by the orc. It’d have an impact on the balance of power.
This balance of power impacted many things including the economy, transport options and vendor merchants Whose wares and stocks would change based on who had control of certain regions which would in turn impact prices.
Then you had travel options like airships and stuff that all happen in real-time. You could jump on an airship in Bastok and go up on deck and see it flying over the Konschtat Highlands. And at that same moment a player in the Highlands could look up into the sky and see that airship flying overhead. Small details but made the world feel connected and alive.

Another comparison between the worlds is just variety. Eorzea. Basically, every zone is just a big bland open space with a slightly different colour pallete. However, in Vana'diel every zone was vastly different and many of them had unique mechanics and elements that helped bring them to life. You had outdoor zones, indoor zones, sky zones, sea zones, underground tunnel zones.. all with different mechanics and puzzles. Some Examples include The Toraimarai Canal with its 3 Mage gate requiring a white balck and red mage to work together to open or a Moon Orb. Ifrits Cauldron where you could use ice clusters to douse the flames and open paths, The Garleige Citadel with its gate breeches needing people to stand on platforms to open gates, The Eldieme Necropolis with its gate switches, Sea serpents grotto with its underground caves and hidden doors. The quicksand caves with its weighted platforms. 1 Galka or 3 Taru to weigh it down and open the door. The Sacrarium with its maze that changed every game day even if you were in the middle of it you would see the walls moving around you. You could even run around inside a giant tree. Or go mining in actual mines. Not to mention all the castles and towers you could explore. So much more varied and diverse than Eorzea where every single zone is just a big open mostly empty space.

You also big events like like besieged and campaigns that impacted the game world based on outcomes. Beasties invaded Aht Urhgan you might find the chocobo npc has been kidnapped and you can’t hire a chocobo or use the runic portal to teleport because they took the Astral ccandescance when they invaded and players would need to go and get it back and rescue the kidnapped npcs.

Or you could simply catch a ferry and find yourself being randomly attacked and boarded by pirates. There were so many of these things that helped bring the world to life. And to add to that just players.. in Vana’diel you never knew what you’d see the next time you ran through a zone, you might see nothing, you might see players EXP farming, you might see players doing a mission or quest boss, or hunting / killing a NM or ZNM, WSNM doing skill up parties or any number of things.

Then there are monsters. Eorzea is dull and boring and there’s no danger or peril. You can run past monsters 20 levels higher than you and not bat an eyelid because in 3 steps they’ll stop chasing you. And mobs are considered trash because they’re so weak and puny players literally just round them up by the dozens and aoe them all down without breaking a sweat. As mentioned earlier there are even videos out there where players clear current content “bosses” without doing anything and just whail away with auto attacks and win. Says a lot about the state of the game when you can do basically nothing and still beat a “boss”.

and every single boss in Eorzea is exactly the same. Same skills in the same sequence following the exact saem rotation against yet another boss with exactly the same weaknesses and strengths as every other boss, doing the same attacks at the same time in every single fight scripted to death boring and predictable. Which again leads to many of the games problems.

In Vana’diel virtually every single monster can and would rip not just you but your whole party to shreds if you weren’t careful. They actually felt like monsters and they all felt different to fight.
It amazes me how Vana’diel was a world created over 20 years ago on what is now incredibly dated code and hardware technology yet is so much deeper, more complex and actually alive than what they created with Eorzea. Where the world is shallow dead and lifeless and nothing you do matters which is a big part of why the game feels so boring. Especially when combined with the fact that’s it’s often harder to lose a fight than it is to win it.

Honestly if Eorzea was even a fraction of the world Vana’diel is XIV would be so much better. BUt Eorzea is just this hollowed out bland shell where so many "Final Fantasy" things just don't exist, the elemental wheel and affinitys, status effects and debuffs, unique diverse jobs and gear. unique and diverse monsters that all behave and act differently. mobs that hit weak but fast, mobs that hit slow but hard. mobs that are evasive and hard to hit, mobs that are bulky and slow but heavily armoured and tough. the list goes on and on.. Eorzea everythings the same. you can fell cleave a level 1 bug for the exact same damage as a level 90 mega boss. because the only thing thats different is how much HP they have.

If SE ever does a new MMO. I seriously hope they build a world more like Vana’diel and less like Eorzea..

[Iyrnthota]

It'll be interesting to see this thread re-necro'd in another 3 years to see if anything has changed. Like our own little time capsule.