We Need that Feeling back of "CoP"(first release)

[Babydoll]

Yeah! Who wants to do battles where you have to really work together and try hard? Why can't we just make random pick ups with people we don't know AT ALL...and win the first try!? -_- I would rather burn through content within a couple days so I can go stand in town and be bored. Please.

[Hyrist]

Yeah! Who wants to do battles where you have to really work together and try hard? Why can't we just make random pick ups with people we don't know AT ALL...and win the first try!? -_- I would rather burn through content within a couple days so I can go stand in town and be bored. Please.

You realize there's a medium solution, right? A solution within the already existing system of the game that can be utilized to satisfy both camps?

It's called adjustable difficulty settings. Single Player games use this all the time to appease wide groups of players and add replay value to the story sections of the game.

[Zaaku]

You realize there's a medium solution, right? A solution within the already existing system of the game that can be utilized to satisfy both camps?

It's called adjustable difficulty settings. Single Player games use this all the time to appease wide groups of players and add replay value to the story sections of the game.

Yeah no.

You can never truly scale that kind of difficulty correctly without some number being more advantageous then others. The moment people figure out you can zerg down the fight with 4 people while bineg easier then 8 you suddenly have half parties floating through content instead of facing up to the challenge. Jesus christ people it is an MMO. It is designed to be played with the OTHER PLAYERS! Having a objective which is actually difficult is FUN. You can't just stop there though. If you make 8 players fight and strain at a point of contention in the storyline then have some slap nickel breeze through the fight because he did it solo you take away from the satisfaction and triumph of those who did it the right way.

And yes there is a right and wrong way. Banding together with a group of friends or allies to take on a serious challenge and only through teamwork could you finally topple the boss is a good.

Saying, 'fug it I only got 20 minutes to play." walking out there alone and lolwinning and making the story and fight itself unmemorable and easy is doing it WRONG.


I'm sorry but if you cannot put in the time or the effort then why are you playing an MMO? The entire basis of the genre is basically TIME SINK. They are designed to make you play over months and years. The leveling process and content and built, from the ground up, to extended game play so you can keep paying them. Anyone who walks into an MMO and expects things to be easy and solo friendly because they are time poor is just plain daffy.

[Jinko]

Yeah! Who wants to do battles where you have to really work together and try hard? Why can't we just make random pick ups with people we don't know AT ALL...and win the first try!? -_- I would rather burn through content within a couple days so I can go stand in town and be bored. Please.

Garuda (hard) is pretty .. uhhh hard

[Hyrist]

Unless you mean you like the ability to switch the game to Easy Mode at the flick of a switch to goose through content then put it back to normal when the hard parts are over. In which case HELL NO. That is a horrible idea and not in line with the spirit of Final Fantasy. None of the titles before ever put emphasis on a single character saving the world. Or a lone hero taking on the dangers of Chaos and disorder by their lonesome. They sure as hell didn't make them easy either.

Except in every single remake there were at least 2 difficulty settings. And you're looking at just Final Fantasy. What about the CURRENT successful titles. Final fantasy's old pedigrees aren't working here anymore.

I'm sorry you got burned out on Promies. Heavy is the head that were the Crown of LS Promy leader but you cannot let that distort your outlook. Challenging content that pits you and your LS mates against near impossible odds are fun.

(Sidenote, Prommies were a huge pain, probably the worst bottleneck of the whole bunch, but Airship fight and Mr Zergrush Samurai were no slouches either.)

Difficult, memorable fights are fine, as far as optional content. Garuda, Ifrit, Mog King they're great. I enjoy the fact that these legends are challenging. (And hopefully more so after they re-balance Black Mages, seriously needs to be done.)

But you don't dangle a STORY over people's heads on content difficult enough to encourage elitist BS like Class Stacking. Storyline content should never be under that umbrella.

Should the fights be fun? Heck yes. Should they be hellishly difficult? NO. Save that for the grind where it really matters.

And also, yes, I do Leves beyond just solo leveling. When I'm not in the mood for crafting or competing over pop NMs I go and do them for Company Seals or some easy gil. I personally find them fun, and it's nice to have that option. Are they riveting and exciting? No. But it beats running around Tu'lia at night fighting Gilsellers for Bat claims.

I'm not saying no content should be difficult. I'm saying storyline content should not be abhorrently so. Give them a reson to do it hard, and a reason to go back to it.

The absolute perfect example of this? Divine Might. That was a fun and hard fight in its hayday that you did not have to do, but people still did. It was memorable, an accomplishment to do, and in no way a barrier to the story-line.

I hold Divine Might well above any of the CoP fights, which were, as described, 2hr spam fights in many, many occasions.


Also, as I recall, I didn't need 13 other real life people to kill Kefka. And I remember Prishe a heck of a lot more than some the people I did CoP missions with (aside from the specific people who helped me in my campaign to get people past CoP). You can do the whole "not alone" thing with one player.

And think of how much content went unplayed in that game. Bahamut alone was a great fight, but such a disappointment that so few could experience taking on the Wyrmking. And it was a great story to boot, hidden behind such hurtles. That sort of thing is a problem.

But no, we don't need that feeling of CoP. We need that feeling of Divine Might back.

[Lienn]

FFXI beat 1M players for a while. They even posted an official announcement at POL when it first happened.

Trying to find it at archives...but since it's only up to 2005 so it might not be there.

[Hyrist]

FFXI beat 1M players for a while. They even posted an official announcement at POL when it first happened.

Trying to find it at archives...but since it's only up to 2005 so it might not be there.

Sorry to say. That announcement meant characters, not active subscribers. That's why it's not in any data-points.

FFXI had a stable population, but a small one comparative to a good number of MMOs that came in the age after it (As seen in Keyln's graph above.)

500k subscribers isn't a success in today's MMO market. We should by no means be shooting for that sort of cap. We should go higher, and IMO that sort of difficulty barrier you're looking at fondly is as much of a limiter as it was an asset.

Then again, so is the Final Fantasy name at this point. Yoshi and crew are taking on a massive uphill climb. The major problem is here though, we're now competing against FFXI as well and no matter what, you'll never get a 1/1 double subscription. We're going to have to pull people from different sources. Ideally from some of the other high-end-yet-aging MMOs in the market.

[Exn]

I did CoP under the caps and back before level sync but it wasn't my favorite. Yet, I do miss the challenging progressive quest lines from the XI expansions. By quest lines I specifically mean the encounters and open world, because I literally button-mashed through most of the CoP storyline wall-of-text. I remember something about a Prishe and a song they kept playing over and over.. looked really pretty I'm sure it was a great storyline but I just was focused on "where to next!?!?!" that I didn't pay it much attention unfortunately. XIV hasn't had a chance to... 'expand' yet, but so far I haven't really seen anything to suggest we'll see harder content of the type that seems to frustrate some players in this thread. Honestly, it seems that the majority (at least the vocal majority) find XIV's current content challenging and sustainable at it's current level. For XIV, the Dev's this time around seem pretty focused on the numbers and trying to emulate the style of what's popular in the genre. Although it would be great to see challenging quest lines that progressed through level cap (and level syncable) areas from the mid levels up to/through endgame, I don't really expect it since the Dev's don't seem to care too much about what worked in XI.. or catering to the XI playerbase period for that matter..

[Ramesses]

Awesome thread and it brought back a lot of bitter-sweet memories.

First off, thanks for reminding me of the FFXI comic "Level-Up"... I actually used to follow it judiciously for a couple years. Wish we had something like that for FFXIV.

As for CoP, I actually loved and hated it in equal measure... I thoroughly enjoyed completing it, but at the time if you asked me if I would run through it again, I would likely have tee-peed your house.

I loved it for the truly excellent and epic storyline... and as a few people mentioned above, that was what really kept people playing because most of the rewards weren't that great. The scenes and the NPCs (Tenzen, Prishe, Selh'teus etc) were VERY well written and the challenging battles really brought out the very very best of your gaming skills... you did NOT progress through CoP if you were a crappy player... simple as that.

In those days, you beat battles like Ouryu, the Mammets, the dreaded airship battle in chapter 6.4 and you held your head up in town with enormous pride. Heck, not to boast but our static on Garuda server were so organized, we beat Promethus himself on our first dry run, right after beating the pots.... and I tanked.

But CoP had its issues. What I really hated about CoP were three things:

One, the horrendous drop rates for certain mandatory key items to progress the storyline... they were NOT fun. Getting items like yellow liquid, or the (teak?) wood that Cid needed, or those stupid Cyan/Grey/Carmine chips from Pso'Xja... I could go on and on. Perhaps we were sometimes unlucky during the middle stage of the whole quests but for me, hunting for a couple days to make sure everyone got their items was sometimes annoying.

Two, places like the trip up the hill in Attowa chasm (somewhere in Chapter 3?) was a candidate for the top ten "WTF" moments in MMO history... heck, even the quest was called "Comedy of errors". The ability to lose your footing due to bad camera angles or not walking slow enough...and then fall all the way down to the base of the hill to start over was NOT funny. People spent weeks... yes WEEKS... trying to finish that particular quest. I hated that experience like a plague and honestly would not want to see crap like that in FFXIV

Three, the alienation of players to be able to participate in the quest... shouting for months to get just the promies done was not pretty, and that's how SE actually lost over 70% of their casual players base to WoW and a couple other MMOs. People must understand that you tube was still relatively NEW at the time so information and video guides were very limited... and less and less people had the precious time to allow CoP to become a vicious time-sink in their real lives. Thus, many quit and that's why SE wanted the TOAU expansion to address some of the player dynamics difficulties that CoP had.

The level of difficulty did indeed bring the element of challenge... but in a world where your bottom line profits actually revolve around the casual players, its highly HIGHLY advisable to have your really challenging stuff at the end game level and not between level 30 to 50. That is how SE should think of addressing expansions in 2.0 and not making early or mid-level content to be a CoP reincarnation.

Sheesh, I still have pics of entire alliances lying decimated at the first 3 promies. Seemed funny at first, until three weeks pass by and you're still trying to get past some lvl 30 dungeon that was insanely hard... then you find out that your two beloved lvl 50+ jobs that you slaved so hard to level are not a right fit for the lvl 30 party.

So yeah... CoP was great and it honed my skills to unbelievable levels but I won't run through some parts of that madness again. Many people have to remember that the Zilart and TOAU tales are actually just as epic in their own unique ways (beating Divine Might, Shadow Lord @ Xarcabard, the Bahamut battle, Apocalypse Nigh, and Alexander were ALL an insane head rush with their respective epic music).

That's the type of excitement I'm looking for in FFXIV 2.0

[Alise]

I like the idea of pop NM item, but I don't like FF11 camping style.

I also like an idea to require some rings from NM in order to get into Ishgard.

and I agree FF14 nowadays are all about repeat content. so boring.