Perspective of a returning player

[Colino]

One thing I will say about FFXI that I think FFXIV can learn from is that the quests could be much better. I think it's partially down to the little quest summary that you get when you begin quests. I feel this makes us all very lazy and can take away a bit of immersion.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine and it's especially painful explaining to my new playing friends that they have to check the journal every step of the way.

Fortunately we're getting a proper quest log in 2.0, the messiah.

[leomike35]

Me I just love the way some posters use contradiction in their posts like "the game had come a long way but still sucks". Or saying nothing has improved but then proceed to list things that have improved. My question to that is..... Does this game have to be perfect in every area for you to say that it simply doesn't suck? I mean listening to some of these post if I didn't play the game myself I would think just from reading these so called returning player threads that SE didn't do a thing. Lol did some of you recent returning players somehow manage to return without installing any patches? I get the feeling you won't enjoy 2.0 you will just say it got a new coat of paint and still sucks. What gives are you expecting games to change your life?

[Kindra]

I recently came back to FXIV and tbh I saw the changes. I have enjoyed my time back. 2.0 is not that far away. So I figured I would wait to see what I really think of it then. Judging it now doesn't seem fair to me since this isn't the final version. (By final I mean what the game will run on til the end, I do know that things like expansions and such will be along down the line.)

While I understand the need to compare to what else it out there, I would like to see it be it's own game. Last thing I want is a clone of WoW, XI, Tera, or anything else out there. It should be its own game. That's what I have always liked about the FF games. They were the same as in the fact they all had great story lines, but that's where it always ended. They all had different worlds, stories for that world, different ways of doing battle.

I'm just saying wait for 2.0 to give a judgment.

[XxOstiaxX]

Honestly as a returning player...... The combat system kinda sucks, way to slow, and "Oh combo" really ? Not that impressive. And class unbalance is annoying, mages can nuke the hell out of anything 4 levels above 1vs3 easy, try to do that as a lancer or something lol

[Tombah]

The longer loading time is because each new patch adds even more files to the already huge 100000's of files and makes the whole thing even more fragmented. (which will also make the HDD/SSD degrade faster which will in turn make the game slower...)
It's not technically fixable in this version.

[Mirage]

Idkbro, my long loading times are due to the client waiting for data from the server. Loading an empty inn room shouldn't take nearly as much time as it does.

[Tombah]

Yes, I notice that the game doesn't access anything from the memory/storage and just wait for the server's response, then the inn room shows up really fast. It's about as slow as storing/selling an item right? I think it's the server lag people have been complaining about since day one.

[Mirage]

Guess this is one of the things they hope to address with the new "server infrastructure" in v2.

[Lienn]

I agree with most OP said.

[Alokin1988]

Couple things.

1. Combat really doesn't improve until later on. After you've unlocked some other class skills the game becomes a bit better. Not perfect and at times I find myself just waiting on my character to hit so he can get enough tp to attack.

2. The game makes me feel like I need to level up all combat classes. Which can be rough for a new player or a returning player who didn't get very far. This also makes the jobs/classes feel very cheap. It's hard to be the top Lancer/Dragoon player when I'm casting Cure, forced to level up other jobs to make Lancer/Dragoon compete, or forced to switch out to other jobs/classes because the dragoon isn't capable of running the content.

I really hope they can address this in the future but I have a feeling its going to be a staple of the game. Which will probably hurt its success in the long run and just won't appeal to me as a player.