Quote Originally Posted by Rutelor View Post
All around, however, I've come to realize that you and I are mostly on the same side. I just don't think the need for developers to provide a constant stream of content is new, or modern. I also don't believe in the underlining implication of your writing, that somehow what made FFXI compelling (for me, evidently not for you) is something obsolete or superseded. And I don't think luck was a capital part of it.

R
I think perhaps you've got a differing opinion on what made FFXI compelling.

I'll be blunt. For me, the answer was commiseration. The game was grueling by many standards, FFXI players insulted WoW as casuals, even though it was a more successful game.

It wasn't any mechanic that made FFXI good, though I'll give compliments to the Job/Subjob system, and the capasity to level multiple jobs on a single character, something that was good to carry over to XIV. But put bluntly, many of the mechanics were really bad - people complained about them for the duration and SE was slow to fix anything. Expansions were strung along with empty filler (You must wait till JP midnight to start the next quest!) And even when you could go through content, it wasn't there until the next patch three months down the line.

And while there were some things that are just plain fun to do in the game, we're not touching on the more notorious issues here. Absolute Virtue, Pandemonium Warden, the Salvage Dupe scandal? Players weren't playing the game honestly and that speaks bad of the game mechanics. Too much was just drawn out in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons.

So it wasn't the nuts and bolts of the game that made it worthwhile, in my opinion. It was the people, it was the lore, it was the story. Players grunted through all the miserable parts of the game because they loved the world head and shoulders above its mechanics. And they enjoyed the company they kept. There are people still outside that Game that hold pride in their home nation (And for you other scrubs, it's Winfirst! Remember that!) I know my previous nation choice affected my decision in XIV.

That sort of attraction can be achieved regardless of the mechanics. And for many of us witnessing the fall of Meteor, that attachment to the world is already blooming.

So no, I don't believe luck was a capital part of FFXI's success either, but neither do I believe it's mechanics were without crippling flaws, flaws this game is most defiantly going to have to shed off if it wants a larger subscription base.