Can we get an idea on what to expect from the open world in version 2? (A bit long)

[Limonconcon]

I just don't have the same hysteria over bots that other people do. My HNM linkshell didn't use bots in XI and we did fine. We lost a lot of Dragon's Aery claims but got the majority of Tiamat and Cerb for at least a year stretch. Honestly, I just think a lot (not all) of the people with an over the top bot phobia just really sucked at claiming. Actually, I suspect they just sucked at killing.

I think back to my days spent in XI and remember most of the most vocal players on this issue were people from linkshells who never even went to HNM camps and wouldn't have been able to kill them if they had. It wasn't that all of them were horrible. They were just unmotivated and since an HNM claim wouldn't fall into their laps wrapped in a bow they only wanted to blame bots. This is my personal experience so when I see all of these people here with what I think are irrational claims about bots I am forced to draw the same conclusions.

The honest truth of the matter is I would rather have to suffer and work against bots than play in an instanced WoW clone. My linkshell is very capable. We have very capable players. We're also small, some of us have conflicting play times, sometimes we find ourselves stuck at 7/8 until very late at night, sometimes we've had to fight Ifrit Extreme with mules in party until an 8th arrives, and a signification portion of our LS list will be inactive until 2.0. We're also on Aegis.

There are Japanese linkshells on Aegis with great skill and they also have seemingly ten times our numbers without, it seems, any great sacrifice in the over all quality of their LS. Were 2.0 to launch tomorrow with all the open world content I want to see, my linkshell and the 2 or 3 other capable NA endgame linkshells (with similar size and structure as our own) would get absolutely steamrolled on claim. That doesn't matter to me. That's a challenge and a struggle i'm willing to brave and ultimately overcome because that is the game I want to play. If we're overwhelmed at first by these emerging JP juggernauts I won't be coming to the forums to whine and cry about the open world system. We'll simply scrap for what we can get, grow our LS, and make sure we get our slice of the pie.

We'll rise to whatever occasion we have to. We overcome the game. We don't let the game overcome us. That's why we want open world. Myself and everyone else in this thread. That and a thousand other reasons.

I would rather have to fight for every crumb in an open world MMO than rule with world first and server first instances any day every day.
It's boring. It gets stale. It's a game on tracks.
That's a single player game. It doesn't matter how fun Mass Effect is. I can't play Mass Effect and experience the SAME EXACT THING fifty billion times and enjoy it. That's what an instance is.

Not for me.

I want to watch people wipe and be ready to claim. I want to have to claim under less than ideal conditions. I want my LS to fight its ass off to make sure we don't wipe in front of someone else. I want to overcome through the skill and strength of my LS the most trying MPK attempts while we're on the brink of failure and win despite it.

That's an MMO.

Addressing the bot issue is IMO addressed through addressing the pop system.
Give future Tiamats enough spawn locations way off the beaten path that an entire linkshell can not sit waiting for them with a kill alliance in one place and a bot at the ready. Or make every mob in the game, from a boar in some remote corner of the world to a marmot squirrel 2 feet outside Uldah's gate, a potential place holder for an HNM.

Make the claim reliant on who can find them and who can muster an alliance the fastest.

There are plenty of solutions short of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

/clap

I was glad to read your post...
I was in zEUs Linkshell in Midgardsormr for about 3 yrs and we never used bots, but we still manage to get the HNMs we wanted to.
Dammm I miss those fun in game years...
And the HNM solution that you gave is one of many that I have. HNMS can also pop randomly anywhere in a whole zone...
People dont understand that claiming an HNM is not as hard as fighting the HNM...
And Im so sure that if they put a Nidhogg or an aspid in an instanced most of the ppl that complain about not been able to have a chance at claiming wouldnt be able to kill them anyways and complain about that also.
And I dnt even wanna say Vrtra with all the adds, Tiamat or the almost impossible Absolute virtue (we have pop him about 20-30 times) we never even got him to 70%... even after the strategy video released by the devs...

[Rutelor]

Actually Ruetlor. While I would normally agree with you that some of the things that I have listed should be obvious and easily completed, my experience within video games has taught me never to assume such for the sake of the content itself will be at risk if you do not mention it.

[...snip...]

Given the history of Ground Kings, there's absolutely no way I'll respect such a claim like the one you just made, and saying as much makes you suspect, in my eyes.

Just to clarify, and because you start your post with my name (albeit mispelled): The person you quote, and to whom I imagine you direct the attack contained in the second paragraph of my quotation, is someone other than me. Please be careful not to (accidentally, I suppose, but equally carelessly) taint my good name, Hyrist.

R

[Rutelor]

Just wanted to point out that this is simply not true. We do have four Strongholds full of enemies and coffers, three of which have NMs waiting at the end. Also for the lower in level we have Shposhae, a fully open-world dungeon, and more than a dozen lower level NMs. I'm not saying it's the best things we've ever seen but it IS open-world content.

You're absolutely right in counting my omissions, Arcell, and I apologize for the oversight. Strongholds probably slipped out of my mind because I have so many issues with the nature of the combat therein. The spammy, confused, and convoluted style of the combat they generate is, alas, not to my liking; I find it to be awfully fast-paced, to the point of becoming perfunctory.

Shposhae is another matter. I am sorry I left it out of my mentions, because I really think this is a nicely built dungeon for its level, one that exists in the open world to boot, and one with very nice mechanics as well. Thanks for reminding me. Alas, I haven't run it in ages, since I only have one combat class that remains below the suggested level for this area. The only things that I missed in there were: a bit of beastman activity, and perhaps more quests that took you through the hurdles and into the difficult corners of the dungeon for their completion. In addition, I'd also like for chests to have random spawn spots, rather than being fixed.

The devs have stated that there will be more open-world content and it's not like they're re-doing the maps just to look pretty. They'll fill those maps with things to do, instanced or not. However that being said, it does seem like a lot of the content is shifting to instanced despite the loud "discussions" in opposition. The community has spoken at length about this many times and still the devs are doing mostly what they want to and what they feel is right for the game. If instanced content really kills the game for you then perhaps FFXIV is not for you, even in 2.0. I would suggest people take the time to consider how much this all really matters to them and evaluate their choice to keep playing.

This might be true, Arcell, but I still would like for some sort of a statement from them. Even if it says what you mentioned, but in their words, lending them a certain official, committing flavor. It's not that I don't appreciate your mentioning what you say, which is also what I would like to believe, but alas, coming from you it's no less a conjecture than when it comes from my wishful thinking. Learning within a single week that the Primals' fights and the Skirmish events were, once again, relying on instances was a bit of a downer for many that, like me, long for a rich, open, and challenging open world.

Again thanks for pointing out my mistakes. :-)

R

[Rokien]

I do hope you know that all open dungeons(including shposhae)are going to be instanced, so he was right not to add it.

Also the strongholds are just slapped on decor with mobs placed in it, it has no meaning or anything. NOW if you had to get through the strongholds to get to ifrit, or moogle, or garuda. That's a different story. Which I don't know why they didn't do in the first place. Oh wait, easy mode, slipped my mind.

[Babydoll]

I do hope you know that all open dungeons(including shposhae)are going to be instanced, so he was right not to add it.

Also the strongholds are just slapped on decor with mobs placed in it, it has no meaning or anything. NOW if you had to get through the strongholds to get to ifrit, or moogle, or garuda. That's a different story. Which I don't know why they didn't do in the first place. Oh wait, easy mode, slipped my mind.

Yeh when I came back (started in 2010, but came back in oct 2011 cuz finally got new pc) I was expecting to have to run though some sort of fire temple or some dungeon with very high level mobs to get to Ifrit. lol I remember looking for it for a long time and someone finally took me to this random cut/paste cave.

I was like..this this it? This is really....it...okay then ._.

Yoshi/devs is gonna hurt this game more then help it if there is no open world end game at all. I know for a fact all my old XI/gaming friends will not have anything to do with it. When I say "all my XI/gaming friends" I don't mean a small number of people either. I try to promote this game all the time and get tons of people to play...they are always asking wheres the open world stuff...

[Rokien]

Yeh when I came back (started in 2010, but came back in oct 2011 cuz finally got new pc) I was expecting to have to run though some sort of fire temple or some dungeon with very high level mobs to get to Ifrit. lol I remember looking for it for a long time and someone finally took me to this random cut/paste cave.

I was like..this this it? This is really....it...okay then ._.

Yoshi/devs is gonna hurt this game more then help it if there is no open world end game at all. I know for a fact all my old XI/gaming friends will not have anything to do with it. When I say "all my XI/gaming friends" I don't mean a small number of people either. I try to promote this game all the time and get tons of people to play...they are always asking wheres the open world stuff...

Ya, I really don't think it's too much to ask, really. I don't know one person who has stated "NO MORE INSTANCES!" not even I. Instances have their place in games, and they are fun, though, if they are not mixed well with the open world, it becomes a crap fest. It only makes sense to have the primals with the things that summoned it. Nope its out here in no mans land with nothing but a few low life mobs. That's bad mixing of open and instanced content. FFXI did it well, especially with bcnms. Lots of times you had to go through a dungeon or a castle to get to said fight.

[Sevro]

I would like to respectfully request from the moderators to give us some semblance of an indication of what the developers' plans are concerning the open world in this game, come version 2. I am not, and neither do I think the community is, a foe of good instanced content. However, right now, all the event additions, and announcements concerning future event additions, seem to circle around the twin concepts of instanced dungeons and timed events.

Other than free roaming NMs (I don't think they deserve the title of HNMs) there's only two imperfect open-world events besides the monotonously repetitive guildleves: Behest and Caravans. Behest is in bad need of refurbishment, since it's something so laughingly easy that it constitutes nothing more than a timed XP giveaway. The mechanics of it, not touched since its original appearance at launch, are notoriously clunky; they allow for easy trolling and renegade-type spoiling of the event for other players.

Caravans, although more enjoyable than behest, also would benefit from some improvements, and the addition of some variety to their scheme. (Do we always need foe-spawn points to be at exactly the same spots? Wouldn't a bit of unpredictability as to the direction, amount, strength, routes, and mechanics of the foes add much needed excitement?) Unfortunately, if Caravans today occupy a spot in the affections of players, it's due to the fact that's an easy event to spam in order to procure GC seals, which is kind of sad. In the future, with the addition of more and more GC events and quests, perhaps the game's population won't have to rely on spamming events (the mentioned caravans, Toto-Rak speed runs) in order to earn seals.

Also, all these events are timed, which has long been the rule in FFXIV, imparting a cookie-cutter feel to the available activities in the game.

A lobby world in which people only maintain a perfunctory relationship with the environment might be easy to develop, but it's also easy to outgrow and get tired of. Many of us in the community think that a rich, varied, colorful, competitive, and perpetually challenging open world is the fundamental backbone for a game that will remain successful over many years. We also understand that, with all the changes planned for the open world maps in v. 2.0, it might be difficult to introduce open world events at this stage and that, perhaps, many are already planned. But for precisely this reason, a little bit of a panorama of things to come would be extremely welcome, in order to maintain the excitement level for us Legacy Players high and bubbly.

This quote, I already included in another post of mine, but that was buried on dead-leg of a long thread, and I think it deserves to be read, as does the entire blog entry from which it comes. In it the writer describes in 17 words, what held him rapt for years in his favorite MMO. That that game was the spiritual forbear of FFXI explains why so many of the veteran players of SE's previous MMO usually repeat this same mantra:



R

Couldn't have said it better myself! Brilliant post and I agree with everything the OP said. This is a huge concern for me. I will be very disapointed in 2.0 if the open world does not have more benefits than the instanced world. Instancing breaks up a lot of the feelings and experiences that I love in an MMO game, in Final Fantasy. It is the reason I am putting my time in XIV and not WoW, Rift, etc. Those games went to the extreme of casual/instancing.. it's time for a true balance to be in the game. I agree there needs to be some instanced content, but the majority of my experiences in XIV I hope will be made of open world XP parties, open world dungeons where players run into each other and where there are a limited amount of boss spawns (this is GOOD for an mmo). Instanced content needs to be in there too, and casual content - however, open world dungeons/parties/experiences are more fun for a lot of us and I feel like we've been totally forgotten about in this whole casual/instant gratification trend. I want FFXIV to sell big numbers and make good subsc money so I know there HAS to be some casual/instanced content and I enjoy it too sometimes.. but don't forget about all of us who want open world. Open World is the concept of an MMO, at least for me it is. If I want to solo everything and have everything available to me at any time then there are a million playstation 3 games I can play solo without sacrificing the graphics that are sacrificed to make an MMO work and have all of that. MMO's are meant to be massive with lots of people around, not sitting in a town, waiting to be selected to join with 4 other players for a generic instance where you know what will happen and it will be like a 4 player game.

I will make 1 or 2 days a week in my 30 hour student/work/young-adult-social-life-fun schedule per week , have some space while I do my thing and play my mmo. I only desire to do this though if it's worth it. Everquest was so worth it, FFXI was so worth it too, although that was a tad extreme at least when I played (quit at treasures expansion). I was so disappointed when raids began being limited in participants or squished from 50 people to only 25. 25 is okay but you get my point.

Everything in MMO's these days seems to be accessible to everyone and anybody. When I see this in an MMO I immediately lose my interest or motivation to raid or play really. I'll sit around for awhile but everything in the game begins to feel pointless. I think this is also a reason why most of my MMO experiences since EQ and FFXI have been with communities who are not cohesive or even known to each other.. there simply is no community because everyone is playing separately.

I'm putting my time into FFXIV hoping it will remember MY type of player equally as much as THAT type of player, if it doesn't I'll be awaiting the mmo that brings this aspect back for players like me who I feel have been totally unfocused on with this mmo era of accessibility for everyone with everything. I really hope the developers read this and I really hope they each remember to put more focus on the players who do love the many aspects of original mmo concepts that captured us into the genre and created amazing social experiences in the MMO. If the argument is time or accessibility for everyone, I am a third year student who works almost full time, volunteers, takes 4 classes every semester, has an awesome social life, and manages to fit in 15 hours a week of game time or more if I feel it's worth it. There needs to be options for everybody, and MMO's today, in my opinion, have totally lost sight of players like me who want there to be some meaningful, exclusive raid content, or framework, creating a different class of LS's/guilds etc, for people willing to achieve it. We've been left in the dust a lot I think and that's really not nice - at all! So please XIV team.. remember that - Meaningful Open World Content needs to be made necessary for players wanting those older MMO elements back and it's fun for us just like instances are fun for casuals! Open World should be the competitive arena of high end linkshells, players. I remember in EQ being a level 9 newbie off adventuring where I really shouldn't have been and seeing a guild of 40 people killing this huge monster. That was epic for me - it motivated me, it's what started my flame for the genre. Balance is key, balance for players like me AND balance for causal players.

A level of competition among individuals and guilds, paired with social interactions on a Massive Multiplayer Online (helloo!) scale strangely enough creates fun, respectful, well structured communities, fun linkshell experiences, fun party experiences, etc. 6 players in a dungeon, or 10 players for that matter, is not very massive - at all.

My hope has been that XIV 2.0 comes closer than all the other games on the market to meeting this standard of mine, I don't want FFXI levels of partying that was too much and a little ridiculous at times in my opinion, just keep a lot of really epic stuff open world.

[Babydoll]

hey guys? Did you see this..from the French translation thread:

We really want to balance Instanced content and Open World content to have a real MMO, not a MO, that will appeal to both hardcores and casuals.

Also, he really means to balance Open World and Instanced content, he wants the game to feel lively, so people should stop stressing about that.

[Rokien]

hey guys? Did you see this..from the French translation thread:

Ya I saw it, though, he should give us more than "Strongholds will be the open world content"

[Babydoll]

Ya I saw it, though, he should give us more than "Strongholds will be the open world content"

ya lol and hopefully he doesn't count those level up quests as "open world" heh hopefully he means end game open world as well.

needs to be more like what you stated up above. open world dungeons to get to primals or end game battles, xi did it great with shadowlord, primes and cop.