Game Design Concepts that the Devs and Playerbase has Forgotten

[Magikazam]

Every time people say they come from WoW, here, they say they don't want to do the story.

I came from WoW when I started playing back in ARR and I wanted to do the story. I still think it bad to force it down people throat since it not something everyone want. Locking contents behind the story also make it harder to play with friends who are just starting. People can already skip most cutscenes while doing the story anyway so it just feel weird that you can't just...skip the whole thing whitout paying yknow.

They just want to get to the endgame immedately

Some people like trials and raids. Sadly while not impossible, it kinda rare finding people who want to do prog or bling prog on old contents. This create a situation that even if you, let say, like the story but want to do endgames encounter, you need to go trough 10 years of story b4 getting access to the most populated endgame contents. Remember, that hundreds of hours of story just to get the right of unlocking the things.

The other side of this is Gacha oriented games like Genshin Impact where you can access the story, but it's gated by P2W gacha mechanics. You can not finish a gacha game unless you either get lucky in the "Free" gacha rolls, or you are impatient and drop thousands of dollars on 0.2% gacha drops.

That depend on the games. The only gacha I play, limbus company, can be completed whitout even rolling in the gacha. People have proven you can even complete the hardest content of the game (wich is optional btw) With the weakest team possible, wich often include characters that are weaker than the base stuff the game give to you.

Final Fantasy X sales include X and X2. FF7 is 14m alone, FF16 alone is 10m.

From what I've seen, as of 2023 FF X sales come up to 20M wich is bigger than og FF7 wich stand at 14m and the remake that stand at 12m. idk why you added FF16 in there, but remeber that the game had kind of bad sales at launch and also it often come ''free'' with PS5 consoles. That how I got mine, I worked at Gamestop during it launch.

Gacha games you can't play after the publisher decides to shut it down. Which is why you should never play them. Don't get invested in it.

Just like every live service game, wich btw include FF14. Don't get invested in this game please.

[KisaiTenshi]

I came from WoW when I started playing back in ARR and I wanted to do the story. I still think it bad to force it down people throat since it not something everyone want. Locking contents behind the story also make it harder to play with friends who are just starting. People can already skip most cutscenes while doing the story anyway so it just feel weird that you can't just...skip the whole thing whitout paying yknow.

I'm sure I could find hundreds of forum posts here where people literately go "(I came from WoW.) I don't want to do the story, how do I get to playing with my friends/RP immediately" and at the time people were floating the idea of the skip pots and a lot of hostility against having them because "Why are you spending money on a game you are not playing?"

Like I understand the premise of why you want to play with your friends or RP with them, but why pick FFXIV when you apparently had that back in WoW. Like that is the thing I find head-scratching all the time when people bring up other "MMORPG's" doing something better and my mind goes straight to "So go back to that game then."

Square-Enix doesn't always do everything right, and that's okay. But if we are treated to an experience that seems to run away from the formula that we want, we should complain about it. Not bring features from other games that work there because they were part of their game experience. This is why Gacha stuff does not belong in any game, it turns the game into a skinner box and you lose as soon as you run out of real money.

Some people like trials and raids. Sadly while not impossible, it kinda rare finding people who want to do prog or bling prog on old contents. This create a situation that even if you, let say, like the story but want to do endgames encounter, you need to go trough 10 years of story b4 getting access to the most populated endgame contents. Remember, that hundreds of hours of story just to get the right of unlocking the things.

See in my view, if you want to play the FFXIV endgame, but don't actually care about the "lore" or the story, you just do what players do now, they get their friend who has the 45 dollar 8-player mount and uber your entire friend group from objective to objective. That turns ARR from a 30 hour experience into probably 5 if all the cutscenes are skipped. Unfortunately, as you said, there's 10 years of content to get through, and a "level skip" option only makes sense for the people who are only there to RP with their friends.

That depend on the games. The only gacha I play, limbus company, can be completed whitout even rolling in the gacha. People have proven you can even complete the hardest content of the game (wich is optional btw) With the weakest team possible, wich often include characters that are weaker than the base stuff the game give to you.

From what I've seen, as of 2023 FF X sales come up to 20M wich is bigger than og FF7 wich stand at 14m and the remake that stand at 12m. idk why you added FF16 in there, but remeber that the game had kind of bad sales at launch and also it often come ''free'' with PS5 consoles. That how I got mine, I worked at Gamestop during it launch.

Again as I said, the sales of FFX include X and X-2.

Just like every live service game, wich btw include FF14. Don't get invested in this game please.

That's different in that Gacha games shut down and take all the waifus and husbando's with them, leaving nothing for the player but an empty wallet and no memories.

You know what one Gacha game did? The minute they shut down the english version, they copyright claimed every single video of the english version on youtube so that it's not even possible to see what the english version of the game was like. They then updated the game so that none of the "Waifu and Husbando" content was even viewable. It's absolutely ridiculous that a company would destroy the game months after it was published. They could have updated the game to strip out the "online store" gacha mechanic and there would have still been a game. But no, better destroy all the good will of the customer so they don't get invested in your next game.

That is why I will never touch a Square-Enix gacha. They have done it multiple times, I do not trust Square Enix to leave me with a game I can still play, so I'm just going to skip any game that comes out on mobile first.

[Magikazam]

Like I understand the premise of why you want to play with your friends or RP with them, but why pick FFXIV when you apparently had that back in WoW. Like that is the thing I find head-scratching all the time when people bring up other "MMORPG's" doing something better and my mind goes straight to "So go back to that game then."

Ah yes, let me tell my friend to stop playing FFXIV where they invested hundreds of hours so we can go play other MMORPG. It generally considered good design to let people play together in MMO you know. Gatekeeping people from it cause you're fine with story not being skippable for free is just weird.

But if we are treated to an experience that seems to run away from the formula that we want, we should complain about it. Not bring features from other games that work there because they were part of their game experience. This is why Gacha stuff does not belong in any game"

Ok but I want my MMORPG to have similar good game design that come from other MMORPG. IDK why you keep bringing gacha into like, were talking about thing in other MMO. Again, I don't see how making the story ''optional'' would hurt the people enjoying it.

See in my view, if you want to play the FFXIV endgame, but don't actually care about the "lore" or the story, you just do what players do now, they get their friend who has the 45 dollar 8-player mount and uber your entire friend group from objective to objective.

Right so I need to pay 45 extra buck over my subs so a friend can ''Skip'' the story instead of the game just, letting you into content if you have the level for it. That just locking some good game design behind a paywall. This is as bad as GW2 hiding best gears farming and important story content inside their Living world seasons (If you never played gw2, Living world season are equivalent of those quest we get in the patches between xpac in FFXIV, you need to pay for those in GW2 too.)

That's different in that Gacha games shut down and take all the waifus and husbando's with them, leaving nothing for the player but an empty wallet and no memories.

I do not trust Square Enix to leave me with a game I can still play.

They could close FF14 anytime they want and what do you think will happen to all the cool stuff you bought in the online shop? Again, you blaming it all on gacha when it just a reality every live service game exist, including MMO. You are litteraly trusting Square Enix to leave you with a game that you still play right now, by playing FF14