What XIV can take from XI to make it better

[Maxthunder]

Well something tells me if your playing your way through Tanaka's crapfest, you will play through w/e yoshi has cooked up, so I am unsure what you are complaining about. And the playerbase has already abandoned this game, hence the reason for the remake.

I said I would give Yoshi a chance but.. I will not put up quest grind or dungeon grinding for exp. I dont like to quest grind nor do I want to dungeon grind for exp, and I am not the only one who dosent want to do it that way. Once you lose mid-core and hardcore players thats it for this game. Maybe they are not the majority but they are the ones who keep the games going in the long term, so that the casuals can come and go as they please. Its the steady income that will help keep XIV going not the short term casuals who come and go like water. A game needs a healthy population of every type of player base, but when you lose too many from 1-2 types of player bases that isnt good at all. In order for Yoshi to keep all types of players he needs to cater to all groups. Yoshi has a tall order so he needs to learn how to balance it for everyone as well as put it into play. Now I am very hard on my opinions of SE and thats because I hold them to a higher standard based of their past Final Fantasy Series. What they are currently doing is in no way their best work and can be much better than it is.

[Ayla]

MMO’s became all theme parks (which is fine I suppose), but the theme parks got a LOT simpler.

1. classes have been pigeon holed heavily, many MMO’s launch with a class needing a single stat – just get more better willpower and U2WIN!
2. meaningful crowd control and pulling ability have been tossed out the window in favor of easily spaced out, non-interlaced groups of “just the right size” content
3. shared dungeons gave way to instanced dungeons in part to improve the number of things you could do in an encounter, but also to avoid training and camping
4. loot got mind numbingly boring. Neat effects gave way to linear gearing and BoP everything. In a world where QL is all that matters, gear choices are a simple greater than, less than check. Thinking, who needs that.
5. you can equip every single ability you ever learn, even the lower tier versions in some games. This reaches it’s zenith in EQ2 where you need 8 skill bars (or three keyboards I guess) to play the game (some hyperbole intended). Back in EQ1, casters had to pick which 9 spells they wandered around with – choice mattered. Nowadays? Just click whichever ability is lit up, avoid the ones that are grey. Some classes require more thought than others, many play perfectly well on auto-pilot.
6. games are built to reach max level in a month. The journey doesn’t matter, only end-game does.
7. however, the game design now focuses on solo to max level and then group up to play end game. In the process of doing the first, you have built no community hooks to supplement the second.

The end result is that games are very streamlined in order to “keep subscribers,” but paradoxically produce subscribers that have no social hooks into the game and thus next to no switching costs to jump to another game.

I can't say any better, what this guy is writing over there: Link.

[Biggs]

I said I would give Yoshi a chance but.. I will not put up quest grind or dungeon grinding for exp. I dont like to quest grind nor do I want to dungeon grind for exp, and I am not the only one who dosent want to do it that way. Once you lose mid-core and hardcore players thats it for this game. Maybe they are not the majority but they are the ones who keep the games going in the long term, so that the casuals can come and go as they please. Its the steady income that will help keep XIV going not the short term casuals who come and go like water. A game needs a healthy population of every type of player base, but when you lose too many from 1-2 types of player bases that isnt good at all. In order for Yoshi to keep all types of players he needs to cater to all groups. Yoshi has a tall order so he needs to learn how to balance it for everyone as well as put it into play. Now I am very hard on my opinions of SE and thats because I hold them to a higher standard based of their past Final Fantasy Series. What they are currently doing is in no way their best work and can be much better than it is.

No argument from me about the lower standards, although I don't think 2.0 will survive if it only manages to keep the number of hardcore gamers 1.0 has now. (although I think you are pretty much saying the same thing) As to grinding, it sounded to me like they are focusing on trying to combine it with questing. Sort of specualtion here but they have mentioned leveled dungeons in 2.0, meaning you get a quest to go to the level 40 dungeon with your party, where you then kill mobs grind style to level. While I prefer grinding as well, I think this sort of system would be ok. The biggest problem for me with that example is that it will prob be instanced, in which case you dont get the awesomeness that comes with seeing others ride by on chocobos, or seeing others in trouble and coming to help, ect. I feel like SE is simplifying many things in 2.0 to make certain things easier (that many of us have hated for years) but in the process they are killing the sense of community and open worldness that made us start playing these games in the first place.

[Maxthunder]

No argument from me about the lower standards, although I don't think 2.0 will survive if it only manages to keep the number of hardcore gamers 1.0 has now. (although I think you are pretty much saying the same thing) As to grinding, it sounded to me like they are focusing on trying to combine it with questing. Sort of specualtion here but they have mentioned leveled dungeons in 2.0, meaning you get a quest to go to the level 40 dungeon with your party, where you then kill mobs grind style to level. While I prefer grinding as well, I think this sort of system would be ok. The biggest problem for me with that example is that it will prob be instanced, in which case you dont get the awesomeness that comes with seeing others ride by on chocobos, or seeing others in trouble and coming to help, ect. I feel like SE is simplifying many things in 2.0 to make certain things easier (that many of us have hated for years) but in the process they are killing the sense of community and open worldness that made us start playing these games in the first place.

Very well put, I am not the best at writeing what I am thinking or meaning but you did sum most of it up. Yes I find it sad that everything will be instanced as well as I wont beable to watch some ls kill a high level mob like ifrit and the likes. What Yoshi needs to do is make all 3 types of leveling equal, because all the questing and dungeons for exp will turn off a lotta players. There is no need to go with the new aged MMO bs, all they need to do is keep things like mob grinding in open world just as effective as doing quests if not more efficent. Now lets not forget that the questing for exp is more than likely going to be slower than mob grinding, but the quest system is no different than mob grinding, its just called something else.