FFXIV And The MMO Blues~

Playing FFXIV it’s clear to see the effort, heart, talent and desire that’s gone into it. It really is a polished gem in the modern genre's eyes. Anyone who’s experienced in MMO’s over the past decade or more should be able to see this. However saying that, I’d bet that those same experienced players would also agree that A Realm Reborn is a short loved experience. It’s joys are merely skin deep and pass by very fast - typical of MMO's made within the last 5-8 years.

I started playing MMO’s back in 1999 and I remember the sense of pride I’d have in working together with other players in simply earning a level, unlocking a job, an airship pass, a rank, that new piece of equipment or finally saving enough money to buy one, and my favourite of all, reaching that location that was once far beyond your reach due to dangerous mobs. You could see yourself growing and becoming stronger. It was a fantastic gaming experience because we all came together; sometimes I’d play with the same group but I would regularly play with new people too. We all benefited from our time together and got to know the community as a whole by building reputation.

FFXI epitomised this feeling and made it its core feature. Now I’m not for one moment saying the game was perfect, it wasn’t, it certainly left me frustrated many times waiting for a party in lower Jeuno, or having certain jobs finding it incredibly difficult to get an invite due to balance issues. But a lot of these issues could have been prevented if the game had a more pro-active development team that wasn’t so archaic and terrified of making decisions and changes.

Meeting up with people for the first time, travelling to locations, setting up tactics for the fight and getting used to enemies where all parts of each gaming session. Just travelling on its own had to be carefully planned out; did I bring everything I needed? Do I have the right subjob? Is there enough space in my inventory, did I check my moghouse? You had to plan things because it wasn’t easy or cheap coming all the way back. These simple things made the pace of the game change dramatically. People have a tendency to jump on this saying it’s awful, but I really don’t think so. You got used to it, you played more carefully, and you looked at and expected things differently than you do from today’s MMOs.

Each and every member of the group had their own specialised area that was vital for the fluency of the party. You couldn’t wing anything otherwise you’d get punished by the mob. Did the WHM have raise up? These small decisions had big consequences. The game was setup so that you HAD to join with people to progress; this meant that everyone was on the same page. Everyone knew that because life wasn’t perfectly free giving in Vana’diel (unlike new MMO’s) we all needed to work together. Obviously you had the occasional idiot, but that’s commonplace in most MMO’s. The good thing about FFXI was that these people, the whiners, the elitists and the down-right morons were weeded out by the CORE requirements of having to co-operate with people.

Because it did take time travelling, setting up parties and between combat, it gave you time to converse, get to know people and have a laugh. It wasn’t at all about being rushed through something on a “speed-run” or moaned at for taking the time to talk... all of which I'm experiencing from FFXIV after having recently come back to it.

Alongside the gradual levelling scale was the equipment factor. Nothing was given to you; you had to earn your equipment through knowing how to earn money, which while not difficult, did require some planning and know how. This lowered the pace of the game aswell, but at the same time, you could also resell your equipment so your low earnings weren’t a complete gameplay stopgap, it made you THINK about what you were buying/selling and to plan ahead. And it made purchases feel like they were something tangible instead of something that's going to be NPC'd or discarded from your inventory. Obviously FFXI had a lot of problems regarding the economy, mostly due to horrible inflation created by free-running RMTers blowing up the market. But again, this was another area that could have been managed so much better by a development and GM team that actively managed the economy instead of passively watching it die.

The point I’m trying to make with this post is that there is NOTHING WRONG with a game that takes on a more gradual/shallow progression gradient. On the few occasions this topic has been brought up in my FFXIV FC chat and some of us talk about our good times back in FFXI, there is always someone who puts up the argument “Yeah but you can quickly reach level cap here and meet end game” and it’s exactly that outlook in MMO’s that is ruining the genre. MMO isn’t an abbreviation for “endgame” the journey reaching a top level should be the main focus accompanied by the community.

Meeting people, getting to know them through co-operation, having experiences together and both helping each other is KEY to the genre. It’s the entire point of it; it’s not an MMO anymore if the game doesn’t do these things. What’s happening in FFXIV is that whenever you want to party up it means you need to go on a dungeon run, which 99% of the time is via the Duty Finder. Now that’s fine but the problem is, unless your friend or FC members need that specific dungeon or something from it, then you’re going to be playing with people that you’re likely never going to see/play with again because it pairs up randomly with people from all servers. So how are you supposed to build a great community, friendship and trust between players when throughout most of your core gaming experience you’ll mostly play with complete strangers from other servers? The only way, it seems, to make this happen is if you create a static which completely nullifies the point of your gaming experience being casual because you’ve then got to play by a rigid time slot and it creates cliques in FC’s and leaves other people out of your “community” Free Company to fend for themselves for the majority of their playtime. Yes you can argue that this goes on in other games and that those people can make their own friends, but the point I’m making is that if everyone is soloing and using the Duty Finder, then good luck meeting new players and forming lasting bonds.

I long for a game that is a cross between FFXI and FFXIV. In that it shares its core values and focus with FFXI but it has the modern technical improvements of FFXIV and its dynamic development team who are fantastic. If this game is ever made, I’ll be all over it. I’ll play it for 8+ years like I did FFXI and no doubt make friendships and bonds that will last a lifetime, as I have in FFXI and other MMOs that came before (or just after) it. As it stands, these things don’t happen in FFXIV because there’s just no time for it to happen. Everyone is rushing to meet something, hit some goal and because of this the community is really quite awful. It’s not just me but others too that are complaining about the attitude that people have at the endgame regarding ilvl. Countless times people are rude, ragequit, moaning about people not meeting their ilvl epeen. It’s a completely un-enjoyable situation.

If its not completely obvious already (:P) I'm thinking of quitting the genre outright, at least for a good 4-5 years because I just can't see a future for it. Time and time again I come back, check out a new MMO that's supposed to be the next greatest thing, and I find myself staring at something I played 7 years ago. I just think they're all missing the point. Surely there can be room for both casual online games and my ideal MMO. What are the chances of this ever happening?

good lord you have no idea how much this spoke to me and how much i cant agree more. You know whats the worst part? The fact that where 1.0 of FFXIV was going had me SO hopeful, but of course they trashed just about everything to jump on the "me too" bandwagon of every MMO since WoW basically.

Me and my RL friends have been trying games here and there just hoping something would excite us and keep us playing like XI did for so many years. We all know that XI had issues and we would like to see some of the modern tweaks, but with a core of what made XI so great. That MMO does not exist and likely will not for a long time until devs realize that jumping on the bandwagon isnt working (and for most it isnt...yet they keep going)

Every game is now trying to be the next "action" MMO, which seems to be the new trend...and i hate it. It ends up giving so many limitations to skills and combat and actually thinking things through . They also tend to be very group unfriendly. Why is it most MMOs are so damn anti-group? I thought that was the entire point of an MMO...to do things with the thousands of people on your server, building a community that meant something and needing one another for everything from leveling/endgame/crafting/economy...ect

Like i said, what FFXIV 1.2~ was before it shut down had huge potential to be what i was looking for, but its a dream dead and gone never to return because of SE's stupid mistakes and the "standard" being as stupid as it is. Games dont go F2P so quickly and so often for no reason, nor does such a huge portion of players game hop so constantly.

Makes me sad to know that my FFXI experience will never have its equal and that i'm convinced MMOs will likely never be like they once were ever again.

Take the name "Final fantasy" from XIV, and it is just a decent hack and slash fest. XIV has the characteristics of an offline co op-hack and slash. I became bored of the game by the second sub and my highest job was only a lvl 30ish marauder :(

I agree with the op and Leo; XIV had tremendous potential, imo, XI is in a class by itself (Sure it has elements of earlier MMOs), but it is a classic; last of a dead breed.

XIV is XIV; imo. Although this may be far-fetched; a XI spinoff/ direct sequel may be your best bet for a XI nostalgia experience (Imagine if this was announced^^ Far-fetched, I know). Imo, this has a better chance of happening than XIV changing; Yoshida is stuck in his ways, he really loves WoW^^ If ppl are paying, he figures, "heck, might as well keep throwing out dungeons."

I cannot put my finger on it, but XIV gets boring, extremely fast. Just my personal experience with the game. Never thought i will be back in XI, after all the crap i talked XD.

ppl get offended when others criticize XIV, we are just sharing our personal experience; if you like it, cool, not knocking you.

Doubt i will ever re-sub; even if they added bst or ninja; the game is too damn mindless/boring for my taste. I heard that there may have been financial issues with SE (Sorry, don't follow this stuff, just play, hehe)? Yea; SE sold out imo, it is what it is. FFXIV:WoW.
Many of us XI fans were disappointed because we were expecting a XI esque experience, but got WoW.

Market changes, what sells it's instant gratification, not long grinds. Believe it or not but those who want grindy experiences à la FFXI, UO, EQ, etc, ain't that many.
ARR aims at having people subscribe for a patch, play it out and then stop playing till next one. Obviously this causes the most hardcore players to run out of things to do fast, but casuals are much much more and so with this method they keep the subs coming and at the same time leave the game as this happy casual-land where players of all age and rl duties can partecipate equally.
We live in the era of low attention span, no room for too much commitment and dedication.

i can put my finger on what makes it boring for me:

1) very soloable til endgame

2)Everyone needs to win/make stuff at the level of causals mindset (aside from a couple endgame raids)

3) combat is spamming combos over and over.

4) basically all endgame is instanced and comes down to dodging red circles and having the right ilvl gear.

5)ilvl...i hate it, makes it easy to judge peoples ability to do things and is in that design of "throw out that gear you just got for a higher ilvl" each damn patch.

6) no need for a cummunity when a) you can do all group things cross server and b) group stuff is not really needed until cap

7) very quick to level and is focused on quests and spamming FATES.

8) FATES make up too much of the content design. They are so "everyone wins" (which is why they took out stuff like NMs or open world stuff that could be claimed). Events and content keeps having it shoved in.

9)crafting is made to be second rate because all forms of top end gear only come from instanced raids...and its easy as hell to level.

10)Endgame and new content (including what i see of the new stuff for 2.3) is basically dungeons with the same layout (trash mobs>boss>trash>boss>trashfinal boss...and linear as hell) They keep rehashing it (look another hard/extreme mode of the same crap)

They also only really have it come down to 4 man dungeons/primals/coil. The primals are basically all the same concept too, get it down to half~ deal with some sort of "nails" mechanic to survive the big attack all in a small arena.

11) no reason to have more than 8 people in a guild since most stuff is only 8 man anyways and people dont want to do old stuff (which is old every patch and irrelevent) because you get jack squat for helping.

12) gathering is too easy and you can see exactly what you will get, so taking out the randomness, nothing is worth squat.

13) because of the above stuff the community barely exists because you barely need anyone. Not for crafted stuff, not for raids, not for leveling..ect.

14) not that many skills for most classes so you do the same combos. Also because your stuck with one weapon there is no veraity.

15) stats barely matter, you pump everything into your 1 or 2 main stats all the time because there is no need for anything else.

16) because of #15 all gear is the same static crap +str +vit and 2 more +2's with either: skill/spell speed/crit rate/accuracy/determination.

Dont worry anyways, all the gear is specific to your job for the most part so you wont have to worry about the stats not being the same thing but with slightly more every new ilvl(lol)

17) the world is small and you can get around so effectively (because of so much fast travel and nothing being a real threat) there is no need to be in the world aside from quests and spamming fates.

18) even if there was a threat..death is a joke because all you get is a minor gear damage.

19) classes were turned into jokes that noone uses after you get a job, so all that cross class skill stuff is a moot point (its pointless anyways because of stuff like the simple stat system)

20) The story is mediocre at best and recent updates have made the story even more dull and pointless (aside from the amusing hildabrand story).



...i could seriously keep going, but i think you got the gyst of it. It's really a meh WoW clone with pretty graphics and an FF skin.

I agree with all of the posters; but I ask you this; if I put more time/effort into any game, would I not be further along than someone whom does not (Coming from someone whom has never owned a REM)? There are currently some grind elements in XIV if iirc (Un-subbed since...forever, someone can correct me on this; only read comments atm); my issue is the linear aspect of the game. A plethora of crafting classes, but no use for them, no economy (When i played), do you need gil? basically; Loe's entire list, lol. These are also issue that the XIV playerbase points out on the official forums.

Waiting til E3; perhaps they will introduce something innovative or exciting; I am not holding my breathe, but nonetheless; i paid for the collectors edition (Silly me; have no children so I spend recklessly^^), would like to play from time to time; been un-subbed for 6 or more months i believe.

Both me and 4 other friends also bought CEs and got into the hype of 1.0 (it started off a train wreck but was on its way to some good stuff). being such an avid FF fan and spending so many years in FFXI i also want 14 to get better, but there is a 99.9999% chance it wont change from what it is now. The most recent upcoming patch i took a look into whats coming (to see if was anything really big) and it quite literally looks exactly like the last patch: 1 primal with hard/extreme modes, 1 new dungeon and 2 old ones as "hard modes" and more beat tribe quests. along with more binding of coil and some side event which is probably neat but will be mostly irrelevant from day 1 and noone will do it....so yes, almost a carbon copy of the last one. Its almost like they have no clue what to do so they push out mostly the same thing with a new ilvl and hope the game stays afloat.

I havent played in a little while, but even at that time, yes, gil really meant nothing and crafting was still behind so there was barely an economy.

I still hold a small glimmer of hope it will get better, i truely want it to be my next great long term MMO, but its a very very small glimmer.

I agree with everything people have said here, and the original poster spoke a lot of what I miss about old XI. It's kind of funny, that the harder, more monotonous parts of the game are what we feel is lacking now in new ones.

Having said that, I also agree that new MMO's cater to a lazier culture (the one we live in). The idea being that anything that takes effort "is a waste of time." Gamers now want instant gratification: Fast levelling, quick, easy gear to get, instant teleports to location, and a rubber-band difficulty mechanic that basically means the weaker you are, the easier the game makes the content (IE the Echo in ARR).

And we wonder why so many young people today are incensed at not being offered executive level positions within the first 3 months of working at a company these days.

No, no one looks at current MMOs models and wonders that. The old grind from the "good ol' days" catered to a niche crowd whereas current games are aimed to a more mainstream audience, i.e., people with other obligations or limited playtime who look to progress their characters within a reasonable time frame. We're not sliding into Gomorrah because super casuals can now complete outdated content.

If anything, I can waste my time more efficiently now with newer games. Take that, laziness!

People want instant gratification because they want return from their money spent. It costs over 100 bucks a year to play these games and grindfests are no longer justifying it when people can play a different grindfest and get the same satisfaction for significantly less.

Well, Yoshida stated that great announcements will be made on June 10th; I'm thinking primals or dungeons XD, hopefully it is something bigger with all of the expansion speculation.

We certainly were in Sodom when content released in 2003 was still relevant in a completely unaltered state in 2009, though.

On another MMO forum, one devoted to World of Warcraft, a discussion recently arose regarding why people seem to stick with WoW (or FFXI for the playerbase here). The answer seems to be a rather obvious one: time investment. We kept playing FFXI or EverQuest or Ultima Online or whatever reasonably long-lasting MMO because we'd already played it so much. I'd posit a secondary factor, though: the MMOs that manage to last, especially these days, are the ones that actually have things to do.

Most of FFXI's content is fairly out-dated, to be sure, but there is a pile of it after 12 years of development and SE has been wise to keep the old stuff usable. There's been a push to focus on Seekers of Adoulin content to the exclusion of most other stuff lately, but we're still running Dynamis and the profit potential or goal of building a relic weapon keeps it from feeling pointless, in addition to providing the necessary base items for reforging gear. WoW has a long history of vanity stuff that remains every bit as irrelevant as the day it was released (as in, you technically only need two mounts but if you want to get more, you've always had and always will have that option), with the added bonus that they've begun tracking that stuff. Compare with the mostly pointless RoE quests to kill old world NMs or even the all-time classic: The Miraculous DALE.

MMOs being released today get rushed hardcore in the name of a quick buck, skip over all the content slog that kept people occupied (even though WoW has been bemoaned by old-schoolers since its release for how fast it is, it still took a while to hit level cap back in the day), and have too sparse an endgame to really engage. In general, there's virtually no sidequesting and content is either made excessively hard (Bahamut's Coil when it first came out springs instantly to mind) or almost trivial after the first week (a problem WoW ran into several times owing to public beta testing of patches).

While I'm generally not a fan of pointless slog in level-grinding (exception: Dragon Quest games), it seems the biggest problem a lot of games have and which seems to have affected A Realm Reborn is too scarce an amount of content. It becomes really apparent when trying to level up a second or third job without the benefit of most quests anymore. And there's not a whole lot to do besides collect gear to kill stuff. I'm pretty sure it was accidental, but Blizzard really stumbled onto a gold mine with vanity pets and mounts and really learned to monetize it with the gear transmogrification system (a better form of /lockstyle).

As an asocial person, I couldn't care less about having people to chat with whilst playing a game (which goes counter to the MMO philosophy, I know), but I certainly see where the faster, solo-focused route to level cap causes problems. On the other hand, a return to the days of being a Dragoon LFG for 9 hours in Lower Jeuno would be absurd.

So it seems that what needs to happen is a game needs to be interesting enough to overcome people's time investment (not hard in the short-term as people unsubscribe/take a break often), it needs to have enough hardcore and softcore content to keep people busy (ideally in a non-tedious way), and it should to encourage socialization without strictly requiring it. Getting the content is hard in the AAA system of game development, but not impossible. Not sure how to handle the socialization thing...

Then again, my ex-boyfriend and I used the Recruit-A-Friend program in WoW to level characters at light speed by grouping up with each other. The random dungeon finder mechanic rewarded grouping. The only downside was that you probably never interact with the same people again as they're on a different server. So, basically, there just needs to be some kind of benefit to grouping up. Good ol' dungeon crawls seem like the best option instead of the slog of EQ/old school FFXI XP camps or the vague pointlessness of grouping up for WoW-style XP questing.

Agree with everything you said, 110% on point. Just wanted to touch a bit on dungeon crawls being the way to go, and the pitfalls that can come of it.

Dungeons and Dragons: Online (DDO) went this route. The only way to gain any meaningful amounts of exp was through dungeon crawls. During your first play through, it was a pretty nice experience overall. Oh, didn't expect that trap, didn't expect that NPC to betray us and summon hordes of mobs on us, didn't expect that boss to come charging through the wall, etc. It was good fun. And for the most part, DDO did a decent job of having a lot of choices of which dungeons to run. However, many had a very, very similar look and feel to them. Some were quests chains though that told a decent enough story to keep someone entertained.

However, it's replay value was absolute garbage. Once you ran a dungeon once, you could continue to run it for decent exp. You got first time clear bonuses and such to encourage you to do other dungeons, but they were rather ill-balanced, and you were typically better off spamming some of the easier/faster/better exp dungeons. Like most dungeon crawls in MMOs, there was very little variance. The same mobs were in each room, the same traps were around those same corners, etc. It became a race, similar to how WoW and other MMO's dungeons did. Your goal was no longer to enjoy the dungeon experience with a small group of others, but rather to charge through as fast as you can to complete it in the shortest amount of time. I remember doing just that in TBC and WotLK for badges, though I'm unfamiliar with WoW anymore to say if it's changed or not. In a sense, that's on us as the players for letting the content become that way to us. But it's also on the devs to create such experiences and bonuses that we shouldn't feel the need to go that route.

Without some meaningful degree of variance in dungeons, I'm not a big fan of them being the "go-to" when it comes to grinding for lvls/gear in MMOs.

I always found it funny when it came to FF14 how against camp grinding they were. Yoshi took over 1.0 pretty early on and made camp grinding work just fine...so it was so odd to hear them say "we dont want that" and purposely make it so it would not work.

i get you want quests and stuff to be at the top, but whats the point of taking away an option? Why exclude that and take the time and effort to make sure it cant work? Especially knowing we will want to level many classes and quests will run out.

Well its not like it matters, people basically just ended grinding "FATE" which is far more brain dead, requires no real team play...or you doing anything but hitting things for a little bit and afking and likely more time consuming than if the option to grind on mobs was viable. Its stupid things like that which make me hate a game like FFXIV which was so caught up in "meeting the standard" that ended up being "standard" and wont ever be more than another "been there, done that" MMO instead of a game running with subs for a dozen years+

Grinding xp is boring no matter how you go about it anyway. Be it via dungeons, FATEs, fetch quests or grinding mobs its mind numbing and repetitive so to me while I guess having more options to get xp is nice its still basically a situation of picking your poison to me and really couldn't care less about the xp grinding aspect of the game. Instead I'm more concerned honestly with the lack of variance in the endgame content and raiding, which while its true the game is relatively new so there won't be anywhere near as many options as a 11+ year game like FF11, the updates have been an alarming trend of just adding the same type of content as people have already noted before. Its bad when you know what most of the content will be in an upcoming update without them even telling you. And while I think primals, coil, and even CT to some degree is enjoyable those three alone arent enough endgame content to me as primal battles lose their luster quickly after fighting the same thing dozens of times and coil and CT end up becoming events u log on one day a week to do and then wait till next week for reset to get back on. The past two updates and this upcoming one have all been way too similar in regards to eg content. They also need to stop adding new dungeons that nobody cares about if it means taking development time away from adding completely new content.

Delete the word "xp" from that sentence and you've basically said that MMOs are boring. Love them or loathe them, an MMO (and, to different extents, all RPGs) are ultimately going to be about a grind that is at least semi-repetitive. In what way is running the same raid every week for 8 months more compelling than Crab Fantasy 2004 (or Colibri Fantasy 2009 if you're a newer FFXI player)?

Even when I devote myself to pointless sidequesting like, say, opening up quested weaponskills back before Voidwatch made them vaguely relevant (e.g., I had Decimation, Retribution, Black Halo, Empyreal Arrow, and Detonator all unlocked during the 75-cap era) or working on my mount collection in WoW, I eventually hit a point of boredom. I'm fairly sure that the only reason people are still doing Siege of Orgrimmar at this point is to gear alts or out of social obligation (or a desire to interact socially with one's friends -- pardon my tendency towards cynicism), not unlike the reasons why anyone goes into Abyssea these days for a reason other than to power-level a job.

Grind is grind in MMOs, regardless if its a level-less MMO in which you "grind" raids all day or EXP. MMOs live and die on how well they mask the grind and the variety of things they let you do/ways they make the grind change up a little bit.

The point of my post was how they built the game to exclude another option, not that i love it more than anything else, but it would be a nice change of pace since everyone is solo grinding 99% of the time.

And i think i had mentioned in an earlier post about the same thing you said, how unbelievably samey all the content for 14 has been every patch...which are not exactly quick to come out. Its like they can't help but show how shallow it is by even just calling stuff "hard" or "extreme" mode and just tweaking some stuff of old content. The layouts of the dungeons are always the same and primals all pretty much work in the same way (as i like to call it the "nails" formula and in small rooms. Everything is instanced to death too, the world albeit small, is good looking and they refuse to populate it with worthwhile content that's not FATEs or a quest.

I went to go look at the new weapons just to see how the whole relic weapon thing basically turned out since they supposedly made it much harder and longer to get...so i thought "these must be pretty damn good"...turns out they are just like the last version...second fiddle to the coil gear.

i remember back in 1.0 when relics where a nice step ahead of everything. They took quite some time to acquire, you needed to coordinate with your guild/LS to get someone the weapon since it took a lot of time and relied on a group to get. They were the best damage and the bigger thing in my eyes was that they had a special job stat on them (which new ff14 pretty much tossed out the window to be super simple) Most of the weapons had a boost for your skill with the very long cooldown, either buffing the damage or giving it another effect/reducing the timer...ect

Hell what happened to having gear with uniqe stats on them? I get people dont want to be forced to get a certain item to be viable...so use your noggin and make them not crazy like XI sometimes did...but no, everything has to be made for dumb-dumbs, base stats pretty much only have 1 meaning, so your gear is pretty much always the same few stats over and over, just with a slightly higher number....how fricken dull is that? Add on top of that the fact that everything has ilevel so you dont ever get the chance to have different builds or mix and match to fit your style...nope, everything is simple, linear and obvious.

I saw an add for FFXIV on PlayStation IV and was considering buying it, but after reading some of this I'm starting to have second thoughts. Really wish they could just do a high def remake of FFXI at lvl 75 cap.

Guessing based on the conversation that I'm probably better off saving my money and time and not getting it?

I wouldn't base any decision on a string of negative posts. The game does a lot of things well: good job balance, fun boss battles, casual-friendly, truckloads of nostalgia, great music, involved crafting system to name a few.

The biggest problem is the lack of longevity for new content leading to big lulls between patches. I'd say you would definitely get your money's worth getting to end game and gearing out one or a few jobs, but after that your mileage may vary. Although if you're still pining for an old-school FF11 experience, then this probably isn't for you.

I just want more classes in XIV, some ninjas, thieves, greatsword wielders and dancers

I'd also love an automaton pet job, I don't care for 40 different jobs but these things are just so damn cute

FFXI is still alive and well, just wanted you all to know that btw.

I actually enjoyed FFXIV when I started playing 2.0, then I found it extremely boring. I still have my sub and haven't logged in months (dumb I know, I'm too lazy to delete it incase I wanna play lol.) I felt like all I did was spam 3 things on my toolbar and dodged red circles... it was INCREDIBLY boring. I did the Diabolos fight and I just did the same couple of spells on black mage until it died. I can barely see what is going on in the game because crap flies through your screen unlike being able to see everything in FFXI.

In FFXI I have to adapt to different situations with different gear sets. As an example, I was doing Delve 2.0 when it first came out and I took my BLU in there. I had to swap to a club set and acc set and deal blunt dmg to certain NMs, I had to swap to a MAB set for certain NMs, I had to play defensive and swap to a DT set. I can't do any of that in FFXIV, all I can do is run around dodging the moves and fire3 > fire > fire > fire3 > flare, reapply thunder and repeat, whatever the rotation is now idk. Nothing else besides that for almost every single fight in that game, how do people find that fun?

The gear optimization is so lame, you get +1 stat for an upgrade on equipment. Compared to FFXI where I have fun just creating gear sets for different occasions based on the wide variety of stats they have.

I honestly don't understand people who cry how FFXI is ruined because we moved past 75 days. These are the same scrubs who would be bitching and whining that there isn't anything to do in the game. The game is STILL THE SAME as the 75 days practically... You have gear that are sidegrades from all different types of content, gear that are huge upgrades, partying still exist if you want it to (people still do abyssea alliances for XP or you can do old school parties.) Everything is still there except maybe camping NMs.

I swear it seems sometimes people only play FFXIV because of the graphics, it is such a terrible game I just don't get how they enjoy it. If FFXI had updated graphics (which the graphics are incredibly good for an MMO its age at max settings) I bet all these casual *** and betty's would come right over because of how shallow people are nowdays.


I agree w/you, I think its funny how defensive people get when you criticize FFXIV. It's like they don't ever wanna know FFXI still exists so they can continue to validate their decision to play an inferior game. Let me tell them something, just because more people play a game doesn't mean its the best. The FFXI community used to say crap about WoW all the time when that game always eclipsed FFXI subs. The general population is full of idiots, so no surprise they flock to the easiest POS in the genre.

Decision-making is front-loaded in FFXI (building sets and associated macros) instead of in real-time as in FFXIV or WoW.

If I had to make a guess, I'd bet that you really enjoy JRPGs but you're a little tepid as they become increasingly real-time? Meaning you favor the opportunity to plan in advance over reacting on-the-fly?

Personally, I find FFXI fights quite unengaging because they're very no-frills-no-surprises and I've already done my work by building my sets and macros. Delve bosses with their different phases have been a welcome addition to a system that was otherwise "The same thing will happen from 100% to 0% except during the NM's SP and TP usage AI gets more responsive at low HP." Rinse and repeat forever. In FFXIV and WoW, the fights still play out pretty much the same time every time, but you have to pay more attention and not just to the chatlog. For my money, I prefer that method, but that's all it is: personal preference.

Yeah that is pretty accurate. FFXI has both though, you have to adapt to certain situations if things go wrong.

Lmao.

Sure, but after you've built your sets and macros, all FFXI needs is a program that mimics the Gambit system of FFXII and most fights would both play themselves and result in success most of the time. I suspect that's part of why SE has been throwing all those obnoxious uLose buttons into content like Delve bosses and revamped battlefields.

I'm not as intimately familiar with FFXIV, but in WoW, if you don't have your gear balanced (around both what you have and what you need), you're going to faceplant pretty often even if you know the fights' mechanics inside and out. By the same token, I've saved more than a few random dungeon groups (especially during the overtuned Cataclysm dungeons) by being able to switch up my routine.

Every MMO has a mix of planning and execution, it's just a matter of which is emphasized. I was commenting to a friend last night that the one thing I appreciate about FFXI's system is that strategies can change, even ignoring level cap increases (or pseudo-increases via iLevel gear). Back when we first fought Kirin, it was a 3-4 hour slog of gently chipping away. A couple years later, we'd got it down to about an hour with the mini-gods being the worst of the slowdown. A couple years after that and people were stacking buffs to zerg him down in 2 minutes. In WoW, that kind of thing doesn't really happen with current level content except for some rare exceptions.

Kind of the same in XIV. The itemization is basic, but you need certain pieces in certain slots to meet acc requirements while balancing survivability (lesser extent) and secondary stats (also lesser extent). For some fights, you can't really win without the proper gear (Second Binding Coil turn 3 for example), but for most fights higher tiers of gear make it easier, and more within the realm of winning for groups that aren't absolute top tier, like Excal BG.

However, every boss fight has a unique set of mechanics that needs to be learned and played properly through. Very few of the fights allow for anyone to *** up and do it incorrectly; like on Second Binding COil turn 2, if you don't LoS Melusine's petrification shriek from the rest of the group (she'll put a debuff on a random party member, that party member needs to run behind an ogre that the group had to petrify earlier in the fight with another mechanic that targets 3 people while simultaneously avoiding the other adds and party members and LoS the entirety of the group so they dont get petrified and OHKO) then it's over. Not a single *** up is permitted.

Lots of raid bosses in WoW are like that. Everything I've seen of FFXIV shows that they're cribbing heavily from Blizzard's playbook. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. /shrug

It may be that FFXI is the reason I like playing "hybrid" classes (ones that can fill different roles such as healing or tanking). I remember doing one dungeon where we hit the last boss which was a mechanics-heavy fight and our healer was woefully undergeared. I don't know how she even got through the gating mechanic, but she must have just barely been at the right iLevel. I swapped from DPS to healing and, by sheer effort of will and using every trick I knew, managed to pull us through after multiple wipes.

Come to that, I remember going through a similar process to complete Chains of Promathia missions and to beat Alexander for Treasures of Aht Urhgan. The difference was that I couldn't swap to White Mage from Monk in the middle of the fight, so it was all planning in advance and calling out advice during the battle itself.

As long as the encounters are well made and entertaining, I don't care who they're modeling them after. Using other ideas and improving on them, or at least putting personal twists on them to the point that they arent exact carbon copies, isn't a bad thing. Video games are extremely derivative by nature, and I can't fault Yoshi P for taking the good ideas out of MMOs and blending them all in to ARR.

Does it offer a lot of unique systems? Nope.

Does it offer competent experiences in some, and excels at others? Yes.

Does it flop in some areas as well? Of course.

Most importantly, is it fun? In my opinion, definitely.

The fact that they've implemented all of the better developments in MMOs from across the years into one game, then skinned it in an extremely true-to-form Final Fantasy setting has kept me hooked in. Normally I leave a new MMO within a few months due to boredom or just getting tired of it in other ways, but something about XIV's world and progression systems has kept me going for far longer than usual. Endgame battles actually having some level of challenge and demanding player competence is also a huge plus, it's something we don't see often in games these days. The fact they can do that while still catering to a more casual audience is something to be applauded rather than scorned. It doesn't fall into the trap of making everything centered around casuals, or making everything so difficult and time consuming that you can't feel like you've accomplished anything unless you spend 16 hours a day poopsocking (old school XI did this in a lot of ways).

I don't really agree, I haven't play XIV forever so maybe they already change it. But back when I still played it there were no real "Decision making" in FFXIV.

Almost every boss moves were done in the same order, so you just memorize the move and use the same strategy to counter it. FFXIV test your ability to execute the strategy as a whole team correctly, but it doesn't allow any decision making because there's only 1 decision you can make.

Red circle popping on the floor? Get out of the red circle, you have no choice. Fireball coming next? Get into the firestorm. Almost every boss fight is "you just do A when boss do B".

Making sets in FFXI is the real decision making, even if it's not real time. Although you can argue that you should always go for max DPS and there are no 2nd choice, sometimes certain secondary stat such as enmity-/DT-/subtle blow on the gears are still decision making.

Overall, I feel like I get to make more decision in FFXI than in FFXIV. Front-loaded or real time doesn't matter to me. FFXIV seems real time but most of the time I don't feel like making decisions, just memorizing boss moves and practice running from point A to point B after boss moves. I feel the entire FFXIV doesn't give me room for creativity to research and develop different playstyle/build and such, the entire game is just "run to point A when boss do this move", over and over. That's why I quit. If I want to play the dodge red circle and memorize boss move game,I'd rather play single player action game,at least I don't have to deal with other ppl and feel frustrated when they can't dodge(or feel guilty when I can't dodge)