A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

[awesomeOmnislashing]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I checked yes for the last question

I want them to change something drastic. Personally I like the game now (under the assumption they are adding a TON later), but there is still the fact that most of my friends really do not want to stick it out and wait for SE to get their pants on.

Right now the core feels like doing leves as they begin to fade out of effectiveness, then all of a sudden its a had core grind. That is harsh. I suppose if you know a lot of people that are playing then you can try doing leve sharing strategy, but I'm currently all alone.

What happened to party style leveling that was in FFXI? Maybe they need to restructure the areas people go to in order to make things more conducive to that type of play. IDK. @Jenova, I think in both games, it just depends on how many people you know are playing/willing to help you. The less the number is, the harder the game is. There is also no AF carrot on a stick currently

On top of all this stuff that makes me dislike combat, including the combat mechanics, I also feel like most of the game forces you to craft. I have stuck to crafting over battle, simply because it seems like more of a game. Fighting is bland, boring, and often pointless (im sorry, but its true). Crafting isn't that way, well not completely. There are goals in crafting that make me feel better about what I have done. I also think that for people who don't really want to craft, this is an extremely bad facet of the game.

So yea, I really do want them to change the core. Could care less if they wiped everything =/ *shrug* but as long as the game becomes something that is exciting to grind, I am for it.

no one here seems to talk about their battle craft leveling strategies, is that because there are none? Anyone here do something besides grind mobs until the leve timer resets, cap out on leves, rinse and repeat?

[Aeni]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

so um is FFXIV harder to level than FFXI?

It requires the same amount of time invested. Since Behest is only once every hour and about 3-5k per Behest, you might only be able to do 2-3 Behests per day. Then factor in Battlecraft leves (Only 8 per 36 hours) and your very limited Guardian Aspects (200, regens about 20 pts per day?) and the fact that solo grinding is just as slow as party grinding (unless you have a traditional PT setup of 1 healer, 1 tank, 1 support and 2-3 DPS) and that only certain classes can regen mana outside of the Aetheryte Crystal ... yeah it's not "easy" to level any more than FFXI.

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 AM ----------

no one here seems to talk about their battle craft leveling strategies, is that because there are none? Anyone here do something besides grind mobs until the leve timer resets, cap out on leves, rinse and repeat?

Behest every hour. It supplements grinding skill points. Aspects only with certain leves that guarantees you good skill gains for the mobs you are fighting (i.e., kill 11 game dodos instead of get 3 of item XXXX to drop) And grind easy mobs (preferably Coblyns) if you must. Even if you group up, if you can't get a "traditional" PT formed, you're not going to get very much SP. All these large parties are only good for behests and leve linking. But outside of this, they are nearly as worthless as soloing. You need to fight mobs much higher than your rank to recoup lost SP from being in large groups and that means your tank is getting murdered and/or your DPS can't hit for shit.

[Malacite]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

Yeah it buts a pain in the ass to rank up from the start all over, and I'm pretty sure that'll cause alot of rage quitting.

Yeah I know I would, at least for a while. I haven't been on much at all since I got back into XI (God damn Abyssea is all-consuming) but I'd appreciate keeping the efforts I've made thus far.

I too, said I wouldn't mind a total overhauling of the game. At this point it needs something to spice things up. They can start adding new combat animations for Christ's sake. It's unacceptable that the elemental spells from tiers 1 through 4 all look exactly the same. What the fuck SE?

[Aeni]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

Yeah I know I would, at least for a while. I haven't been on much at all since I got back into XI (God damn Abyssea is all-consuming) but I'd appreciate keeping the efforts I've made thus far.

So far a couple of buddies of mine say they will QUIT FFXIV for good if SE decides to wipe everything and make us start from scratch. I guess as frustrating as the game may be it doesn't call for something drastic as nuking everything in order to get something going right. There are issues with all parts of the system but they are very minor in the grand scheme of things. You can just tweek things a bit and it will come out okay. The reason why things look so off and so broken is because it's an accumulation of many, many minor issues that seem to far outweigh the scope of the issues themselves.

A good friend of mine recently just came back to Hawaii on a vacation trip and he's a programmer (the group that's responsible for Medal of Honor) and told me that this is not an unusual phenomenon. Many development teams try to prioritize game breaking bugs and issues ahead of the minor ones ... Blizzard does this in WoW and SC2 and other games ALL THE TIME. The problem is not the game isn't running or someone finds a way to jig the system of millions of in-game currency. The problem is that 1% chance accumulates quite rapidly when you got too many of those 1% in the game so that everyone is going to experience a bug or problem everyday. That's just as unacceptable as having something that prevents a player from logging on but it doesn't look as bad if you took each problem individually. I think the term he used was "aggregate irritation" and affects almost every modern game that gets published. Even Valve deals with this very issue ... no one is immune to this.

[Luna Flower]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I am just going to say this now to get this out there, SE will never wipe our characters and make us start from scratch.

[Raydeus]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

Yeah, SE would probably never do that.

But personally I don't see it as a bad thing if (and only IF) the new game is fun to play and specially fun to level up. That's because I put fun/hr rate above anything else in a game. Other people with a different approach to it would probably kill someone if their chars were deleted and all their progress erased though. <_<;


That's why I'm interested in games like DCUO, The Old Republic and GW2 since it looks like they will be less demanding on the grouping side and more fun/hr rate friendly. But only time will tell.

[Luna Flower]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

Yeah, SE would probably never do that.

But personally I don't see it as a bad thing if (and only IF) the new game is fun to play and specially fun to level up. That's because I put fun/hr rate above anything else in a game. Other people with a different approach to it would probably kill someone if their chars were deleted and all their progress erased though. <_<;


That's why I'm interested in games like DCUO, The Old Republic and GW2 since it looks like they will be less demanding on the grouping side and more fun/hr rate friendly. But only time will tell.

Yeah if they ended up ever changing the game to where they need to switch the classes or levels around they would compensate us. Like they did for the exp to next lvl for 10-20. I highly see this as VERY unlikely tho. I dont think when SE was talking about game changing aspects they did not mean to completely change the way the game works or the class levels. I think they meant more along the lines of changing whats already there.

[Aeni]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

But personally I don't see it as a bad thing if (and only IF) the new game is fun to play and specially fun to level up.

A grind is still a grind unless they made it so easy that a chimp could do it. At that point I'd just quit ... because there wouldn't be any challenge to the game. They shouldn't wipe characters because many players have already devoted "days" of game time to it and would not think of it as any form of a positive sacrifice.

FYI there's nothing wrong with the classes and the system. It's the other parts of it, from crafting to leve, that will be the focus of any review and change.

[awesomeOmnislashing]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

That's why I'm interested in games like DCUO, The Old Republic and GW2 since it looks like they will be less demanding on the grouping side and more fun/hr rate friendly. But only time will tell.

I was looking at these games, in light of someone making a comment that FFXIV is going to have a horrible future because 2011 was such a big year for MMOs in general. Looked into the games and found some pretty boring stuff.

swTOR is pretty sweet as far as concept and the way their mechanics sound. But after watching gameplay footage and their modeling... not for me. I really don't want another WOW graphics mmo regardless of how fast the PvP is going to be. FFXIV (and I suppose XI) had a pretty awesome graphics style in terms of armor and environment. Its honestly hard to beat.

DCU and gw2 seem ultra gimmicky. no thanks ><

I think what SE meant by core changes would relate more to how grinding and classes worked together, specifically for battle crafts. Other things that come to mind when thinking of core is the leve system, and behests (which feel like a tossed in temp solution to the lack of partys). If all of these things got a huge change, and they left the crafting system more or less the same.. this game would be fucking awesome ^^

Maybe I am starting to feel optimistic about this game..

[Raydeus]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I was looking at these games, in light of someone making a comment that FFXIV is going to have a horrible future because 2011 was such a big year for MMOs in general. Looked into the games and found some pretty boring stuff.

swTOR is pretty sweet as far as concept and the way their mechanics sound. But after watching gameplay footage and their modeling... not for me. I really don't want another WOW graphics mmo regardless of how fast the PvP is going to be. FFXIV (and I suppose XI) had a pretty awesome graphics style in terms of armor and environment. Its honestly hard to beat.

DCU and gw2 seem ultra gimmicky. no thanks ><

I think what SE meant by core changes would relate more to how grinding and classes worked together, specifically for battle crafts. Other things that come to mind when thinking of core is the leve system, and behests (which feel like a tossed in temp solution to the lack of partys). If all of these things got a huge change, and they left the crafting system more or less the same.. this game would be fucking awesome ^^

Maybe I am starting to feel optimistic about this game..

WoW didn't invent that style of gameplay though, and TOR will be much closer to KoTOR and Mass Effect than it will ever be to WoW. Even if it will include some features WoW is currently using (which Blizzard copied from someone else anyway) simply because players expect them to be present.

And about GW2 and DCUO they are simply different types of MMORPGs so it's really up to personal preference.

I hope XIV really gets fixed though, I actually wanted to wait for it but I'm no longer interested in spending as much time as I did on XI just waiting to have fun. So a more modern approach works much better for me.

And then there's EVE. If all the other options failed I'd just go back to that game or take a break from MMOGs altogether.

A grind is still a grind unless they made it so easy that a chimp could do it. At that point I'd just quit ... because there wouldn't be any challenge to the game. They shouldn't wipe characters because many players have already devoted "days" of game time to it and would not think of it as any form of a positive sacrifice.

FYI there's nothing wrong with the classes and the system. It's the other parts of it, from crafting to leve, that will be the focus of any review and change.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. If playing the game and leveling up was actually fun people wouldn't mind restarting their characters much. But because "playing" the game was actually work losing them would amount to losing all that time spent grinding.

It's like when you watch a good movie, you exit the theater with less money and with 2 hours less, but you had fun and wouldn't mind watching the movie again. Whereas if you had worked say piling up leaves and then a strong wind came and scattered them all again, that would be 100% lost time.

Something like that.

Now this is a separate issue from difficulty, since different people find different playstyles entertaining. Some like the challenge part more, others like smooth progress, others like the cutscenes, etc.

Also, classes may work well, but character development may or may not require an overhaul. In which case redoing chars could be a posibility. Although they could for instance give you back your exp so you could redistribute it in the new system rather than wiping out all your progress.

Really, there are many ways to handle it, but none of them are in SE's nature. They are just too fixed in their ways to adapt like that, so I don't think anything of importance will change. Which is why I'm staying away from XIV (and XI) in the first place.

[Luna Flower]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I know my response is a bit on the "omg I hear that a lot" list. I just want to say tho, that FFXIV is going to be an amazing game. I have 100% faith in SE after playing FFXI for many years, I realized they are great and amazing game developers. They learn from a lot of their mistakes and I am more than happy to have the FFXI dev team on the FFXIV project. I will be saying "I told you so" in the future to everyone who is sitting here doubting the games potential.

[Raydeus]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

Hopefully you'll be right and SE's XIV will deliver eventually.

But I wont be there either way.



Although there's always the possibility of me rejoining XI once the lvl 99 cap is finally implemented, to try soloing Mission BC fights once more.

---------- Post added at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:39 PM ----------

Now that i think about it.

Have you guys noticed if the recent changes have improved the situation about people leaving the game even if it is still on extended trial? Or even seeing more people coming back and stuff.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I just want to say tho, that FFXIV is going to be an amazing game. I have 100% faith in SE after playing FFXI for many years, I realized they are great and amazing game developers.

May want to reserve your judgment (and faith) until after SE thinks FF14 is good enough to charge a monthly fee. Or, go gung ho on micro-transactions like those "free to play" games. The business of MMORPG is all about generating and maintaining an on-going revenue stream--if SE is scared to charge money, it means FF14 isn't a viable business case (yet)--i.e. it's either a beta, or a failure.

Oh well, at least the game is pretty. (I'm still interested in a mug with art from FF14. Mithra or Moogle~)

They learn from a lot of their mistakes

I don't know about this one; the devs didn't seem to have applied much of what they should have learned from FF11, at least not at first.

[Luna Flower]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

May want to reserve your judgment (and faith) until after SE thinks FF14 is good enough to charge a monthly fee. Or, go gung ho on micro-transactions like those "free to play" games. The business of MMORPG is all about generating and maintaining an on-going revenue stream--if SE is scared to charge money, it means FF14 isn't a viable business case (yet)--i.e. it's either a beta, or a failure.

Oh well, at least the game is pretty. (I'm still interested in a mug with art from FF14. Mithra or Moogle~)



I don't know about this one; the devs didn't seem to have applied much of what they should have learned from FF11, at least not at first.

LOL so says a person who doesn't even play the game.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: A New Year and FINAL FANTASY XIV Player's Poll the First (1/1/2011)

I don't know; do I need to play the game to know that SE doesn't think FF14 is good enough for players to pay for it?

Don't think long list of problems FF14 had at its release were a secret, either, and many of the FF14 players had pointed out many those very problems were solved/non-existent in FF11. Heck, even SE itself acknowledge there were severe issues--otherwise, why would the devs be busy patching the game instead of adding significant new contents? (Do I really need to play the game to know those things are true? lol.)

Yes, many of the problems were fixed/mitigated, and no, I've never claimed to know FF14 intimately well. But, once again, if SE isn't confident enough to charge for it, it's either beta, or failure. That's the present state--the future, no one knows.

* * *

I don't mean to say FF14 has no future, but really, you need some thick rosy glasses and a very selective memory to ignore FF14's recent history (and FF11's much longer one) to point of saying something like "have 100% faith in SE". It's looks to be far from a sure bet (and in fact, is in great jeopardy), when viewed rationally.

SE may very well buck the trend, but most big budget MMORPG that launched poorly, fizzle and die/zombie-fy (*cough* SE's Fantasy Earth: Zero. *cough*) fairly fast, and FF14 really did not launch very well. Personally, I think FF14 still has a good chance at becoming an on-going, viable business, especially if SE can fix the problems in a timely manner, add contents, and re-launch it (probably at PS3 release), but it looks to be an uphill battle.

* * *

Team SE's MMO game so far:

FF11: Third base; respectable success, but it's no home run like WoW.
Fantasy Earth: Zero: Struck out 0 and 3, fast. Paper to move it to the minor league were signed before the announcers finished laughing.
FF14: Two strikes, with a crowd of critics booing in the stands--SE is calling a time out.

It's not a great record, really--but it is not exactly horrible by the industry standard. Most MMORPGs do flounder and go *poof*, while SE managed to get one right.

But, that one 'right' one is FF11, not FF14. At least, not FF14, yet.