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Reasons why we like this MMO's Direction!
Birdy88
Member Posts: 107
Ok, a good point has been made in another thread, stating that most of us FFXIV enthusiasts are focusing more on preaching to people as to why this game is not like WoW is a good thing, and showing hate towards those kind of games. Instead of explaining to those unaware or on the fence as to why we think this game is good despite its immediate flaws! So here goes. if anyone has anything to add or any point to debate feel free to do so.
WARNING : I will be using WoW as comparison examples, just to explain my logic, not to bash. I played WoW for 5 years, enjoyed it. (Also only played FF11 for 1 year...)
1 - Graphics, Artstyle and Presentation
Graphics & Art
Artstyle is subjective but I personally think its great, granted I wished there were more variety of races, since im not a huge fan of FF11s, but the world and its characters, in most aspects including animations are amazing, the cutscenes while full of Asian cliches and cheesyness are more engaging than most things you will see withing MMOs, including the upcoming SW:TOR which focuses more on stiff conversation trees, both are down to preference however.
The enviroments while larger than most MMOs and more Copy-paste are beautiful, I can only imagine what the higher level and important dungeon content will look like, a stable of Square-ENIX.
Quest Presentation
Even the non-voice acted dialogue is pretty interesting, the characters have great dialogue and quirky animations suiting thier characters, the reading is easily digested as opposed to WoW's approach where they just make the NPC do nothing and shove a quest text box in your face expecting you to read them over and over again with no emotion...
2 - Guild-Leve's, Faction Leves and thier potential!
Leve Complexity Potential
Ok, for most its nothing more than "Kill x mob in x area" much like most MMO early games, but as stated by Beta players that have reached the level cap, the leves become more challenging and complex, "Silver Leves" have been popping up aswell, as the game progresses you will no doubt see Gold, Platinum, Adamantite leves and so on that as stated by Square will blossom into "campaigns". Its impossible to base this system on 1-20, as I recall, barely any MMO has anything epic at the start regaurding its leveling quests.
"Daily Quests, But more about the core gameplay & Social Interaction"
1) Its already been confirmed that the Refresh timer for Leves is going to be reduced from 48 hours, now logicaly it will be 24 hours or lower, allowing you to do them every day...
2) "Its still only 8 Leves a day" you say? well, thats the design idea aimed at people with little time to gain benefits from, admittedly this is somewhat boring to do alone imo. however, I am playing with 3 freinds which instantly bumps this up to 32 leves a day. you could litterally spend all day doing this for good progression and a laugh with freinds do the more difficult leves for better rewards. not to mention adding random people in to buff this into a leve campaign.
To me this is a more social form of "Dailies" in WoW for example, you just follow the same pattern with the "sons of hodir" doing the minigames and killing the enemies, gaining the benefits... alone... this is a much more engaging approach that still focuses on the core mechanics of the game and its partying system.
3 - Fatigue System & Character Progression!
Important Video Explanation of the system:
This video 100% explains how the system works, I suggested watching this if you already havnt!
I dont see much reason to explain character progression, as the video explains it perfectly.
4 - Story!
General Story, Cutscenes and Beta Missions
Story is self-explanatory, you either like the way the Final Fantasy series portrays its story, or you dont, another subjective point that might be a deal breaker, but judging from the cutscenes and mission basics shown so far, I am impressed for an MMORPG, the ammount of character and soul put into it, along with some tutorial based interaction with the earlier missions even explaining stuff like emotes is more engaging than most.
People dont seem to realize that the first few missions are largely tutorials in themselves.
Starting point of the story, and where it will go?
Take a look at WoW for example, your thrown into a war torn world, and then led through the world thats already in chaos, which suits its theme, however doesnt give much suspense, or question to the motives, although this is largely due to it being part of an ongoing series that already explains all this (Warcraft I, 2 3). Whereas FFXIV starts off similar to the single-player franchise where nothing has been revealed as to what role we play, and the characters we meet early on, in which some trailers suggest the characters we bump into will play a role up into the late levels aswell.
End-game we will have a major villian, much like the raids and expansions, but this villian wont just appear in some random CGI and only visable when you go to kill him (minus the lich king and his breif appearances during OPTIONAL quest grinds).
5 - Combat
Slow Paced, Subjectivly good and bad.
This comes down to preference, muc hlike games like EVE. you either want a twitch based system like World of Warcraft, or you want something slower paste and more thougth out.
Example : WoWs end-game consists of complete rotation spam, constantly, the actions per minute required dont allow for thought or social interaction during, everything is so tense. this is prefered by some, I personally like it, but at the same time the combat is limited, spells are barely reserved or "impactiful" just a neccesity to keep your DPS up with the auto-attack focused mana-less classes as apposed to a turning point. (with the exception of "oh-shit" abilities), to the point where the class roles are all pretty much the same, a mage is a rogue at range, most of them offer similar party buffs now to the point where say Shamans and Shadow Priests are no longer unique or noticable as they were previously..
Where as games like FF11, a Black Mage casting Ancient magic... with 10-15-20 second cast times that while time with skill chains formed a level of complexity and interest that cannot be offered in World of Warcraft. I also like this sytem aswell.
So its Win-Win in my eyes, what people see as slow and boring, I see as complex and meaningful later in the game. which was accurate about FF11 and no doubt will be with FFXIV.
____________________________________________________________________________
Work in progress, il add more as it comes to me, I got abit bored at this point, I will also add other peoples points and sections on request.
This is a taster of why I believe despite the techinical issues in place at the moment, and some poor balances, that this game will be a true gem in a genre that is far too heavily influenced by World of Warcraft (though I loved it at some point). and why a game like this should be praised despite your personal preference for trying to stick to its guns.Ok, a good point has been made in another thread, stating that most of us FFXIV enthusiasts are focusing more on preaching to people as to why this game is not like WoW is a good thing, and showing hate towards those kind of games. Instead of explaining to those unaware or on the fence as to why we think this game is good despite its immediate flaws! So here goes. if anyone has anything to add or any point to debate feel free to do so.
WARNING : I will be using WoW as comparison examples, just to explain my logic, not to bash. I played WoW for 5 years, enjoyed it. (Also only played FF11 for 1 year...)
1 - Graphics, Artstyle and Presentation
Graphics & Art
Artstyle is subjective but I personally think its great, granted I wished there were more variety of races, since im not a huge fan of FF11s, but the world and its characters, in most aspects including animations are amazing, the cutscenes while full of Asian cliches and cheesyness are more engaging than most things you will see withing MMOs, including the upcoming SW:TOR which focuses more on stiff conversation trees, both are down to preference however.
The enviroments while larger than most MMOs and more Copy-paste are beautiful, I can only imagine what the higher level and important dungeon content will look like, a stable of Square-ENIX.
Quest Presentation
Even the non-voice acted dialogue is pretty interesting, the characters have great dialogue and quirky animations suiting thier characters, the reading is easily digested as opposed to WoW's approach where they just make the NPC do nothing and shove a quest text box in your face expecting you to read them over and over again with no emotion...
2 - Guild-Leve's, Faction Leves and thier potential!
Leve Complexity Potential
Ok, for most its nothing more than "Kill x mob in x area" much like most MMO early games, but as stated by Beta players that have reached the level cap, the leves become more challenging and complex, "Silver Leves" have been popping up aswell, as the game progresses you will no doubt see Gold, Platinum, Adamantite leves and so on that as stated by Square will blossom into "campaigns". Its impossible to base this system on 1-20, as I recall, barely any MMO has anything epic at the start regaurding its leveling quests.
"Daily Quests, But more about the core gameplay & Social Interaction"
1) Its already been confirmed that the Refresh timer for Leves is going to be reduced from 48 hours, now logicaly it will be 24 hours or lower, allowing you to do them every day...
2) "Its still only 8 Leves a day" you say? well, thats the design idea aimed at people with little time to gain benefits from, admittedly this is somewhat boring to do alone imo. however, I am playing with 3 freinds which instantly bumps this up to 32 leves a day. you could litterally spend all day doing this for good progression and a laugh with freinds do the more difficult leves for better rewards. not to mention adding random people in to buff this into a leve campaign.
To me this is a more social form of "Dailies" in WoW for example, you just follow the same pattern with the "sons of hodir" doing the minigames and killing the enemies, gaining the benefits... alone... this is a much more engaging approach that still focuses on the core mechanics of the game and its partying system.
3 - Fatigue System & Character Progression!
Important Video Explanation of the system:
This video 100% explains how the system works, I suggested watching this if you already havnt!
I dont see much reason to explain character progression, as the video explains it perfectly.
4 - Story!
General Story, Cutscenes and Beta Missions
Story is self-explanatory, you either like the way the Final Fantasy series portrays its story, or you dont, another subjective point that might be a deal breaker, but judging from the cutscenes and mission basics shown so far, I am impressed for an MMORPG, the ammount of character and soul put into it, along with some tutorial based interaction with the earlier missions even explaining stuff like emotes is more engaging than most.
People dont seem to realize that the first few missions are largely tutorials in themselves.
Starting point of the story, and where it will go?
Take a look at WoW for example, your thrown into a war torn world, and then led through the world thats already in chaos, which suits its theme, however doesnt give much suspense, or question to the motives, although this is largely due to it being part of an ongoing series that already explains all this (Warcraft I, 2 3). Whereas FFXIV starts off similar to the single-player franchise where nothing has been revealed as to what role we play, and the characters we meet early on, in which some trailers suggest the characters we bump into will play a role up into the late levels aswell.
End-game we will have a major villian, much like the raids and expansions, but this villian wont just appear in some random CGI and only visable when you go to kill him (minus the lich king and his breif appearances during OPTIONAL quest grinds).
5 - Combat
Slow Paced, Subjectivly good and bad.
This comes down to preference, muc hlike games like EVE. you either want a twitch based system like World of Warcraft, or you want something slower paste and more thougth out.
Example : WoWs end-game consists of complete rotation spam, constantly, the actions per minute required dont allow for thought or social interaction during, everything is so tense. this is prefered by some, I personally like it, but at the same time the combat is limited, spells are barely reserved or "impactiful" just a neccesity to keep your DPS up with the auto-attack focused mana-less classes as apposed to a turning point. (with the exception of "oh-shit" abilities), to the point where the class roles are all pretty much the same, a mage is a rogue at range, most of them offer similar party buffs now to the point where say Shamans and Shadow Priests are no longer unique or noticable as they were previously..
Where as games like FF11, a Black Mage casting Ancient magic... with 10-15-20 second cast times that while time with skill chains formed a level of complexity and interest that cannot be offered in World of Warcraft. I also like this sytem aswell.
So its Win-Win in my eyes, what people see as slow and boring, I see as complex and meaningful later in the game. which was accurate about FF11 and no doubt will be with FFXIV.
____________________________________________________________________________
Work in progress, il add more as it comes to me, I got abit bored at this point, I will also add other peoples points and sections on request.
This is a taster of why I believe despite the techinical issues in place at the moment, and some poor balances, that this game will be a true gem in a genre that is far too heavily influenced by World of Warcraft (though I loved it at some point). and why a game like this should be praised despite your personal preference for trying to stick to its guns.
Comments
Trolls just can't wait to get their hands on this tasty thread!
I have never played a Blizzard title so I can't really say much in that department.
But I can say that I like the fact that I know for the most part what I'm getting. SE hasn't turned off the path it said it would be on from Day 1. Therefore the things I know I love, I know will be there. Which makes me happy to give them my money.
That's honestly the reason why I didn't sub to DF even though I really liked it. Or MO even though I liked the idea and look.
. . . not to nit pick. But is that it? Though you could be adding in an edit right now because you wanted to be second.
You wanted my time, so I played you. You wanted my money, I forked it over. You wanted my soul, I gave it willingly. Not to complain... but when do I get my end of the deal? And no, I don't want your flippin' carrot. If you can't do that give me back my youth and keep the change. Why don't you try chasing your own damn carrot for a change? I'll gladly hold the stick.
I'm with you on everything you said except leves. I don't expect this system to really be all that great at any time in the future, but I suppose since no one has seen the future, only time will tell.
Just to nitpick
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
I'm a lot like the OP. Played FFXI 2 years and Wow for 4 years.
The games are very very different and I hope they stay that way. FFXIV is truely a different experience. If you want somthing that will never be called a WoW clone, then you can try it out.... though you only have today to do it.... last day of beta.
The way the game is designed, it also engenders a better community. Some of you will disagree based on the fact that no one talked during open beta. Well, those people were from FFXI, in their premade linkshells, and having a blast on vent.
One drawback to using a controller is that you're less likely to talk using the keyboard.
If you find yourself truely enjoying the game where some of the "issues" (ui lag) don't bother you, then give this game a chance. With SE behind it, you wont' regret it. You character and the game will grow together. When everyone is just joining the game, your high level character will be able take advantage of the new and constant content patches, while everyone else who waited will be rushing to catch up.
But, it's also not a bad idea if you like the game in this state but want more polish, to wait for the ps3 release.
Either way, this mmo will not flop, the foundation is solid, the company has a proven track record, all that you need is a little patience and a little time.
Yup you raise a valid point, I like both JRPG and WRPG's approach to RPGs, I feel that WRPG Dialogue options are more interactive, however at the same time I feel that they often leave out any kind of emotion in the majoirty of the cutscenes and dialogue due to this.
Take ToR, Ive have watched a lot of footage, most of it is pretty amatuer in its choreography, facial expressions and feeling of emotion from the characters, yes ok they will be angry, point at you raise a fist or something, but its never anywhere near the same.
My charater makes the options with in a ToR Style,my character in FFXIV for example is directly envolved in the cutscene with no player-input interaction, however displays a level of emotion and envolvement that I dont get while standing there responding to someone.
I wont see my character running for his/her life from a giant tree to be frozen in mid air ect, I will only see basic things like responding to the NPC with basic gestures.
alittle bit of a rant, both work, in an ideal enviroment both would be combined for perfect, but it would take far too long to achieve.
Actually your post lost all credibility due to the fact that youa re ignoring the many in game cutscene interactions already posted of SW:TOR. I think you need to spend a little bit more time researching your opinions before posting them biasedly.
Fatetaker Voidwalker
Linkshell founder of Shi Ryu of Aegis & Figaro
Leader of the Bad Wolves Multi Game Community
As the person who responded first said, theres lots of footage and you can see the approach already, its a guesstimation using a sample.
Actually, my post still has credibility due to the fact that the game hasn't released. The only bias I see is yours.
Edit for OP: A guesstimation really shouldn't be used in a review. Just facts and your opinion on those facts. Since SW:TOR is still in production, things can change. Judging things from videos is not the same as actually playing them.
I actually read the rest of your review. It does have merit, but still argue the point with the statement in red.
According to your own logic your post has no credibility due to the fact that niether game has been released and therefore thier comparisions are fair and non bias until one is released or new information is released which contradicts the OP's statements.
/end
Fatetaker Voidwalker
Linkshell founder of Shi Ryu of Aegis & Figaro
Leader of the Bad Wolves Multi Game Community
Trolling must be fun, your entitled to your opinion but I disagree "no different from WoW" is like saying all shooters are identical because you point and shoot things... a dumb statement.
WoW is repetitive in every sense, and your just randomly denying complexity even though ive described quest and combat mechanics... yet you have no rebutal for anything .... "No your wrong" doesnt cut it.
I don't think the OP is "done." You may disagree but his opinion is still valid, as is yours.
So a game that has a heavy repetative grind is NOT similar to another game that has a heavy repetative grind is what you are saying?
I'm confused that makes no sense...
FFXIV is actually quite similar to EvE, what with their ENTIRELY player driven economy and resource based crafting.
Right now the only MMO pushing the industry is WoW. They won what is effectively the "King of the MMO world" crown and unless all these joke independant mmo houses get together, swallow their pride, and build an epic "king killer" mmo then WoW will keep it's crown till it dies of old age.
I really wish more people would go play Osmosis so I didn't have to explain the concept of passive absorption based on total mass.
So if they don't go after WoW's audience they're making a mistake?
So Hyundai as a car company "fails" cus its not AS successful as Toyoda?
Clearly Mac is so fail cus PC's are vastly more popular....
I'm sorry your statement has no logic in it at all.
FFXIV is just as repetitive as WoW. More so in my opinion. WoW has a PvP system. It has many ways that you can progress through the game. It's likely that the endgame will be similar in grind. Both games allow you to play different classes and spec any time you want.
I think being repetitive is an MMO standard at this point.
What is it about FFXIV that you find less repetitive than WoW?
Failed logic is fail. The OP shouldn't have used a game that is still in production to compare to a game that is soon to be released. That was my original statement and I stick by that. Videos don't do a game justice and in his own words said it was a "guesstimation". I think I see your King....Checkmate.
I think its the fact that no one has reached max level or end game, so we don't truly know yet. I've played through beta but only to P.lvl 15. I haven't felt repetitiveness but I guess it could turn out that way.
I dont, that has been put in my mouth, all MMOs are repetitive, hell all Multiplayer Games are repititive, they just have different mechanics appealing to different people or direction.
Both are as repetitive as eachother, that is not the point of this at all, just something he slung into my mouth without me saying.
Comparing still in production to soon to be released with an MMO is failed logic. Case in point active MMO's are constantly
"in production" as for example they will be adding more features "approx 6 gigs" when FFXIV goes live as well they have more features "in production" down the road such as PvP.
I think you missed my king, plus you can't checkmate. Troll isn't a legitmate chess piece.
Fatetaker Voidwalker
Linkshell founder of Shi Ryu of Aegis & Figaro
Leader of the Bad Wolves Multi Game Community
Why do people insist on titling a thread as this one, yet making a comparison to another game out there as was done? It begins a pissing contest.
If anything, the only game that FFXIV should be compared to is FFXI.
If it is a case of needing to provide some point of reference to something you wish to say, you need not name a specific game to do so. You could actually go with a descriptive marker, making sure that what is stated is opinion and not fact unless undeniably fact.
Unfortunately, what I have below is as far as a I read...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Your complex logic makes my head hurt.... T_T
Fatetaker Voidwalker
Linkshell founder of Shi Ryu of Aegis & Figaro
Leader of the Bad Wolves Multi Game Community
I dont get it, what are you complaining about exactly? I thought it was pretty obvious, if your trying to explain a different direction to what people are use to and why wel like the difference, you NEED to show a comparison, comparing and contrasting is healthy.
I dont know why people get so butt-hurt by me comparing, im not saying one is better tha nthe other, im explaining the differences.
FREEDOM! Bottom line. I don't remember any PvE MMORPG the last ten years that gives us as much freedom than in FFXIV! I kinda wish they wouldn't do this, because now the WoW crowd is whine to Blizzard going... First Runescape, and now FFXIV! We want to be able to level all jobs on one character also!
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."