I don't think Final Fantasy XIV's issues stem from being "unfinished" so much a they do from "being developed with a different development philosophy in mind." Polish the game until it shines, eliminate the lag, remove all instability, and you still have a game that the average don't-make-me-work-for-anything casual-friendly MMORPG addict wouldn't touch with a ten foot halberd.
I always look forward to your posts because they make me chuckle. Anyways, I already know what their philosophy is. Its pretty much to forget everything they learned from FFXI, slap together a half a$@ product and then slap a FF logo on it.
I still don't understand why you poke a stick at casual players considering this game in itself is right along side casual. Sure might not have a guy with a "!" on his head, but the first intro story is about as simplistic as it can get. Fighting mobs is nothing more then 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 til it dies. The casual list goes on and on.
Bad UI and LAG. Oh and i forgot no AH. A Auction House does not matter to me at the game start, that is simply a world wide MMO thing people can not give up on, they like the AH. In FFXIV it will come out later, most likely when PS3 hits. The rest of this game feels like FFXI redone with better art work and a revamp on the job's. I like how FFXIV makes you think, instead of the hand holding.... oh look it is a "!", i have a quest there. Instead they are like here you go have fun and figure things out. It is not like you can play this game, max level and then sell the account to have someone buy it and within 1 week know how to play the class.
Personally i think MMO's cater to the people that want things handed to them. I am sorry, but i do not want to be treated that way. I do have a brain.
Everyone that thought it would be different from the beta was dead wrong. I still like it and will play it. I played AoC which was worse at launch then FFXIV. It is still going right now and just the fact that you people do not like something because you are use to WoW and titles like that are just not use to this game. I would never pay $80 for a game though, that is not worth it to me.
I think your not grasping what people mean by "finished".
So a game is not "finished" until it has all the features that you enjoy and find standard? Perhaps you are the one who is not grasping the meaning of "finished".
Personally i think MMO's cater to the people that want things handed to them. I am sorry, but i do not want to be treated that way. I do have a brain.
You want MMOs to stimulate your brain?
Did real life kick your ass so you're using MMOs to make yourself feel better? Winning the game called "RL" is harder than winning any MMO, all MMOs should be casual because of the above...unless, of course, your ass got kicked by RL and you need to make yourself feel better via 'hard' MMO.
Personally i think MMO's cater to the people that want things handed to them. I am sorry, but i do not want to be treated that way. I do have a brain.
You want MMOs to stimulate your brain?
Did real life kick your ass so you're using MMOs to make yourself feel better? Winning the game called "RL" is harder than winning any MMO, all MMOs should be casual because of the above...unless, of course, your ass got kicked by RL and you need to make yourself feel better via 'hard' MMO.
So Dr.Phill, according to you all those who play EVE, darkfall etc they have some real life issues?
There are two types of people who play "hard" MMOs, and they both usually have one attribute that is identical: too much free time. The second attribute is the result of two very different things:
1. Failing at life
2. Succeeding at life, usually being defined via one's total net worth (and a "success" value is usually at least 1 million USD).
Answer the question yourself.
Wow! Don' t you ever feel the need to challenge yourself?
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
A game doesn't have to have every feature it will eventually have in order to be finished, as that word is being used in this context. Here it really means finished enough to keep a person's interest. What constitutes enough is what is up for debate and somewhat subjective and effected by personal preference.
When people play your game you need them to want to keep playing it. You should want them to be constantly wondering what is coming next and be interested enough to find it out. There should be at least some amount of war within the person to decide between playing another hour or stopping because you need to do something else. Yes the person needs to be disciplined enough to stop when it is bed time, meal time or work time what ever, that is a part of being grown up. But you still want to leave them with a desire to return to the game and find out what is going to come next.
My problem right now is that I am not finding it interesting enough to want to come back. I do my guildleves. Finish my storyline quest for my level. I have talked with scores of npcs. Done a couple behests, started my crafting and I am left wondering, "ok, now what? Is that all there is?" I know I can go out and just grind some mobs but that is both uninteresting not to mention unexpectedly difficult to even find random mobs.
I am not trying to prove I am right or claim that the game is provably and objectively lacking. I am just giving you my impression of it. What am I missing? Is there another class of quest or activity out there that I have simply missed?
Is the day I stop paying $15 per month to play them.
I keep seeing posts about how FFXIV is "unfinished".
The best part about MMORPGs is they are always changing. Always adapting. Always improving. Just because FFXIV is "released" now, well that just means we can start playing.
The most important thing is to have a good company, with a good reputation, and a strong foundation to build upon. FFXIV has all of these things.
If you want to "wait" until the game is finished, you will be waiting a very long time. Me? I prefer to play now, start to experience the game before everyone else does, and establish my place in Eorzea.
I'll gladly level another job with all of the people who wait though! There will be a spot in Eorzea for you in a few months when you are ready.
I don't think people complain about unfinished as much as unpolished. And unpolished does not only refer to bugs, it refers to UI, how smooth things interact, how smoothly quests flow, how balanced skills/classes are, etc.
I'd personally rather see a game try to get less features/content out the door on the release and have it be extremely polished.
Is the day I stop paying $15 per month to play them.
I keep seeing posts about how FFXIV is "unfinished".
The best part about MMORPGs is they are always changing. Always adapting. Always improving. Just because FFXIV is "released" now, well that just means we can start playing.
The most important thing is to have a good company, with a good reputation, and a strong foundation to build upon. FFXIV has all of these things.
If you want to "wait" until the game is finished, you will be waiting a very long time. Me? I prefer to play now, start to experience the game before everyone else does, and establish my place in Eorzea.
I'll gladly level another job with all of the people who wait though! There will be a spot in Eorzea for you in a few months when you are ready.
Umm if an mmo released with a good three to six months worth of content you would not play it to experience that content simply because you knew nothing would change about it? I can't really agree with that statement but to each their own.
I can't really speak from personal experience but if there are that many vocal people about how unfinished the game is maybe SE should be taking this into consideration. It's one thing to say an mmo is always growing but this entire "an mmo is never finished" slogan is just a slippery slope that we the community shouldn't be accepting.
While one person may see enough entertainment value to overlook obvious flaws everyone is not going to be like that and it's something we should all be pushing for whether it effects our personal experience or not.
Anyone who said they had an interest in a game I liked but couldn't play it because something wasn't finished or done right what is the point in siding with the company to debate this person, I want that person to enjoy the game as much as I do so I hope the company get's there shit together and fixes the unfinished features.
In my opinion there needs to be acceptable standards in place because when I go and pay sixty bucks for a ps3 or xbox360 game it works well and always has all advertised features by the time they sell me the product and mmo's are not doing this and getting away with murder.
Maybe it's the jerk in me but I say "if you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen", again I'm not sure what features are missing from FF but I can say these same types of posts have existed for every game that gave a shaky release and at the end of the day it only hurt players like yourself who like the game because you end up being one of the only ones playing it and instead of being angry at the idiot devs who release have baked junk we often make excuses for them and blame the people who wanted to and tried to like the game.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Whenever a MMORPG is released half-baked we get apologists with this straw-man argument.
Keeping these aspects in mind, I think that a lot of people have a lot of criticisms that are valid (and should be sent to SE's suggestions box!!!). What I don't think is valid is the amount of anger that seems to be permeating many forums and this "Half-Baked" nonsense...
Half-baked is nonsense?
1. No tutorials to understand the game or what to do in it
2. Copy/pasted world over and over again
3. No flow to the quests, you have to run for 20 minutes to get from quest to quest. If the environment wasn't copy/pasted and there were interesting things to do along the way it might be fun but it is not the case
4. Which leads us to lack of mobs, the world is almost devoid of mobs as you explore
5. Guildleve. Repeatable quests are the main source of leveling? Everyone hated that in Aion, everyone still hates it now. It's plain lazy programming so you don't have to make interesting quests.
6. Terrible UI, laggy and unresponsive
7. People keep saying it's a social game yet their chat options are terrible, hard to communicate with other people
8. No AH... though they are supposed to add one 'eventually'?
9. Loads and loads of timesinks with crafting and gathering being almost a must or you cannot progress. "Come and do whatever you want in this game! Unless what you want is to progress however you want and whenever you want, then this is not the game for you!"
....
The list goes on and on. People are going to come back and say these are my opinions or they don't have most of the troubles or they are smart design "choices" by SE and they are great... yeah, like Kyleran here, we've heard all these things time and time again from every MMO that has been coming out.
Bottom line, it's poor and often at times lazy game design. Does that mean the game can't be fun and you can't have great fun? No, of course you can. But to defend the half-baked garbage that is FFXIV now makes me weep for the rest of us gamers that expect a little quality and foresight to what their customers want.
I guess the question then, is what do their customers want? Do you know offhand, do you have some insight from the company and their target audiences?
So the question more stems, it doesn't have the little quality and foresight that you wanted out of it, such, you did not purchase it. Thus it is now a statement.
1. There are some tutorials, and for everything you do it shows you how. What does crafting do, how about the tutorial guild leves?
2. I'll agree, but hey honestly I don't really care-Some people do.
3. I haven't touched my next "storyline" because I frankly could care less. If I want story, I'll go singleplayer, but from the first I ran, I can say you run around, but it in no way took 20minutes.
4. I don't find a lack of mobs at all. Mobs are everywhere I go. I leveled and got myself some shards/crystals for an hour and a half with not one person walking by. (Mind you this was non-stop nearly and was quite fun)
5. I actually like the guildleve system, you do not. I also loved pre-cu SWG too with no quest but mission terminals. Maybe why I'm enjoying this game.
6. UI needs some work, mainly "Less are you sure" and needs a few more one click options
7. I don't think its hard to communicate with people. Type /say. Go to your linkshell channel, chat. It really isn't hard..
8. They need something here, yes to make it an economy actually happen
9. What MMO is not a timesink? Do you want to get to max level and raid? I hate raiding, I get bored of it after about a week. The whole point of an MMO is to do something with time hence=timesink.
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No one is is saying the game is perfect. What game are you playing that appeals to you? WoW for example holds zero appeal to me, and the majority of the people I know in real life that I've played MMOs with. Does that mean its a bad game? No. I also think its common knowledge that SE goes outside the normal regardless of what people think. Why? Because it works for them. We can dollydick around the bush all day about issues with this game or that game, what it has and what it doesn't. In the end, if you don't like it, honestly you can't do anything about it other than send in a "I hate this game complaint add this this and this." Short of you being an actual developer our opinions mean little unless everyone agrees with them.
With that said:
I want three things: Custom Chat Channels. Actual Guild customization(MSOD option for example) and some sort of market, be it auction house or whatnot. Thats all I want from the game. Everything else I can work around.
Comments
I always look forward to your posts because they make me chuckle. Anyways, I already know what their philosophy is. Its pretty much to forget everything they learned from FFXI, slap together a half a$@ product and then slap a FF logo on it.
I still don't understand why you poke a stick at casual players considering this game in itself is right along side casual. Sure might not have a guy with a "!" on his head, but the first intro story is about as simplistic as it can get. Fighting mobs is nothing more then 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 til it dies. The casual list goes on and on.
So far i see the most about.......
Bad UI and LAG. Oh and i forgot no AH. A Auction House does not matter to me at the game start, that is simply a world wide MMO thing people can not give up on, they like the AH. In FFXIV it will come out later, most likely when PS3 hits. The rest of this game feels like FFXI redone with better art work and a revamp on the job's. I like how FFXIV makes you think, instead of the hand holding.... oh look it is a "!", i have a quest there. Instead they are like here you go have fun and figure things out. It is not like you can play this game, max level and then sell the account to have someone buy it and within 1 week know how to play the class.
Personally i think MMO's cater to the people that want things handed to them. I am sorry, but i do not want to be treated that way. I do have a brain.
Everyone that thought it would be different from the beta was dead wrong. I still like it and will play it. I played AoC which was worse at launch then FFXIV. It is still going right now and just the fact that you people do not like something because you are use to WoW and titles like that are just not use to this game. I would never pay $80 for a game though, that is not worth it to me.
So a game is not "finished" until it has all the features that you enjoy and find standard? Perhaps you are the one who is not grasping the meaning of "finished".
You want MMOs to stimulate your brain?
Did real life kick your ass so you're using MMOs to make yourself feel better? Winning the game called "RL" is harder than winning any MMO, all MMOs should be casual because of the above...unless, of course, your ass got kicked by RL and you need to make yourself feel better via 'hard' MMO.
Wow! Don' t you ever feel the need to challenge yourself?
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
A game doesn't have to have every feature it will eventually have in order to be finished, as that word is being used in this context. Here it really means finished enough to keep a person's interest. What constitutes enough is what is up for debate and somewhat subjective and effected by personal preference.
When people play your game you need them to want to keep playing it. You should want them to be constantly wondering what is coming next and be interested enough to find it out. There should be at least some amount of war within the person to decide between playing another hour or stopping because you need to do something else. Yes the person needs to be disciplined enough to stop when it is bed time, meal time or work time what ever, that is a part of being grown up. But you still want to leave them with a desire to return to the game and find out what is going to come next.
My problem right now is that I am not finding it interesting enough to want to come back. I do my guildleves. Finish my storyline quest for my level. I have talked with scores of npcs. Done a couple behests, started my crafting and I am left wondering, "ok, now what? Is that all there is?" I know I can go out and just grind some mobs but that is both uninteresting not to mention unexpectedly difficult to even find random mobs.
I am not trying to prove I am right or claim that the game is provably and objectively lacking. I am just giving you my impression of it. What am I missing? Is there another class of quest or activity out there that I have simply missed?
All die, so die well.
I don't think people complain about unfinished as much as unpolished. And unpolished does not only refer to bugs, it refers to UI, how smooth things interact, how smoothly quests flow, how balanced skills/classes are, etc.
I'd personally rather see a game try to get less features/content out the door on the release and have it be extremely polished.
Umm if an mmo released with a good three to six months worth of content you would not play it to experience that content simply because you knew nothing would change about it? I can't really agree with that statement but to each their own.
I can't really speak from personal experience but if there are that many vocal people about how unfinished the game is maybe SE should be taking this into consideration. It's one thing to say an mmo is always growing but this entire "an mmo is never finished" slogan is just a slippery slope that we the community shouldn't be accepting.
While one person may see enough entertainment value to overlook obvious flaws everyone is not going to be like that and it's something we should all be pushing for whether it effects our personal experience or not.
Anyone who said they had an interest in a game I liked but couldn't play it because something wasn't finished or done right what is the point in siding with the company to debate this person, I want that person to enjoy the game as much as I do so I hope the company get's there shit together and fixes the unfinished features.
In my opinion there needs to be acceptable standards in place because when I go and pay sixty bucks for a ps3 or xbox360 game it works well and always has all advertised features by the time they sell me the product and mmo's are not doing this and getting away with murder.
Maybe it's the jerk in me but I say "if you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen", again I'm not sure what features are missing from FF but I can say these same types of posts have existed for every game that gave a shaky release and at the end of the day it only hurt players like yourself who like the game because you end up being one of the only ones playing it and instead of being angry at the idiot devs who release have baked junk we often make excuses for them and blame the people who wanted to and tried to like the game.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I guess the question then, is what do their customers want? Do you know offhand, do you have some insight from the company and their target audiences?
So the question more stems, it doesn't have the little quality and foresight that you wanted out of it, such, you did not purchase it. Thus it is now a statement.
1. There are some tutorials, and for everything you do it shows you how. What does crafting do, how about the tutorial guild leves?
2. I'll agree, but hey honestly I don't really care-Some people do.
3. I haven't touched my next "storyline" because I frankly could care less. If I want story, I'll go singleplayer, but from the first I ran, I can say you run around, but it in no way took 20minutes.
4. I don't find a lack of mobs at all. Mobs are everywhere I go. I leveled and got myself some shards/crystals for an hour and a half with not one person walking by. (Mind you this was non-stop nearly and was quite fun)
5. I actually like the guildleve system, you do not. I also loved pre-cu SWG too with no quest but mission terminals. Maybe why I'm enjoying this game.
6. UI needs some work, mainly "Less are you sure" and needs a few more one click options
7. I don't think its hard to communicate with people. Type /say. Go to your linkshell channel, chat. It really isn't hard..
8. They need something here, yes to make it an economy actually happen
9. What MMO is not a timesink? Do you want to get to max level and raid? I hate raiding, I get bored of it after about a week. The whole point of an MMO is to do something with time hence=timesink.
-------------------------------
No one is is saying the game is perfect. What game are you playing that appeals to you? WoW for example holds zero appeal to me, and the majority of the people I know in real life that I've played MMOs with. Does that mean its a bad game? No. I also think its common knowledge that SE goes outside the normal regardless of what people think. Why? Because it works for them. We can dollydick around the bush all day about issues with this game or that game, what it has and what it doesn't. In the end, if you don't like it, honestly you can't do anything about it other than send in a "I hate this game complaint add this this and this." Short of you being an actual developer our opinions mean little unless everyone agrees with them.
With that said:
I want three things: Custom Chat Channels. Actual Guild customization(MSOD option for example) and some sort of market, be it auction house or whatnot. Thats all I want from the game. Everything else I can work around.