Truly I am jealous of your gameplay experience, If only I could be easily amused with activities I can do in the real world in a game designed around story/community and foremost battle content. You keep saying that I am "projecting how a MMO should be" rather I am stating the obvious. Maybe you should take some time and break down what a Role Playing game is and its main purpose. The priority/balance of story/grinding/fluff varies between JRPG's, Western RPG's and MMO's in those respected formats. While "worldy" activities are not as apparent in other MMO's they were very prevalent in single player RPG's BUT they always found a way of rewarding a player for the main journey ahead if they took the time to master the activity ala Triple triad in FF8.
Pursuing this conversation is pointless because it just seems in the end you don't get it. In the end if you find the activity fun then it's done its job. What I am implying is that a simple application of currency and a slower way to offer varied character progression from these "Worldly" events would not be a game breaker and encourage more players to engage in these activities. What i am saying is while there are players that play FFXIV to play second life with FF models you are still a minority to an extent. There is some merit to offer non combat activities to attract a broader range of players, but that is not what attracts the majority. Upon walking into the ghost town that is the Golden Saucer and seeing the "not enough players participating for choco racing/TT tournaments" constantly on the OF doesn't make it a fact, but makes me question the amount of players that actually feel the same way you do.
Whether SE decides to add a varied reward for these activities to bolster attendance and have it as a win/win for everyone matters very little to me. In fact if more production time was put into fixing the main draws of the game instead of making sure you get a new dinner jacket wardrobe every patch I could care less about the trivial matters you enjoy in this game. In honesty this whole game could be shite if crafting was actually worth doing. While I don't find your activities worthwhile, as long as I can make some kind of "goal" I would have no problem with non combat activities. Burning the midnight crafting oil, playing the market and saving enough gill among my small circle of 5 friends to afford us a mansion and take up gardening would be fantastic and I could really find myself falling into the game until you realize players hold property at ransom and to SE crafters are the devil it seems.
I absolutely love crafting and the meta, but being proverbially punched in the stomach by each major/minor patch and looking toward each said patch with disdain and fear instead of enjoyment like yourself is the life of a crafter. I enjoy the whole idea of gear progression in crafting in 3.0 but its much of the same; the casual/non serious crafter players simply sell mats to the crafters rather than risking the NQ synth. While this is been a apparent problem for some time you still did not lose everything when you NQed an item and it still offered you a market to sell to. In 3.0 and HQ 160 is MUCH stronger than a NQ 180 so if you don't HQ it then enjoy all those mats you wasted grinding for from limited currency, better luck next week chap. Add this "crafting progression" to the fact made it take the better part of over a month to gear enough to even attempt HQ 180 that by now there is hardly any market for the items. That being because everyone by now has full ESO sets by now and working on a second set (IF the play something else).
PvP could of also been an activity to hold me but all I can say is that SE does not have its own PvP team and by the gods does it show. For all this "DaOC research" and "WoW involvement" Yoshi touted that PvP to be on par with the quality of PvE and 2+ years later I am still waiting. It's all such a mess that I could be it's own separate write up. Days after my original post above, In the coming patches Yoshi has addressed the problem with repetitive battle content cycles so for now i will digress. In the meantime I'm glad you find your own fun in this game, but for me its socializing with my friends and enjoy working together to help eachother become stronger. Could this be because we were raised on Final fantasy games/RPG's all our life? There is no way to tell, but we have been playing MMO's like this since we can last remember and while I don't mean to speak for the community as a "we" I cant say that most of us want what you do. Thinking back to the whole garrison scheme WoW had a few patches ago and the implosion it caused makes me feel I am not so wrong with that assumption.
Hybrid classes aren't going to happen. WoW had hybrids back in vanilla, and they didn't work with a tank/healer/DD role trinity. For hybrids to work they'd need to completely redo how roles and combat are done in FFXIV:ARR. Hybrids provide flexibility of options at the cost of party strength. They're only good when combat presents a multitude of options that can lead to victory, like in Divinity: Original Sin.
As for anyone arguing that using the WoW formula is helping FFXIV:ARR, I'd like to point to the fact WoW has been in decline despite a total redesign. It is what FFXIV:ARR did differently or promised to do differently that kept players paying. The old guard community it garnered from FFXI, even if only temporarily, also helped by making it a more pleasant social environment.
You know the way you say that really brings the pre-scripted nature of battle content to light. Outside of small adjustments like single tanking/single healing something and simply adding more DPS there is very little room for change. I am going to simply hope from the sidelines that you are wrong with your prediction of hybrid classes because Blue mage and Puppetmaster were my two main favorite classes in FFXI. While hybrid and multiple roles for each class would be a nightmare to balance the lack of them really does make this game feel a bit more shallow to me, add scripted fights on top of that xD.
EDIT: Yoshi did talk about Hybrid classes sometime after 2.0 launch, one of the many things among the 100 floor dungeon that I am still waiting for more details on. That being said its not completely off the table *crosses fingers*.
Its the last of the WoW clones so if you don't like that style of game just move on.
So every MMO after WoW is a WoW clone? I didn't know WoW was the first MMO! Please explain, what is your definition of a WoW clone?
Don't feel that anyone thinks that WoW was the first MMO, rather the first to perfect the formula and what the current generation is more familiar with comparing the current filth of the MMO market.
While 1.0 had a huge number of issues, the number one complaint that you saw over and over in various reviews was that it wasn't like WoW and it was non-intuitive. So they made it like WoW.
We got exactly the FFXIV remake we asked for, sadly.
I think there has to be a line between saying a game is bad or you personally not enjoying said game. Not saying that is what OP said but it's a general feel I get of people posting on the forums here. As well as the people saying the mmorpg genre is dying, I'm like ???what??? why is there 5 million people paying monthly to play the 12 year old WoW if the genre is dying? How is FFXIV still using a p2p model and plenty of people playing it if the genre is dying? Why are there still so many mmorpg's being made? Point it. If it's not your cup of tea, try another flavor and don't tell people that the tea u don't enjoy is bad.
While 1.0 had a huge number of issues, the number one complaint that you saw over and over in various reviews was that it wasn't like WoW and it was non-intuitive. So they made it like WoW.
We got exactly the FFXIV remake we asked for, sadly.
That's probably the shortest response with the most meaning I have ever seen xD. 1.0 was a trainwreck but what most don't recall is that it flopped because it was half finished. A lot of the non intuitive nature comes from the terrible menu system/lag and sever lag with action input. Most of this and much more got fixed in 1.2 but sadly the only way to re invigorate this game was a complete re-branding. Still in 1.0 I couldn't play with a controller making the UI elements/menus/controller systems absolutely awesome in 2.0.
As I mentioned before, a lot of the 1.2 players came to your conclusion into the back of our minds long before the servers shut down. Whether it needed to be a total WoW clone or not we will never know, Naoki merely took the safest route because SE was in very bad shape at the time this happened. This is particularly why it was like salt in the wound when we saw what became of the game in 2.0. So many 2.0+ players that were actively enjoying the same game they have been playing since 2003 were so quick to tell you to "move on if you don't like it" without really understanding the implications.
If there is one company that can create their own fantasy MMO its Square Enix, and due to that FFXI has been my last bastion for many many years further makes me feel that way. According to the most recent live letter Yoshi plans on expanding on gameplay/battle systems outside of the same dungeon scraps we have been getting since 2.0 so I still stand hopeful.
Truly I am jealous of your gameplay experience, If only I could be easily amused with activities I can do in the real world in a game designed around story/community and foremost battle content. You keep saying that I am "projecting how a MMO should be" rather I am stating the obvious. Maybe you should take some time and break down what a Role Playing game is and its main purpose....
... and so on...
Okay, so you've decided to become snarky and dismissive in response to perfectly reasoned arguments.
If that's the only way you're capable of responding, then yes... this discussion is over.
All I'll say in closing is in response to the quoted bit (though I did read through the whole post, tedious as it was)...
You still don't get it.
You are only stating the obvious for you. You are not the final authority on "what RPGs/MMORPGs are all about" for everyone. So, you can be as snarky as you like, and keep repeating how you think you're "stating the obvious" all day long. You're not making any valid or compelling points.
At the end of the day, your views are still close-minded and myopic, and you are demonstrating, repeatedly, that you can't, or won't, acknowledge anything beyond your own nose. This does not make you appear knowledgable. It makes you appear willfully ignorant.
If it's in the game, it's there to be experienced. And if people find those experiences fun, and worth doing .... apart from any tangible sort of "reward" that may exist for doing them, then having fun is all the meaning they need to have.
Truly I am jealous of your gameplay experience, If only I could be easily amused with activities I can do in the real world in a game designed around story/community and foremost battle content. You keep saying that I am "projecting how a MMO should be" rather I am stating the obvious. Maybe you should take some time and break down what a Role Playing game is and its main purpose....
... and so on...
Okay, so you've decided to become snarky and dismissive in response to perfectly reasoned arguments.
If that's the only way you're capable of responding, then yes... this discussion is over.
All I'll say in closing is in response to the quoted bit (though I did read through the whole post, tedious as it was)...
You still don't get it.
You are only stating the obvious for you. You are not the final authority on "what RPGs/MMORPGs are all about" for everyone. So, you can be as snarky as you like, and keep repeating how you think you're "stating the obvious" all day long. You're not making any valid or compelling points.
At the end of the day, your views are still close-minded and myopic, and you are demonstrating, repeatedly, that you can't, or won't, acknowledge anything beyond your own nose. This does not make you appear knowledgable. It makes you appear willfully ignorant.
If it's in the game, it's there to be experienced. And if people find those experiences fun, and worth doing .... apart from any tangible sort of "reward" that may exist for doing them, then having fun is all the meaning they need to have.
Alright you got me, I'll admit my response was very snarky. Lets just discuss the bottom line, we both enjoy MMO's/RPG's for different reasons and we will never see eye to eye and everything else is left to your opinion.I guess arguing over whether something is content or not may have been a bit of a pointless matter since trying to push a single opinion is technically projecting my view on other people.So instead of saying FFXIV ain't got squat to do I will simply rephrase it to be more specific: I feel FFXIV could do with more casual/intermediate battle content because its current offering is a bit meager.
Though from where you are standing I can definitely say you found a diamond in the rough. You have prime real estate on top of new uncharted lands and I must say I am jealous because from where I stand I am still playing the same game since 2003. Everything you enjoy about the game is what FFXIV has that other MMO's don't and that offers you a rich and un-diluted experience that maybe I will take a piece of one day. At the end of the day I want to see this game successful of its own merit, not riding the coat tails of a proven formula. While things look very peachy from where you stand I still look towards the future with some concern.
While there is a possibility that there is plenty of people that enjoy the game from your perspective (very possible because a lot of the really 100% positive players I come across these forums enjoy worldy content and battle content, offering them a plethora of things to do) that doesn't mean its speaks for a vast majority. I'll admit each time that I come back to this game my interest for other activities does get slightly peaked and this new minion battle system might win me over to your side. Lately I have even taken up PvP to get the MNK set due to how awesome it looks coming from someone that didn't even bother to cast glamour a few patches ago.
At the back of my mind I still want this game to be more successful that it already is, because I want to pull those WoW players off of their proverbial fence to get a taste of what a final fantasy game is about. While the other MMO's do not offer the worldly charm FFXIV does, other MMO's still offer a similar raid/vertical progression experience which lessens FFXIV's pull. Players who invested into a MMO will always be hesitant and on the fence because why should they level all over again to do the same thing, even to the extent that they will wait out 14-16 month content droughts......
So while your area of the game is solid (I am led to believe you have no qualms with your vanity/fluff/worldy content?) I do feel there is some room for improvement (in the crafting/PvP/battle content scene) so that FFXIV can make a name of its own. I was serious about the easily amused comment despite how aggressive it may come off as. Its hard to convey sarcasm in text so I'll just have to say it must be nice that FFXIV is a game where it is your home rather than for me as a place I am just visiting. My friends made a interesting point today; we are all dreamers, we like to gear in hopes to get to end game and beat the big nasty boss at the end of the road and that's what keeps us playing. We purposely wait as long as we can before doing raid content to give a false sense of more to do (of what we play the game for I mean).
Then we finally beat the bad guy and take all the loot, in a matter of weeks we all get the best of the best gear and the suppressed realization comes to surface and we hit that invisible wall. We try to gear other jobs we realize that we really don't like to play in the first place to hold on and the denial starts to sink in. Once you learn the dance (Due to the heavily scripted nature of fights I call them dance routines) you conform to it and after a while I become a little stale. Every week almost becomes deja vu from the last, doing the same fight with the same mechanics at the same intervals with very small changes. I'm not sure if its the nature of the game with the scripted fights because I never really felt that way with other games. Sooner than later we start losing members because they rather play CS GO because the repetitiveness just starts driving them insane.
Before we know it one friend is playing a new JRPG that came out, the other is playing World of Tanks, then I join him in WoT but we swear we gotta log in and keep raiding. Then the denial reaches its critical point when I get the renewal of subscription email from square enix... I really want a game that I can call home again just like I did FFXI, rather than just visiting. I really would love to stay in FFXIV but this has been happening each major patch like effing clockwork man and its driving me insane >3>.
Comments
Pursuing this conversation is pointless because it just seems in the end you don't get it. In the end if you find the activity fun then it's done its job. What I am implying is that a simple application of currency and a slower way to offer varied character progression from these "Worldly" events would not be a game breaker and encourage more players to engage in these activities. What i am saying is while there are players that play FFXIV to play second life with FF models you are still a minority to an extent. There is some merit to offer non combat activities to attract a broader range of players, but that is not what attracts the majority. Upon walking into the ghost town that is the Golden Saucer and seeing the "not enough players participating for choco racing/TT tournaments" constantly on the OF doesn't make it a fact, but makes me question the amount of players that actually feel the same way you do.
Whether SE decides to add a varied reward for these activities to bolster attendance and have it as a win/win for everyone matters very little to me. In fact if more production time was put into fixing the main draws of the game instead of making sure you get a new dinner jacket wardrobe every patch I could care less about the trivial matters you enjoy in this game. In honesty this whole game could be shite if crafting was actually worth doing. While I don't find your activities worthwhile, as long as I can make some kind of "goal" I would have no problem with non combat activities. Burning the midnight crafting oil, playing the market and saving enough gill among my small circle of 5 friends to afford us a mansion and take up gardening would be fantastic and I could really find myself falling into the game until you realize players hold property at ransom and to SE crafters are the devil it seems.
I absolutely love crafting and the meta, but being proverbially punched in the stomach by each major/minor patch and looking toward each said patch with disdain and fear instead of enjoyment like yourself is the life of a crafter. I enjoy the whole idea of gear progression in crafting in 3.0 but its much of the same; the casual/non serious crafter players simply sell mats to the crafters rather than risking the NQ synth. While this is been a apparent problem for some time you still did not lose everything when you NQed an item and it still offered you a market to sell to. In 3.0 and HQ 160 is MUCH stronger than a NQ 180 so if you don't HQ it then enjoy all those mats you wasted grinding for from limited currency, better luck next week chap. Add this "crafting progression" to the fact made it take the better part of over a month to gear enough to even attempt HQ 180 that by now there is hardly any market for the items. That being because everyone by now has full ESO sets by now and working on a second set (IF the play something else).
PvP could of also been an activity to hold me but all I can say is that SE does not have its own PvP team and by the gods does it show. For all this "DaOC research" and "WoW involvement" Yoshi touted that PvP to be on par with the quality of PvE and 2+ years later I am still waiting. It's all such a mess that I could be it's own separate write up. Days after my original post above, In the coming patches Yoshi has addressed the problem with repetitive battle content cycles so for now i will digress. In the meantime I'm glad you find your own fun in this game, but for me its socializing with my friends and enjoy working together to help eachother become stronger. Could this be because we were raised on Final fantasy games/RPG's all our life? There is no way to tell, but we have been playing MMO's like this since we can last remember and while I don't mean to speak for the community as a "we" I cant say that most of us want what you do. Thinking back to the whole garrison scheme WoW had a few patches ago and the implosion it caused makes me feel I am not so wrong with that assumption.
You know the way you say that really brings the pre-scripted nature of battle content to light. Outside of small adjustments like single tanking/single healing something and simply adding more DPS there is very little room for change. I am going to simply hope from the sidelines that you are wrong with your prediction of hybrid classes because Blue mage and Puppetmaster were my two main favorite classes in FFXI. While hybrid and multiple roles for each class would be a nightmare to balance the lack of them really does make this game feel a bit more shallow to me, add scripted fights on top of that xD.
EDIT: Yoshi did talk about Hybrid classes sometime after 2.0 launch, one of the many things among the 100 floor dungeon that I am still waiting for more details on. That being said its not completely off the table *crosses fingers*.
We got exactly the FFXIV remake we asked for, sadly.
As I mentioned before, a lot of the 1.2 players came to your conclusion into the back of our minds long before the servers shut down. Whether it needed to be a total WoW clone or not we will never know, Naoki merely took the safest route because SE was in very bad shape at the time this happened. This is particularly why it was like salt in the wound when we saw what became of the game in 2.0. So many 2.0+ players that were actively enjoying the same game they have been playing since 2003 were so quick to tell you to "move on if you don't like it" without really understanding the implications.
If there is one company that can create their own fantasy MMO its Square Enix, and due to that FFXI has been my last bastion for many many years further makes me feel that way. According to the most recent live letter Yoshi plans on expanding on gameplay/battle systems outside of the same dungeon scraps we have been getting since 2.0 so I still stand hopeful.
If that's the only way you're capable of responding, then yes... this discussion is over.
All I'll say in closing is in response to the quoted bit (though I did read through the whole post, tedious as it was)...
You still don't get it.
You are only stating the obvious for you. You are not the final authority on "what RPGs/MMORPGs are all about" for everyone. So, you can be as snarky as you like, and keep repeating how you think you're "stating the obvious" all day long. You're not making any valid or compelling points.
At the end of the day, your views are still close-minded and myopic, and you are demonstrating, repeatedly, that you can't, or won't, acknowledge anything beyond your own nose. This does not make you appear knowledgable. It makes you appear willfully ignorant.
If it's in the game, it's there to be experienced. And if people find those experiences fun, and worth doing .... apart from any tangible sort of "reward" that may exist for doing them, then having fun is all the meaning they need to have.
Though from where you are standing I can definitely say you found a diamond in the rough. You have prime real estate on top of new uncharted lands and I must say I am jealous because from where I stand I am still playing the same game since 2003. Everything you enjoy about the game is what FFXIV has that other MMO's don't and that offers you a rich and un-diluted experience that maybe I will take a piece of one day. At the end of the day I want to see this game successful of its own merit, not riding the coat tails of a proven formula. While things look very peachy from where you stand I still look towards the future with some concern.
While there is a possibility that there is plenty of people that enjoy the game from your perspective (very possible because a lot of the really 100% positive players I come across these forums enjoy worldy content and battle content, offering them a plethora of things to do) that doesn't mean its speaks for a vast majority. I'll admit each time that I come back to this game my interest for other activities does get slightly peaked and this new minion battle system might win me over to your side. Lately I have even taken up PvP to get the MNK set due to how awesome it looks coming from someone that didn't even bother to cast glamour a few patches ago.
At the back of my mind I still want this game to be more successful that it already is, because I want to pull those WoW players off of their proverbial fence to get a taste of what a final fantasy game is about. While the other MMO's do not offer the worldly charm FFXIV does, other MMO's still offer a similar raid/vertical progression experience which lessens FFXIV's pull. Players who invested into a MMO will always be hesitant and on the fence because why should they level all over again to do the same thing, even to the extent that they will wait out 14-16 month content droughts......
So while your area of the game is solid (I am led to believe you have no qualms with your vanity/fluff/worldy content?) I do feel there is some room for improvement (in the crafting/PvP/battle content scene) so that FFXIV can make a name of its own. I was serious about the easily amused comment despite how aggressive it may come off as. Its hard to convey sarcasm in text so I'll just have to say it must be nice that FFXIV is a game where it is your home rather than for me as a place I am just visiting. My friends made a interesting point today; we are all dreamers, we like to gear in hopes to get to end game and beat the big nasty boss at the end of the road and that's what keeps us playing. We purposely wait as long as we can before doing raid content to give a false sense of more to do (of what we play the game for I mean).
Then we finally beat the bad guy and take all the loot, in a matter of weeks we all get the best of the best gear and the suppressed realization comes to surface and we hit that invisible wall. We try to gear other jobs we realize that we really don't like to play in the first place to hold on and the denial starts to sink in. Once you learn the dance (Due to the heavily scripted nature of fights I call them dance routines) you conform to it and after a while I become a little stale. Every week almost becomes deja vu from the last, doing the same fight with the same mechanics at the same intervals with very small changes. I'm not sure if its the nature of the game with the scripted fights because I never really felt that way with other games. Sooner than later we start losing members because they rather play CS GO because the repetitiveness just starts driving them insane.
Before we know it one friend is playing a new JRPG that came out, the other is playing World of Tanks, then I join him in WoT but we swear we gotta log in and keep raiding. Then the denial reaches its critical point when I get the renewal of subscription email from square enix... I really want a game that I can call home again just like I did FFXI, rather than just visiting. I really would love to stay in FFXIV but this has been happening each major patch like effing clockwork man and its driving me insane >3>.