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FFXI what it did right, wrong, and suggestions for future MMOs.
zanfire
Member UncommonPosts: 970
This is probly my first Major post on this site, im not one to write a lot becase of my terrible spelling skills. first off let me tell you my history of MMOs. I was mainly a console MMO player, started off playing EQOA on ps2 for about half a year. then like many other ps2 MMO fans i switched to FFXI, and stayed for over 2 years. not long ago i bought my own PC and have been playing/trying many MMOs. this post is purely my opinion and I hope its just mabey inspires people to make somthing like this about there favorite MMO. It could also be help to MMO designers, noteing on things players liked and hated about games, mabey helping them get an idea to use some of the positive ideas.
What It did right:
1)classes: this game had probly one of the biggest verity of classes ive seen in any MMO. i think they did good on keeping a good verity of every style to fit your need.
2)Sub Classes: this is probly one of the best ideas in MMOs ive seen to date. if done well and balanced well it makes the game that much better. there system was that you could have a sub class, get some benifits and up to its lvl, those abilitys. your sub was half of your main level (max 75/35) i think they did a great job with this and a game like Dream Of Mirror Online is trying a little bit diffrent take on this wich works very well also. This feature made your charicter thta much more uniqe and added more ablitys to gameplay. it also had people changing jobs to level subs and made it that there was always people in every level range.
3)Combat: initaly its the classic tank...wel tanking, DPS up front, mages in the back doing there thing. other games ive played also do the "chain system" but i think this game did it exceptionaly well. mixing diffrent weapon skills (once your gain 100+ TP from normal attacks you got a cool big attack) chaining those attacks together creating more damage, and an elemental weakness. Afterwords the mages could do a "Magic Burst" and do extra damage for a short period of time after the chain, in all making huge damage. The game also was more about timing and using abilitys together, instead of spamming lots of small ablitys.
4)Grouping: Probly one of the few games that really made you a part of the community. Grouping was very heavy and forced you to interact with people instead of soloing alone the entire time. I personaly prefer to group more then solo.
5)Economy: with the auction house being the main sorce of getting goods to one another, it made a very real life like economy, getting people to gather things and sell them in packs of 1/12/99. It gave the feeling that everything was worth somthing, and rare things...were truely rare and very expensive. this is in many games, but this game made it more of a priority, shops never really did justice.
6)Real Time Travel: one thing tha ti think people had a love and hate for was the real time travel of ships and airships. like real life, its constantly going back and forth, not waiting for anyone, just doing its thing. it was nice for the fact that it brough some realism to the game. everyone had experince either just hopping the next flight to a major city or missing it by inches.
7)City Setup: i love the way they set up the citys. your first start off city was big, full of life, but not to clustered to confuse you. people were there from high levels and of course the new people. the did 3 seperate nation citys in right in the middle was the big. bustling, higher lvl city of Jeno. It was the big city that you basicly set up shop at after you got high enough to get there. it was a great feeling going from your smaller city with a smaller group of people, lots of new people, lower level missions/quests...going and arribing in this big beautiful place where all the higher lvl action took place.
8)End Game: IMO the most expansive and most fun endgame content in any MMO. i great mix of real time and instanced stuff to keep you there for a long time. Truely the game really started here for most. some people at times didnt like the realtime HNMs/NMs (Notorious monsters/Hyper-notorios monsters) these are what commonly called in other games Named mobs. These HNMs would pop at certain times between a certain timeframe, that would take normaly larger groups. and sience it had a window of lets say 2-3 hours and it would be random, the time it poped would change to round the clock. it made it that people who played at diffrent hours could have a chance (if they found out pop times) to get them. then they created special areas (Sky/Sea..ect) that your had to earn acces to at high levels and take on really powerful mobs. some yout would have to pop using times (meaning garunteed that ud get to claim it) called Gods. Then came the instanced stuff like Dynamis/Limbus wich were basicy your large allience would go into these alternate relms of citys and areas that were fludded with hard high lvl creatures, that u had to slowly kill off to get to a big boss at the end before time ran out(classic instance stuff) then they did things like campagien and Besiged. these were random attacks on the big citys (started of in the previous expansion) making hundreds of players fight together to push the mobs away or pay the consiquens for loosing the city. This IMO was done best in this game.
9) AF: also know as "Artifact armour" these were very defining set of arour, every player could get through a series of quests depending on the job. They were recivied every 2 levels from 50-60. They took the form of the classic looking armour that the old FF games had to show what class you were. These peices were usualy well fit to the job, but fo course there were peices that you could get that were better. some jobs could use them until 75..other only for a short while. its a great idea and shows the diffrences in jobs(also if you played FF games it was a nice reminder of the classics)
10) Signit: the signit was a great idea. you wuld get a symol from your gate guard (lasted usualy an hour or 2) and while you gain XP, you would get points for a) your nation twords gaining control of areas (for setting homepoints, getting signits at that homepoint and later on usuable teleports to outposts in certain areas) anther benifit was that crystals use for crafting would now almost always drop. lastly they later introduced the added bonuses u get from having them on.
11)going multi platform: this one is dibateable but i love the fact that they get a much broader playerbase from ps2/x360/pc. it lets more people play, and its one of the very few MMOs on consoles, giving the game a much bigger player base.
What They Did Wrong:
1) Grouping: though it made you becme a part of the population, it was far to heavy on doing almost everything in groups...it was a little to inforced. you couldnt solo long b4 you basicly had to group grind til cap. even 90% of the quest and missions needed groups to get done, wich in any MMO can be a time sink, and can be frustrating. this also spawned the classis "elite group setup" wich made groups need certain jobs for cetain things, and groups usualy wanted the best tank/healers/DPS, amking it hard for some jobs. this is probly the top level of "too much grouping"
2)Classes: the downed was that balancing classes became a pain, mainly with the DPS classes. there is constant want for groups to have the "best" DPS class. so jobs (before recent update) like draggon wich could be mre versitile, werent as good at putting out damage as say a Monk. I think all games have this issue when they have class verity.being able to change jobs was nice, but sience there isnt a ton of customization, it made you feel very cookie cutter, because everyone else could play that job.
3)economy: of curse with evey econimy comes the "gold sellers" the most hated thing in any MMO. they would overflood things and overprice, ruing the economy, and sience this was way more relient on the Actuion house and trading over it, the game had major issues.
4)Quests: This game had decent quests...not alot..but decent ones. The big issues was that a) there was no exp givin for quests b) the money and prizes were after a short time not worth it. the money became extremely small portioned compared to the ecnomy and most of the items werent worth the effort. lucky missions kinda made up for that for the fact that it earned you more "signit items" and got you to the big worthwhile places like Sky and Sea.
5)Subs: the only downfall with subs id hafta say was that depending on your job, you would be stuck usuing nly certain subs to be "efficent" and not called a "noob" in groups. some subs just werent woth having on certain jos anyways(though some seem like great combos, dont always mean there are good at all or even "acceptable" in groups)
6) death penalty: though some call it a part of harcore MMOs, this game made it far too severe for many peoples taste. the fact that you loose so much XP made people want to try andhelp less, because failure could mean another 3 hours of grind to get it back. this also shyed away people from just plain old exploring. this factor adds into things like "wanting the best groups..ect"
7)Gear: though one of the few games where you could go through higher end people and easly tell the jobs apart, the game relied alot on having "the best gear". its a flaw a bunch of games have. getting called a crappy DPS becuase u dont have 2 snip rings and the best weapon was horrible, this forced more people to spend endless amounts of time hunting NMs, farming or down to even buying in game money. gear defined you so being "diffrent" didnt happen often. it was only diffrent really by playstyle and race.
8)endgame: my onnly engame complaint was that being certain jobs ment that you werent alw alwasy usefull to certain endgame aspects. when lokking for linkshells, not many would take in a ton of less powerful DPS.
9) PvP: this game is basicly focused on PvE, wich left PvP in the dust. people like to have somthing to do after they got all the great gear and learned there jobs well. they really need to expand more on PvP, but not have in FFA..like flagged PvP and mabey certain zones you can go in and out to PvP. even dueling would been nice, even group dueling.
What they could do:
1) add more customization to make you feel "uniqe". from having a couple of add on status each level (only 1 jobs max level worth ex: 75levels x3 points total that u must geat at achevient each level) ,ore general charicter model looks (this game didnt have a ton)
2) mabey remove zones..they did work well, but making the game more open ended would be great.
3)make grouping less or a "have to" and more of a very huge benifit, make solo very slow but possible. (mabey after a certain point u can, but not til near rthe very end of cap like last 10 levels or so)
4)PvP more of a part of the game. as of now its still small and more of a "side game" instead of somthing cool like having rank, contests and such (all i know of is sever vs server once a year balistia[wich more games could try])
there is more i could say but il leave the rest up for disscussion. thanks for reading this long thing. i hope this can get others so say what they love/hate about there games, gets some chats and disscussins going. -Z
Comments
So what OTHER games did you play to base this on?
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Retired from: Neocron, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, RF Online and Final Fantasy VII
Currently Playing : EvE Online.
i played EQOA 6 months LOTRO for 2 or 3, tryed WoW but cant get into it. Kal for about a year. EQ2 for a couple months. PSU for 3 months (x360) and tried a bunch of other f2p MMOs. this was really just an opionion on what i think made the FFXI in specific great, what wasnt so great and what things they could do in my opinion to make the game even better. again its all opinion.
It's job system was amazing. If it could somehow merge servers into one global server then there would be people populating all areas for all eternity even if there had to be a number system added like EQ2 or Guild Wars.
Forced grouping to an extent. If there was more variety in needed classes and grouping gave insane rewards over soloing then I think it would be great. There is not a game in the world besides maybe the original EQ that can create the kinds of friendships that FFXI does.
The adventure was great too. FFXI was a great MMO. I am very excited that the head of the team is working on a new next gen MMO.
It doesn't matter. His point of view is that from someone who has played the game. If you find fault with his opinions based on the game itself then you yourself should explain why and provide your own counter-points based on the game itself.
What other games he played prior to playing FXII is not relevant to the conversion unless you are trying to derail this post.
It doesn't matter. His point of view is that from someone who has played the game. If you find fault with his opinions based on the game itself then you yourself should explain why and provide your own counter-points based on the game itself.
What other games he played prior to playing FXII is not relevant to the conversion unless you are trying to derail this post.
thank you sir
I liked FFXI myself, but my biggest problem with it was that it seemed to move along too slowly. Not that I expect a game to cater to the ADHD crowd, but it was just generally too slow.
I don't know how it is in the upper levels because I never got there. I gave up before that time. So, I can't speak to much for those levels. But I honestly just couldn't stand the long trip to get there.
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What game is that, ProfRed? I'm curious to see, I bet it will probably be cool.
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It doesn't matter. His point of view is that from someone who has played the game. If you find fault with his opinions based on the game itself never said that then you yourself should explain why and provide your own counter-points based on the game itself. Not interested to just interested to see how his opinions formed from past experiances.
What other games he played prior to playing FXII is not relevant to the conversion unless you are trying to derail this post. Dont forget he did say FFX has the best systems in any MMO or something like that s yea id be interested in what MO's he has played so i cna fully understand where hw is comming from in his origonal post.
I really love it when people make assumptions
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Retired from: Neocron, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, RF Online and Final Fantasy VII
Currently Playing : EvE Online.
luckly for me i played during highschool. i had alot of free time, and my bro (+2 of his buddys and friends from EQOA played) me and what ended up being 6 fiends got into it, we all went to the same school and live close to eachother. i think having them around, constantly talking about it and grouping w/ them really helped. that and im a FF fanboy to begin with lol
It doesn't matter. His point of view is that from someone who has played the game. If you find fault with his opinions based on the game itself never said that then you yourself should explain why and provide your own counter-points based on the game itself. Not interested to just interested to see how his opinions formed from past experiances.
What other games he played prior to playing FXII is not relevant to the conversion unless you are trying to derail this post. Dont forget he did say FFX has the best systems in any MMO or something like that s yea id be interested in what MO's he has played so i cna fully understand where hw is comming from in his origonal post.
I really love it when people make assumptions
does the word opinion make any sience to you?
Yes i do.
Perhaps i should be even more clearer in what im saying. Im not disaggreeing with you. im not de-railing your topic. I just asked what other games you have played as i was interested to khow how you formed your opinions.
I will not say anymore on this topic as i am in danger of actually de-railing this topic for real!!!.
But thank you for answering my question.
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Retired from: Neocron, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, RF Online and Final Fantasy VII
Currently Playing : EvE Online.
damn, your post makes me wanna play ffxi...
although i completely agree with you on pretty much all of your points, especially gear. DOWN WITH GEAR BASED BS.
?played: Nearly everything.
?waiting: *Darkfall*, Hero''s Journey
Apparently since and sense both = sience now.
i cant spell....(noted at the begining of my post)
Yes i do.
Perhaps i should be even more clearer in what im saying. Im not disaggreeing with you. im not de-railing your topic. I just asked what other games you have played as i was interested to khow how you formed your opinions.
I will not say anymore on this topic as i am in danger of actually de-railing this topic for real!!!.
But thank you for answering my question.
i get what your saying about that one point i made, wich i did list off other games ive played, sorry about that, but other then that one statement i didnt make any kinds of comparison comments
The OP pretty much got what the game did right, so here's more things it did wrong:
The interface. Can we say *blargh!*? A mouse has no place in this interface. Sure, the buttons could be clicked, but they were small and not designed for it. There wasn't even your typical bar along the screen to show you which skills were ready to be used with a handy description requiring only a mouseover. Instead, skills were either cryptic in purpose of very, very basic damage with element. The only way to put together a typical skill bar was with macros, which requires some knowedge of scripting and knowing the syntaxes required. Combine this with an inventory that will happily fill all of your slots with the same item until you manually sort it, discarding loot (which magically teleports from the bodies into your inventory, so it's never seen and slightly harder to track).
The economy. The ability to change jobs and missions with level caps (that lower you down to that level) requires having to keep and store lots of different armors for different levels. This takes up storage space. In addition to the stupid quest that requires a guide to raise that storage limit. There's also a ton of different crafting materials out there with no easy way to tell which one is valuable. Each crafting good out there might used for 2 recipes, which in turn means there's a lot of goods out there, and again, very little means of storing them.
Advancement. There were so many opportunities with FFXI's system, but it still follows the same boring linear level system. At the very least, the subjob could rise simultaneously, allowing someone to level up a new subjob without having to go through with the aformentioned equipment juggling. Other jobs could contribute small stat boosts. And, if other jobs provide stat boosts, experience could be gained based on other people in the party. That is, fighting with a warrior, black mage, and red mage will increase your levels in those jobs (much more slowly, but it translates into free stat boosts).
Zoning. When I first played the game, monsters were unforgivable. The only way to run was to to zone, otherwise you were dead. While a player would have to stand still to whack anything, monsters were able to run and whack stuff just fine with no problem, resulting in rather lame deaths. Oh, and death means XP loss up to and including potential level loss.
I can't bare myself reading your post at all. Those spellings are simply awful. But i can easily guess where you coming at with your post.
All i want to say is, there is no perfect MMO that can target every person in the market. Such product never and ever will exist.
SE targeting only players that
1. doesn't enjoy PvP enough
2. Love a grouping system that follow since "original" final fantasy series. (if you didn't notice, the only soloable class BST is the most hated class by other in this game)
3. FFXI is "based" on final fantasy 1,2,3 not 7,8,9,10,12 (i did a post on this). If you did NOT notice, the last half of the series already beyond the older series in both system and game style.
4. Class balance is something that CAN'T have in a grouping system. This isn't wow, As you can see monster in this game are harder then average WoW solo base monster. To advance you need classes to specialize on what they do best, hence no balance can be make.
5. Don't complain about how hard this game is.... if 1000+ people can reach 75 as a dragoon before the patch, how can't you not? Only if you are lazy enough not to try as hard of the other people.
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well if u had spent i dont know...2 minutes reading my post you see that its not a whine at all..more of a review of what i loved about the game, what stuff turned out not so great and what things they could incorperate into a the new MMo that would make it great.
Final Fantasy 11 was my favorite mmo and still is but I dont play it anymore. The had many mechanics and elements that was a head of its time and still is. Best of all to me it had the best community and I think it introduced the skillchain system in the genre. Plus the animations for weapon skills look so damn bad ass.
I miss my Dark knight and Blue Mage, they had the best looking AFs.
i never got to finish DRG or BLU to 75 one was 67 the other 62 =( i was gunna go back for the expansion only to find out that i cant get my guy back. i miss it and cant find anything close to it. i need some new addiction but the game was so well done and uniqe...probly will be a while until i can finnaly find somthing to stick to (mabey after every compony stops makeing shitty WoW clones)
I thing the OP did a good job of summing up many of the pros/cons of FFXI - sometimes finding both in the same feature.
Personally, I think FFXI is a fantastic game and its design, really, is fine. You can tell the type of players it was designed for just by looking at how it is setup.
Quests don't give XP and only nominal money rewards... Why would that be? Methinks it's because SE intended for players to undertake those quests for the challenge of doing them - for the storyline and lore - for the fun of working together to overcome obstacles and solve problems. What they likely didn't plan for was many people's need for a "tangible" reward, like xp or money. Fame is a more nebulous measure of reward that doesn't necessarily have an immediate effect, unless you were bordering on "dinging" that next fame level. Unfortunately, because there is no "tangible" reward for doing quests - it doesn't help them level, etc - most of the quests are deemed useless and are left undone by many people. Besides, you can PL your fame easily enough and that's what most people prefer to do.
The game's focus on grouping, to me, is indicative of two things... They wanted to stay true to the Final Fantasy party-based setup that has been in place since FF1. And, they wanted to focus on building a strong community of players who would group up, play together and build cameraderie. They have mostly succeeded at this, I think. I have my qualms with the community overall - particularly how they've been reducing the game more and more down to a cookie-cutter experience and ignoring more and more of what the game really has to offer. However, a myopic community is a community nonetheless and it's one thing FFXI has done a good job of building and supporting.
Quest NPCs don't have indicators over their heads and you have to talk to them - sometimes several times over time - before one will have a quest for you. Many people - especially post-WoW - deem this a bad thing. "How do I know they have a quest?". Well... you don't, 'til you talk to them. To me, this showed that SE wanted people to explore, to talk to NPCs and see what they might learn, or find. Just like in the other FF games.
In general, you can get the idea of where a designer's focus is - what their goals are - for a game just by playing it and seeing how it's set up. Many people would deem them "flaws" or that these things are "broken". No, they're not flawed or broken. They're merely designed around a playstyle that some do not prefer.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
/bow
What game is that, ProfRed? I'm curious to see, I bet it will probably be cool.
It's most likely gonna be FFXIV (14). They've already announced it in a E3 interview last year.
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/sdetail.html?story=10045
When people start talking about this game, about what it WAS and what it HAD, etc, I really feel the urge to slap them hard!
FFXI is still very much alive, it's not dead yet, and I doubt it will die anytime soon!
I can give you guys some ideas what SE is working on for online gamer.
There is 2 items i notice:
1. The virtual world - Not a game but its for casual members of SE to enter the world of similar to "kingdom heart II" and enjoy a cup of tea with your favorite yellow bird.
2. Concgate (sorry for the name, i am being lazy)- (its the 2nd of the series right now) http://announce.hangame.co.jp/hangame/core/conc/event/071130_start/
and
SE also working on a "real" yugioh alike game ... that use cards and "arcade" machine.
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