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The day that a finished MMO is released....
Jimmydean
Member UncommonPosts: 1,290
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.
Comments
Most eloquently stated!
*gives Jimmy a cookie*
I concur.
but...
This thread will go nowhere without proper FFXIV hate.
The Black Company UNLEASH TEH HOUNDS!
Think you are misunderstanding what people mean by "unfinished", when referring to FF XIV. All SE have done is spent years developing graphics and forgot to make a game.
This pretty much. People aren't upset that it's unfinished in the sense that their will be a content patch down the road, but the fact that....well i don't really think i need to list it for the millionth time.
Whenever a MMORPG is released half-baked we get apologists with this straw-man argument.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think your not grasping what people mean by "finished".
Threads starting to move along quite nicely now.
Really, I dislike reposting a consideration that I've already made but, when I see 4-5 people alleging of this right after I post such a consideration I really feel the need to temper perspectives:
So in its reposted glory:
When a consumer today is looking at whether or not FF14 is a good deal or not, compared to many of the more polished offerings of course it's not and will look "Half-baked".
A fair comparison would entail comparing products at launch.
This too has its pros and cons. I think this kind of comparison is good at assessing the potential of an MMO since a game that starts off with more offerings and interesting things at launch is going to have more potential than one that didn't have such features at launch.
Of course the con of this method is that it ignores the reality that a game like Aion or wow (even though it was released a while ago) is currently more polished than FF14.
Even if the developers were to extend the FF14 beta (= no profit) to add more features and gameplay, MMO games that have already been released will not only continue to make profits but also be cranking out their own sets of polished new features and gameplay. This only leads to raising the bar continuously and the features that are expected from new MMO's will only grow ( and they have if you think about it!! )
For a MMO developer, this presents an interesting conundrum because on one hand you can't just keep a game in beta for too long (angry investors, profit margins, etc.), but you can't release an absolute piece of crap either.
I personally think that ff14 has struck an OK balance between these two considerations. Sure there's a lot to be desired, but they've got to start recooping on the losses at some point. Given their past with FFXI I also believe that they will be supporting this game with lots of content. Additionally although the current FFXIV is certainly lacking in a lot of ways, having played it for a week, there are certainly more than a fair share of interesting things to experience.
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'll accept your joke
As for the last part, this is what makes me the most sad, I felt I missed the FFXI boat, I read about FFXIV many months ago, SE said it was going to be more casual friendly and it seems like it is even less casual than its predecessor. What a shame...
I completely agree with you Jimmydean. I still think people misunderstand the game. No one seems to want to PLAY games anymore, just rush through the content. Well, the 50 people that spread hate on this forum anyway. :P
Hmm...Sounds like a Sand Box game to me. This will be the perfect next game that I play.
Well, it's not. Don't go in with that expectation.
It's just boring as hell. You can only run around and kill the same stuff over and over again so many times. 8 quests in 36 hours + a few locals every 12 is really lame. Don't get me started on the skill up point dice rolll when you kill monsters.. who ever thought of that should be fired. The only real fun if you wanna call it fun is the crafting system. Not many games out there let you craft a full set of gear that you will actually use.. But, this is the west and I don't see this game lasting very long out here if they dont start changing stuff. People want more out of a game now a days and so far FF XIV just has two of em.. Great Graphics and a crafting system .
Wow, 2005 and before were so much better community wise when MMO gamers overall actually had fun with all these flawed, unfinished MMO's that lacked all kinds of features.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
just got to find mobs that weild good xp dodos ftw
... was not September 22nd, 2010.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
So.. I'm working on this MMO.. right now everything is literally on paper, but you can level up by adding one tally to the paper per hour.. anyway, it's like $5/month..
Oh, and you can only use this pen I have.. it sometimes works... and i'm currently working on fixing this bug where other pens can be used. A few beta testers have been exploiting this.
If you order my collector's edition, the pen comes with a laser pointer
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.
A MMO will never released in an acceptable state, so many of the bugs that show up on release, are not as noticeable during beta. The only way to get rid of the bug ridden first month of an MMO release is to have an open beta stress test that runs for a few months.
Even still, people will still complain that the open beta was bug ridden. There is just no getting around it. Warhammer has probably been the smoothest release I have been apart of, and still it was extremely buggy.
East Carolina University, Computer Science BS, 2011
--------------------
Current game: DAOC
Games played and quit: L2, PlanetSide, RF Online, GuildWars, SWG, COH/COV, Vanguard, LOTRO, WoW, WW2 Online, FFXI, Auto-Assault, EVE Online, ShadowBane, RYL, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Myst Online, POTBS, EQ2, Warhammer Online, AoC, Aion, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Allods, Darkfall.
Waiting on: Earthrise
Names: Citio, Goldie, Sportacus
I think you are correct in your fundamental approach of this issue, especially in an aver more competitive market as MMORPG is today.
However, I also think there's a reasonable (or decent) average between "completion" of the v1.0 and the release of a v0.6 beta (or so). I think FF XIV, as many other titles that failed (in hoping this one won't, really), is closer to a v0.6 than to its v1.0.
Again, no "common sense" idea is good when pushed to the extremes : you don't want to wait for v2.0 before you release a software (you explained that very well), yet you just can't put it out in v0.1. It's all a matter of balance.
The feeling of many players, especially those that play, is that SE had to release the game (probably for financial reasons), yet the "real" FF XIV v1.0 will probably be out in march 2011 for the PS3. Which is a complete lack of consideration for the PC players--but as they are marginal in the FF online market, I can understand why SE acts as such, and actually uses us to iron out the final version, the "gold FF XIV for PS3". Doesn't make it better from a user standpoint, though. If anything it's bad for their image, I think on that point no one can argue they've been hit pretty badly by the opinion between FF XIII and now this XIV. Again, especially by die-hard fans who are expecting simply nothing less than the best quality in SE's games. Because that's what they used to do for 20 years.
Just wait until companies and ward search are implemented, and you'll see how "beta" this release was. I'm willing to bet my mog sword on it.
Note: don't tell me about the "real" version of the game, I can program an alpha and state it's v3.0, it doesn't make my code any more finished after I stamped those numbers on it.
Correct... there is a difference between unfinished and evolving.
Live it, learn it, love it
Two things, there ARE tutorials. They are called tutorial guildleves, so that is just misinformation. You take the leve and it gives you info the whole way through. Also, there is a mini-manual to the game on aetherstones.
The changes to the market are going into effect in ONE TO TWO WEEKS. That is blazing fast in terms of listening to your consumers and making a change.
Also, there are more than enough mobs in the non-starter area. If you can find me a game that has enough mobs in the starter area when thousands of people are creating new characters, then you have probably found a game that just spams mobs at you.
A lot of the hate is misinformation, the game is doing well from what I can see.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Do you really think those changes are coming from OB feedback and took only two weeks to develop? Seriously? It's just that they pushed release knowing the game wasn't complete.
A good pattern, when a game is released, is to focus on bugs/exploits etc. That alone takes loads of time--many mmo makers wil ltell you that the worst part isn't the rush to meet deadlines for release, it's the first month right after release.
When you see whole features being implemented just a few weeks after release, you can bet they've been in development for months. Whereas a good pattern is to announce new features shortly after launch, and release them consequently within a few months--the time to create them, and above all test them extensively! Also, being submerged by many bugs and corrupted data issues right after release, you really don't want to implement more changes to the core program so quickly: it screams "more bugs", or alternatively "more time to implement". This road is a bumpy one in software development.
As it stands, they released the game knowing it was lacking on most fronts, making a grab a CE buyers. Well, I thought CE customers were your real fans and you should show gratefulness to them... how about SE extends the free period for a few weeks, as a way to say "thank you for dealing with the troubles of such an early release?"