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inertia1980
Member Posts: 3
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First off, I want to say, I am a long time MMO player, and began my many journeys with the original EQ, and continued through many over the years. Most recently, Aion, Warhammer, WOW, and EQ2. Most are revisits, as I tend to play MMO's on and off, and have only continued subscribing long term to WOW, although I did play EQ1 for 4 years. Now I can already hear the incoming flames, but I do this because regardless of public opinion, they invest a huge amount of resources and time into beta developement, and they listen and respond to the community and it's feedback, both hardcore and casual. The result is a very polished game that appeals to casual and hardcore alike. The success it has isn't due to any one niche, rather it's broad appeal.
Although, even I grow bored of it from time to time, and try new MMO's or revisit old ones. I recently stopped playing WoW and was looking for something fresh. Not really wanting to revisit some of the more recent games I've dabbled in, I considered FF XIV. Although, I am usually calculated in my purchases, and tend to research in advance. Let me say after reading these forum the past weeks, and seeing the reviews, I am relieved I wasn't compulsive and decided to buy it.
I have heard both sides argue. The people who enjoy it have opinions as strong as those who dislike it. Although, what those who defend it may not understand, those people who expose it's flaws save people like me alot of money and time. Let me say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
All MMOs experience issues when launched, and that is acceptable. Although, the issues outlined by sites such as Gamespot and IGN, are much worse then anything I've seen in recent memory. Poor user interface, that is completely server side, with unbearable lag is just skimming the surface as to why I'd not play this game. Artificial barriers to hinder progress to an unfinished endgame, barren and uninteresting environments, restrictive slow paced gameplay, lack of content in the later levels, and a level cap of 30 due to there being no finished content beyond that. My feeling is, this is an unfinished game that SE is releasing to help them polish for the console version and rake in some cash for the holidays. To save face they implimented safeguards to control how fast people progress.
I don't know about you, but I like having the freedom to play an MMO to my playstyle, and not be forced to craft, or play horizontally. When you force people to play how you want them to play, you lose them in droves.
I want to address the "this game is not for you" theme I've heard throughout so many posts. In this recession that we face, many companies are struggling and even folding. Those that thrive are those that appeal to the genre that they market to. The last time I checked, FF XIV is an MMO. To say it is trying to differentiate itself as a defense for it's poor design is inexcusable. Rather, you design a game to be fun and immersive for it's target audience. I promise you the developers didn't design the game in hopes of grabbing a small niche of MMO players....
"We are only targetting a small niche of MMO players. That is who we designed this game for. This game isn't for you if you aren't in that niche."
The reality of the matter, they designed it for as many MMO players as they could get. Unfortunately, from my understanding, they refused to listen to the community in beta, and released an unfinished game. What's even worse, they don't appear to of acknowledged they are working to correct these issues. Sorry, a search function in place of a AH is not making me anymore likely to purchase this game.
In conclusion, I want to thank all of those who submitted reviews and feedback as such. I think the reason the community is so angry about this game is because FF is a staple RPG. My first RPG was FF1, and I have fond memories of many more that came. Unfortunately this won't be one of them. Instead I will save my money, and maybe play some EQ2, or resub to Aion. Thank you community for your feedback. It is not in vain.
Comments
Speaking as somebody who has researched this somewhat, I can tell you that it isn't so simple. The truth of the matter is, if you attempt to target everybody, you end up with a game that pleases very few people. In any entertainment medium, you need to make concessions to target a specific audience of players, or else you end up entertaining no one for lack of focus. Any good entertainer absolutely needs to identify an audience to appeal to.
Right now, we've got something out there called World of Warcraft. It is an unprecedented success, a massive drain on the entire base of MMORPG players. Anyone who has attempted to go for the World of Warcraft audience has largely been devastated. Remember Warhammer Online? Remember Alganon? Blantant WoW clones do no better than the average EverQuest clone, sometimes even worse. It has been decided among many professionals that attempting to go after this audience is foolish, because nobody is better at being World of Warcraft than World of Warcraft.
Consequently, Final Fantasy XIV - really, any modern MMORPG developed by a developer who knows what they're doing - is attempting to target an entirely different audience. They're not trying to capture "as many MMO players as they can get" because that's far too fuzzy of a target that will end up shooting themselves in the foot. They're steering as far away from a World of Warcraft mentality as possible, because they know that their audience is largely claimed and not interested in moving on.
It's all very easy to sit back as a player who didn't like the game and rant at them how wrong they were to make the choices they did. However, until you happen to have several million dollars and a game development company of your own, you'll never really understand, as it's not your livelihood you're imperiling with this advice.
I would agree with you if they didn't model the game in a way that ended up having an identity crisis. By limiting the amount of quests you can do per 48 hours to promote a more casual base, and then requiring hours upon hours of crafting and such to be competitve and then only the option of switching proffesions to do something you may have no desire to do.
It has been stated by more then a few that this game has an identity crises. I don't think this was the intention of the designers. I believe the game was not finished, and forced upon the public for short term revenue. My belief is they implimented the restrictions to give themselves more developement time. This probrably was designed to be more of a hardcore MMO with some interesting new play mechanics. Some of the ideas are truely innovative. Although, as it is in it's current form, it is redundant and restrictive with little content other then bi-daily quests that are generic at best. Hardly innovative.
They didn't have to be WoW. They could have used the current format. But here are a few changes that I think would've led to a successful launch.
- Withhold the release 6 months to iron out the issues.
-Revamp the UI and not make the entire thing server side, reducing a large amount of lag.
-Remove the artificial barriers, such as XP fatigue and areas you are able to explore. This also would be solved with a later release.
-Create a AH and mailing system. These are bare bones systems that all MMO's should have in today's market. There really is no excuse for this one, other then making it infinitely more time consuming on players to achieve the same end result. There is no benefit.
At this point in time, you have loyalists that have devoted many hours into the game and I see their denial of said issues as blind loyalty to a developer who is concerned only with money. It is no coincidence that these systems were added near the end of beta. They knew the game wasn't launch ready, but when you have thousands of preorders and $$$$ in subs sitting in front of you, it's much easier to impliment restrictive gameplay and collect while you rush the developers to finish in the process. Unfortunately, this will most likely end up failing to reach all but their most loyal and devoted fans. Hence why they are so vocal in defending it to a fault.
The better thing for the loyalists to do is vocalize these issues to SE or stop paying until they are fixed. Nothing speaks louder then your money, and when it is gone, they will fix the issues. Please don't dilude yourself and say they aren't issues, as even a good majority of their target audience is not happy with it.
One would have to guess the mail reason why they chose not to wait 6 months to finish the game is for business reasons. If you release after CATA, they would not do well at all. They chose this time as the optimal business time to release the game for that reason. Their target audience was initially casual gamers. They openly stated this, however they where not trying to get every tom, dick and sally to play the game. They stuck true with their MMO origins (1 game, lol) and made the game a grind, as 11 was.
They started work on this game from what I can tell only a year and a half ago. Most console games average 1.5 - 2 years in dev, MMOs are generally 2-3. What they churned out was a game with no major game breaking issues (at least none that I have encountered) and a different style of game play.
With that being said, ya the game does need a lot of work and features listed are felt amongst the entire community. AH, more content, etc. It will come, when FFXI released it didn't have an AH in Japan and one was created later. They let users craft to begin generating the economy. Things in the industry don't happen overnight and will take time to grow.
Once you compile the quality (not content), but the overall quality of the game such as a different class system, graphics, smooth transitions, voiced CS all done in a short amount of time. Plus with this done they have laid the groundwork for faster creation of content using the already created systems.
I am not saying the game has no issues, I am saying that in the short turn-around time for the game they did a good job. I do agree more content, quests with depth are needed which will come in time. Just need to be patient, I would look to the game around Christmas time and see if any improvements have been made. I would venture to guess most major complaints will be close to gone by then.
-Maltos-
What MMO is finished (currently not ones shut down)? Look these companies can launch at any point on the project timeline they please cause we let them.
UI needs some responsiveness tinkering, it's not as horrible as it's made out to be, only one that's really grating for me is loading up the materials for a local levequest in crafting, and it's about a 6 second delay. I feel virtualy no delay UI wise (there are some loading delays though in crowded areas), with a very middle of the road computer, and a very middle of the road cable connection.
It looks like the game was very much designed top down, which makes it kinda of a drag to start in on early, a lot of the items required simply won't be available till later levels so the first rush of people have to slough through the bog to advance, when PS3 release hits those players will have a much easier time all around. We are indeed guinea pigs, right? wrong? idk just calling a spade a spade.
As for the leves (quests) being on a 36 hr cooldown I think it's fine, it's more bonus XP (truth be told their more for gil, which is somewhat useless anyhow) than the meat and potatoes (farming mobs/group farming). Besides I've ran out of them all of once over the last few weeks, and if you happen to you can catch a bonus one every hour on the hour at your camp of choice (called a behest).
Regarding fatigue, never hit it yet, play for 6-8 hrs a night. Physical level 21, 2 DoW 10 and 6, 2 DoM 11 and 10, 2 DoL 9 and 10, 5 DoH 2 @ 12, 1 @ 6, 2 @ 4
All in all it's a rough start for sure, but it'll be easier for those who join in 4-6 months.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7