Welcome back?Follow

So, I came to the “welcome back” promotion without a lot of expectations. However, these were the expectations I had, and how the game measured up.

I want to say off the top, that I actually really would like to see this game succeed. I really would. I was a big defender of it in the beginning, and unfortunately on issues such as abilities and combat, I think that the dev team has taken the game backwards. I’m hopeful that they will revisit some of these decisions for version 2.0, which is why I keep tabs on the game, and continue to offer my feedback.

There was a lot broken at launch, and a lot continues to be broken. It is just sad to me that the one thing I truly believed wasn’t broken – which was all the neat abilities and spells we had – has been lost in the process, while a lot of other things are STILL broken that we can all universally agree need to be fixed.

So that is something to keep in mind about this feedback. I have been outspoken about my unhappiness with changes to mages and to MP. I’ve never bought into the idea that playing mages has to be all about standing still doing nothing and waiting for MP. So I have a bit of an axe to grind here and I hope you can forgive me that.

Abilities and combat: I was devastated when the devs took almost all the spells away from mages, and gave them a boring palette of repeats that I stopped playing at that point even though the game was still free. I was expecting to be missing a lot of key abilities that I loved when I logged back into Coerthas, so I wasn’t really disappointed to see it for reals, but I was sad to see my worst fears about the generic and boring spells that were left confirmed. Some abilities were even worse than I had imagined (a 15 second buff on a 1 minute timer? Really? That’s pathetic). My thm is not nearly as much fun to play in combat as it used to be. Does it kill stuff quickly with nukes? Sure, but I am once again playing “Final wait on MP fantasy” and the combat itself is no where near as fun as it was when I got to play with DoTs, Absorb spells and other nifty tricks. Thunder thunder fire fire is boring. I’ve been playing a Warden in EQ2 so the contrast between the engaging, frenetic pace of combat and quick MP/power regeneration and the “kill a couple mobs, wait on MP” of XIV is just astounding in a way that makes XIV look bad.

For the record, I really miss stuff like “initiation” which while it might not have been the most useful crap in the world, it was fun to take stats from enemies and pass them on as a buff to friends. I wish instead of making everything boring and generic, they would have made abilities like that more useful.

Ease and speed of leveling: From everyone complaining about how fast leveling is, I expected leveling to be faster. Unfortunately, the TNLs are still depressingly large, although mobs seem to drop more exp than they used to, which is nice, I would rather they chop the TNLs and slightly reduce exp per monster, cause having tens of thousand of exp TNL is just depressing. Also given that there are no real exp parties for people under level 40, and leves are still boring, something needs to be done to make solo leveling less horrific. It is just too depressing.

Responsiveness, and graphical issues: I have my computer on medium settings and out in the middle of nowhere the graphics seem to be just fine, but as soon as I enter a city, even a nearly empty one like gridania, I have to wait on npcs to load and I get a lot of stuttering. Worse, I had to repeatedly hit the button to transfer stuff between myself and my retainers in Uldah. Unfortunate, but I wasn’t really very hopeful that the game was better tuned than last time I played, so I wasn’t as disappointed as I might have been if my expectations were higher.

Crafting: I had reservations about changes to make crafting simpler, but I was hopeful that culinarian would get a bit of relief from it. Uh, yeah, not so much. Did they change CUL at all? It took me like 1.5 hours to make some orobon stew, and I already had a lot of ingredients on hand. I was very thankful to see NPCs carrying some more reasonably priced stuff such as black pepper, thereby bringing down the cost of dishes somewhat, but the continuation of the whole “need 6-8 ingredients, some of them with 6-8 ingredients” thing was a real shock an disappointment. Also, we do not need so many types of water. Really, why do we need a muddy water, a distilled water, a mineral water and does that fizzy water still exist? If so, ACK. I mean really. I think they should just have muddy water and distilled water. I was pleasantly surprised to get an exp bonus for higher quality. (I’d like to see some sort of similar exp bonus for gatherers for having more left on their gathering bar on a sucessful harvest, since they just get no relief.) I was also happy to see that crafting abilities are no longer on the “random pop up system.” I was annoyed by how hard it is to find up to date recipes and am left wondering why there isn’t some sort of in game system for them yet. Also, it is just too annoying finding ingredients in my inventory and in the inventory of my retainer. I just about went bonkers.

Gathering: (Really, fishing) Well, this hasn’t changed really at all. I still enjoy doing it, but that is because I am cracked in the head, and I am doubtful that any normal person feels the same way. The TNLs are, as usual, depressingly large, especially given how long it takes to even catch 1 fish. Leves help with that a bit but, they are repetitive. That said, so is gathering in general, so given the fact they have given up on DoL actually being fully fleshed out classes, there isn’t much to be done about that. I like fishing in XIV better than in any other MMO so far. So there is that. It does have a lot going for it, but really, there needs to be more fish to catch and more things to do for them. A lot of the baits have felt pretty broken for a long time (some baits have really high bite rates, others seem to never get bites) – regardless of whether you are using them correctly or not (spoon lures, rat tails and baskets are all high performers – while all flies seem to suck). I’d like this to be improved on or the reasoning to be made more obvious. (AKA this lure has a lower bite rate but has a higher chance to catch HQ fish etc)

EDIT for one more positive:
It's nice to see that food is more useful and the effects are listed! YAY! Improvement.

Buying stuff: I thought there was going to be an interface to buy stuff directly? I am so confused. If there is one it is too hard to figure out, and so not intuitive. This was disappointing, but it might be my fault for misunderstanding where things are at. What is the point of the mercantile houses? It just makes no sense to me.

Overall, it seems like the most noticable changes are the ones I wish they hadn’t made. Other than taking my spells away, the only real difference I noticed was the positive changes of making crafting abilities controllable and giving exp bonuses for quality.

I am not sure why they did this campaign, honestly. I don’t see it really giving anyone much reason to keep this game top of mind.


Edited, May 11th 2012 11:14am by Olorinus

Let's see what we can do to help you out a bit on your critisims there Olorius.



What level are you?

You shouldn't be having such substantial MP problems. Simply put. Not unless all you are doing is grinding mobs without Leves and have not unlocked Black Mage. (Black Mage gets Convert at level 30 and it does effectively what the origonal one does, on a 7.5 minute timer). Leves will restore your HP/MP upon completion, so doing leves for levels should result in absolutely no MP troubles whatsoever.

You have no native "15 second buff." Unless you think combos are a buff, in which case you're wrong. Btw, have you read up on combos? All of Thm's native abilities are "on next cast" buffs that have an auto-wear off timer of 30 seconds. They are used to empower your spells, not linger as a passive buff.

As far as the loss of abilities. I sympathize, but the entirety of battle has been rebalanced to compensate. Again, I really recommend you check into Combos if you haven't.




Again, what level are you?

You mention "Ten's of Thousands of Xp" But really you can just chop zeros off comparatively. I get several hundred XP a kill later level on Dragoon, and with XP food, Rested bonuses XP chains. The flow of EXP puts FFXI's concepts of leveling to shame. There is no padding here. You should be, on any job, averaging about a level per hour at the mid to high level range, and that's fairly consistent (except for like the first five to eight levels, they go FAST) If you are not, we need to discuss your methods in depth.






Stuttering you should not be getting. Load times are common for NPCs due to the load limit. Alas, broken engine is broken. This is background stuff Yoshi said at the beginning that it could not be fixed at all until 2.0 - that's how broken the game was at the beginning.

Over all it looks like you took a glance at something and decided it wasn't worth your time. It's welcome back what? Day one? Day Two? And you've made up your mind.

Again I feel as if this has more to do with the genuine disinterest in the game - the uphill climb SE is going to have to face at every turn for anyone coming back to the game or hearing about the game third hand. A gigantic negative bias that the developers deserve after screwing up the launch so badly by releasing such a horrible, unfinished product.

However, I implore you, look deeper. For many of us, it took time to like the combo system. It took time to figure out how to get my exp blitzing fast.

It is good feedback to state how first impressions coming back are bad. SE needs to fix that. However, you've got a total of 10 days to explore, so please do so. You're going to find more gems you like I assure you. It may not be enough to get you to stay, but it would be bad not to use the full time given to you.

You talking about Sanguine Rite? It's an emergency buff if anything. Later levels it becomes a safeguard (THM gets a trait that adds Damage resistance to it as well) if you get hate or if a boss unleashes a powerful AoE and you're in range. To have it on longer than that is overpowered, really. It's Sentinel for THM more or less.




If you're casting Fire on a single target, you're doing it wrong. Fire costs huge amounts of MP and is only meant for nuking down groups of enemies. If you use Thunder combos and cross class Aero and Stone from Conjurer, you should be fine.



Do the inn quests, rest in an inn overnight, you will get 50% more EXP. There is no need for reducing the EXP tnls.



They did have this, but they moved the Item Search counter inside the houses themselves to reduce lag and make it so you can search all three item houses in the same town.



I've seen you post here and there, and you keep bringing up the point that there were spells lost. A lot of the spells that were taken away were straight up overpowered (AoE Shock Spikes, AoE Sacrifice) etc...

I do like the Thaumaturge/Black Mage of new rather than the Thaumaturge of old. The nukes before the 1.20 patch were laughable at best, and had no reason to be used. I would have wished they kept enfeeble spells like Dia, Slow, Paralyze etc... Mobs can still use them, so I'm hoping they're given to a new class like Arcanist or something.


Edited, May 11th 2012 7:05pm by UltKnightGrover

They've already said that the next class that would be a DoM, that may very well be the case.

THM got changed and stripped because they were changing to the class equivalent of Black Mage.

Well, I gave it the college try. I decided to start from 1 on Archer on the one character I have, which has both DoM's in the mid to late teens. I did seven leves and got to about level 7 and since no one was there, I'd be doing the behests alone. Went back to Ul'dah to see about these quests and (to me, my opinion, ymmv) were so non-descript and generic, I couldn't be arsed to do them. There's literally no more content for non-50 characters than before (ever?), so... I'm out. Still will keep up with developments, but maybe I'll come back @ 2.0.

I'm actually astonished there's so few posts here or on the official forum from people who came back.
Is everyone busy playing? That would be a good sign. Did only a handful of players come back? That
would be a bad sign.

See, that's my problem though. I look at games as fun, not an investment. I'm not going to do something unfun and absolutely tedious for 20 levels to then get to do more things. If it's not fun at first, I'm out. And since that part of the game is essentially untouched content-wise, and the fact that I will not grind... well, it's pretty clear the game is still not for me.

It's not a question of attention span, really. My time is important to me. I work a great deal. I'm training for my first marathon and so, my free time is at a premium. I want to have enjoyment, not having to grunt through anything to get there. :)

Edited, May 12th 2012 10:46am by hexaemeron

Here: Go questing.

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Category:Main_Scenario_Quests

These are your main story-line quest. When you start you'll get pulled in to these.

If you're not content at those start traveling:

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Category:Sidequests

You can also start doing quests for your chosen or favorite class (and they'll flag for subsequent classes when you get them at appropriate levels) or even job quest.

There is content here besides grinding to do. Never have I gotten to the point in my level scaling where I've gotten bored of Leves or grinding, and not been able to find some quest for me to do to break the monotony of it.

Also, give Faction Leves a try. They're a bit more involved than your normal Leves.

My response was more aimed at Hex, who was complaining about low level content when there is a lot of content scattered through the levels.

I touched upon quests, but there is also a level 25 instance (http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Imperial_Devices) that gets overlooked due to being over-level for it.

If you don't like Leves, I'm sorry, they're not going away. I personally find them a heck of a lot more fun than the normal mob grind. Especially Faction Leves.

Job quests for you personally Rinsui, you will probably not find them fun until the last two, which require a group in some portions of higher levels.

At level 50, your concerns typically do involve a group. The various dungeon instances, and of course the Primal Battles. Group content tends to rule the higher levels - which is where the social interaction starts to flood in.

There's also the Seventh Umbral Era stuff going on, though I haven't gotten myself deeply involved in that yet.

As far as the 'main quest' story-line stuff. Already stated that kinda got side tracked by remaking the game. Most the stuff and storyline is coming now from the Seventh Umbral Era events - which is basically an invasion with the looming Dalmund in the sky. There are more parts of it in the easy mode primal fights as well.

I didnt bother to try the welcome back thing because as i have followed the updates I havent really seen a ton of big improvements. Sure the game has had many small changes in the almost year and a half since YoshiP took over. But these changes in my opinion took the game from being a shell of an alpha of a fraction of a husk of a game and has turned it into a beta of a fraction of a game.

Sad part is after all the work the game still isnt very fun. Most people do everything they can to skip the leveling process to get to max level where they can take part in a small hand full of end game encounters that are all subpar in comparing them to many other games end game content. Even comparing all of FFXIVs end game 20 months into release to ONE end game dungeon that was in WoW at release and it isnt even close in terms of amount of bosses and time spent.

The UI is still a failure
The LS controls are still a failure
The Market Wards are still a failure

Before the usual response...I know I know I know 2.0 is gonna fix all of this and more AND its gonna make the game fun. I wish I could muster the same faith in SE that you have.

Edit: Came off harsher than I wanted.

Edited, May 12th 2012 12:33pm by tpgsoldier

LMAO says the guy with all (or almost all) capped classes...

Hyr,

Why I do see alot in what you are saying, I don't think you pushing the subject with Hex any further is really valid. He has already said his time is very precious. He is busy and at this point FFXIV isn't going to cut it for him. He has to WANT to play it and enjoy it on his own. You and I are obviously enjoying ourselves playing FFXIV, but it's not for everyone, just like maybe WoW isn't for everyone and the other slew of MMO's. So when someone like Hex says "Meh, not for me", it's really not necessary to say "try this that and the other and you'll start to have fun" sort of saying. When someone has their mind truly made, no amount of convincing in the world can make them come back (Believe me I have tried already with my husband...his answer is still no. )

Hex,
I can completely understand your pov. As I have stated too many times on these forums I am busy busy as well (a 3 year old and a newborn coming this Wednesday ^_^ so excited!) Not to mention a husband, house chores, family responsibilites...etc. So maybe we'll see you in game around 2.o. Hope we do. Also, good luke on your marathon! My husband enjoys running his 10k's :)

Well, I spent a couple hours playing around (I know, not much). I ran through the Warrior quest as far I could go, until you have to fetch the pieces of armor. Then you needed to be a in a party, and I wasn't going to get into that. I think I saw two people that I knew, and they were doing things.

Sadly, the game has just lost all it's magic for me. Since the 1.20 patch it's just WAY to slow for me. I thought 1.19 was a step in the right direction, TP building was fast, battles were frantic, it was just fast paced and fun. Sure some things were still a grind, but it was expected. Now it's just focus on a one mob at a time and hope everything around you doesn't kill you before you can get to it. Wait for auto attack to build tp, hit an action, stand and wait for tp, maybe hit some random ability while waiting....... *sigh*

If 2.0 has a "trial period" I'll check it out, but right now FFXIV is not for me.

I want to thank you both for your well-thought and well-considered responses. I guess the difference for me is that while you are having fun doing what you're doing. I'm not. If I enjoyed what I was doing in-game, I'd feel far more justified in spending my time with it. But so many things about the whole experience just feel so unpolished, counter-intuitive, missing... or just... glacially motivating.

To wit: For my level 1 Archer, I needed to purchase some arrows. After asking around, because it was not clear on my Ul'dah map, I went to purchase some warped arrows. Now, there is a 999 stack max. I think this is great. So, like every other game that's been made in the past decade practically, I hit the right arrow to purchase the max stack. Only... this reduces it to 1. I'm confused. I thought I misclicked and it happens again. Well, it turns out you have to hit the one that usually resets the purchase count to 1 in every other game that's been made in the past decade practically.

I don't like feeling like I'm fighting the game client/engine/design and I have always felt that way about FFXIV. I HATE the UI. I loathe it with the hatred of 1000 fiery suns.

So, as you can imagine, fun honestly has never, ever come into fruition for me here. I do try to keep an open mind, and an open mouth (as most of you know :)), but until things are radically different (2.0?), it's just not fun for me here, and never has been.

Edited, May 12th 2012 5:29pm by hexaemeron

I get that most people probably did suck it up and spam boring, repetitive and tedious leves(or get PL'd') until they capped. The problem is that this does nothing at all to address the biggest issue they're facing.

You shouldn't feel like you're doing chores. It's possible to make something a timesink while not completely abandoning the fact that your goal is to create a game that people can enjoy. The question in most prospective new and returning players minds is "What is going to keep me interested until I can participate in things like instances, grand company, new jobs, Ifrit and Garuda, ect.?"

Like I said before, people are going to come back, realize they don't have enough time to get to where they need to be to get a taste of what they should be experiencing(content that has been added since they left) and promptly uninstall. Implement something that will keep new and returning players interested between the landmark levels and you've got a foundation to stretch out on. Until then, you're only creating and expanding a game for people who already subscribe.

I'd go so far as to say that most players who stuck it out(at least at one point) only did so because they didn't want to be left behind should XIV turn itself around and become a good game. Ironically, the side effect is that it's keeping the game from picking up new players it desperately needs to turn that corner...

Well, I would say things are not looking great.
My wife logged back into FFXIV now with the welcome back campaign and all. She stayed online for a few hours, then she logged out and said a bunch of not very nice words about the state of FFXIV (mostly concerning the horrid UI and the new combat style)

I still enjoy FFXIV myself but it looks like I will have to go to Rift-land if I want to play together with her. And that is a shame.

Except that in most mmos the first 20 levels are less grindy than later levels. It's absolutely nuts not to build a solid first impression for new users by making the first levels intuitive, fun, and not grindy. There should be a lot of effort put into those levels so that the new player is carried from quest to quest so quickly that they forget time and get a bunch of levels.

I started a Ratonga paladin on EQ2 this weekend, and I was level 10 almost before I blinked, although a couple hours had passed, I didn't even notice how much time I'd spent because I was getting cool new abilities every 15-20 minutes, and really blasting through varied quests (gathering, speaking to npcs, finding a lost froglok, etc)

I did try to give XIV another shot again yesterday (got my gobbue mount!) - unfortunately, just as I was starting to enjoy CUL I started R0ing. After force quitting a couple times I thought I might try doing a leve in bloodshore, hoping that I wouldn't get R0ed so much outside of Ul'dah. No dice. R0, R0, R0.

I finally gave up, and logged into EQ2. Fought underwater, on cliffs, climbed mountains, etc.

I will give XIV another go tonight, hopefully I can stay connected long enough to do a couple leves on my PUG. I do want to give the game a real good play through to see what has improved.

Unfortunately, there are lots of core issues with XIV. The lack of an engaging, sensible quest-system that pulls you from place to place (in a natural way that doesn't make you do a lot of annoying backtracking) - the mess of the markets, and a lot of the basic infrastructure (which hopefully will be fixed in 2.0)... all of that is really distracting. Spending an hour just looking for some half decent gear for your char (only to find no upgrades, except ridiculously overpriced ones not worth the cash)... really reduces the fun factor

I am also hoping that 2.0 addresses the crummy physics of XIV. There is no excuse for a game without swimming, climbing, jumping and flying in this day and age. I've heard them say they will introduce jumping, but what about the rest of it? It's so disappointing to be rooted to the ground after experiencing the kind of freedom of movement I have in EQ2.

It's becoming quite clear at this point, if you didn't have a level 50 char prior to leaving, there's really no point in coming back. All of the glaring problems you saw at that point are still there. The game is almost 2 years old, and unfortunately those who stuck it out and are the majority of online players are level 50 on almost every single job. SE has to cater to them by adding these dungeons and battlefields while kind of leaving the earlier stuff untouched or touched up just enough to say they added something.

So unless 2.0 really revamps the whole 1-40 trek by adding tons of story line and meaningful quests with good cut scenes while making you level, this game will never grow into anything more than it is now. I still say the official forums should really open up to these Welcome Back players, you might be great feedback from these people. Sure you'll get a ton of the vets saying "but omg, it's so easy to get plvld and to spam leves!", but the devs might see, holy sh*t, some people want story and quests to progress their levels!

You have Star Wars that did 1-50 right and completely dropped the ball on end game, you have XIV who seems to be getting end game right but completely dropped the ball on leveling. Now, if some company could just mesh these concepts together...

Know what I just realized? That the whole purpose of the welcome back campaign might have been
for developers to get an estimate of how many former players would still be interested enough to come
back if the game was ftp. Or whether there are enough left to warrant further investment. I really feel a
little guilty now for not logging in >.>/

Olo it's somewhat ironic (maybe?) that you chose D3 launch night to come back to FFXIV. You took my spot :P

I for one don't want XI reincarnate.

You said you know it won't happen, and SE has stated that it won't happen, but I will entertain your next thought anyways. If they scrapped my character data I would definitely cancel my subscription indefinitely, boycott all SE products indefinitely, and seriously consider feasibility for a class action suit. So, no.

At the risk of derailing, I really don't get why people beef leveling up in this game. It's really not at all hard anymore, and there's plenty to do should you choose to pursue it. What's the complaint about? Can anyone name a game where they enjoy the journey from 1 to cap as an example?

Yeah I tried the welcome back campaign and unfortunately nothing has changed about the game except the combat mechanics. Fights still take way too long. Auto attacks are so slooooow. Menu commands take forever to initiate. No hot keys, always have to go thru the main menu for everything and that is slow too. Controls are still not intuitive had to constantly go to the key bind screen to figure out controls. Coming up to a fence and having to walk around it instead of jumping over it is really really irritating. After finishing the opening quest the momodi chick said to do leves so i did and i wanted to claw my eyes out they were so boring. Going back and forth from the city to the crystal was tedious. Ran around the city to see if there were any other quests but there were no "!" symbols and running one circuit of ulda is more than my patience can handle the city is way too big and things are too far apart. There was nothing in the world or at the camps to do. Everyone i saw was sitting around crafting, everywhere, nobody was doing anything interesting. I got to lv 9 and had to quit it was so tedious and boring. Doing leves over and over and over? no thanks. I uninstalled after i logged out. Nothing has changed about this game for me.

When I read "but there were no "!" symbols" I thought it was satire.

Just a quicky about slowness... The menu/hotbar is lagging bigtime since Welcome Back began, at least on my server. I know combat will be slow for a lot of returnees (I actually like it for DD, mages I'm still coping with)... The last 3 days I do an action and it doesn't blank out even though I get the animation. The timers are correct, but it still throws me off and makes combat feel slow... and I melee at least 2x per week. I think the servers are overcrowded...

Welcome back,
The fees were your ticket out.

Welcome back,
To that same old Eorzea you laughed about.

Well the LS names have all changed since you hung around,
But some bugs have remained and some turned around.

Who'd have thought they'd see ya (Who'd have thought they'd see ya)
Here where Yoshi needs ya (Here where Yoshi needs ya)

Yeah we tease him a lot cause he's geared in a Dated smock, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.