Whens the last time...Follow

...That you all just played a game without hearing all the rage.

I didn't get a chance to play ffxiv because my computer just wasnt good enough. I'm in the process of building a new one and the only game I really really want to play is ffxiv. I jumped into ffxi with 0 expectations about 9 years ago and ready to do the same with ffxiv. I think the biggest problem with games today is people are always putting a game down before they even get their hands on it. Everyone always has to compare a game to another one and not even play the game as the developers intended it. Now I did hear that SE royally F'd up last time around but I'm pumped to see what they have in store for us.

So, when's the last time you had to book an appointment with a new dentist, and despite having a list of online reviews that pointed out the good from the bad, you thought to yourself, "Surprise me!" and just picked one at random instead?

Now, I've liked my share of games that most people hated, and I've thought some games most people liked were highly overrated, but far more often than not, the impressions stated in critical reviews don't stray far from mine. It's what makes them valuable, especially so you don't end up dropping $60 on a waste-of-time.

The good thing about the crap FFXIV has taken is now it's possibly on the verge of being something people could actually enjoy playing for a long time. If we all just smiled and said, "Yay! Final Fantasy is perfect!" and then quietly left without griping for a moment, the game would have failed by now and they'd have no idea why.

To be fair, you playing it now would have you wondering along the lines of "why did everyone think it was so bad?" You'll be playing after they did the overhauls.

Back when FFXI came out, I had no idea what an MMO was, I jumped in with no expectation and I got hooked. You would think FFXIV would take what worked from FFXI and expand on that, right?

Wrong.

It seems that half of FFXIV's design was to hinder the player or to combat RMT rather than focus on making it fun. Convoluted market systems, fatigue to prevent the player from reaching cap, no quests, no sense of exploration, everything being soloable and offering no real challenge. There was more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

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Needless to say the people involved with 1.0's design were either fired or demoted and the new team worked their *** off to get around 1.0's limitations to come up with something better. I'm fairly optimistic with where it's going, but in today's day and age there's a lot of MMO competition and the MMO crowd is a very fickle one.

I saw that you can fight on chocobos now and thats 2 months worth of fun right there.

To compare the times of XI to the times of XIV is unfair and biased. When XI came MMO'S where not a fraction of what they are today, they where games that the most hardcore and nerdy/ no lifers (That was the impression given at the time of people that played them.) only played, MMORPG'S where in their infancy back then, the media of gaming was not what it is today, it was mostly magazines and stuff back then, now we got youtube, and 500 billion sites and reviews.

Since this is a FFXIV forum i am assuming you are talking about how people put down FFXIV ? Well guess what ? We where Right! There is no if 's or but's or anything WE WHERE RIGHT! The game was not put down or beat to a pulp by reviews and fans because it was a masterpiece, the game got the reviews it got because it deserved them. Period.

I was definitely on the critical side of 1.0, and took all the crap that came with that...

"It's only alpha.."
"It's only beta.."
"It just launched, give it time.."
"It's only the first three months, give it time.."

2.0 isn't shaping up to have the same problems. Which means, thank you, they learned from their past mistakes. Now, in the interest of fair play, we need to give them a chance to redeem themselves.

It's ok to look at 2.0 critically, that's fine. It's not ok to prejudge 2.0 based on a handful of alpha videos. We have to play it ourselves before we can put forth anything like a valid opinion on the subject.

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 12:07pm by Callinon

Well consider what happened the last time people paid attention to FFXIV.

SE has a monumental task ahead of them if they're going to redeem themselves on this score. It might actually be impossible. I do however, think it would be a bad idea for them to be super open and forthright about 2.0's progress if they don't have something to show people.

What I'd like to see, personally, is some high level content executed by people that know what they're doing. Show me what I can look forward to in FFXIV.

Currently we've gotten alpha videos of some of the most lethargic gameplay I've ever seen in an mmo. If that's the best they can do with the alpha build, it's better for them not to make a huge deal of it just right now.

XIV was horribly under developed but that's unfortunate circumstances..also here's a perfect example of what's wrong with MMOs today:



The genre now has to be:

1. Fast Paced twitch battle systems.
2. Platformers.

Or it's not deemed "good"

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 1:00pm by Theonehio

It's Ostia, and talking about a Square Enix game, don't take him seriously with arguments like that.

Did you play WOW/Rift/Swotor/GW2 ?

Couldn't get into WoW. Looked at most of the modern MMOs and went "meh." I looked at 1.0 and went "meh" as well - but Lahurah, who was at the time my room mate, played it even during its broken days, and what the hell, she actually enjoyed it even though we had to upgrade her Square Enix build Goddess Box to even play it. She even managed to get her parents into 1.0 for a while there.

I picked it up in May 2012 because State Alchemist was unable to make ACEN, which left me short handed and with no knowledge of XIV of my own. Rather than deal with that failure again this year, I vowed to play it a bit.

By the time I started playing, at 1.22 or whichever version that was, I was surprised and upset at myself for not giving it a try sooner. The engine was still awful, but the gameplay itself was fun, and the storylines were really interesting. By the time the servers went down, I was a 42 THM and had joined the Limsa Lominsa grand companies and finished out a good chunk of the initial main storyline.

See i understand that you are a fanboy, but you are irrelevant to the discussion, as are all of those that played in 1.0(Myself included) First off rift has hovered around 1-2 million subs, kinda hard to call that a flop, it is 4 times as much as XI ever did, and at max XIV did 50K before it dipped below 20K for a long time, so in essence did Rift reach WOW ? Not at all, but it dint crash and burn either, Neither has GW2, please do provide the proof that GW2 is dying or bleeding :) Also! Swotor did flop to an extent, did it reach wow ? Nope, did it sell more than 3million copies in a month ? Yes, did it retain 1.8mil for the first 3 months, and started bleeding then. Swotor is not going to lose money, it has already made well over half it's developing cost back and once it goes free to play it will keep earning money :)

Now that we got that out of the way, you do understand that the fanbase that currently supports FFXIV is irrelevant ? The game cannot sustain itself on the users that it already has, it has to reach out for the casuals, now exactly what % of the casuals it needs is debatable, but it does need them in order for it to survive, that is a Fact! Now if we observe those games that we have mentioned, their biggest flaw is lack of "End Game Content" swotor for example once you reached max level, all you had to do was do dungeons or pvp, the raids it had where very lacking if we compare them to WOW(Sorry but wow is the standard) that was the case for rift also, and to some extend to GW2.

There will always be people that will like FFXI and its oldschool MMO gameplay, but sadly that number of people is a whole lot lower % than those that enjoy what has become the "Standard" in MMO. Oh and what i meant by "Did you play rift/swotor/wow etc" is that most people that do not enjoy games like those, enjoy games like FFXI, and those that enjoy games like those, more often than not, will see games like FFXI/XIV like some backwater behind the times game. What more proof do you need ? The game was free to play for way over a year... yet it never reached 50K players.

SE needs to appeal to the masses, while retaining it's own fanbase, which will be tricky, and i am more than excited to see how will they pull it off, but they do need to showcase their gameplay more, i dont care about graphics :)

Unfortunately, the Final Fantasy fanbase is in a much more jaded condition than they were were XI hit the market.