I agree that the launch was too early. Though honestly, I think the state it's currently in is where it should have been during the beta testing phase. If nothing else, this should serve as a really strong warning to other companies that even a high amount of hype is not going to keep subscribers if you push a game out before it's ready.
Also, dozens, no hundreds, of things that they should have learned from their mistakes in FFXI they've chosen to ignore all because the company still doesn't grasp the MMORPG industry. They basically wanted to make FFXIV as far unlike FFXI as they could, like the people in charge had such a huge fucking ego they couldn't take what previous ideas were cherished by the FFXI players and put them in their new game and build on them.
People LIKE familiarity. They also like basic things to not take up a shit-load of their time. AH? Nope. (FFXI was the first game to implement an AH, a genre-changing feature that showed the brilliant minds that worked on FFXI. But no, let's not put that in all for the name of change.) Input lag? It's their in spades. Arrows? Yep, gotta carry a fuck-ton of arrows still. Want to get somewhere? Well, eventually you're going to have to run for 15-30 minute spurts which is just mind-numbingly stupid to not have a personal mount-type system in a game made in 2010. I hate the instant fucking teleport system that goes along with this. It's a system that's either feast or famine. Instant travel that doesn't let you see any of the scenery or running for 20 minutes dodging 6 inch impassable-ledges. The terrain is just another instance of pissing all over the intelligence of their player base.
I think you're pretty far off base with these complaints. S-E needed to make XIV different than XI. Rely too much on familiarity to draw people in and you end up with Rift.
For the first massively multiplayer Final Fantasy game, people didn't know what they should expect, and so S-E got away with some really odd design choices like multiple jobs and subjobs, unlockable jobs, genkai quests, and no exp from quests. This time around, they expected the same leniency but didn't get it. The MMO playerbase is much larger and more diverse, there is more competition from a wider range of MMO sub-genres, and it's not the first FF MMO this time.
I think that they did have a vision in mind more advanced than "let's make something that's totally unlike FFXI." It's just that they had unrealistic expectations of how easily people would accept their design choices for FFXIV. The fact that NA were involved in the betas didn't help much either. Rather than hearing and addressing complaints like "Classes are too similar", "80 inventory is too small", "1 retainer is not enough", "vendors should sell low level gear", "+1s +2s and +3s take up too much room", "crystal stack size too small", "anima costs too high", they were subject to a cacophony of "JUMPING PLUZ", "SWIMMING PLZ", "MALE MIQUOT PLZ", "Y NO AH", "ZOMG FATIGUE SYSTEM". The former list is complaints is valid, and almost all of them were addressed after release.
In a nutshell, it is my opinion that their beta schedule was the biggest problem. If the game had launched in its current form, it would have retained a lot more people. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the game now other than the fact that it's not the type of game that most MMO players are looking for... which is fine. That happens to all games, even WoW. There are tons of gamers who won't ever enjoy WoW or any game like it. But because the initial reception was so poor, S-E is going to be stuck playing catch-up for a while, making changes based not off of "what brings the game closer to our ideal vision" but rather "what will make us get more players/lose fewer players?"
Yeah, you're right. People love stuff that takes up their time for no reason. Silly me. I think the game losing 80% of it's playerbase since release says which person is telling the truth and which person is full of shit. With your comments about the NA beta players I'll just ignore you from here on out, since you've seemed to ignored that dozens of NA beta players warned the community what this game would be like, let alone SE. I guess the current director is addressing invalid complaints, since he's testing to see if implementing an AH is feasible. Note: he's not testing if an AH is better than the market system, of that he's already sure of.
Also, dozens, no hundreds, of things that they should have learned from their mistakes in FFXI they've chosen to ignore all because the company still doesn't grasp the MMORPG industry. They basically wanted to make FFXIV as far unlike FFXI as they could, like the people in charge had such a huge fucking ego they couldn't take what previous ideas were cherished by the FFXI players and put them in their new game and build on them.
People LIKE familiarity. They also like basic things to not take up a shit-load of their time. AH? Nope. (FFXI was the first game to implement an AH, a genre-changing feature that showed the brilliant minds that worked on FFXI. But no, let's not put that in all for the name of change.) Input lag? It's their in spades. Arrows? Yep, gotta carry a fuck-ton of arrows still. Want to get somewhere? Well, eventually you're going to have to run for 15-30 minute spurts which is just mind-numbingly stupid to not have a personal mount-type system in a game made in 2010. I hate the instant fucking teleport system that goes along with this. It's a system that's either feast or famine. Instant travel that doesn't let you see any of the scenery or running for 20 minutes dodging 6 inch impassable-ledges. The terrain is just another instance of pissing all over the intelligence of their player base.
I think you're pretty far off base with these complaints. S-E needed to make XIV different than XI. Rely too much on familiarity to draw people in and you end up with Rift.
For the first massively multiplayer Final Fantasy game, people didn't know what they should expect, and so S-E got away with some really odd design choices like multiple jobs and subjobs, unlockable jobs, genkai quests, and no exp from quests. This time around, they expected the same leniency but didn't get it. The MMO playerbase is much larger and more diverse, there is more competition from a wider range of MMO sub-genres, and it's not the first FF MMO this time.
I think that they did have a vision in mind more advanced than "let's make something that's totally unlike FFXI." It's just that they had unrealistic expectations of how easily people would accept their design choices for FFXIV. The fact that NA were involved in the betas didn't help much either. Rather than hearing and addressing complaints like "Classes are too similar", "80 inventory is too small", "1 retainer is not enough", "vendors should sell low level gear", "+1s +2s and +3s take up too much room", "crystal stack size too small", "anima costs too high", they were subject to a cacophony of "JUMPING PLUZ", "SWIMMING PLZ", "MALE MIQUOT PLZ", "Y NO AH", "ZOMG FATIGUE SYSTEM". The former list is complaints is valid, and almost all of them were addressed after release.
In a nutshell, it is my opinion that their beta schedule was the biggest problem. If the game had launched in its current form, it would have retained a lot more people. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the game now other than the fact that it's not the type of game that most MMO players are looking for... which is fine. That happens to all games, even WoW. There are tons of gamers who won't ever enjoy WoW or any game like it. But because the initial reception was so poor, S-E is going to be stuck playing catch-up for a while, making changes based not off of "what brings the game closer to our ideal vision" but rather "what will make us get more players/lose fewer players?"
Yeah, you're right. People love stuff that takes up their time for no reason. Silly me. I think the game losing 80% of it's playerbase since release says which person is telling the truth and which person is full of shit. With your comments about the NA beta players I'll just ignore you from here on out, since you've seemed to ignored that dozens of NA beta players warned the community what this game would be like, let alone SE. I guess the current director is addressing invalid complaints, since he's testing to see if implementing an AH is feasible. Note: he's not testing if an AH is better than the market system, of that he's already sure of.
Your selective reading is selective. They've said they want to implement the system that best work with the game design. An AH is one such design that they are specifically looking at, but it's NOT guaranteed. The same is true for jumping - they're also examining it in exactly the same way as the market system. It's on the list, but only as something to be examined. Implementation will only follow if deemed favorable.
Personally, I prefer the system as it is currently. Auction House systems favor the seller; the current system favors no one. The buyer can now see prices to take the best bargain, but they still have to go to the seller, which leaves the option for players to run semi-real shops, which is actually my main complaint against auction houses. You can really improve your profit as a seller if you load up your broker with a smart selection as good (for example, selling entire outfit sets of the same color, or setting up your broker to have your gear repaired while also selling the materials needed for the player who takes up the offer to make the repair).
Disdena makes some valid points. I saw the various NA forums during beta and many of the suggestions were by and large fairly useless. Leet-speak aside, those representations weren't inaccurate. Everyone wanted to throw in their two cents about how the game *should* be, according to their preferences, rather than addressing the various serious problems that hindered the game.
This is a good very point and perhaps one of the most, if not the most, important point to be made about FFXIV. For people who have played FFXI, FFXIV is not only more of the same but a prettier version of that same in a new environment with some new mechanics but basically the same thing. There are strong reasons to consider the game FFXI-2. Fans, loyal fans, were terribly burned here. I'm a big FF fan but after my experiences with FFXI, all things considered, the launch of FFXIV and the studio's mmorpg division (or whatever you'd want to call it) give me no reason to ever touch another S-E mmorpg.
Nobody on any XIV-based forum believes this game is FFXI-2, quite the opposite. In fact, it seems most of those people want SE to make the game XI-2 now. And it is quite true, as this game is while built on the same core engine in all ways different from its predecessor, both design and mechanic wise.
So essentially,you're saying that FFXIV should be renamed the second version of FFXI? I dunno, from what I've heard the two games are pretty much exactly alike except for a design difference that makes the game more beautiful but at the same time they're completely different games with completely different story lines right?. Hmm S-E has a habit of making some so-so to bad games, until they come out with a game that eventually saves their company (i.e The First Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy XIII) so maybe this is just part of the ongoing circle? =_=
Hyanmen is right. Quite a few of the FFXI fans want it to be more like FFXI. I liked FFXI but I'm not looking for a FFXI-2 and would not be playing if it was. Though they can take some of the ideas for content and put it in (campaighn, assualt, etc) and I wouldn't mind.
Bottom line I don't think this game is up to anyones expectations atm.
I'd like them to capture the vast and epic feeling FFXI's Vana'diel has. I wouldn't want a carbon-copy of the game though - especially as it is now. Abyssea and the changes that came with it has all but ruined that game in my opinion.
If they captured the same feeling and depth of gameplay XI had up to, say Aht Urghan, with certain elements of expansions after it... that would be fine, IMO.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Comments
I agree that the launch was too early. Though honestly, I think the state it's currently in is where it should have been during the beta testing phase. If nothing else, this should serve as a really strong warning to other companies that even a high amount of hype is not going to keep subscribers if you push a game out before it's ready.
Yeah, you're right. People love stuff that takes up their time for no reason. Silly me. I think the game losing 80% of it's playerbase since release says which person is telling the truth and which person is full of shit. With your comments about the NA beta players I'll just ignore you from here on out, since you've seemed to ignored that dozens of NA beta players warned the community what this game would be like, let alone SE. I guess the current director is addressing invalid complaints, since he's testing to see if implementing an AH is feasible. Note: he's not testing if an AH is better than the market system, of that he's already sure of.
Your selective reading is selective. They've said they want to implement the system that best work with the game design. An AH is one such design that they are specifically looking at, but it's NOT guaranteed. The same is true for jumping - they're also examining it in exactly the same way as the market system. It's on the list, but only as something to be examined. Implementation will only follow if deemed favorable.
Personally, I prefer the system as it is currently. Auction House systems favor the seller; the current system favors no one. The buyer can now see prices to take the best bargain, but they still have to go to the seller, which leaves the option for players to run semi-real shops, which is actually my main complaint against auction houses. You can really improve your profit as a seller if you load up your broker with a smart selection as good (for example, selling entire outfit sets of the same color, or setting up your broker to have your gear repaired while also selling the materials needed for the player who takes up the offer to make the repair).
Disdena makes some valid points. I saw the various NA forums during beta and many of the suggestions were by and large fairly useless. Leet-speak aside, those representations weren't inaccurate. Everyone wanted to throw in their two cents about how the game *should* be, according to their preferences, rather than addressing the various serious problems that hindered the game.
Nobody on any XIV-based forum believes this game is FFXI-2, quite the opposite. In fact, it seems most of those people want SE to make the game XI-2 now. And it is quite true, as this game is while built on the same core engine in all ways different from its predecessor, both design and mechanic wise.
So essentially,you're saying that FFXIV should be renamed the second version of FFXI? I dunno, from what I've heard the two games are pretty much exactly alike except for a design difference that makes the game more beautiful but at the same time they're completely different games with completely different story lines right?. Hmm S-E has a habit of making some so-so to bad games, until they come out with a game that eventually saves their company (i.e The First Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy XIII) so maybe this is just part of the ongoing circle? =_=
Hyanmen is right. Quite a few of the FFXI fans want it to be more like FFXI. I liked FFXI but I'm not looking for a FFXI-2 and would not be playing if it was. Though they can take some of the ideas for content and put it in (campaighn, assualt, etc) and I wouldn't mind.
Bottom line I don't think this game is up to anyones expectations atm.
I'd like them to capture the vast and epic feeling FFXI's Vana'diel has. I wouldn't want a carbon-copy of the game though - especially as it is now. Abyssea and the changes that came with it has all but ruined that game in my opinion.If they captured the same feeling and depth of gameplay XI had up to, say Aht Urghan, with certain elements of expansions after it... that would be fine, IMO.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops