Been away for a while, have a few ?'s about the "new FFXIV"Follow

Levelling is the first tier of progression. It gives people a chance to slowly incorporate the jobs' abilities into use as opposed to hitting them all at once with abilities. Ideally speaking, everyone would practice before they go into a high risk party or solo scenario. But realistically players will just suit up and flail buttons around more often than not, and when that flailing would likely affect everyone's exerience in the game, levelling is necessary for overall quality of the game.

There's a little entertainment in anticipating a new game-changing ability as well. A warrior just getting rampage in FFXI, for example.

Levelling is not a guarantee that someone will remotely play their job well at the end of it, but I hate to imagine said players if they didn't even *have* to experience the job before diving into it.

For me, I like leveling. Sometimes I like it because it's a mindless thing I can do while watching a movie or listening to a podcast. Sometimes I like learning a new class bit by bit (especially if it's an entirely new role). Some games even have a pretty good story to go with their leveling (SWTOR).

But my point was, if people are just going to afk through the process while someone else does it for them, which I understand was a thing in 1.0, it might as well not be there.

I'm not exactly sure where you get this notion, but in most MMO's I've played that's not the case. Leveling is used for players to advance the storyline, learn their new skill sets, learn how to work in groups, explore new regions of the world, unlock new sets of quests, etc. I don't see how that's artificial (other than that everything in a game is arguably artificial since it isn't real), but especially in games where there is a decent storyline mixed into the leveling process such as lotro or swtor. I quite enjoy the leveling process in most games. It gives me a sense of natural progression of my character. I agree that it needs to be paced properly to avoid the grind or skipping too much content, but I don't consider it to be artificially paced.

wonder how much they bumped the TNL up to for each lvl... lvling might not be just as quick as peeps have been saying it is anymore...

I concur. The enjoyment I derive from games is most definitely through the leveling process, and all that level progression entails.

In XI leveling was so difficult that it made whatever you received for reaching a certain level a MAJOR prize... i.e. subjob, airships, area access etc etc... Just getting to the new area you could level at was a major point of enjoyment.

Everyone remembers their first jeuno run, their first time in the dunes, etc. It was that very sense of achievement that leveling provided in XI that will be difficult to emulate ever game. Especially given the common sentiment that "levels are unnecessary." There's nothing wrong with feeling like that, I just think we all value different portions of the game

Hell, I was soloing rdm last night and got all tingly in the pants for leaving that hell hole... I think it's more about the negative memories...

Edited, May 20th 2013 10:56am by Louiscool

I actually remember leaving Duskwood and redridge mountain lol Valkurm dunes ? The place with all the crabs ? yeah i remember it but for all the wrong reasons lol

And here we go again with stalker BartelX! Not only did i not miss the point, since the point was a subjective one, where supposedly XI was more memorable, because of "Party dynamics" and "Sense of accomplishments" which btw are totally subjective and not absolute, i never said they where wrong, so i do not see the need for you to jump in, and spew stupidity, because if you atleast had a point, then Great! Awesome!

Oh and if you felt that way about wow zones, cool, awesome, we disagree, i did not find, sitting in one spot killing crabs for 45hrs, some sort of achievement, or some passing right, that made me worthy of advancing to the next zone, i found more appealing, the fact that i could progress the story line in wow at a decent pace etc etc. But hey if you found crab killing fun and some sort of achievement, more power to you.... Now get off my D

See here is a perfect example of your problem, you put words and get to conclusions, that nobody has stated, what makes you think i am not relaxed ? Please this is a forum, is not serious, i do not take this back and forth's serious at ALL! But i do dislike the fact, that you have a knack for getting involved in conversations that you are no part of, and claim people have stated things, that cannot be found ANYWHERE in the Thread. Also you just made the same point i did, congratulations for not having an opinion off your own, could have saved us both a lot of time, by just not posting.

Also i am not a wow fanboy, i do not play wow, i understand you get your raging hardons from XI, and their toddlers probably, Cool! Awesome! You liked the leveling system more in XI ? Like i said in the previews post (Which really you just copy pasted into yours but anyways) more power to you, but nobody was arguing, somebody said that dunes where more memorable than redridge or duskwood, all i said was "Hey i rememeber those places" That should have been it, there was no need for your useless intervention. Really get over it already.

Raging Mad!

I know what your point is, was and will be, you liked XI progression and sense of achievement... Great! Awesome! I had those feelings too when i played EQ, sadly i did not have them when i played XI, it was just more of the same to me, i had more fun questing around in darkwood forest, than i did standing around killing crabs, does that mean that, you where unable to have fun doing it ? No, and i never made that argument, so your knock at "You missed the point" was off base, for i never brought those 2 arguments into the conversation, you did... Out of nowhere, now if people found that fun and they had a sense of achievement, great, more power to them, but fact is far more people enjoyed the quest progression of WOW, than that of XI, unless i have been asleep for the past decade, and all this MMOS are really copying XI progression method and not wow... Is XIV a XI clone ? Or a wow clone ? Hmm! Why would a company emulate the progression model of another MMO, that CLEARLY! No people enjoyed more than their own....

Oh and really i have never gotten mad, but i sure have fun, when you guys think i do

Er, advancing story line, learning new skills, exploring new regions, unlocking new quests... are all player progression. When you tie that to a number and say, "You must reach this number before you may progress this far," that's artificial pacing. Part of the purpose of using a leveling system is to gate your access to that content, artificially. Rather than tying those progression markers solely to key accomplishments, they use XP as a measuring stick for whether you've played the game long enough to advance. i.e., it's not whether you can slay the dragon--it's whether you are level 50 and can slay the dragon.

Like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with leveling. I just don't care for them personally, mainly due to the over-reliance of them in the genre. Its also frequently used as a crutch for bad design.



Fortunately that doesn't happen if you don't have someone watching you from above, waiting to tell you "no." Indie games are practically in the business of shaking things up. But I'm barely even talking about shaking things up. Sandbox fans have been singing that song for years, and in some of the communities I visit, dissatisfaction with leveling borders on the norm.

There are no shortage of fans with "great new ideas." Being able to build efficient systems with the great new ideas is, sadly, a very rare skill that takes a lot of time and practice to develop. Most people struggle to create simple games (like checkers) that are functional. Some can manage to build a game while implementing an original idea, but they have to use the architecture of familiar games to pull it off (i.e., a standard game, with a twist). Few can build entirely original game structures from the ground up--noting that even "entirely original" games still rely on standard game structures at times--in some cases there are literally no new ideas.

I think that if the original FFXI came out today, compared with the current MMO standards, people would not "enjoy" it at all.

Those advancement moments were difficult to achieve, and were satisfying. That was then.

If a MMO came out that expected you to put forth those same original time sinks and grinding for advancement, people would go play something else. FFXI now is not what is was then, because demand has changed with time,

Those advancements were certainly treasure moments in my MMO past. Let's leave them there.