Eorzea feels...Follow

Heavensward is supposed to address that. As for FFXI, I'll admit the first few times through a zone were always fun. After awhile though, all you kept thinking was, $*%( I have to walk through all of this again! Mind you, had the walk speed/chocobo speed been faster, they might not of seemed as big. Hurray for teleporting just about anywhere now!

As cool as Coerthas was, Gridania, Limsa and Ul'Dah were bland and repetitive as hell...especially Gridania, what a mess. I remember 0 landmarks or areas from those zones, where in 2.0, I remember several unique locations. It doesn't help that the zones were divided into Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern instead of one big area. Most people have a hard time picturing it as one big area.

Either way, you can't win. You make massive zones, people complain about needless travel, you make them too small, people complain there's not enough exploration and travel. Both XI and 2.0 seem to have a lot of little unique things. If they could meet halfway, that would be the way to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesY1XssACM I hope in a few years, we can do the same with XIV (which you probably already could.)

Remember also that the PS3 and PS4 clients have to be able to LOAD these zones with their limited memory. Having massive outdoor zones ala 1.0 creates a huge problem there when you realize how much memory is being taken up by the zone itself.

FFXI's zones only seemed huge because of the amount of time it took to travel across them. That has more to do with run speed than it does the size of the zone itself.

I actually agree with the OP. It's the reason I log in maybe once every 2 weeks. And that's only to see friends. FF14 just isn't final fantasy, which is ironic. It looks the part which fools you for a while, but then you realize the truth.

Final Fantasy is a story that you explore through.
Final Fantasy has steampunk influences, but usually remains embedded in Fantasy.
Final Fantasy has iconic jobs, with iconic 'outfits', and iconic named weaponry.
Final Fantasy has Chocobos.
Final Fantasy is a self-contained world. (Mistakes happen, like X-2, XIII-2,3, etc.)
Final Fantasy has recurring Character names.

Every game in the series allows you to explore large worlds (for their respective era) and fight tough enemies. There are quests to do (real quests) which are interesting and more varied. FF14's cut scenes are skippable. You're not missing out if you decide not to follow the story. Which is terrible since the main story is actually good, but there's so much filler that the story feals very disjointed.

Then there are the social aspects of the game which is nonexistent. Only FF11 had social aspects, but nobody can deny that FFXI had a very good social structure. Going to merit parties weren't the most fun thing in the world, chatting it up with a bunch of people all gathered to slay hundreds of monsters together, made it enjoyable. FF14 just doesn't do a good job of getting people to socialize. When someone does socialize, it's usually to trash talk people. Dungeon runs no one talks, and you can even get through the game with almost no social interaction to get the gear you want. Only coil boasts enough coordination to warrant talking to people.

Another MMO trait is having a reputation in game. FFXIV also lacks in this department. It's why there are way more mean people than in FFXI. In 11 if you had a bad rep for being a **** head then it meant exclusion from content from certain people. We all had those people who we just would not party with. In 14 I feel it doesn't really matter. I'm usually nice, but sometimes I'll just ***** around and can be a **** at times. But who isn't at least sometimes? So many failed primal fights from just a sheer lack willingness to learn and trolling. The people starting up duty finder and then removing themselves repeatedly is testament to that.

Gear is uninteresting, and for a game that is about the loot just as much as the adventure, it is one of the worst loot in the entire final fantasy series. Surpassed only by possibly FF13). When you play final fantasy, no matter which one, you find some cool weapons and armor that will help you on your way. There are a wide range of stats and builds to explore. ranging from evasion builds, to resist builds, to damage builds, to tanky builds, to hybrid builds, or just all around fun stuff. FF14 gives you almost no freedom of experimentation. There is no epic build to find to make your class play even better than though possible. Instead, You collect the same gear with the same stats on them from ilevel 1 to 130. A leather cap is just really crappy version of a high allagan helmet. An exalibur is a souped up bronze dagger. Nothing sets gear apart, which every other final fantasy game does. The feeling you get when finding something awesome never happens because nothing is awesome when everything is the same.

The difficulty in FF14 also seems to have only 2 settings: So-easy-a-jar-of-mayonnaise-can-play-it, and So-tough-that-I-ate-a-bowl-of-nails-for-breakfast...without-milk. Theres no difficulty curve it's just easy and hard. The stuff that's too easy isn't fun because if the challenge level could go below 0 it would, and the stuff that's too hard makes you progress so slowly that it could take weeks to complete a single encounter. Not only that, but those hard fights are simply memory games. Theres no randomness to the fightswhich makes them interesting. You know when an attack is coming so you can easily counter it with a cure and stoneskin/adlo. As long as you follow the pattern you win. In no FF game that I can remember playing, did you ever know when attacks were coming up. You knew the boss had them, but you never knew when. When bosses had really nasty combos they could pull on you, it was player skill that determined if a fight was a wipe or a win. Now it's all about not standing in the circle. You're not fighting a boss, you're fighting a robot. You're like those mice in the board game mouse trap.

And yes they made the game very casual friendly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But difficulty doesn't have to be sacrificed for the game to be playable by casual gamers. Every final fantasy installment besides Lv75 era ff11 had challenging bosses that didn't take massive chunks of your life to beat. Everything usually went down within a day, only with the most hardcore bosses extending that. I believe they made the same mistake with FF14 like they did with mystic quest. They believe the casual gamers are incapable of anything harder than pressing 1-2-3. The majority of the game is like that, except for the hardcore content. When a casual gamer wants to get into raiding they have a very hard time getting in because the game does a VERY poor job of getting you into the mechanics. The guildhests are a complete joke and serve basically no purpose to the game that people wouldn't learn by simply getting to 50.

Even the music is very hit or miss in 14 unlike the other games in the series. Boss music is generally good, but area music is just bland as hell. It sounds generic, and doesn't really make you feel down for an adventure. Of course with music it's all about a persons taste so although I dislike it, others may enjoy that style so the music category gets exempt from criticism.

I played FF14 hardcore from 1.0 launch until turn 9 (few weeks in). I haven't played much since. What the game offers is the exact same thing over and over. Some people like that. Some don't. But like everything else, if you do something too much, it looses it's luster. FFXIV as of now hasn't changed at all since 2.0 launch. It's the same boring gameplay with the same boring gear, and the same boring dungeons, and the same boring quests, and the same boring story. Maybe the new expansion will change all of that. But didn't we hope for that already once before? That they would make an epic comeback? Well, they did make a comeback since FF14 seems to be popular. But it just shouldn't have taken the final fantasy name since it is the farthest away from a final fantasy game they could have made. I'm curious to know how the game would have done if it wasn't called final fantasy.

You're certainly missing out on the story, which as you said is pretty good. Maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean by this. If you skip the story, you don't get the story. If you mash A through the dialog boxes in FF6, you also don't get the story... what's the difference?



This hasn't been my experience at all. I'll get dungeon runs where people are silent as rocks, sure. I'll also get dungeon runs where people chat with each other. It all depends on the people you're with; the game has very little to do with it. Same with people trash talking. I've seen people do it, and I've seen people be helpful and supportive.

"More mean people" could mean anything. There are, flat out, more people in FFXIV than there are in FFXI. So as a whole number, yes there are probably more meanies in XIV, but I don't think it's by an unusual ratio. I also met plenty of jerks in FFXI when I was playing that. The elitism in that game was insane.



This is something that will get better as the game ages. Right now the dev team is still in the process of learning what their players can do. If you remember the recent NIN nerfs for instance, they were due in part to the fact that the rotation players were using was different than the one the dev team expected. Difficulty balance goes through the same process. And Heavensward seems to be taking that into consideration by now offering two difficulties for raids.



The more recent HM dungeons and even ST would seem to disagree with this, but I'd be happy to hear any specifics you'd care to cite. The game definitely goes through an extended tutorial phase where it teaches players the basics of playing an MMO. This is probably entirely necessary when you consider how many people would be picking this game up as their first MMO versus another game like Rift that probably wouldn't have that problem. The max level content definitely requires more than just standing around pounding out a rotation. But, once again I'd be happy to discuss specifics here.



I love the music in XIV, but absolutely every game on the planet is going to have some tracks that people like and some they dislike. Not really even sure why this was brought up.



That's what an MMO is. This reminds me of an earlier discussion where people were asking for "something new" but failing to expand on what that could possibly be other than content.



Except for all the new things?



I thought you liked the story. And once again, this is pretty much how MMOs work.



I'm not sure what this means. You haven't really answered the original question which was "what is Final Fantasy."

It seems to me that Final Fantasy is whatever Square tells you Final Fantasy is. If you don't like a particular entry in the series (and there are entries I dislike) that doesn't make them NOT Final Fantasy. It just makes them games you don't like.

1.Doesn't any rpg qualify for that?
3.Many jobs can be found in other games and D&D. What makes the jobs special is the abilities/traits created by Square.
5.Other rpgs do this too.
6.Other rpgs do this too.

Here is my opinion on what Final Fantasy is and what make it feel unique:
1.Final Fantasy comes up with some of the most original, deep, engaging combat systems in each iteration.(Though that changed less in the first ten FF.)
2.Final Fantasy has always been at the forefront of beautiful visuals in terms of art style and technology.
3.Final Fantasy usually has some original gameplay systems for equipment, stat progression, etc.
4.Final Fantasy has very emotional moving stories, but the writing has gotten weaker in previous years according to reviews.


I have never really gotten lost in a Final Fantasy as I might in an Elder Scrolls srpg or Dark Souls. Because Final Fantasies tend to be linnear versus open world. I enjoy both ways of experiencing story. While the open world might have a more enriching feeling progressing on the whole. I like the fast pace and beauty of FInal Fantasy cutscenes.

"Ya, cause AV and PW went down in no time. Farming stuff for them was a breeze. Easily done in a day. **** even Sky at the 75 cap was a massive time sink just to farm the 4 gods to then farm Kirin."

you clearly can't read because I said except for 75 era ff11

At the risk of poking this particular hornet's nest again, what would you consider new enough to count as new?

Also take into consideration players VOTED for these kinds of maps. Heavensward wouldn't have "huge maps" if PS3/PS4 were any part of the equation. FFXI has some significantly larger (and more detailed in ways) maps and it's a PS2 game ported over numerous times. So unless yoshida is flatout lying to us about large maps in order to make flying maps "have a purpose"..memory isn't the issue here. Remember: Developers are also a limitation because they either or do not want something. Yoshida was even push offish about another SE dev DARING to suggest a different attribute system for XIV ARR and I promise you it has nothing to do with PS3/PS4 lol.




They seemed large because they were large. It's like saying Texas only seems huge because you drove through it rather than flying over it - it doesn't change the fact it's damn large lol.

You also have to take into consideratiion FFXI had significantly more in the overworld (including dungeons) than XIV ARR does - Yoshida had his team designs the maps with "themes", which is why it feels cramped..they tried to shove anything into small "thematic" areas..but you also spend far less time in the overworld than 1.0 or XI for example.

The offer is still open to join us on Lamia. We can certainly solve the social interaction problem.

There are parts of XIV that we can't get to yet, and that to me is actually almost more exciting than having giant stretches of nothingness.

I took this screenshot today, while waiting for the FATE Air Supply: http://xivdb.com/?fate/633/Air-Supply




We can see that island, but we can't get to it. We can see the path! But it's hidden to us. Someday that island might open up for us. And that makes me really happy.

Edit: Another example is East Shroud. You can see where they could add back in some of the lost zone around the Slyphlands; the understory is still there. There's always the possibility we'll get that back some day.

Edited, Jan 18th 2015 7:11pm by Catwho

This really should read pre-CoP Like it or not aRR has taken roughly as long as it took them to churn out RoTZ. While FFXIV suffer a major handicap by having to be remade from the ground up as their first expansion instead of a traditional one. Doesn't stop it from being it's 2.0

Also I don't think anyone arguing the amount of zones although I was skimming I could of missed that. They are arguing the SIZE of the zones.

In my Opinion I think the zones with some few exceptions are roughly the same size. Some Zones seem bigger then the average in XI there also some in the limited amount I saw in XIV I think are bigger then the average when mixing both games data into the pool. Where XI Curb stomps XIV in this category is dungeons. There are dungeons in XI That are easily twice the size of Zones in either game. However a lot of them, and a lot of zones used tricks to make them seem expansive. From some maps just not showing you where everything is(IE the jungles, secret beaches etc), a good amount of them used terrain as an extender IE those times when in XIV you would just be able to jump there but because there's a knee high wall you gotta walk 10 miles around), and finally when maps just made you walk back and forth to get to your destination.(Such as Glacier)

how about dungeons that don't feel like "kill trash -> boss -> kill trash -> boss -> kill trash -> final boss". repeat this for as many dungeons as we have. same exact layout for every single dungeon. there's no variation and no surprises. those trash mobs could feel more than simply an annoyance too, if they actually did more than simply get in the way. And the insignificant amount of gil they drop doesn't count as "something".

The issue I'm having with all of this is that what we do is constantly the same. it's always "spam dailies -> cap weekly points -> raid". that formula has not changed and nothing new has been introduced. I've already voiced my opinion numerous times about how crafting is useless, so I don't even consider crafting part of the game. it's like it's own entity within the game, instead of being part of it. Why can't we have more activities and opportunities to aquire either fun or powerfull gear through other means, A la nyzul isle or assault. Those were pretty casual activities during ff11 and had nice stuff that didn't render end game obsolete. And then there are primals. These drop only accessories, and are usually outclassed by coil or upgraded tome gear, which renders them redundant. Interesting fights to beat once but I would never farm them.

I'm just tired of the same old same old. I'm not arguing that new fights aren't new, because they are different mechanics and visuals wise, but everything follows the same cookie cutter structure for the same rewards. dungeons don't matter, tomes matter. every single dungeon is a means to the same end. Theres no variety in that. opening a chest in hauke manor hard is the same as copperbell hard. Not only that, but once you get tome gear dungeon gear is obsolete until patch like 2.9. dungeons now are dropping what, 90 gear? I'm i110. that's a good 2 years if they continue this trend for dungeon gear to be irrelevant. This means every dungeon I run is for tomes is for the same gear. Whil were on this right now, like I said, gear sucks major donkey balls in this game. I can't believe people still defend our un-diverse gear choices. an Excalibur is just a really good iron dagger. you can make this comparison for every piece of gear in the game since every gear has the same stats on them. The gear hunt isn't fun because the gear isn't fun. No one likes this comparison, but a 0% haste ninja in FF11 is way less fun to play than a capped 25% haste ninja. Hell just because of that you can now do some pretty epic stuff solo wise that you couldn't before because of cooldowns and whatnot. FF14 gives the player no such diversity in their jobs. You play a job the only way it can be played. If tanks die it's almost guaranteed a wipe. No one else can tank because everyone gets one shotted. This creates no diversity in fights as well, and no opportunity for skill to come in. This whole memorization of fights throws skill right out the window. If you know the fight you win. doesn't matter how good or bad you are. If you know exactly whats coming you can counter it 100% of the time.

I'm an advocate for variety. maybe some of you are alright with doing the same mundane tasks over and over but I'm not. This is why I enjoyed older school MMO's to todays garbage. Only a select few games I play from time to time, but in the end it's all the same rubbish. The MMO market is stagnating because of a lack of advancement. All of this talk of "well every MMO does it" doesn't help the situation. the market needs to CHANGE not stay the same. Nothing in ff14 is unique to ff14 except the final fantasy tropes. Yoshi talked a lot about knowing MMO's and playing a whole bunch of stuff...and then he gives us an exact clone of whats wrong with the MMO market right now. He had a huge opportunity to do something really special and didn't go for it. Anyone who has a pair of white ravens, at one point in time, liked what ff14 was going to become. That fight had randomness to it and wasn't scripted 100%. nael could use a few skills at will, unlike t9 where the entire fight follows the same exact rails. FFXIV is the equivalent to an on rails shooter. You do what the game forces you to do, or you lose.