Heavensward to launch June 23 (early acces June 19)Follow

I think you have told your self you are not interested in this game any more as a result I wouldn't bother sticking around if I was you. I never did get this I don't enjoy this but I will stick around. As much as XI infuriated me at times when I was doing End Game stuff - I loved it. I even at times enjoyed the grind of Exp Parties or doing new things.

With XIV there are a few things that do annoy me AKA - spending time learning just one single fight in the hope everyone else is learning quickly enough so I don't spend more than an hour or two on it. That's why XIV gives choices for easy - hard content.

Yeah, for one thing, I was smn main in merit parties and it worked well. Soloing was fun, and a nice break from stuff. Bst wasn't the only pet job. What you call lazy and minimal, most would say innovative and maxing out Job potential. This is my opinion.... Not fact. Thee is a difference.
Also, I played xi for almost 10 years.

Edited, Mar 24th 2015 9:09am by Teneleven

2005 planning of FFXIV started and promotional Xbox video shown, 2007 - Production of FFXIV 1.0 Began. 2007 is also when Wings of the Goddess Released.

FFXIV was Tanaka's current team includin everyone who works on XI and it wasn't exactly hidden knowledge that the XI team was pulled onto the XIV project. WotG is still the only expansion that took -forever- to complete, unless you can point out the other MMOs during Zilart, CoP, ToAU and Seeker's that they produced? All expansions but WoTG and Crossover stories finished fairly quickly.

FFXIV Production ended abruptly in 2010 and released prematurely to beat out Cataclysm.

WotG ended and Visions/Scars/Heroes of Abyssea took over.

Though I'm sure you'd say that's a coincidence. This is why I never understood when people use WotG as an example but completely forget about FFXIV 1.0 during that timeframe. Normally it shouldn't affect it as much as it did, but during the time most people just naturally assumed they were trying to kill XI off or "PS2 limitations is why we got WoTG and not a real expansion."



I don't know, my BLU could solo pretty well at 75 too once it got geared out, but BLU was also pretty cheat mode, since while not everything could be stun locked, the fact quite a few things could be interrupted gave BLU quite a few grace periods to compose themselves when things got a bit tense.

WotG front loaded its grindy parts, at least. Campaign was a decent way to earn exp while in a small group, and could be fun. The big problem with WotG is that the storyline battles were very difficult and people would get "stuck" on them for months or even years. ("A feast for gnats" was my blocking point.) XI wasn't like XIV where you could brush off defeat a few times, laugh, and go back and tackle it again. There were stupid restrictions like "once a Vana'diel day" so if you lost in the first five minutes, you couldn't try again for an hour. Or two hours, if you had blown your cool downs.

In that respect, it didn't matter that they stretched out the WotG missions over two years, because people never got around to them anyway!

The accused circumstances regarding WoTG's update release delays, does not excuse its previous two expansions doing pretty much the exact same thing to it's customers, nor the one after it.

Sorry, Hio, but FFXI's update policy problems were well before FFXIV, as you seem to repeatedly accuse problems in FFXI to FFXIV. Had the staffing adapted a better Expansion/Update policy in the four years leading up to WotG's initial release, it might not have chafed so many players as hard when FFXIV issues delayed WotG.

It was the staggered story progression in and of itself that was the problem. If there had been a delay that branched a story from ToAU to WotG or WotG to any other expansion/addition) (And each individual stories were self contained upon release) because of massive disaster problems with FFXIV, and SE would have given as much communication on the matter as Yoshida and Matsui do now, delays would go over much better.



Edited, Mar 24th 2015 1:54pm by Hyrist

I am looking forward to new story and especially with dragoons. What bothers me is we have not heard of anything new really other than flying mounts and a cap raised and some new classes I am not interested in because I have a hard enough time keeping up with mine now..

Other than story is the area going to be filled with same o same o fates?. Are they going to be just more cookie cutter dungeons? Is there going to be something new or is this going to be like every other patch just with new story and new land? . We talk about FFXI but the major upgrades offered something new like dynamis, campaign, besieged etc. It bothers me that they have not mentioned anything or even in the form of a new raid. It bothers me that it aint going to offer much new in the way of battle and combat at least not mentioned yet.


Edited, Mar 24th 2015 3:42pm by Nashred

Edited, Mar 24th 2015 3:43pm by Nashred

XI's later expansions used the first chapter to unlock the premise for getting you to the new areas (become a mercenary in ToAU, get thrown back in time in WotG, become a pioneer in SoA) and gave you some time to play with the new multi-player content (Assault and Besieged in ToAU, Campaign in WotG, Reives in SoA) before adding in more chunks of storyline.

Heavensward is not going to be any different. We'll get the first chunk of story with the premise of going to Ishgard, and whatever new battle content they add, but they'll add more zones (dungeons) and story as the expansion progresses. We're not going to get all of Heavensward or its zones (dungeons) or its story right off the bat.

Are you sure about this? Because I recall quotes from Yoshi-P in the past saying the upcoming expansion (which we now know is Heavensward) would contain about as much content as the ARR launch. To me, this implies a self-contained story much in the way ARR presented a self-contained story.

I think it's going to be just like ARR... we'll get the expansion's complete main story arc, and then patches will start continuing that story toward whatever comes next.



Great point... this is also a big upgrade over XI's storytelling.

Edited, Mar 24th 2015 3:57pm by Thayos

Yeah, I don't think it would make much sense for Yoshi-P to compare 2.0 to 3.0 if we didn't get a whole storyline at once. I mean, 2.0 pretty much started and concluded the Garlean invasion on Eorzea storyline, and 2.1 onwards the focus was on the Primals and the politics of Eorzea while giving us glimpses of Ishgard and Garlemald. I'll be very surprised if they are going to change that story design in Heavensward. It works because SE has had many ongoing storylines going on at once, which allow for one story to finish completely in the expansion while the rest of the storylines keep going. In fact from what I've heard there are again going to be multiple "themes" to the story in Heavensward: the thousand-year war (primary) and the wyrmking (secondary).

I think this is already in a stark contrast to FFXI which pretty much followed a single story throughout an expansion, instead of multiple overlapping stories.

Yes, I also prefer FFXIV's design to FFXI's immensely. There's simply more stuff storywise.

Edited, Mar 25th 2015 8:20am by Hyanmen

It's not any different really. Some of the updates main appeal are content that doesn't even benefit you. If a XIV's update comprises of Hard Mode Dungeons, a Primal and Story progression, only the Story Progression and Primal (Extreme) matter to you as the Hard Mode dungeons usually drop gear 20 ilvls under you or the max, meaning you're running it for completion sake and not the sake of progression. Even gearing Alts you still have Syrcus Tower and uncapped Soldiery tomes making it even more of a worthless addition, since being technically obsolete on introduction makes it even more obsolete on the next patch.



The irony is Yoshida even stated that 3.x will have a different update pattern. It will generally be 3-4 months but the content will be more spread out. I don't know why people have the delusion that every expansion in XI took 4 years to finish when only WoTG did because of XIV's development. Every expansion's main content came fairly quickly, Seeker's were added ON launch with only the Outer Raz content coming later.

Not to mention that most of 2.x's content came from 1.x to begin with.




Kind of like how they announced free companies will be able to summon Primals that they slay on the overworld? How FC housing and Private housing would be different and have different costs? Kind of like how WoD was to have 3 separate paths? What else do you know about Alexander? The 24 man raid will be worthless like the CT raids were in a sense because he has said time and time again it has to be designed around 24 people doing it through the duty finder but the only thing he went into detail on is that Alexander will be delayed 2-3 weeks after HW launch so people don't rush to it/through it.



The way FFXI was, the actual content remained relevant which means the while the story wasn't released whole, the CONTENT was the appeal, which is opposite in XIV because a lot of XIV's patch content is obsolete on implementation. HM dungeons only served as a tome source, the gear it drops, while some looks nice, is usually 20-30ilvls behind current progression making it obsolete in that manner. In XI, you could still do BCNMs/Sky/Sea/Einherjar etc at 75 cap for gear as each offered something that would enhance you. In XIV, there's zero reason to do Primal Focus or Leviathan EX weapons etc. Hell there's ALMOST no reason to do Second Coil Turn 4 for weapons. Almost.



You do, actually. You did with the CT raids, you did with 2.1-2.5 and you still do. It's actually more apparent in XIV than it was in XI because when you complete an arc in XIV you get a nice black background with text shortly after a cliffhanger or just because a "preview" of the next arc. In XI, it's usually an NPC telling you to "come back tomorrow" in a sense.



And yet the way some people are stating things Heavensward will be release complete on June 19th/23rd, since "only XI broke up content." When the guy in charge even stated that it will progress JUST LIKE 2.x, with less content in the patches to space out content better..it's really hard to say XIV is that different XI. Especially when it technically took just as long to complete 2.x as it did to complete 1 of XI's expansions if you're considering update pacing, with WotG being the exception. The funny thing is, if ARR didn't have 1.x to build on, they'd still be patching in basic content to this date.



Yeah, the way XI's was setup was more like an overarching story. In XIV, aside main elements, they're all self-contained storylines for the most part. Especially since almost none of the stories outside of Coil has to yet to touch on the "5 year stasis".

Edited, Mar 25th 2015 7:24am by Theonehio

The problem is you're not seeing the difference between the game's initial story arc and the transitional story content since then, all of which have primary story arcs that are wrapped up in each patch. Even each Crystal Tower chapter has a self-contained story arc in addition to the little cliffhanger that leads to the next chapter. All the quotes from Yoshi-P indicate Heavensward will be handled in the same fashion... which is not how FFXI was handled, no matter how you spin it.

In FFXI, you bought an expansion and had to wait more than a year for the resolution of the main story arc. Rise of the Zilart launched in spring 2006 and wasn't resolved until fall 2007. That was OK then, when MMOs were still shiny and new. Today, that's just unacceptable.

It's not fair to compare the expansions of FFXI to the base game of XIV, though.

Again, the base game of FFXI was also complete to level 50, to Rank 5. You met the creepy duke, got asked to get him some magicite, met his creepy little brother, went through a dozen hoops to get the magicite, saw a goblin die (poor Fickblix), and returned to Jeuno triumphant. You got the big reward (airship pass!) and were told you'd be called upon by your nation's embassy again in the future.

Sure, it's nowhere near the amount of story and content that XIV had from 1-50, but that is because XIV is a quest driven game and FFXI was not.

That doesn't make it any less of a complete Chapter 1.

Edited, Mar 25th 2015 3:26pm by Catwho