What happened to these forums?Follow

This one https://youtu.be/5ZkVv4pJqNc

http://i.imgur.com/6XMaU17.png <- example of what a monk has to do ALL THE TIME. What on earth? How is that enjoyable to people? I can have plenty of fun with two 3 button rotations for a total of 6 damage abilities with maybe another 2 CDs and 1 or 2 situationals.

Well, I'm sure us XI vets had our share of parties where maybe you waited 30+ minutes or so to get it together, spending 10-15m to get to camp, fight a mob or two, only for someone to have to go for whatever reason. From the logistics perspective, I get why such instancing/matchmaking systems are generous about getting people together as quickly as possible while minimizing the politics of group formation. It's what happens after that can definitely be the mixed bag.

Overall, I'd give XIV negative marks here on their server structure being so constricted. Other games let you hop to and communicate with other servers at will, or perhaps they're doing a smaller number of servers, but instead with channels to help distribute populations and avoid overcrowding. The concept of paying for world transfers is something that needs to die since it's part of what complicates someone finding their potential in-game "home" since they're no guarantee that next server would be the one. Some folks may have the tolerance for once or twice, but others just don't want to drop the bones on a gamble.

Nonetheless, one could argue that the whole concept of instancing came about as a direct result of congestion or even griefing. Unless it's a temp-RNG-spawned area, I don't think instancing combat-related locations people can't get to without an invite has done the genre the good it should've. Congestion tends to come about as a direct result of rarity, which powered the drama of XI's HNM scene. Loot got fought over. Mobs got stolen. People got MPKed. All because "power" was being arbitrarily balanced through rarity, both in respawns and drop percentages, instead of solely through effort. Respawn rates are pretty much interchangeable with lockout timers in the case of XIV.

But people sitting around in towns waiting for their queue to pop is also a symptom of other issues: the worlds themselves tend to be pointless. Why craft when dropped/token goods are better? Why care about lore when you're a glorified errand boy and the world changes not one iota relative to your efforts and those of others? Straight up PvP isn't my cup of tea, but I'd be more receptive to the possibility of raising NPC armies I could use to capture and hold lands, possibly allied with other players or even as enemies PC and NPC alike. The whole "You're the hero!" trope of most MMOs is holding back innovation in its own way. We need the shades of grey. We need to be the storytellers. No one server of the same game should be alike.

In our own ways, we like the power we find in these games. The first to not trivialize one for the sake of another just might be onto something big. Be the first to slay a dragon? Okay. How about the first blacksmith to create a one-of-a-kind legendary sword that players who come after would fight to get their hands on indefinitely? Neither effort is intrinsically a solo-only affair, but one should still be able to strive for either goal without all the internet toughguy ********* With some real freedom, I think we'd find who's more keen on helping, hindering, or just plain bootlicking.

I can't deny I may be more ambitious than current tech/knowledge would allow, though.

There is a huge area between "zero commitment" and treating something like a part-time job. Most of us are in that area. MMOs, xiv included, don't cater well lately to that large group at endgame. To its credit, catering to this group is something FFXI did extremely well.


Edited, Mar 21st 2016 8:28am by Thayos

The problem with LFR exposes a much larger reaching problem within the community itself...

Players want to press a button, endure a brief wait and then be whisked off to contentland. If they can't join a group for content with literally 0 commitment on their own part, said content is deemed 'inaccessible'.

Old school players of games leading up to and including WoW always talk about 'vanilla' like it was the golden age, but it kinda was. That was a time when we were adventurers. Players these days don't want a gigantic new world to explore, at least not unless it comes with a cozy RV to drive them around so they can dress up and take pictures.

What we are witnessing is essentially the beginning death throes of the old MMO Era - where organized content is falling further and further into a minority, holding essentially the same rotating number of people in spite of the popularization of the medium.

.

I'm not asking for a brain dead 1-2-3-repeat, 3 button rotation, but come on. What we have now is just insane.

The overload of one shot mechanics in 14's endgame is just getting old, man. Feels nice jumping into a fight relying purely on skill/reflex but still feeling challenged.

It's not like FFXI's endgame had so much real challenge. Mostly it was about having enough people and knowing what order to kill stuff in. Most fights had few or no mechanics beyond "stun and/or kite the 2hr." While I agree that some FFXIV bosses are just mechanics overload, at least the fights are more engaging than most FFXI's bosses.

A lot of Kited fights were one strategy in a multi strategy game. XIV has no strategies. It has ONE way to do everything. Kiting was popular because it let you get risk free damage (and quite frankly, early on in XI 1/2 hand melee was tough to maximize) since you also didn't want to constantly have 6-18 people taking tons of damage, but once you had tanks who were able to take a proper hit, you didn't use a kite strategy unless they have insane attacks.

The scripts of the boss fights never bothered me much, it's the amount of buttons and cds I have to monitor that gets in the way of me enjoying myself. I don't understand why we need to use 30 abilities all of the time. I had it down pretty well in ARR, but the additions in HW just made me want to avoid combat altogether. I do fantastic in level 50 content with all my jobs, but after that I stop enjoying it. MCH and BRD are both really fun before the mid 50s. BLM is really fun before the 50s. Monk was too. After those 4 got their "new abilities" in HW, I pretty much just gave up on DPSing. I've forced myself to get used to it a couple of times in the past in between breaks from the game and parsed myself on the dummy to see if I was doing well, and I was, so it's not that I'm incapable of it. It just feels so clunky and awkward and .. unnecessary. It just gets to a point where I feel I spend way more time looking at my hotbar than just using my abilites off of my internal clock like I did in ARR and in every other MMO I've played. I spend most of my time fishing now outside of a few roulettes. Having that many abilities is fun, but having to use them all in every single encounter is not.

I'm sure people will just tell me to "get gud" or whatever it is that people say these days, but I really don't get why people would want so much to monitor and execute all the ******* time. It's such a draaag.

http://i.imgur.com/6XMaU17.png <- example of what a monk has to do ALL THE TIME. What on earth? How is that enjoyable to people? I can have plenty of fun with two 3 button rotations for a total of 6 damage abilities with maybe another 2 CDs and 1 or 2 situationals.

I just can't force myself

It's why I loved 1.0's original battle system with stamina and "tiers" - For example you can spam attacks if you want but if you let the bar fill to 2 bars you get higher accuracy then 3 bars enhanced crit rate and so on. Basically the slapped together battle system was more in depth. 4.0 is going to get even worse simply because you have a VERY vocal amount of people who'll cry foul if SE mimics any other MMO on the market or even come up with a better system.

A big part of the fun was being in some kind of boss fight, and suddenly something goes wrong and crap starts hitting the fan. Bad groups just crumbled, but good groups found ways to fight through it and win. Those fights -- where it seemed all was lost, but against all odds you STILL get it done -- are what I remember most about XI.

And those fights just don't happen in XIV. By design, they can't. Something goes wrong, and... well, that's it. You wipe.

And the really sad part is that that sort of thing CAN happen in lower level content. Just not at endgame.

I once got got Titan normal in leveling roulette on PLD. Right after the heart both DPS died and the healer and I spent the next 10 minutes slowly bringing him the rest of the way down. That not only wouldn't, but couldn't happen in HM or EX, and it's sad.