An Important Announcement for FINAL FANTASY XIV Fans

[Hyan]

I am really hoping for an entirely new direction. Something with a more "western" feel to it would be ideal imo. Let's face it, the west created the mmo and these guys began designing an online console game from the get-go with both XI and XIV even. It's not a feasible design if you plan on being competitive in this market and/or are looking for your flagship title to be your breadwinner.

This says more to me than I can put into words, but succinctly, I feel they've been listening to feedback, reading the community forums (which is almost nothing but disdain), and maybe peeking at other games (Rift's first phase of beta just ended very smoothly), and are now just starting to understand the big picture. If we see an entirely new UI that has a "familiar" feel to it, I wouldn't for a moment think that a bad thing. If I start seeing NPCs with quest markers over their heads, I won't be shaking mine. If global channels pops up or we get an AH and some semblance of a community forms as a result of similar additions, It'd bring a big smile to my face.

This has me really motivated again and I am glad for that. SE has not made leading a linkshell and recruiting for this game easy in any way at all. This may bring some naysayers back, at least for a second glance. But there's a lot riding on that too. They have to produce this time and really make that "next generation mmo" that we hear so much about in the media now, but no one has yet discovered.

They need to distinguish themselves. Bring the UI and the AH, tweak the pace of gameplay a bit, fuck the rest.

[goodr]

Distinguishing yourself does not mean you need to throw out proven and popular mechanics - especially when you strive to appeal to a large player base. A final fantasy mmo has a few strong, distinguishing characteristics they should keep - they're genuinely defining bits for the final fantasy title.
1) One character, many classes <3
2) Beautiful visuals, cut scenes, art style
3) Story

A good team would focus on maintaining and improving their strengths - the ones that already and successfully distinguish them from the rest of the market. A good team would also recognize proven and popular mechanics. If FF took the successful economy mechanics, mailboxes, etc - all that mundane stuff other mmo players take for granted and laid their three hallmark strengths on top, they'd have a top contender.

What they did with FFXIV was not spend enough time developing a story at a good pace and try to reinvent too many things at once. That's something indie art does - try the bleeding edge ideas and toss aside the concern of appealing to the masses. And mmo can't be indie or it loses the "massively" of mmo.

[Spira]

seriously need to bring back a real AH. scrap the retainer shit for selling stuff. its like going back to rummaging yard sales as opposed to searching on ebay.

the UI wasn't entirely bad. the overlay widgets at least.. liked how they're customizable and can be rearranged, but there are a lot of small details that coulda been better, like the tabs for chat windows.. and like a means of adjusting the magnified text box, and chat filters that weed out NPC chat spam...

UI for gameplay is still horrible tho... like.. targeting is seriously bad enough.. don't even have to get into gameplay to know theres an issue there

[Riposte]

How many of FFXIV's failings could be based on the fact their odd concepts were turned into terrible concepts because they couldn't be fully realized (at release)? Like for example look at traveling. Is it meant to be extremely punishing? Well, it is - without the chocobos and airships, inevitable additions, not fixes, and are not in the game right now for some bad reason or another. I can believe that the retainer/ward system had plans for a search feature right from the start. It comes down to whether a new direction would involve people ripping this out by the root or finish the game to a point where it doesn't fail to deliver on its promises.

[Lordender]

This is what happens when you've done no research over the past 8 years of what worked in XI and what didn't work plus study the competition out there to learn from their mistakes so you don't repeat them.

There are two rules you must follow for a modern day MMO.

1. It must appeal to the casual player and also provide things for your hardcore audience, allow the casual players to see the game without endless grinding but also offer hardcore elements for the elite advanced players.

2. Convenience must be established. This game went out of its way to piss you off, vendors to clear inventory are sporadic in the field, anima regened too slow, horrible menu's that made everything so annoying to do basic things like selling items to a vendor, terrain issues such as a small drop off stops you causing you to go around. The little things add up to big things, SE dropped the ball big time here.

[Hyan]

Distinguishing yourself does not mean you need to throw out proven and popular mechanics - especially when you strive to appeal to a large player base. A final fantasy mmo has a few strong, distinguishing characteristics they should keep - they're genuinely defining bits for the final fantasy title.
1) One character, many classes <3
2) Beautiful visuals, cut scenes, art style
3) Story

That's why I said they should keep the UI and AH from other games, and tweak the combat pace.

The rest is completely unnecessary to imitate.

[Forte]

Dear FFXIV players,

Give us back our awesome director.

Signed,
FFXI players.

[kisada]

Lead UI Designer/Lead Web Designer
Hiroshi Minagawa (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)

it'd be interesting to know what games the previous lead UI designer worked on. anyone know who he is/what he did?

[Hyan]

I guess the game will be free until Eorzea Prelive(get it??) in February where they'll lay out these "plans" and after March we'll start paying.

[Woozer]

2. Convenience must be established. This game went out of its way to piss you off, vendors to clear inventory are sporadic in the field, anima regened too slow, horrible menu's that made everything so annoying to do basic things like selling items to a vendor, terrain issues such as a small drop off stops you causing you to go around. The little things add up to big things, SE dropped the ball big time here.

Omfg yes this^! I finally decided to log back on and try some guild leves the other day and came to the conclusion that the game must have been designed with the sole intent to piss off and inconvenience the player in every way possible. It's not a game when the epic struggle is against the very mechanics poorly implemented into it. I'm still incredibly skeptical, but SE's got my ear now. Where as before I was all but 100% committed to turning my back on them completely. I'll have to see where this leads, but it does excite me, and dare I say; give me hope.

[Spira]

truly.. everything that was good in XI which players took for granted just miraculously didn't appear in XIV...

most significantly.. the AH. I don't think anything else was quite as marvelous as FFXIs AH system for the longest time in any MMO.. it made buying and selling extremely fast and convenient..

travel isn't so much an issue.. like, if you collect your aetheryte locations, u'd have a pretty well connected network of places to teleport to, but the whole recharge based on time anima system is ridiculous as it punishes players who want to get around faster, do more.. clearly the people who design these things know nothing about behavior analysis and positive reinforcement, which they rarely seem to apply... even in XI they don't have a system that limits your travels by timer. Teleports are unlimited. Outpost warps are unlimited. Airship travel is unlimited...

the gameplay infrastructure in XIV is just totally screwed up, and I'm glad the dev team is willing to admit that and work on it.. hopefully XIV will be much more playable come PS3 version.. and Nov update was already a huge step forward.

[Lazytowner]

This game went out of its way to piss you off

I choked on my water with your comment -- fucking PERFECT description of this game's current condition.

[Hyan]

These kind of news really lure the haters out into the wild.

[Shazaam]

HOLY CRAP!

(If your first response to this announcement was anything other than this... then please leave the realm of vidya gamez)

[Fereydoon]

HOLY CRAP!

(If your first response to this announcement was anything other than this... then please leave the realm of vidya gamez)

Mine was more along the lines of: "SON OF A BITCH NO.".

[Riposte]

I think they stuck too close to the Final Fantasy formula and decided to throw out too many things for the sequel. How about that Final Fantasy feeling queers?

[Hyan]

I think they stuck too close to the Final Fantasy formula and decided to throw out too many things for the sequel.

Balance is hard, but still rather this than Vana'diel-2.

[Chakra]

Bye!!!!

[Fereydoon]

http://squarehaven.com/media/hiromic...Capture_20.png

"I give up! My bad!"

[Grey Jorildyn]

That guy had like no vision. This new dude better give us coolshit like dual-targetting. I'd wet my pants.