Looking for a new MMO made in FF

[Syntex]

If you look at FFXI you realize the things that make it unique are actually flawed systems that rewards time rather then skill, money rather then teamwork, and made the player work HARD for anything they wanted.

The thing was it did balance some aspects of the game as far as time put in and reward out so when you got that Duelist Chapeau after 2 years of Xarc you felt like you EARNED IT rather then how todays MMO's are usually X runs to get Y amount of currency to buy Z item. Yes the feeling of earning something is dwindling in games because people don't have the time like they did. I mean how many of us who did a faf>behe>sandworm>ixion>Tia>Khim>verb day can do that now? I use to play 12 hours+ a day and 70+ hours a week and I have no where near that time to devote now to it let alone want to especially when its sitting idle at a camp 90% of the time. I will say the job system and the complex mechanics of jobs and how they worked along with sub-jobs made FFXI one of the most dynamic, interesting and unique systems in any MMO I have seen to date with only Rift coming anywhere near it and even they are still way off.

I guess what I'm trying to say is all the waiting around and slow way of doing things(old school leveling up, 21-24hour HNM's ect) made it feel like more community involvement because you spent a lot of that time talking with people vs todays current MMO's. That and all the waiting made getting items rewarding and an accomplishment which is something thats hard to mimic when you can do the same in another game in 1/5th the time.

I think if you want a FFXI experience then ignore what some people say and go play FFXI right now. It will not be around forever and I thought Abyssea was a much needed fun change to the game that made it better but still feeling FFXIesque in the process.

Despite what people say I don't think anyone really enjoyed sitting at camps for 3 hours to NOT claim. Fights were fun but playing a game to do nothing is not playing a game at all.

[Enygma55]

GW2 definitely looks more like my type of game having looked at that video and doing a bit of research on it, but I'll hold judgement til I can play it to see how it feels.

I love me some dynamic content. I like interacting with the natural world and server wide events that cause permenent changes to the physical world. I wanna see a town burn because the server failed to defend it from invading dragons.

Much like how besiege worked in XI. If the invading beastmen got the Astral Candy, you had to get it back or you couldn't use the rune porter. Not sure if that's the correct penalty as my memory is a bit fuzzy but that idea I enjoy very much.

Guild Wars 2 sounds very uncookie cutter and I'll for sure check it out.

[Pikarya]

Never go back and play FFXI. It's never going to be as you remember it. Disappointment is all you'll find.

Just wait for something new and "innovative" to come along, or try some free ones for awhile.

This man is dead on. MMO market is trash right now, including TORtanic. Just wait it out, go play some console vidya like dark souls.

[The Stig]

Still waiting for my Pokemon MMO
One day ... one day

[Seiji Okita]

Still waiting for my Pokemon MMO
One day ... one day

I so wish, too bad Satoshi Tajiri said specifically in an interview that MMO's don't support face to face interaction, which is his intention with the pokemon games... idk, I would totally love a fleshed out pokemon MMO experience :3

[Golum]

Thanks for all these feedbacks guys.
I tryed some MMOs but well it's definately not the same spirit I found in XI
I hope future will give us other ways to enjoy MMO's than just casual style...

[SamanosukeShiva]

I think what made FFXI unique, great ,and addicting is the community. Back when I was playing, everyone in the server knows everyone, because at some point when they're leveling they've encounter each other whether it's partying together or doing quest like limit break together etc. All the other MMOs I've played since FFXI doesnt really have that community feels the way FFXI does. Mainly I think because in FFXI, we had to party with other people to level up, while other MMOs you can just solo to max level and not have any interaction with other players at all. And by the time you get to max level, you're already in a guild, doing stuff only with your own guild and not with other people because let's face it, they're all horrible. To compare to other MMO, FFXI was like WoW's trade chat without the trolls.

This is why I can't wait for GW2, because their system is VERY VERY similar to FFXI, dynamic system, really no "Kill Steal"ing because if you kill other people's mob you get EXP too, and the person you're helping doesnt get any penalty whatsoever. Quest system doesnt make you compete with other people, so even though there are TONS of people doing same quest you're doing, you don't have to camp against each other for a particular quest mob. All these things promote community, and not to mention the gameplay, as far as I can tell, is amazing. GW2 took all the good things from other MMOs and dump the bads, and put it into one game.

Here are some great aspects from other MMOs that GW2 is going to have:
FFXI - Great community - as explained above
SWTOR - Story/Questing - Pretty much the only thing SWTOR good for, all quests use voice actors, they also put a good amount of effort into the writing as well.
WoW - Very Fluid UI/Gameplay/Movement - Fluid gameplay for example, when you press a button to jump, your character jump with minimal/unnoticeable delay, and the animation of the character is in sync with jumping.
????? - Non Grindy Leveling - I'll believe when I see it with my own eyes, but GW2 supposedly also promise a non-grindy leveling.
????? - Persistent World - People said it, just like the besieged mechanic for example, only it's to the whole freakin game. Consequences for everything.

I'll be waiting for GW2, and you should too.

[Lordender]

I think the MMO market is shit right now because of these things.

1. Trying to cater to everyone which means a lesser quality product overall. IE: trying to please everyone

A. Having 3 to 4 difficulty modes takes an extremely long time to balance thus everything else suffers.
B. If you're fail why do you need to be an endgamer? shouldn't endgame be for those who dedicate themselves by learning their class and learning how to work with others?
C. Games are doing a very poor job at teaching players how to play their classes, most learn nothing from the start to level cap.

2. Content production doesn't seem fast enough.
A. 3-4 months is about the fastest any MMO company can produce content updates yet people get bored of the new shit in mere weeks after release.

3. The genre has had very little innovation in many years.

A. Tired of seeing the same shit, we don't need radical MMO's just for the sake of being different IE. FFXIV.
B. Tired of specs, rotations, illusion of choice when everyone ends up with the same builds that only differ because one encounter is more single target while another is more AoE based.
C. Tired of non-dynamic events with content that says, "Here is your new raid, bang it out for the next 5 months only to repeat it all over again for loot with 10 item levels higher.
D. queue, queue's and more queue's seem to be every companies answer.
E. Hope GW2 will provide the innovation that the genre has needed for many many years now, each game to me is stale as hell right now.

The genre is really hurting right now and its just not a World of Warcraft decline, it's an entire genre decline.

[Takiwaki]

A little off topic but FFXI system is nothing like GW2, I have no clue where that came from. There was competition for mobs for simple xp parties, competition in the quest system, claim system and stealing mobs was shit in FFXI, Lots of over camping for quest mobs that drop shit that everyone needs. Not sure what FFXI you played. The game forced you to group, because you really couldnt progress without it. This is a huge difference to GW2 where you do not need to group to play together and everything is shared. HUGE difference. I totally understand what you are getting at in terms of community, but the examples you give really are so far from the truth =/

[Hyan]

Yep, huge difference because while you play "together" you are still alone. Zergfest is all it will be. A game designed around Campaign/besieged basically. Good for a soloing experience in an mmo environment at least, but if it replaces traditional grouping in any shape or form I'll be shocked.

[Takiwaki]

Yep, huge difference because while you play "together" you are still alone. Zergfest is all it will be. A game designed around Campaign/besieged basically. Good for a soloing experience in an mmo environment at least, but if it replaces traditional grouping in any shape or form I'll be shocked.

I duno Hyan, From playing the bit I played Zergfest is pushing it, its just not built that way. Also you really cant play together and be alone, lol. Alone is if mobs wern't shared, but everything is. Since skills are also built to affect others around you its not really alone. Think of it as everyone in the zone is in one big party. I know its hard get but I do not think its fair to compare the system to campaign/besieged as its not that simple, also you really cant have traditional groups when the entire profession system isn't traditional. As in roles being tank healer dd.

Too much off topic anyways. sorry

[Hyan]

It's not hard to get at all. The only difference to campaign you mentioned is that this time everyone is a Summoner.

It may have more complex&fleshed out systems but fundamentals are the same. And that's not what I'd call a proper replacement/improvement to traditional grouping. Soloing, though, sure.

[Takiwaki]

It's not hard to get at all. The only difference to campaign you mentioned is that this time everyone is a Summoner.

It may have more complex&fleshed out systems but fundamentals are the same. And that's not what I'd call a proper replacement/improvement to traditional grouping. Soloing, though, sure.

But don't you need a traditional job system in order to facilitate this traditional grouping? There wont be that. There will be grouping, you can for Dungeons and PvP, also everyone as summoner is really simplifying things a bit too much no?

Remember the entire game system is built around co operation, I mean if I set something on fire and you come along and can use that fire to do something better, or you are low on hp and ur heal is on cooldown I can easily use certain abilities that can give you regen while still doing dmg to enemies. Don't you think that's better than having to group up for everything?

It is still playing together, which is different than needing other players, because of the tank dd healer trinity, which in fact forces us to group, and the truth is its not even really needing each other, its needing specific jobs, where you can in fact screw someone over because you need a particular job in your group.

If I can run the hardest dungeon with any profession combination and play with the people I want to play with at anytime, then screw traditional grouping.

[Hyan]

I'm skeptical that just because it's built that way people will use it as intended instead of just being headless chickens ignoring everyone around them. Especially when it comes to anything even slightly larger scale, and if the fights don't really demand much if at all coordination from the 'group'.

It's the direction I'd take soloing but I still don't see the big difference between it and other systems like it.

[Takiwaki]

Hopefully open beta will let us see exactly what is gonna happen.

I will say this, It will be very hard to ignore people around you in a system where everything you do can and will affect the people around you.

A simple thing like being able to raise anyone at anytime, makes such a difference.

Also I can safely say that you definitely need coordination in large events, its just a different type of coordination. Alot of the elite events have multiple facets and not just concentrating on the Boss, you can't zerg, you need people defending npcs or environmental weapons, coordinating attacks on minions etc etc. When I played even when the event was toned down, we got owned hard. Cus everyone just rushed in, this is where organizing within guilds will come into play I believe.

But yea I can understand your doubts, its hard to accept when everything we have known before used traditional grouping.

Speaking of which this just came up today

[link deleted]

The most basic of these combos require at least some kind of coordination.

[Iku]

FFXI is probably the only game that feature Skillchain and Magic Burst. Most MMORPG nowadays just forgo that concept and it is all out how fast you click your skill when it comes off cool down.

[Eaglestrike]

I think the MMO market is shit right now because of these things.

1. Trying to cater to everyone which means a lesser quality product overall. IE: trying to please everyone

A. Having 3 to 4 difficulty modes takes an extremely long time to balance thus everything else suffers.
B. If you're fail why do you need to be an endgamer? shouldn't endgame be for those who dedicate themselves by learning their class and learning how to work with others?
C. Games are doing a very poor job at teaching players how to play their classes, most learn nothing from the start to level cap.

2. Content production doesn't seem fast enough.
A. 3-4 months is about the fastest any MMO company can produce content updates yet people get bored of the new shit in mere weeks after release.

3. The genre has had very little innovation in many years.

A. Tired of seeing the same shit, we don't need radical MMO's just for the sake of being different IE. FFXIV.
B. Tired of specs, rotations, illusion of choice when everyone ends up with the same builds that only differ because one encounter is more single target while another is more AoE based.
C. Tired of non-dynamic events with content that says, "Here is your new raid, bang it out for the next 5 months only to repeat it all over again for loot with 10 item levels higher.
D. queue, queue's and more queue's seem to be every companies answer.
E. Hope GW2 will provide the innovation that the genre has needed for many many years now, each game to me is stale as hell right now.

The genre is really hurting right now and its just not a World of Warcraft decline, it's an entire genre decline.

The issue is that "everyone" is fail, thus while you're trying to cater to everyone and make the most money, you need to create content terrible players can play. Having extra difficulty modes is the best they can do at creating "extra" content and do this. Create 1-2 modes for the fails, then 2 modes for the real players so they get a sense of progression.

The thing is you NEED to cater to both groups, because the fails don't normally know they're fails, and will follow the hardcore group around in a game. So you need a game that the hardcore players like to even get "everyone" to play, so all modes are "necessary" these days.

People don't learn their classes because they don't care. You saw plenty of these people even just in FFXI where it was really easy to learn your class. It's not even a matter of teaching someone most of the time, people just do not care.

Content production is a major issue, and I really think Blizzard gets the major fail in this regard. While they've been solid for the longest time and still by far the leader of the genre, and I like their product and have an annual pass, they are slow. They could do some groundbreaking shit by using their money and just massively expanding their production team. But they're sticking to a smaller team to keep their quality up. I understand where they're coming from, but if anyone can throw a shitton of money into a game and try to do one month patch cycles, it's WoW, and they're just not interested in it.

I honestly don't see MMO's evolving much for a while. What I am waiting for, hoping for, is multiplayer RPG's to come out. Not massively, just multiplayer. Skyrim, Dragon Age, etc. Put a L4D-type multiplayer into that shit and just watch as the nerds go absolutely ballistic about it. NWN may have been too early for it, but that could be it too.

I mean just imagine, Skyrim world, double dungeon length, 4x as many creatures, no fast travel, add in skillchains or some shit. You could essentially make an old-school FFXI type event where solo you only really log on to craft and do stuff in city, and need others to do anything. And just instead of adding in hundreds of people per world, you make a game that reuses that one world thousands of times for a handful of people.

It's kind of funny that Skyrim Online has been being worked on since Skyrim came out. And THREE different groups are going towards making it. You'd think with this type of effort being put into it, a company would realize it and go for it.

[Ashmada]

I've been sampling many MMOs since leaving XI, here's what I miss from XI:

1. Most of all, an actual gameworld. Vanadiel was a real world (albeit small). You eventually learned the path to X place by heart, knowing every nook and cranny of a convoluted zones, you had your own little spot for doing Y activity (fishing, farming something,...), you formed a connection with whoever was regularly competing with you at some NMs (not Faffhogg, smaller solo NMs. I made quite a few contacts at Mee Deggi/Ogygos/Enkelados/Pallas/Alkyoneus), you could be doing something solo in a remote place yet still feel like you're in a MMO because of LS chat or the random stranger that just passed you by with an exchange of /c and so on.

The MMOs I've sampled don't have that. Some have most of the content in randomly-generated maps (looking at you, CoH/CoV and your generic factory/office/caves) but even in those that don't, you play beside people; not with them.

I'm currently playing Star Trek Online*, Fleet talk is awfully quiet and we never do events together.
Interaction with random strangers is mostly limited to checking what that nice-looking ship is, that's all and since they don't get alerted of that fact, no convo is initiated.

For all we can malign it, level design in this game was way beyond industry standards. Zones are memorable, random NMs (even pointless ones like Ishtar) make for a richer environment, the convoluted aggro system (most MMOs just have FFXI's equivalent of "True Sound") gave character to some zones,...
And the check system, while it did have its downsides, was a way to enforce interaction, for good or for bad.


2. Diverse classes/races (only applies to fantasy MMOs, not superhero/futuristic ones).
Ok, XI didn't have diverse races. It was the usual 5 with a bit of shuffling around and not much practical difference between them. But at least, it had many jobs with well-differentiated (but poorly balanced) flavor.
Other old MMOs like EQ offered quite a variety of choice, as well.


These days, races tend to have been reduced to:
- Humans, generic "average" types.
- Elves, with all the usual clichés. Sometimes, many types of Elves, sometimes just Light/Dark.
- Dwarves and their own clichés. Usually only 1 type. Sometimes, Orcs (or Galka) fill the niche.
- Some diminutive race. Gnomes, Hobbits, Halfling, Taru... whatever you want.
- A furry race.
- THAT'S IT!

Look, I get why those races are used: some people don't want to play a non-Human, some people always play Elves, some people like playing brutes (I prefer Orcs to Dwarves in that respect, myself), some people are midgets, others are furries. You've got to appeal to all of them.
I don't bemoan their presence, I bemoan their exclusivity. At least offer 2-3 other choices.

Same with classes:
- Warrior guy!
- Priest guy!
- Rogue guy!
- Sorcerer guy!
- THAT'S IT!

Once again, those classes are fine, but offer a few more choices. At least bit of effort when naming them would be welcome. You'd be surprised how much fresher your MMO looks when the Priest is called a Soothsayer or some such and the Warrior a Titan or some such rather than bland purely descriptive names.
They're not very imaginative names either, but at least it looks like you're trying to create a lore.

Having appealing races and/or classes is the backbone of getting players to actually join. LoTRo was particularly bad in that respect. Looking at the races and class pages, I saw nothing I'd want to play. Zilch. Boring humans, tired of elves, fuck midgets with hairy feet. Doesn't help that they portray all their non-Human races as being one foot in the grave in the little blurb they give.


3. Meaningful strategy.
Most MMOs I've sampled are "establish a rotation, apply it ad nauseum".
In XI, we didn't approach all enemies the same way, be it positionning, kiting vs straight-tanking, meleeing vs nuking/arrowing,... and some skills/spells were sometimes conterproductive to use: you wouldn't Diaga a huge Dynamis pull (well, ok, for the lulz) in most other MMOs, you spam your skills/abilities/spells are fast as possible.

Everything is always worth the cost and "doing something" is never going to bite you in the ass. You use your whole arsenal on every encounter. Always in the same order.
And mobs are all the same. Sure, sometimes different mobs use slightly different attacks, but never does it warrant a change of tactics.
Even different classes all play similarly. In XI, a BLM solo, a THF solo and a BST solo happened very differently. In more recent MMOs? Spam your shit at point-blank range, it's just named differently.


4. Slowish pace.
Ties in with the above and doesn't only concern MMOs.
I can't count the number of newish MMOs who have, as a major selling point "all-new, all-innovative, fast-paced action combat!" or some paraphrase of sorts.

Fast pace is fine in moderation, but when it just comes down to how fast you can click in an MMO (hi, DCUO), that's just retarded.
And when does it stop being "new and innovative"? It's the norm, stop pretending your product is the only one to do that.
Atlantica Online** is innovative (but boring as fuck), your action-based MMO isn't.


5. The little things like the claim system and the treasure pool.
Why do so many MMOs still make you click on stuff on the ground after each kill? Why?
Not only is it opening the door to ninja-looting, but it's annoying as hell to pick up every single gold coin from your kills.

Why do so many MMOs still have mobs free for all? Once again, open door to killstealing.



*Short review:

The bad:
- Story. Awful writing. You can't fathom how bad it is without experiencing it.
- Bugs. Most bugged MMO I've ever played.
- Daily maintenance. You know those emergency maintenances for 2-3 days after a big FFXI update? Well, in STO it's every day.
- Ground combat.
- Obtuse mechanics makes it very confusing for a beginner.
- Aged graphics.
- Forced cameos everywhere are very tiresome. If you're to believe this game, everything that happens in the galaxy is the work of someone from one of the series. Billions of billions of billions of people from billions of species and the same few hundred people did it all, good or bad. I like the characters like anyone else, but this is downright ridiculous.
- Cryptic-ness. It'll be quite familiar for those who've played/tried other Cryptic MMOs.
- Voice acting (with one exception, see below)/motion capture. I wonder if that was done by humans. Speech stopping mid-sentence, completely alien (not in a good way) animations...

The good:

- Space combat.
- Obtuse mechanics create some complexity.
- Pretty nice backgrounds, if glitchy.
- It's Star Trek! A more warlike Trek, but still: you can zoom around in the various Enterprise (not B and C), the Defiant or Voyager, visit a pretty well reproduced K7 or DS9... the whole atmosphere is somehow there, even with terrible writing.
- They somehow got Leonard Nimoy to provide voice-over. Every time you enter a new zone, Spock narrates some events. That's a nice touch.

The summary:
Play only if a trekkie, in which case you're probably already playing.


**Atlantica Online explores the polar opposite of a clickfest: it's a turn-based MMO, to my knowledge the only one. It's no more enticing than the other extreme.


Edit: just re-checked the LoTRo site, they've altered their race description page to be less gloomy and there seems to be more classes than when I last checked, so yeah, pretend I used another example.

[Viq]

4. Slowish pace.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who appreciates the slower pace that FFXI presented.

[Lysithea]

As far as stories and character types go... there really is only 7 different stories. and
just about as many or fewer archetypes.
You need a tank, a dd, a healer for basic classes.
You're going to have heavy DD's, light DD's, ranged DD's.
You're always going to have a Healer, a Dark Magic user and combo/dd

if you've played TOR its just this. Even the story lines are the same, on both sides. FFXI, broke this down even more basic. Everything else that we see that comes out is always broken down to this. FFXI, took all of that, and every little bit of mythology out in the world and brought it in. From Argus dropping a peacock charm, to the names on and equipment and why they are called that.

There is strategy to ffxi, and its not just clicking a button. There's was a giant community with ffxi. Also, there is the time factor. It was 10 years ago, most of us were in high school, middle school, early 20's. Now, shit is completely different, and less time for everything.

I was watching WWE and whole shit happened with Kane, and it was cheesy and corny. My friend asked me what the fuck happened to Kane he used to be scary and shit. Nothing happened, we got older.

I miss FFXI, I really do... and I just recently lost my characters 'cause of some stupid shit. Unfortunately there will never be a game like this out. But content wise, every game will always be the same. It will be the style of play, and the community that make the game different and special.