FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Schedule (12/26/2012)

[Lucavi]

The XI universe was not ready for the skill ceiling (within the confines of that game) of CoP and the restrictive nature of progression, thus, didn't like CoP. Hearing BGers say CoP was easy means nothing considering that BGers are typically more skilled... typically.

You have to think about the chaff, not the wheat, and there's FAR more chaff than wheat in any game. The chaff hated it and left. The wheat stuck around. The wheat would enjoy anything SE, though, which is why some of the wheat is still apologizing for SE to this day.

[Elcura]

You know there's more than two types of players right? Even the wheat who could complete CoP might not have liked it. Then there are players who might have just stuck around through the shit because they had good friends.

Personally I found CoP to be incredibly boring and tedious rather than difficult. It seemed to be the biggest asset you could have during that era was patience.

[Lucavi]

Sure there's more than two types, but if you ran a survey, those two would top the results.

Personally, I liked the music. Nothing else really rocked my socks, although finally having a haste option on Drg was nice. WoW was running full-steam ahead by that point, which, of course, made any weakness XI showed that much more appealing to blizzard.

[Niiro]

CoP would have been infinitely more tolerable if level sync (and therefore gear scaling) hadn't come X years too late.

Level caps sucked, but having to carry around level capped gear, for multiple jobs, at multiple caps was just fucking awful and tedious.

The story may have been great, but fuck if I could keep track of it doing missions months apart because getting competent group together was like pulling teeth. If you had a static for CoP great, the majority of people didn't.

[Lucavi]

The only positive about having to carry around all that level capped gear was that I could easily ballista in every level cap.

[Manako]

Yeah if level capped gear had be implemented at the same time, may have been a different story. Also forcing players to do the exact same content 3 times before moving onto unlocking tavnazia is just poor design, by the time you ran through 3 you didn't really want to help others do theirs. I had no issues doing promyvions with my group, think I even did one mostly pickup, and that was before they made them easier. What bothered me was that emptiness as a level was boring, and the mobs creeped me out . Simply allowing players into Tavnazia before having to do the promyvions would have been enough to make it more accessible.

[Manako]

mispost... odd

[Achitophel]

CoP would have been infinitely more tolerable if level sync (and therefore gear scaling) hadn't come X years too late.

Yup.

[Izzy]

Thanks to pre-zerg style Bahamut v2, I literally get chills whenever that song pops up on iTunes.

Fuck that shit.

[Arc07]

The only positive about having to carry around all that level capped gear was that I could easily ballista in every level cap.

What this guy said.

[Lucavi]

^ And I bet you were ballisting pretty well with that freakin' shield. Pld was badass enough without it in uncapped.

[Arc07]

Actually it was annoying. As /RDM (I stopped playing during ToAU) nobody would bother hitting me... not even to build TP. I ended up doing ballista as ninja or as my friend's drk just to enjoy myself. :/

[Alok]

Hopefully they make a smart play here and the filtering done by quality is like a checkbox. Aion had an excellent AH (probably other games did too) where you could type part of the name in the box (we have this now already), and you could filter by common, uncommon (greens), rare (blues), etc.. personally I think that +1s should just move up in color to simplify the system at this point. Make a Darksteel Haubergeon +1? -> green named item just called Darksteel Haubergeon (and give it a little symbol to mark is as HQ *wink*). No need to have multiple entries for the SAME ITEM just because it is +1 (they kind of collapsed this already too but they should try to keep it that way). Let people use their brain for a change.

Bring back the white box prz!

[Yoli]

I thought CoP was fun. Not the level capping - that always irritated me - but I really did like most of the zones and the story. And some of the fights were a lot of fun too, before people started doing them in cheaty ways (like what Izzy said about Bahamut 2, that was a great fight the first time I did it). I liked the grouping too.

I find it so hard to believe that everyone hates grouping because, on forums at least, it seems that 9/10 people thought the parties were one of the great things ffxi had going for it. For some people, it seems to have been the only thing they thought xi had going for it because they hated the way everything was designed at 75. So I find it really weird to see all the newer mmos heavily moving away from that sort of thing. That's especially true with FF imo, where every job is characterized by being particularly special in one respect or another. As a system, that just screams "enjoy working with other people!" I'll agree that forming up six person parties to progress level wise was a hassle at times, but it's not like I'm opposed to finding ways to fix that. I think a better auto-match system (like the one that seems to be getting put together) could go a long way towards fixing that. Other stuff probably could make it less of a hassle too. But you don't have to remove partying itself to remove the hassle. I'm more or less resigned to the fact that stuff is the way it is now, though. I don't really like it, but there's not much of a choice besides just dealing.

Maybe I'm biased though. I really enjoyed my parties, and the (relatively) long time I spent getting up to 75 and then 37. I guess some people didn't. If people's preferences can be read by the way games are designed, it seems everyone would just want to start at 75 now (which - I'm being dead serious - to me begs the question of why even bother having a leveling process if you can reach the cap in two or three days?)

Anyways, I'm excited for FF14's second take. I don't have half the free time I did for 11, but I'll definitely get this and hope it ends up better than the first take. It looks like they're moving ahead at a passably decent clip. Will be fun to make a new character.

[Charismatic]

Everyone enjoys parties, you fool.
Very few people enjoy sitting in town with their thumb up their ass 'cause they can't do anything without one though.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Bring back the white box prz!

Nah. I don't wanna live in the past!

[Churchill]

The best part of XI was logging in for weeks on end and putting up an LFG flag and a sweet/clever search comment and still being level 37 at the end of it.

[Reve]

I hated CoP. Level cap was a needless hassle. All I remember of the CoP missions up to Lv.60 was Astral Flow, Hi-Ether, Astral Flow, Hi-Ether, Astral Flow, success.

I liked partying when it was working well. However, it was painful when jobs were unbalanced or players were terrible. A bad healer or tank could ruin the exp for 5 others. It also sucked if you weren't a top tier exp job: SMN, PUP, DRG (post Penta-nerf pre-ToAU lolibri pt). You could be lfg for ages. Doing old content was also a challenge.

Like Charismatic said, no one likes sitting around unable to do anything because they log on during non-peak hours. I love partying but finding one needs to be easy, and there should be content for solo waiting time (craft, gather, small quests). There also needs to be that fun low man content when you and a few friends want to accomplish something. Linkshell/Alliance content is also fun. There needs to be a thoughtful balance/ratio of content.

[millionsknives]

The best part of XI was logging in for weeks on end and putting up an LFG flag and a sweet/clever search comment and still being level 37 at the end of it.

Ahhh, memories of levelling DRK back in '06. But as long as no jobs are major loljobs, having level sync means this shouldn't be a problem.

(But seriously, why did you play FFXI? I've never heard you say anything good about it. I look back and laugh, you look back and cry into your pillow D: )

Maybe I'm biased though. I really enjoyed my parties, and the (relatively) long time I spent getting up to 75 and then 37. I guess some people didn't. If people's preferences can be read by the way games are designed, it seems everyone would just want to start at 75 now (which - I'm being dead serious - to me begs the question of why even bother having a leveling process if you can reach the cap in two or three days?)

I'm the same. It took me nearly two years to finally get a job to 75, I didn't care at all. The journey was fucking fun. I always found that people in my LS who powered through to 75 ended up enjoying the game less, they couldn't see the fun in anything. That's why I think it's a shame levelling is instant now. I hope XIV finds a happy middle ground.

[Sephiroth]

I was just thinking, there is no mention of Coerthas and Mor Dhona in the beta schedule. Do you think we'll have to wait until launch to play in these areas? They were in V1 beta but that counts for nothing here. It would be a nice way for SE to keep the better content for launch.