Something lost when making game so easy/accommodating?

[Teknique]

Oh thanks so much there keeva. Yea seriously we spent a good 50 minutes wiping to demon wall over... and over.... and over. Fuck those gnats.

[ronin sparthos]

That's the rub. The more you do that, the less time-friendly the game becomes. I think the middle ground was that people would grind dungeons for xp and those skills would be honed, but I leveled my CNJ from like 26 to 39 between now and B4 and I haven't done any dungeon on it more than once, so that clearly isn't necessary.

FATE chaining is so easy there is no reason to really run dungeons outside the storymode unless you're just doing it for completion sake. Guildhests also kinda get cockblocked by this.

[Kuishen]

"Evolved" into a clone of a game that was released a decade ago lol.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd there it is. I'm genuinely surprised it took 3 pages to happen.

[Carth]

I'm not surprised BG of all places are saying this game is easy, but lol @ people saying the game is easier than FFXI.

[Spider-Dan]

The "game is too easy" complaints would carry a lot more weight if they weren't frequently followed by "I just hit level 30."

When you're facerolling Garuda hard, maybe you will have a point.

[Siatdiat]

You guys are going an awful long way to humor a single XI fanboy.

From what I have been reading in this forum lately, a plethora of people find /sitting in chairs to be innovative game play. Oh, and crafting being classes is innovative too, no one else did that before!

[Churchill]

point

[Enygma55]

Sometimes making friends with people on ur server can go along way with avoiding shit PUG groups thru the Duty Finder.

Maybe try to shout a bit to build half a group before you think about solo queuing a DF. Just pretent for a moment DF didnt exist.

When you form a 7/8 party, and spend 20 mins looking for an 8th, then use DF to find that last member. This way you can all enjoy ur accomplishments together when the duty ends.

[bleat]

tldr: XIV has no risk or punishment while having a super quick leveling experience so it feels easy compared to XI.

Let me preface this long ass post with the fact I am enjoying leveling up my character in XIV and will probably take 2-3 classes to 50 when all is said and done, but I don't think I will play it for years and years.

I do agree with the OP, and I'm afraid we are a rare breed in these days of instant gratification and fear that failure will drive away customers. If I fuck something up I want to be punished or have someone else rewarded for my fuck up, I believe it makes everyone a better player and a more enjoyable game. Call me an old piece of shit, but these days when everyone gets a trophy for participation, it makes everything feel worthless.

I think XIV feels easy and unrewarding because there is NO risk and very little punishment, so you never really feel accomplishment when completing anything. If I wipe on an instance 6 times, I just have to repair my gear with 1 click from the npc and all is well, or I just queue up again with a different party. They even give you a mother fucking shortcut if you wipe.

In XI, a wipe meant you had to re-farm pop items, de-level, get locked out for a few days (limbus / nyzul), or sit and watch the rival LS kill the mob that you just wiped to. When you beat and event, there was a feeling of accomplishment. Even after killing nidhogg for the 100th time, it still felt nice because you were gaining stuff for your ls while blocking others from getting it. Competition makes for a fun game imo and there are many of us who would still be playing XI if they didn't ruin it with abyssea.

XIV community is also a joke, everyone is playing it like a single player game and it disgusts me. It was nice getting to know everyone in XI and knowing what gear they had and shit. you KNEW people on your server. I can't imagine its going to be the same in XIV since you never have to party outside of your FC, even FATE parties rarely talk when there is a bunch of downtime. I'm only level 42 in XIV so maybe it all magically changes when I'm doing end game stuff, not sure.

[Akiyama]

Yeah.. I mean I can see people's point in all this, but I'm not missing the way XI was.. I mean, Garbage Shitadel, those were the days amirite? Training shit to the exit, etc. I don't personally miss all of the hard, hard punishments XI dealt out, and I'm personally glad I can play XIV without seeking a group out for like an hour+ only for the party to be..terrible. D:

But I can see why people are worried about 'not meeting new people' and such. Gotta put forth a bit more effort!

[Deadgye]

Compared to XI, we traded "immersion" or whatever the fuck for accessibility in regards to quests. You just blindly follow the exclamation points and do shit, instead of talking to everyone in town to find a quest, and then making educated guesses on exactly what you need to do if it doesn't spell it out for you. I like both approaches, so I don't mind the tradeoff.

The only, possibly annoying and evil, mechanic that I truly truly miss from XI is the aggro system. With how mobs would either aggro you by sight and/or sound, and how some would track you by scent. Stuff like being able to Hide from tigers in the rain but not during clear weather, or being able to cross rivers to lose enemies. But most importantly was that avoiding aggro was important. You couldn't just go LADI DADI DA and run through a bunch of enemies, only for them to get tired after 10-15 seconds and run back to where they were. If you caught somethings attention you, for the most part, had to deal with the consequences if your ill attention.

[Carth]

The only, possibly annoying and evil, mechanic that I truly truly miss from XI is the aggro system. With how mobs would either aggro you by sight and/or sound, and how some would track you by scent. Stuff like being able to Hide from tigers in the rain but not during clear weather, or being able to cross rivers to lose enemies. But most importantly was that avoiding aggro was important. You couldn't just go LADI DADI DA and run through a bunch of enemies, only for them to get tired after 10-15 seconds and run back to where they were. If you caught somethings attention you, for the most part, had to deal with the consequences if your ill attention.

I'll agree with most of this. Sight and Sound aggro still exists, but avoiding mob in the open world is pretty unsatisfying if only because they refuse to chase after you. Getting aggro in dungeons can cause a silly death if you're not prepared, but it's not the same since you can just run back there with some slight durability wear. The feeling of adventure is somewhat absent in FFXIV, but I'll be damned if I say I didn't get a sense of accomplishment out of beating dungeons post-Brayflox.

[blowfin]

Yeah I have to say I'm finding this a lot easier to get into than XI, which is by design of course, and required in this day and age. As mentioned the artificial time sinks have (thank fuck) been largely eliminated. In the early levels at least, this game is way more accommodating, it's like a warm hug of EXP and quests VS a cold wasteland of 2004's "welcome to FFXI, you're so very poor".

I was a bit stunned last night though, upon failing an instance for the first time (what the hell is that stick that just appeared near Ifrit?!?!?) that we went straight back to the start of the battle like nothing had gone wrong. I was half expecting to have to wait until the next game day ticked over to be able to retry, or to delevel. Some sadistic part of me wanted us to be severely punished for failing, that part of me is a jerk.

Also, although I have a TP bar, and it sure is pretty to look at. I haven't had to manage my resource usage once through to level 26 Archer. Maybe this changes as the higher levels approach, but it's a far cry from the anal resting of XI. While I'm thankful that it's gone (it too was an artificial time sink), my TP bar does feel like an arbitrary piece of UI. As does my endless MP pool when I've played Arcanist.

Does anything seem lost? Not really, if anything I'm more engaged than I was in FFXI at the early stages..

[Siatdiat]

Would like to just note for everyone who wants to be punished by their MMO, that EQ still exists and is f2p.

[Elcura]

Serious question, how many people who think this game is easy actually try to figure shit out for themselves? By that I mean they don't run to a video guide or some other shit after the first loss.

Also, I'm surprised at some of the things people call difficult.

[Eleven19]

The only, possibly annoying and evil, mechanic that I truly truly miss from XI is the aggro system. With how mobs would either aggro you by sight and/or sound, and how some would track you by scent. Stuff like being able to Hide from tigers in the rain but not during clear weather, or being able to cross rivers to lose enemies. But most importantly was that avoiding aggro was important. You couldn't just go LADI DADI DA and run through a bunch of enemies, only for them to get tired after 10-15 seconds and run back to where they were. If you caught somethings attention you, for the most part, had to deal with the consequences if your ill attention.

I, as masochistically as it is, agree with you. Developers put a lot of thought into the system, and after so many years of playing it you sort of develop a skill for it. You know how mobs behave and how to work your way around them without catching attention, or how to lose them if you catch aggro. Otherwise that shit would chase you all the way to the zone line.. And it was sometimes frustrating, but it was a mechanic that, for some reason, I miss too.

I don't, however, want to go back to XI's EXP (neither early nor abyssea), fighting mechanics, or quest systems. If I wanted that, I'd play XI. This game has only been out for a week, I'm really looking forward to exceedingly difficult fights, not drawn out artificial 'difficulty' in terms of length of time needed to progress. XIV fits my lifestyle, I can't play all day 'er day like my time spent in XI. Got bills now, full time job. XIV is incredible for spending an hour before work and getting something accomplished, be it a dungeon or two or a few levels in Leatherwork or whatever. Beyond the login issues, which I'm hoping will be all finished by tomorrow, I'm really loving the mechanics because I don't want to be as hardcore as I was in XI.

[ronin sparthos]

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...ps3ff61666.jpg

Miss me?

XI will never happen again so enjoy your memories, you lived through the "golden" (lol) age of MMOs. I'll be telling my grandkids about how this one time Nidhogg flailed and killed around 120 people in the Aery before the whole endgame community made a mad dash from home points back to the tree to reclaim and regroup. All that for some Mbodies!

What kept XI going was the close-knit need for an online 'family', even if that family were a bunch of cutthroat cunts who had nothing better to do than dock you DKP for missing events. It's what kept many people playing for years. Once you got yours, you wanted to get friends their shit and before you know it 3-4 years has past and you're still finding shit to keep you going. It's why XI declined so sharply after Abyssea - the need for 'family' dried up, you could solo everything with your $9.99 walmart WHM and the weight of accomplishment became solo for a relic then get an emp in a week.

Just play XIV for what it is, an online FF title with some brief interactions with other players. Hopefully WvW and PvP will foster some sense of unity among Free Companies and players in the game as a whole.

[Hioki]

Serious question, how many people who think this game is easy actually try to figure shit out for themselves? By that I mean they don't run to a video guide or some other shit after the first loss.

Also, I'm surprised at some of the things people call difficult.

I don't think I've pulled up a video for anything involving strategy yet in this game. There are some things that can be kind of difficult in the post 30 dungeons but for the most part my pug experience has been pretty good with attentive, competent players. Then again I was in the fast leveling crowd(was already 50 on non legacy server before Friday hit). I'm sure once the masses catch up it might start sucking.

[Damane]

long time FFXI player here (still play). only hit 21 conj and 15 gladiator. the game is refrehing and i feel very connected to FFXI by the primals or design of the beastmen that was kept similar. seeing a kindred in tamtam definitly brought some nostalgia together with a soulflyer as a boss. the fighting mechanics are fun too you are constantly on the warch as a healer due to alternateing AoE ranges. Ifrit was hella fun even though we won as a PUG on the first try.
I can see the battle engine become very fun with harder challenges.
The story also has startet to shape up very good and starting to love it. I have fallen in love with 14 for now only wish i could play with my FFXI friends but we are scatteted on different servers.
and FFXI is barely any harder then 14 at 99 just a bit more time consuming. (skirmish 2 was a total disappointment).what i love the most is the dutyfinder. shit like that would make stuff in FFXI much easier. like VW etc back then.
so far only praises from my side!

[Kachiko]

Lets not confuse 'difficult' with 'punishing' when we talk about FFXI. There was usually very little difficulty in farming your pop items, san congestion/gil farmers. It was generally very punishing if you failed the fight, where you used up said pop items, as you had to now spend all that time farming them again. The game literally punished you at every move, even when you made all of the correct moves, due to it's highly restrictive drop rates. MMO companies, and players, now know better, hence the game-play we now get. When the next company makes the next evolutionary jump, everyone else will pile on again, going with what works.