Something lost when making game so easy/accommodating?

[mallister]

i'm playing with 14 with the folks i started MMO's with on 11. i have my people, game has been fine so far. half of the side quests and flavor bits are easter eggs/nostalgia bombs from previous ff games. the vast majority of 11 wasn't hard, it was just fucking annoying and tedious. i'm playing after i had swore i'd never give SE another nickle, too. they're doing something right.

[Ksandra]

Lets not confuse 'difficult' with 'punishing' when we talk about FFXI.

This is so insanely true. I kinda pop a vessel sometimes when people talk about WoW endgame being "easier" than FFXI. Vanilla FFXI endgame fights came down to two strategies. 1. stand at the feet, cure through shit. 2. kite while range dps beat the crap out of it.

What made ffxi "hard" was the punishment of waiting 3 hours for a mob to pop that you had to try to spam without aggroing adds.

Killing nidhogg wasn't as satisfying as claiming nidhogg. Which required one button.

Getting a ridill wasn't an achievement because it was a hard boss to kill, it was an achievement because you managed to claim the stupid mob enough times that rng mechanics finally dropped the stupid thing.

I am so thankful that FFXIV went the more active WoW-style fighting, where you actually have to pay attention to what's going on around you. Yes it is easier to get to doing the fights, but the fights are a lot more interactive.

Don't get me wrong, I do remember FFXI fondly (hell I met my husband in FFXI). But I know them for what they are, fond memories. Not something I want repeated. The same way sitting around a kerosene heater as children was a fond memory, but for the love of god I love my central air.

[Lonewind]

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.

This x 1000

difficult = CoP hard mode = good

punishing = 500+ runs for VW drops, over a year of 4 times a week salvage for 1 35 body piece + constant assault funding it + whatever used to fund it when ingot prices were at peak, 24 hour kings, cryptic AV mechanism...etc or others up to up to late 2011, I'm sure people have more examples...

[blowfin]

I'm sure people have more examples...

"Kirin portal" pretty much sums everything up

[chichicha]

Sorry, that I didn't read entire thread.

I'm guessing that you guys , who said this game is easy, have beaten all hard mode and behemoth king, Odin in 18 people size?


Just thinking about : (small example)
Behemoth King at Level 75, max 18 people fighting , with possible some extra outside alliance. (Talk about 2005 ish)

Behemoth King in FF14, sorry that I'm not there to find out. Still slow pacing my level to 40.
I heard over 50+ ppl to kill it? Or 100?

Comparing this two, I don't really see the game is as easy as you guys were saying.

Same mob (Term wise), but the amount of people you need to beat it.

I could be wrong, perhaps you have already killed it with party size of 8.

P.S. I'm not saying that FF11 is not hard, it is and agree with what ppl said here on the hard level of FF11 used to had.

[Gokulo]

Comparing the amount of people that is needed to kill the mob without knowing anything about the fight itself is rather pointless. Shit can take 4 people and be harder than anything you did in XI

But yeah, people that complain about difficult need to get to end game. There's no need for leveling experience to be too hard and it isn't, yet DF sometimes makes you feel otherwise, lol.

I was also worried about the equipment being handed out so easily, but this actually slows down after 30 and if you're not lucky in dungeons you might end up with some outdated gear fast.

[Nyanoko]

Lots of valid points here regarding the "difficulty" of early XI. However, the bullshit of 24-hour pops, no-drop HNMs, lolKirin portal, etc, was the glue that bonded communities together. It may have been smelly, shitty glue, but it worked all the same.

In XIV, I feel like there's my FC, and a bunch of NPCs running around. The sense of community is the answer to this thread's title question.

[Deadgye]

"Kirin portal" pretty much sums everything up

If you used the clock to time your port, you always got to Kirin. I had a 90%+ success rate and didn't even use oils, just flee'd right to it aggroing everything along the way because I had worked everything down to a science.

[Spira]

XI and XIV are just very different games born in different generations of MMOs where expectations are vastly different.

I'd think the biggest conceivable difference is really that "inconvenience" was an acceptable part of the game. Having to run everywhere all the time, quests not telling you where to go, "wait for next game day/JP midnight", 15min pop spots, poor drop rates on random quest items, and things like the enormous cockblock that the quest up to Odin is...
Devs somehow thought it was ok because people put up with it ..and I guess the inconvenience was "necessary" because it was one effective way to build in timesinks, which you'll have to admit are far less common in modern MMOs.

Gameplay-wise its really the same thing. apart from the fact that XI has a slower pace, everything isn't so much easier as it is more convenient. Most of the MSQ battles are designed to be solo-ed and don't require grouping. Level syncing exists so people who are capped down don't walk in naked. Instant warps to places you need to go. Stuff like that.

XIV:ARR clearly has it from the get-go, but XI has had to develop and introduce them over the years. Today, gear syncing on caps does exist, as do many new forms of convenient instant-warp travel, and even Kirin warp is 100% now.. They've had to change the game to gradually suit the newer generation of players.. but it'll probably never reach the level of convenience that something built from scratch was designed to have.

as for ARR, my biggest annoyance is that 3/4s of the MSQ are fetch quests for random fuckers. Missions in XI were directly relevant to the story characters 90% of the time or a consequence of being part of the story.. not "oh you haven't earned my trust, here's my laundry list of errands i was gonna do before you showed up."

[Carth]

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.

Only time I've had to look up a video thus far is against that Princess Antlion thing during Cutter's Cry, and that's because for the life of me, I could not figure out that all it took was our healer kiting all of the adds instead of trying to tank everything, or prioritizing killing off the marshalls, or trying to sleep everything, or trying to see if there was an HP percentage mechanic. After dealing with The Sunken Temple of Qarn, I wrongfully expected a lot of complications.

EDIT:

as for ARR, my biggest annoyance is that 3/4s of the MSQ are fetch quests for random fuckers. Missions in XI were directly relevant to the story characters 90% of the time or a consequence of being part of the story.. not "oh you haven't earned my trust, here's my laundry list of errands i was gonna do before you showed up."

This is the reason why I skipped 50% of the mission dialogue. After I had to kill raptors, do some fetch quests, and find a random guy to get ingredients to make a bottle of fucking wine, I stopped giving a shit. Unfortunately, dumb crap like that is necessary to be at the correct level for the storyline dungeons.

[Sonomaa]

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.

This so hits home the failures of XI that we somehow seen as "greatness" so hard that I could kiss you.
Fun Fact: the BG linkshell stuttered to a halt after a few abyssea expansions, and it did so because of greed and unwillingness to help the fellow man who wore the same pearl as they did. It wasnt all sunshine and rainbows and mithras and galkas for everybody, it was fucking hard ass work and greed tore it all a sunder. It built slowly but when it happened, it was done in one night.

[Sev]

I think community wise I'm not missing XI as much because of where I am currently. As many pointed out there was much more of the cock blocking in XI then the items hell I made it a point of traveling from server to server to change the balance of power. While that was fun I'm now 27 and with my daughter now in school and being involved in all sorts of activities I lack the ability to make all those hmm camps.

I don't miss the 11 community and I only sy this because I'm in the BG ls and fc. There is that helping one another out, I think I've run ifrit about 20 times for various people in the shell. All and all I couldn't be happier with this game screw that log in mini game. Damn gf logging me out!

[Siatdiat]

as for ARR, my biggest annoyance is that 3/4s of the MSQ are fetch quests for random fuckers. Missions in XI were directly relevant to the story characters 90% of the time or a consequence of being part of the story.. not "oh you haven't earned my trust, here's my laundry list of errands i was gonna do before you showed up."

How many "missions" did 11 have vs 14? I am pretty sure when you take only the "properly serious" main story quests and compare them to total missions in 11 (initial release rank missions at that) I think 14 will come out leaps and bounds ahead of 11. In 11, instead of those quests you would be spending a lot of time either seeking or making a party, rolling out to your chosen camp, find it full, go to an off the beaten path spot that was harder to get to and probably sucked, have whm leave in the first 30 minutes, etc.

So this comparison is not obvious to people somehow?

[Aldon]

I'm okay with XIV's 'system' for levelling, I just hope they ramp it up in difficulty AND reward.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say it's pitifully easy to level. Sub level 20 or so that's great and I encourage it, but past that the same cycle of quests continues. Heres a quest, kill these 3 mobs? Fine, that's standard procedure. Unfortunately the mobs will be pitifully easy for the level that the quest is. Cast Aero, throw Stone a couple times. Take a nap, read a book, drink some tea. Don't even bother to dodge their red-perimeter AOE attack, it won't kill you unless you actually go AFK; it'll only slow your DPS down, stone, stone, done, repeat, turn in quest, here's 15% of your level's XP. Leves are more interesting since some of them have some mechanics, but it's mostly the same. Don't get me started on the 46-50 FATE spamming.

I'm actually really enjoying the more difficult dungeons and current end-game content; some of the mechanics are interesting and challenging and shows SE's got some excellent precedent for fun fights in the future. Getting to 50 in the first place was kind of a snooze-fest for the most part, however.

Game doesn't need (and shouldnt be) XI levels of stupid-grinding and punishment, nor does it need to be 'kill-these-3-pitifully-easy-mobs quests till you're level cap because thats what all MMOs do'. I think there's a middle ground.

edit: getting hit on a mount should really force you to dismount or slow or something. Cant count the times I've just run through waves of mobs that should have murdered me in order to get to a quest or unlock a dungeon "LOL IM ON A HORSE I AM LITERALLY INVINCIBLE"

[Siatdiat]

You realize that leveling a class to 50 only = gimp correct? For example, you need to get level 34 on CNJ and 26 on THM to get both Stoneskin and Swiftcast, to not be a gimpster.

Edit: This example relates to SCH.

[Argantes]

To start off, I have to say I absolutely loved playing XI.
That being said, it wasn't particularly hard. It was basically just the fact that you really wanted to have a certain item and like other people have said, were either dedicated or lucky enough to get it.

Looking back, XI was actually a pretty easy game. It's just that we had an absolute crap interface to work with, everyone had some sort of delay etc.
We do (well, I do atleast) so much better in current day MMOs, not so much because everything is THAT much easier, but cause everything just works and responds better.

I remember when having to bind something in XI, it'd take two more steps after bind landed. The next game I played, Aion, I'd bind something and it would be bound in an instant. Like, right as I hit the button.
Just the fact that everything worked as it should and when it should already made everything easier.
Yeah, people will compare a lot of games with XI and say XI was so much harder etc, but it really wasn't.
It's like people saying Vanilla WoW was the best patch/phase/period in WoW ever, when most people who've played it know that it was terrible when it comes to bugs, balance etc.
It's just nostalgia speaking.

One thing I will give XI though, is their concepts.
The way they set up fights etc, having the elemental chart which came with immunities etc and the fact that you didn't have anyone outside your server to do anything with really worked for the community.
Now you just chuck blizzard on an ice elemental without second thought. You are an absolute wanker to everyone on your server and every group you get in and just jump in to Duty Finder etc. It's an entirely different community now.

Another thing is something I've mentioned in another post.
I don't like the fact that in XIV you need gear, to get gear, to do certain content.
It doesn't matter how great (or terrible) you are playing your class. Your gear is the major deciding factor.

In XI you could hit 75 (Which was cap when I quit) and apart from stuff you needed to obtain access to like Dynamis-BCD/Xarca, Sky/Sea/Einherjar. You could just do everything with your basic AH gear tbh.
Yes, better gear made you perform better, but it was never a "requirement" where as in XIV it is.

[Aldon]

You realize that leveling a class to 50 only = gimp correct? For example, you need to get level 34 on CNJ and 26 on THM to get both Stoneskin and Swiftcast, to not be a gimpster.
Edit: This example relates to SCH.

Your definition of 'gimpster' is a far cry from mine. I got SCH to 15 for WHM unlock and and not an XP further; didnt bother with any of THM's 'useful' WHM cross class abilities. So far nobody has noticed in DFs or anywhere else, least of all me. Sure I'll need to do it at some point, but it's not crippling or noticeable by any means for current content at any rate, and having to level subclasses doesn't make levelling any less easy or interesting.

[Eldelphia]

I think that xiv is fun but so far (and no I'm not 50) I don't see what will keep people in it when other games are released. However, I am more than willing to give it a shot and wait and see how it develops. I think it's kinda ridiculous that people have been able to hit 50 already. I think the world is beautiful and the crafting is great. Some nice FF feels but yeah, the whole 'kill 3 deer because I feel like venison tonight' and that will save Eorzea a bit daft.

[Hioki]

Only time I've had to look up a video thus far is against that Princess Antlion thing during Cutter's Cry, and that's because for the life of me, I could not figure out that all it took was our healer kiting all of the adds instead of trying to tank everything, or prioritizing killing off the marshalls, or trying to sleep everything, or trying to see if there was an HP percentage mechanic. After dealing with The Sunken Temple of Qarn, I wrongfully expected a lot of complications.

Actually I ended up tanking all the adds. We had everyone stack in, I'd flash for adds. Everyone in the group got the same idea pretty quickly that big adds are priority burns. I like that some of the fights can have different strategies to go about dealing with the mechanics. For example, I've done a full burn on the demon wall in Keep as well as adds burn. I prefer just burning the adds since you have more than enough time to kill the wall afterwards. I thought SToQ was really well made as far as dungeons go.

[Deadgye]

Right now the only thing I'm worried about, when it comes to leveling, is how I'm getting a second DoW/DoM up past 20. Leves aren't exactly the most efficient and I've burned most of the quests already. It seems like I'm supposed to spam fates or plan ahead and target mobs that drop stuff for my crafting.