Never understimate Square-Enix ability to drag a project.
Never understimate Square-Enix ability to drag a project.
6 months after jump potion release:
squeenix Raid Buddy, customized party AI members decked out to clear those pesky elitist raids for you!
Just came back recently and had heard about this on a podcast, great idea. I just got into PoTD last night and was screwing around in there after doing some random dungeons to get back into the swing of tanking. Not sure why anyone would be against jump potions because it's not like it's going to do anything but help the game as a whole. Oh no you'll get shitty people at max level who don't know how to play their class? Them leveling via FATEs or even dungeon spam still leads to shitty people who can't play their class. Hell even if they went from 1 to max doing dungeon content they could still be horrible, because if they were doing random dungeons they might just keep getting Tam-Tara or some bullshit over and over again.
Always going to have the people that only want to hit max and don't care about actually learning shit, but then you also have the people who can learn to be excellent at the game but who are so off-put by the story needing to be completed that they either don't want to come back, don't want to reroll on a friend's server, or don't even want to start.
The amount of time and effort it would require for them to make EVERY single quest something amazing and rememberable would be astronomical. It's hilarious to expect that of anything, much less a MMO where a majority of content before max is usually filler. At least the story in ARR had some interesting parts to it, unlike the story while leveling up in other MMOs...oh wait none of them had a story really worth paying attention to at all.Given that they had a chance to rework FFXIV with ARR they had the opportunity to design a game where all the content is actually entertaining and rewarding to play. Levelling, story and end-game.
It's hard to see the introduction of a method of skipping content by paying real money as anything but a symptom of core design errors.
I actually mostly agree with that quote. Now, while I don't think it's realistic to expect all the quests to be amazing, the problem is you're required to sit through all of them in this game. A lot of the filler from other MMORPGs is skippable: if I don't care about WoW's fetch quests, I can spam dungeons or PVP. If I dislike a certain area, I can move on to the next one asap. If a specific quest sounds boring or annoying, I can opt to not pick it up, etc. There's no such options for new players/alts in XIV, this game has so much mandatory filler in its leveling experience that it honestly ruins the few good bits. Also important, said filler isn't really minimized as the game grows - it'd be one thing if the required quests remained constant, but the number only goes up.
The MSQ is one of the worst systems of any MMORPG I've played in many years, and its un-sustainability should've been obvious back in the alpha/beta given the expected vertical model for the game. The most depressing and baffling part to me is how they doubled down on the idea when they designed the 2.0-2.55 MSQ, and again by using it to gate an entire expansion. They improved with the HW and 3.0-3.4 MSQs, but the underlying issues of the system are still there. It should've never been the core of the leveling experience, or at the very least it should've been future-proofed.
I would've welcomed a MSQ revamp, or even something like making all old MSQ series optional and adding separate quests for the dungeon/trials unlocks, but I'm not surprised they took the easy way out of this mess. The jump potion won't fix the actual problem with leveling in this game, but the option to skip is better than nothing so I still see it as a positive addition.
I see they're looking to let free trial accounts to get to lv50, so may as well let people pay to skip 50 levels lol
I thought they said jump potions wouldn't even be ready at Stormblood release at some point?
No, but they could at least have made the required MSQ and dungeons less shit. Solracht is pretty much on point. I'm not saying they have to make every single story quest something amazing, but if they want to attract players to the game that will stay, i'd imagine having a decent not shit tier MSQ would help.
Ah, I didn't see that bit. Thanks for the correction.
As opposed to what? I have not played ALL the mmos on the market but I have played Aion, Lineage, Tera, WoW, FFXI, a little ESO (not enough to get into it), RO, Swtor, Guild Wars 1 / 2 and a few others. FFXI had a better story to me personally but it was mostly due to time investment and rose tinted glasses. Stories for Korean MMOs are usually garbage tier and ESO/SWTOR/GW1&2 stories were just meh.No, but they could at least have made the required MSQ and dungeons less shit. Solracht is pretty much on point. I'm not saying they have to make every single story quest something amazing, but if they want to attract players to the game that will stay, i'd imagine having a decent not shit tier MSQ would help.
I agree there is a lot of filler there and fetch quests, but fetch quests are kind of the bread and butter of MMOs and MMOs exist to eat up your time, that's their main market strategy so of course you're going to see that in any game of this genre type.
SWTOR stories were meh?
What fucking game did you play?
Hey, I never said another MMORPG hasn't done it better because I haven't played any other MMORPG. I just said that it would be better if their MSQ wasn't ass, while comparing it to other RPG games that I've played. Its like playing a shooter campaign that is literally filled up with "go hit this switch", "now hit that switch", "now take this item to this location". Its gameplay i'd expect from 20 years ago.
SWTOR leveling stories were amazing. Haven't played recently but it was such a disappointment when you hit cap
I wrote that SE had a chance to rework FFXIV with ARR and so "had the opportunity to design a game where all the content is actually entertaining".
The problem is so much of XIV content is actively not fun. If it's not fun then it should be rewarding at least?... well, apparently not.
It's not that everything has to be amazing... it merely has to avoid being an obnoxious waste of time.
Currently you're left with not fun you have to pay to engage in? Better yet, not fun you can pay even more to not have to do?
Part of me feels there's a hint of immorality involved when you steer your game mechanics towards grindy, skinner-boxesque stuff (with the addiction element that it implies) with not only monthly fees but another attempt to dip into the pockets of your audience by asking them to pay to escape some of the worst content to come from SE in years.
I don't know. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I don't think healthy game design combines torture with fleecing.
Again, it's pretty. Really pretty. It's a shame it's wasted on this game though. I feel for the artists.
I guess it's obvious but there's something I really dislike about the... design direction... or something of XIV. There's something awful about it. It's like a bad smell in the background, like something rotting under the floorboards. Like some sort of guiding hand of shitness that ensures XIV gameplay will forever be mediocre.
The time-wasting, the grinding, the "congratulations! you pressed the buttons in the correct order!" combat, the lack of anything but sinking time towards the next highest number for your ilvl. At some point they stopped designing the game to be fun, they started designing a trap. Time and money. Your time and money.
Tell me you don't smell it too.
Honestly wouldn't limit that feeling to XIV, Al. So, while it's easy to say good gameplay would actually attract customers and pay the bills by proxy, it seems the whole "playing it safe" angle is more the MMO norm. And those who try to deviate wind up doing it in colossally wrong ways, like Wildstar did with the hardcore endgame focus. Meanwhile, one can pretty much expect Korean games to be shit, both in grind and content.
I kinda wanna snarkily say anyone who plays an MMO for a story these days is doing it wrong, but it's not like the single player RPG market has made many good showings in the last console gen or so, either. So, I dunno if that's a side effect of companies like SE putting more of their eggs in the MMO basket, or the realization that making a good RPG for today's consoles is a lot more demanding of dev skill and creativity than your run of the mill shooter or sports title redux.
I'll own up to using a fair amount of hyperbole in this thread, but the reality is boring, really.
XIV is just a little bit shit. Certainly a fair amount shitter than necessary. They've played it safe and built a model that lets them claw money back.
It's just disappointing.
It's possible but still... I'll be absolutely floored if Stormblood refocuses the game into something better. Delivering good gameplay just is not the focus of this game.
Edit: Not many games would be pitched like: "Ok, we want acceptable gameplay". Maybe the legacy of the original release means that this doesn't sound insane for ARR+...
All these bad game decisions, who wants to go play Maplestory?
XIV should do whatever gaming model SWTOR does.