Will you still play Aion when FFXIV comes out?

[crazyrabbit]

The only part that Aion realy disapointed me in is storys. After i finished the last campaign mission, which should kinda be the "main story", i just sat there for a min and thought "thats it?"

Maybe i was spoiled by FFXI, because it just has the best made storys out of any mmo out there, but the Aion missions just felt like normal generic quests and didnt even tell much about the background story at all. Even the normal city rank missions in FF let you get more involved in the story and actualy have some depth and tell you the background of the game. Also cutscenes, lolAion in that aspect too.

I have huge confidence that FFXIV will go the same way as FFXI regarding storytelling and thats why i will 100% play it. I don't know if i'm still wandering around in Aion by that time, depends heavily on NCSoft.

Ofcourse theres also the problem that you have more variety and fun at lvl40-45 than at 50 in Aion, but theres been enough talk about this already.

[Priran]

The only part that Aion realy disapointed me in is storys. After i finished the last campaign mission, which should kinda be the "main story", i just sat there for a min and thought "thats it?"

Maybe i was spoiled by FFXI, because it just has the best made storys out of any mmo out there, but the Aion missions just felt like normal generic quests and didnt even tell much about the background story at all. Even the normal city rank missions in FF let you get more involved in the story and actualy have some depth and tell you the background of the game. Also cutscenes, lolAion in that aspect too.

I have huge confidence that FFXIV will go the same way as FFXI regarding storytelling and thats why i will 100% play it. I don't know if i'm still wandering around in Aion by that time, depends heavily on NCSoft.

Ofcourse theres also the problem that you have more variety and fun at lvl40-45 than at 50 in Aion, but theres been enough talk about this already.

not necessarily disagreeing with you but if you're only 48, you're not done with the campaign missions.

[LurkaKitty]

I disagree with vrumpt saying Aion lacks any planned progress. I played Lineage 2 for two years, from just before Interlude until Gracia 2, and if Aion shares anything in common with L2 other than the company name, I believe that there is a lot in store for Aion. It took 5 chronicles (~3 years) for NC to achieve their "vision" of what they wanted L2 to be when they started the development. I didn`t play prelude - C4, so I can`t say from personal experience how these updates were, but from Interlude to Gracia everything was pretty groundbreaking. Of course these expansions were also considered additions to the vision of what L2 is, added after Chronicle 5. (I have proof somewhere that Prelude-C5 was just NC achieving the original vision of L2, was in an interview with an L2 dev, would have to find it if anyone wants it.)

That`s what I know about Lineage 2, and I strongly believe that Aion is going to follow some suit. NC was pretty consistent about giving L2 an expansion twice a year, so if it starts getting close to the 6 month marker on Aion and still nothing, my opinion will shift a bit.

That being said, right now I am planning on staying with Aion. I enjoy pvp and I don`t have much hope that FFXIV will have it. I`ll read what BGers say about it of course, once it comes out, and I may even try it out.. but I don`t see myself sticking to it.

[Kerberoz]

Fuck FFXI-2. I might play the beta just to mess around and get banned. XI had great mission lines, but that was it. Horrible mechanics, horrible company that hates its playerbase, stupid console shit, etc. XIV is literally just XI with a cartoonish amount of bump-mapping. They didn't even change the races, and half the screenshots for XIV are in Neo-La Theine.

Not that Aion is amazing or anything, but it's something to mess around on casually when I'm bored. XI was nothing but stress and drama and dreading having to log in after the first couple years. They didn't even have real devs after CoP.. every new "feature" seemed like it was made with a mod-kit and haphazardly slapped onto the PS2 game. You really think they won't use "PS3 Rimitations" and assfuck their customers again?

[Imitarate]

A lot of talking about community... I suppose it'll depend on where my friends go. That's what really makes either game for me. A group of my friends moved over to Aion more or less fulltime from FFXI, and I LOVE playing Aion when I'm with them. I have one small group I play around on semi-regularly on marchutan with my asmosorc, and a formal ffxi-style static i play on lumiel with my elychant. As soon as I go off by myself to try to XP, solo or PUG (UGH), on an alt, I get bored or irritated. I love exploring, finding places the devs never meant people to go and taking amazing screenshots is a passion I never was able to fulfill in ffxi, but I can't imagine how people play Aion solo grinding the whole way (or even Pugging it). It's not the community, it's the people YOU play with.

[Kaylia]

I love exploring, finding places the devs never meant people to go and taking amazing screenshots is a passion I never was able to fulfill in ffxi

The best time I had in FFXI were the couple of months where I used pos.exe.

I must have climbed every trees, buildings, towers, pillars in vanadiel. I had some amazing screenshot sitting in a tree in Riverne, underwater in bibiki bay, inside a crystal in promatia BC...etc

Part of the thrill came from exploring "illegal" area, but having complete freedom of movement was great.


I really don't think FFXIV will be interesting. Movement limitation will be as bad as they are in FFXI...so all there is left will be grinding...it's a step backward compared to many other mmo.

[Imitarate]

Having meaningful jumping is a pretty big requirement for me. This psuedo-3D insurmountable waist-high fence you can't go up the stairs in garlaige because there's a 2-inch gap stuff just won't fly. Period. They need to seriously improve their engine to get me. I know it doesn't SEEM like much to some of you, but it's a pretty big deal to me. It is ridiculous to have someone that can leap a 100' straight up (in a 10' high cave no less) but can't get up a 1' step.

[Hyan]

The funny thing is, SE has already learned from 80% of problems in FFXI. If you can't see this, you're probably blinded by hatred or something else.

[Hyan]

Also, relatively shortly after the NA FFXI launch CoP was announced and progressed and probably the appropriate speed for needed end-game content. CoP's problem was not content, it was a lack of comparative rewards to RoZ. But I believe this is much more due to the fact that SE didn't really know how to itemize the game at that point. There were ridiculous variations in the strength of gear and huge imbalances in gear distribution to different jobs. I think CoP was a reaction to this to fix things, but went too far the other way.

I think at that time SE realized how they fucked up with RoTZ's itemization and became too sensitive about adding similar gear again. It seems they only got the hang of things when ToAU came out, but at that point there was no way they could have really fixed the problems in itemization anymore. All they could do was work with things as they were, and I think they did alright in this respect.

[Hyan]

I might play the beta just to mess around and get banned.

I so can't wait to see you eat your words and start play the game after all. Pathetic, but predictable behaviour. See you there.

[Kaylia]

Having meaningful jumping is a pretty big requirement for me. This psuedo-3D insurmountable waist-high fence you can't go up the stairs in garlaige because there's a 2-inch gap stuff just won't fly. Period. They need to seriously improve their engine to get me. I know it doesn't SEEM like much to some of you, but it's a pretty big deal to me. It is ridiculous to have someone that can leap a 100' straight up (in a 10' high cave no less) but can't get up a 1' step.

Yep, I agree with this.

Going on top of a huge mountain and jumping to my death screaming "wooooohooo" is another big requirement for me. I never get tired of it.

The funny thing is, SE has already learned from 80% of problems in FFXI. If you can't see this, you're probably blinded by hatred or something else.

They did?

[Hyan]

They did?

Yessir. You actually have to think about these things to notice them, though. Makes a lot more sense that way.

[vrumpt]

They did?

You can tell from the launch of WotG that they learned their mistakes. They have added much content to make soloing xp considerably easier (although not as efficient as joining an xp pt). Campaign and the EP / DC mob xp raise comes to mind here, along with FoV and those treasure caskets. (not sure what else they added since, stopped playing over a year ago).

They can't change it drastically because that would require changing the core foundations of the game that basically support party play, but what they have done to work around that is very good. Any other simple changes like UI changes they haven't done more than likely fall under the technical limitations since it is a 7 year old game running on 7 year old technology (remember FFXI still supports 56k)

So yeah FFXIV has huge potential.

[Hyan]

Plus the way HNM's work in WoTG as opposed to the three kings.. Yeah, HNM's are still around, but I wouldn't say SE didn't learn anything just because the kings are still there. Sandworm and DI are the proof of that.

Events these days aren't as long and boring and less predictable as in the early era. Imagine XIV endgame with 30min/100min events that don't take million people to run and 5 days to camp in sky, without having relics around limiting the dev team from creating any better items and getting stuck with horizontal progression.. I think I'd enjoy it at least, even if the drop rate stays the same.

[ringthree]

Having meaningful jumping is a pretty big requirement for me. This psuedo-3D insurmountable waist-high fence you can't go up the stairs in garlaige because there's a 2-inch gap stuff just won't fly. Period. They need to seriously improve their engine to get me. I know it doesn't SEEM like much to some of you, but it's a pretty big deal to me. It is ridiculous to have someone that can leap a 100' straight up (in a 10' high cave no less) but can't get up a 1' step.

I will never understand this complaint. It's like saying I won't play the next Halo if they don't have rocket packs to fly around with. If a game is not designed to have flying, then it shouldn't have flying. The zones you are talking about were designed to require walking around and not jumping. If they added jumping and still wanted to have a longer path they would just make the ledges too high to jump over.

There are problems with pathing in FFXI which seems to be your real criticism but jumping doesn't fix that.

[ringthree]

Yessir. You actually have to think about these things to notice them, though. Makes a lot more sense that way.

Anyone that say that SE didn't make massive improvements or learn from their mistakes is just a bitter angry gamer. You may think they didn't do enough or you didn't like the changes, but some of the statements being made are just ridiculous.

[Imitarate]

My issue isn't that I want jumping/whatever in FFXI, it's that I want it in FF14. Of course FFXI could never support it, it wasn't built to. And I don't care if there's flying as long as I can push a button and take a little leap and get over a rock the height of my ankle that's blocking my path.

[Kaylia]

You can tell from the launch of WotG that they learned their mistakes. They have added much content to make soloing xp considerably easier (although not as efficient as joining an xp pt). Campaign and the EP / DC mob xp raise comes to mind here, along with FoV and those treasure caskets. (not sure what else they added since, stopped playing over a year ago).

They can't change it drastically because that would require changing the core foundations of the game that basically support party play, but what they have done to work around that is very good. Any other simple changes like UI changes they haven't done more than likely fall under the technical limitations since it is a 7 year old game running on 7 year old technology (remember FFXI still supports 56k)

So yeah FFXIV has huge potential.

What's about every other issues?

The time it takes to move anywhere in the game, botting, retarded drop rate, lack of gears progression, large quantity of totally worthless items, the lack of content in updates...etc


Just because you're happy with an update that barely change anything doesn't mean they understood their mistakes. SquareEnix's biggest problem is the amount of time they spend before addressing an issuee, and when they do, it's not even a real fix, just a small step in the right direction.


Technological limitation my ass. It's just an easy way out most of the time. Unless they really screwed up the spaghetti code and no one understand it anymore (it often happen when many programmer leave), that argument is bullshit most of the time, because they could do more with less.

I will never understand this complaint. It's like saying I won't play the next Halo if they don't have rocket packs to fly around with. If a game is not designed to have flying, then it shouldn't have flying. The zones you are talking about were designed to require walking around and not jumping. If they added jumping and still wanted to have a longer path they would just make the ledges too high to jump over.

There are problems with pathing in FFXI which seems to be your real criticism but jumping doesn't fix that.

Your argument works well if you compare great games that use different style, but it doesn't justify shitty gameplay.

MMO for me and many others are about exploration, and exploration is about freedom of movements (to a certain extent). Some limitation can be very alienating when you can't jump/fly/go where you want.

Aside the occasional train in FFXI, the gameplay itself wasnt exciting at all. I don't feel any sort of tension when I xp, and I hate this. In other mmo, it's much easier to mess around, and play in a way that keep you on the edge.

[arus2001]

Initial 2H update aside, I always felt SE was never drastic enough in changing and updating XI. Some people claim to like the game just for that reason, but pussyfooting around and avoiding issues people had or stubbornly adhering to flawed design decisions got old.

[vrumpt]

The time it takes to move anywhere in the game, botting, retarded drop rate, lack of gears progression, large quantity of totally worthless items, the lack of content in updates...etc

Might i suggest a game called World of Warcraft.