FFXIV Flame Wars Thread: because ten threads is not enough threads

[Hyan]

These are design choices and they were made on purpose.

What makes you think so? Actually, what makes you think

new RvR feature that was hard to tune and fix.

doesn't apply here? The system is not as simple as you may think it is. What they design and what actually happens doesn't always go hand-in-hand, you should know this. If it fails, they redesign- they need to redesign- until it works as intended.

[Lucavi]

The voice of the vocal minority is your basis for this argument?

Its not the voice of the "vocal minority" if everyone left for the same reason. Ask anyone who played AoC, even on BG. They'll all tell you one of two things:

1)The game was a buggy mess of fuck all.
2)They were too slow in nerfing/buffing classes, which killed both PVP and PVE.

Yet, what you say doesn't give any valid reason as to why what I say can't be true as well.

If you seriously think that both games experienced a mass exodus of the player-base for any reason other than the fact that both were borderline unplayable at times due to crippling bugs, I don't know what to tell you. When people complain about it, review companies complain about it, and players leaving the game comment on when they quit the game, not simply on forums, but also on the game's official "tell us why you're leaving" boxes, obviously it is the core problem. Not simply the only problem, but the -CORE- problem.

Think about it. Why have review companies slammed FFXIV? Why have people left FFXIV? Why haven't people bought FFXIV. Think about it.

And at this point I don't really care that you don't understand, lol. I've had my fair share of games I've enjoyed this year alone and what I like is not a hard concept to grasp. I will also enjoy this game (more than others, even if it's not my dream game) if they don't completely 180 on some of these things and it becomes good someday. And you will never understand why.

In a way that makes me sad.

ib4 "nobody but you thinks so" blahblah.. please keep it to fewer words.

You keep backpeddling. What you like and what you want are two different things. What you like is whatever serviceable game you tolerate because what you WANT is an impossible dream. I know it. We all know it.

[plue]

So... I think that when Diablo 3 comes out, it'll be judgment day for this game for me. Hope they can fix this shitpile up a bit.

[BlackheartX]

LOL... you clearly aren't past even mission 2 if your making a statement like that. Hell even the opening cs in each city ties the story to the lore of that particular area. Obvious troll is obvious.

Obvious white knight is obvious, the games cs are the only relevant things in this game to the story, which is why WOW has an infinitely better and more robust questing system. In WOW at least there is some reason for the fetch quest leading up to a raid. Also you don't have to mindlessly grind 10 levels to get anything remotely different from what you've already been doing for the past 10 levels out of the game, that goes beyond a stupid cutscene.

@People circle jerking about what is an MMO and what FFXIV is
If this game wasn't Final Fantasy with it's drove of zealot fanboys, it would have completely flopped harder than any fly by night korean MMO and been written of as another failed attempt at breaking into the MMO market.

[Kaylia]

I think it's also because they are focusing on creating a huge world and gameplay around it so servers can handle the stress. Then they fill the game with instances and instant teleports and suddenly modeling all that world is just not worth the hassle. It's like the devs are fighting against their own design.

I don't think MMO's have that good graphics IMO.

I really dont think it's the issue. A large world usually mean more monsters, which turn out to be a bigger load for the server, but it's very possible to go around this with proper coding. In the end, servers stress should be proportional to the amount of players online more than size of the world.

Instances are used to do thing they couldn't do in the outside world. It would be very hard to balance this kind of gameplay if everyone was playing in the same instance, and you wouldnt be able to do events or trigger very well.

I dont understand why you say teleport make the world smallers. Poorly designed teleport might, but most of the time, you're forced to explore the place beforehand. The teleport step in when walking around become a trivial task you don't want to do.

The entire reason SE launched XIV as-is was purely based on the idea that nostalgia would hold over people until they got their fixes in place. Reviewers over the years hold a warm spot for Final Fantasy games and SE always intends to capitalize on it. People rushed out to buy CE versions of the game purely based on the nostalgia of XI or previous FFs simply because this game was labeled Final Fantasy XIV.

Moogles, Chocobos, Airships, Cid, Summons etc will all eventually be in XIV but SEs fatal flaw is thinking that you can polish a lump of clay, call it final fantasy and think it won't be subject to review.

What you described here is brand name more than nostalgia.

Nostalgia is the crystal theme, the chocobo...basically, everything that bring you fond memories of previous titles. Like I said in my last post, you could say they are milking FFXI nostalgia a little, but there isn't much from the rest of the franchise.

[Lordender]

I've just never in my life seen a game that was so half-assed before. No major improvements from BETA to Retail except leve's becoming 36hr cooldowns. So much re-hash in this game that it blew my fucking mind that someone allowed this to get the green-light. The game is the most boring game i've ever played, even the zones are boring because of the excessive copy/paste terrain's. I know all MMO's re-hash stuff to a certain point but FFXIV took that shit to an entire new level.

Things they must fix to make the game not so boring and incredible lame.

- Reduce the grind by at least 75%.
- Re-tool the entire combat system, possibly removing the stamina aspect from it while adding an auto attack.
- Get more creative with leve's, give me a sense of purpose of why I need to go kill x amount of rats. No reason why there isn't voice acting/more being done to make me feel like there is a real threat going on during leve's especially during Faction Leve's.
- Re-tool durability so weapons last more than 1hr before having to repair it.
- The land needs to be in more of turmoil, too many marmot's, dodo's, crabs and not nearly enough low level beastmen/humanoid faction mobs causing trouble. Mobs must get more diverse than killing the samething over over and over again.
- Get more creative than anima, chocobo's should have been in right from the start.
- Crafting recipe's need a complete overhaul so low level stuff doesn't require rank 15-20+ other components from a different craft.
- City states need to be more unique.
- Crafting leve's need to go by levels like regional leve's so you can always do the correct level leve that is near your level.
- Battle regimen's need to be re-tooled completely.
- Inventory needs to be x4 or x5 of what it is now before any bag/retainer quests to up it.
- Increase taxes on people who sell the wrong items in the wrong wards by 60-80%
-Flag AFK people after a certain time while bazaaring who are in town for x amount of time and warp them into some misc marketward all together. No reason why SE allows 100+ people chilling outside of every adventurer's guild. The lag gets so bad here that the door won't even open to the adventurer's guild.
- Stats need to be looked into, never saw strength make any difference once-so-ever in my damage on maruader.
- Fatigue bar needs to be added so people know where they stand and plan around fatigue.
- Improve on the dumb dialogue in limsa, it's about as terrible as jar jar binks was in phantom menace.
- class jobs need to be a ton more interesting than they currently are.
- Melee Acc needs to be addressed.
- Solo'ing needs to be much much more viable.
- Random skillgains need to be addressed.
- Behest's need a lot more work, they should also give fame/standing in the area's you do them in that will eventually branch off into bigger things to do.
- The entire game world needs more life, random NPC's walking along the road, camped out in various places that offer story lines about them and possibly involve some quests that open up bigger things, A trust system would be good here, the more you help this guy/girl out with their problems the more trust you develop with them for more side quests.
- Game must become a lot more streamlined overall

This is probably the bare minimum that would need to be done to even get a start, I didn't really include the basic things they are putting in nov patch.

[Achitophel]

I've just never in my life seen a game that was so half-assed before. No major improvements from BETA to Retail except leve's becoming 36hr cooldowns. So much re-hash in this game that it blew my fucking mind that someone allowed this to get the green-light. The game is the most boring game i've ever played, even the zones are boring because of the excessive copy/paste terrain's. I know all MMO's re-hash stuff to a certain point but FFXIV took that shit to an entire new level.

Things they must fix to make the game not so boring and incredible lame.

- Reduce the grind by at least 75%.
- Re-tool the entire combat system, possibly removing the stamina aspect from it while adding an auto attack.
- Get more creative with leve's, give me a sense of purpose of why I need to go kill x amount of rats. No reason why there isn't voice acting/more being done to make me feel like there is a real threat going on during leve's especially during Faction Leve's.
- Re-tool durability so weapons last more than 1hr before having to repair it.
- The land needs to be in more of turmoil, too many marmot's, dodo's, crabs and not nearly enough low level beastmen/humanoid faction mobs causing trouble. Mobs must get more diverse than killing the samething over over and over again.
- Get more creative than anima, chocobo's should have been in right from the start.
- Crafting recipe's need a complete overhaul so low level stuff doesn't require rank 15-20+ other components from a different craft.
- City states need to be more unique.
- Crafting leve's need to go by levels like regional leve's so you can always do the correct level leve that is near your level.
- Battle regimen's need to be re-tooled completely.
- Inventory needs to be x4 or x5 of what it is now before any bag/retainer quests to up it.
- Increase taxes on people who sell the wrong items in the wrong wards by 60-80%
-Flag AFK people after a certain time while bazaaring who are in town for x amount of time and warp them into some misc marketward all together. No reason why SE allows 100+ people chilling outside of every adventurer's guild. The lag gets so bad here that the door won't even open to the adventurer's guild.
- Stats need to be looked into, never saw strength make any difference once-so-ever in my damage on maruader.
- Fatigue bar needs to be added so people know where they stand and plan around fatigue.
- Improve on the dumb dialogue in limsa, it's about as terrible as jar jar binks was in phantom menace.
- class jobs need to be a ton more interesting than they currently are.
- Melee Acc needs to be addressed.
- Solo'ing needs to be much much more viable.
- Random skillgains need to be addressed.
- Behest's need a lot more work, they should also give fame/standing in the area's you do them in that will eventually branch off into bigger things to do.
- The entire game world needs more life, random NPC's walking along the road, camped out in various places that offer story lines about them and possibly involve some quests that open up bigger things, A trust system would be good here, the more you help this guy/girl out with their problems the more trust you develop with them for more side quests.
- Game must become a lot more streamlined overall

This is probably the bare minimum that would need to be done to even get a start, I didn't really include the basic things they are putting in nov patch.

How do you keep making sprawling lists for a game you don't play? I'm impressed.

[Lucavi]

So... I think that when Diablo 3 comes out, it'll be judgment day for this game for me. Hope they can fix this shitpile up a bit.

This game will have been long since fixed or long since dead when D3 comes out. Judgement day is a long, loooooong way away for you, then.

Also, Hyan, you're saying they're making this game massive? We must have a different opinion on what constitutes massive.

[BlackheartX]

Massive copy paste.

[Elrina]

The voice of the vocal minority is your basis for this argument?

I've heard this mentioned a couple times, I think, in general about people who are actual posting on forums. I don't have a degree in statistics or anything, and it's entirely possible there are factors to this that I'm not thinking of or don't know (hence this being a question, if a long one, in my usual fashion).

Couldn't you pretty much use the "vocal minority" as a sample and then just scale it up to the entire player base? There are generally always people on forums for and against something. Even with all of the issues that plague FFXIV, from the actual problems inside the game to SE's communication with the communities, there are those defending both the game and SE. I realize that you weren't specifically talking of XIV with this specific quote, but I didn't play AoC and Warhammer, and I'm pretty sure the statement can be extrapolated anyway.

When the majority of those being vocal dislike something, and the minority of those being vocal defend it (whether even they like it or not), can you not (roughly) scale that overall "vocal minority" sample up and figure out that the majority of people playing the game are probably pissed off and angry, and it's a minority that still finds it "acceptable"? And if you can, doesn't it completely deflate the point of saying we're a minority for being part of the percentage of players that post one way or the other?

Even if it isn't that cut and dry, it just seems obvious that regardless of what any individual one of us thinks, there's a major percentage of the people who are playing FFXIV that have huge issues with it. It can be defended, and there may be some people who have been fortunate and have had favorable circumstances and so are less bothered, yet even so.

No matter where you look, and who is defending it, the general opinion of how bad it is just seems overwhelming. Why is that ok?

You can argue that "MMOs" are always released this way, etc. I've seen a lot of various arguments. But regardless of how fickle people can be, how bad press reviews can be, I can't imagine anything other than that SE made a really bad decision releasing this game the way it is. I don't know what they could have done to make it better. I don't know that delaying it till the PS3 release would have helped, or if making it "more like WoW" would have given us a better game. But they must have done something wrong, because MMO or not, I can't think of a single valid reason that would make it okay for any game with as high a profile as "Final Fantasy" to be released to so much overwhelmingly bad sentiment.

Even if they do fix it, even if someday it is a good game, this will always be how Square-Enix released Final Fantasy XIV, and the opinions of the people it was released to.

[Eaglestrike]

I've heard this mentioned a couple times, I think, in general about people who are actual posting on forums. I don't have a degree in statistics or anything, and it's entirely possible there are factors to this that I'm not thinking of or don't know (hence this being a question, if a long one, in my usual fashion).

Couldn't you pretty much use the "vocal minority" as a sample and then just scale it up to the entire player base? There are generally always people on forums for and against something. Even with all of the issues that plague FFXIV, from the actual problems inside the game to SE's communication with the communities, there are those defending both the game and SE. I realize that you weren't specifically talking of XIV with this specific quote, but I didn't play AoC and Warhammer, and I'm pretty sure the statement can be extrapolated anyway.

When the majority of those being vocal dislike something, and the minority of those being vocal defend it (whether even they like it or not), can you not (roughly) scale that overall "vocal minority" sample up and figure out that the majority of people playing the game are probably pissed off and angry, and it's a minority that still finds it "acceptable"? And if you can, doesn't it completely deflate the point of saying we're a minority for being part of the percentage of players that post one way or the other?

Even if it isn't that cut and dry, it just seems obvious that regardless of what any individual one of us thinks, there's a major percentage of the people who are playing FFXIV that have huge issues with it. It can be defended, and there may be some people who have been fortunate and have had favorable circumstances and so are less bothered, yet even so.

No matter where you look, and who is defending it, the general opinion of how bad it is just seems overwhelming. Why is that ok?

You can argue that "MMOs" are always released this way, etc. I've seen a lot of various arguments. But regardless of how fickle people can be, how bad press reviews can be, I can't imagine anything other than that SE made a really bad decision releasing this game the way it is. I don't know what they could have done to make it better. I don't know that delaying it till the PS3 release would have helped, or if making it "more like WoW" would have given us a better game. But they must have done something wrong, because MMO or not, I can't think of a single valid reason that would make it okay for any game with as high a profile as "Final Fantasy" to be released to so much overwhelmingly bad sentiment.

Even if they do fix it, even if someday it is a good game, this will always be how Square-Enix released Final Fantasy XIV, and the opinions of the people it was released to.

People with issues complain. People without issues don't complain. So you are going to find far more people on forums on the side against something happening than the true number of people in favor of it. Now, in the case of a small MMO like FFXI, you might be able to do things how you want, because so much of the playerbase is active on forums to begin with. But you couldn't with something of WoW's size, because a LOT of WoW players care not for the forums at all. That's also true in FFXI and other games, but to a much lesser extent to a point where the vocal minority/majority on the forums could be close to the true ratio of how the players feel.

[Elrina]

People with issues complain. People without issues don't complain. So you are going to find far more people on forums on the side against something happening than the true number of people in favor of it. Now, in the case of a small MMO like FFXI, you might be able to do things how you want, because so much of the playerbase is active on forums to begin with. But you couldn't with something of WoW's size, because a LOT of WoW players care not for the forums at all. That's also true in FFXI and other games, but to a much lesser extent to a point where the vocal minority/majority on the forums could be close to the true ratio of how the players feel.

Makes sense. I don't know, like I said, I wasn't entirely sure how dealing with the numbers worked. Regardless, ultimately my point was that heavy bad press and what seems like an enormously negative response to the game is bad. There is no reason that a main title FF game should be getting this kind of reaction. Even XIII, which a ton of people seemed to dislike, was just another trademark move by SE in doing something different with an (offline) main sequence FF game, and there was still a lot of people (including myself) that liked it. And, as usual, the next will be something different.

This kind of reaction, in and of itself, is bad. Especially for a game that isn't just an offline play-then-shelve RPG, but something that is supposed to hook people into playing long term. I don't even like thinking about it, and managed not to, then I come back after being on vacation for over a week and realize that the arguing over it likely isn't going to end till at least a fair amount of people really do completely give over and stop caring. Then I wonder why we should need to stop caring about something we all obviously wanted to care about, when the reasons and problems are so blatant. It's frustrating.

[Eaglestrike]

Makes sense. I don't know, like I said, I wasn't entirely sure how dealing with the numbers worked. Regardless, ultimately my point was that heavy bad press and what seems like an enormously negative response to the game is bad. There is no reason that a main title FF game should be getting this kind of reaction. Even XIII, which a ton of people seemed to dislike, was just another trademark move by SE in doing something different with an (offline) main sequence FF game, and there was still a lot of people (including myself) that liked it. And, as usual, the next will be something different.

This kind of reaction, in and of itself, is bad. Especially for a game that isn't just an offline play-then-shelve RPG, but something that is supposed to hook people into playing long term. I don't even like thinking about it, and managed not to, then I come back after being on vacation for over a week and realize that the arguing over it likely isn't going to end till at least a fair amount of people really do completely give over and stop caring. Then I wonder why we should need to stop caring about something we all obviously wanted to care about, when the reasons and problems are so blatant. It's frustrating.

I have absolutely loved XII and XIII. I will continue to purchase SE single player FF games. But I'm done with their MMO's.

[Tomino]

There's one MAJOR issue when dealing with a new MMO release, looks like SE really did understimate that:

MMO buyers are usually MMO players which means they're for the most part already playing something. You don't simply have to tease or lure them, you have to show something so nice that it also convince them to drop their beloved character and start a new one entirely.
A new Spiderman game comes out, it's decent but you like the character, you have nothign else to play so you give it a go.

FF14 buyers were in most cases FF11 players and those, well, simply found it complete shit. To be even more hilarious, the just turned FF11 to a wow inspired system with constant cap increase and new shiney items.
I know a lot of people that's just keeping playing FF11, they have no reason at all to drop it.
On the other hand, every WoW-bored player will have Cataclysm released by the start of December and with that a tons of reason to be there and not on Eorzea.

[Dooom]

There's one MAJOR issue when dealing with a new MMO release, looks like SE really did understimate that:

MMO buyers are usually MMO players which means they're for the most part already playing something. You don't simply have to tease or lure them, you have to show something so nice that it also convince them to drop their beloved character and start a new one entirely.

Especially amusing as reviews have all picked up that this game is so unfriendly with it's explanations, UI. etc that first-time MMOers would be hopelessly lost.

[miokomioko]

I think a first-time MMORPG player is going to catch on with the mechanics of the game quicker than the average MMO-hopper, fresh out of a different game, just looking for the quickest route to e-peensville.

[Eaglestrike]

I think a first-time MMORPG player is going to catch on with the mechanics of the game quicker than the average MMO-hopper, fresh out of a different game, just looking for the quickest route to e-peensville.

Not a fucking chance. My friends have a non-gamer playing with them in LOTRO. The guy is TERRIBLE. He doesn't understand aggro, doesn't understand tanking, healing, doesn't understand he should be constantly pressing buttons. This guy owns consoles and plays other games, but he just has absolutely no concept of how an MMO works. And I've met a number of people like him over my time MMOing. A lot of people just don't get it.

[Dooom]

I'd like to know how likely a first-time MMOer is to catch on to ideas like market wards, equipment breaking, crafting classes, and so on.

[miokomioko]

I'm basing it on the assumption that most first-time MMORPG players are at least somewhat versed in playing RPGs before they move to an online version and attempt to play it like their offline counterparts... you know, actually talking to NPCs, actually reading dialog, et cetera.

This just doesn't apply to that massive chunk of middle-aged+ WoW players that have never touched any other video game in their life.

[Lordender]

First time MMO'er will more than likely quit 3 days into FFXIV.