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

[Kaylia]

Just to clarify, you had the AH to sell your items, and the need of a bazaar was minimal. Also, inventory wasnt as much of an issue (especially not in ffxi early day)..

[Kylewhataru]

I don't know, some region received gigantic make over (Thousand needle/tanaris region, oggrimar/durotar and a few other come to mind).

1k needles is probably the most dramatic change, but most zones aren't like that, some are barely any different.

[Charismatic]

Just to clarify, you had an AH to sell your items, and the need of a bazaar was minimal. Also, inventory wasnt as much of an issue (especially not in ffxi early day)..

Seriously. It's just not the same for XI since the auction house was there. Bazaaring is just not vital in XI. Usually when I wanted something done in rolanmart I'd just wait til I was finished playing for the day then log on to my jeuno mule. No way in hell I was going to buy a separate account for that since it's wholly unnecessary in FFXI. If you want to get your shit sold in XIV you pretty much need a retainer. It's a good thing they give you the first one free because god damn do you need it.

[Elrina]

They actually made it cheaper to do the same thing in XIV. In order to bazaar while you played in XI, you needed a separate $12/mo account, not just a $1/mo mule. $1/mo Retainers do a lot more than $1/mo mules.

They shouldn't even be charging for extra retainers, regardless. I don't know that they even originally intended people to require mules for inventory in XI, it just became necessary for many, and their pricing scheme was designed ages ago.

Charging $13/month (or $10 + $3 or whatever bullshit), and then more for each retainer is stupid.

You should get a certain amount of characters free, not just one. I don't know about anybody else, but getting all my friends together just from XI on one server was a giant clusterfuck and there are several on different servers, and while I don't really intend on heavy leveling a character on each server, it would be nice to at least get 1-2 extra characters so that I could do leves and fart around with friends that aren't on my main server without having to pay $3/each for each of them.

And retainers shouldn't cost you $1/month each with only one free. It's money, that's all. They can artificially limit inventory by a ridiculous degree, force the market ward system, build the game around raising several classes, and it's pretty much mandatory to have extra retainers sooner or later to function properly. This, too, you should be able to quest/lease for in-game currency a certain amount of additional retainers, to a total of maybe 3-4 or so, imo.

At least in XI if you had all your gobbie bags, safe quests, storage furniture, locker, etc. it was possible to function perfectly fine with a few jobs or so without needing one or more mules. There needs to be a way to stack +1/2/3 items with their NQ counterparts, whether it involves a submenu and selecting which when you select that item or something else, and some means of utilizing your inventory and selling stuff efficiently long term without the need to have additional retainers.

$13/month and designing it around this is basically a scam, in my eyes, to raise the average monthly fee (once the game actually gets going, assuming things turn around after the November and later patches) at least a few dollars past the somewhat standard $15/month. And that's USD, with the conversion rate it's worse for others.

Maybe there are others, few if any, but I can't think of any other pay-to-play MMOs that basically force you to pay extra real money every month beyond your standard monthly fee just so that you can have enough storage space to function (at least at higher levels).

Edit:
Also, isn't the entire point behind charging for additional characters because "you only need one", since SE allows for job/class changing in XI and XIV, whereas other MMOs restrict you to one class per character? Inventory is then easier to manage on each character, since you only have to worry about that one, and you have the ability to make many extra characters with no additional fee to be able to play many classes.

Wouldn't it then be fair to say that, since SE does allow many jobs/classes on one character, we should get extra storage space for each extra class we use on our character with no additional fee as a balance to extra characters costing us extra money?

[Hyan]

1k needles is probably the most dramatic change, but most zones aren't like that, some are barely any different.

Looking at it from an outside perspective it seems like a bigger budget WoTG to me. They might be finally starting to turn WoW2 from concept to reality..

Maybe there are others, few if any, but I can't think of any other pay-to-play MMOs that basically force you to pay extra real money every month beyond your standard monthly fee just so that you can have enough storage space to function (at least at higher levels).

If they will never, ever raise the storage capacity and/or implement new storages (fat chocobo!) in the future. That level beside your retainer gotta mean something.

[Lucavi]

They actually made it cheaper to do the same thing in XIV. In order to bazaar while you played in XI, you needed a separate $12/mo account, not just a $1/mo mule. $1/mo Retainers do a lot more than $1/mo mules.

Uhh.. I think both systems are complete nickel-and-dime-a-thons, but sure.

[Elrina]

If they will never, ever raise the storage capacity and/or implement new storages (fat chocobo!) in the future. That level beside your retainer gotta mean something.

Oh, I'm sure they will, to some extent at least.

But I haven't heard about anybody finding a quest or some means of raising their retainers level so far and haven't heard anything about it and/or what it might do from SE. Nor anything regarding a literal increase in inventory, or the ability to stack together the HQ versions of all the different items to help inventory management. I have, however, heard from them that they intend on letting us have several retainers, and recently that they're working on giving us the ability to have multiple retainers soon. And that they're going to be charging extra real money on a monthly basis to use them.

I'm not saying they won't give us some means of functioning at a very minimal level, just that it seems very intentionally designed to raise that average monthly fee past the standard. Enough past it to make it worth not just charging us the standard, slightly higher, monthly fee. I just can't imagine it being other than that they don't want to lose out on all the extra dollars a month they got/get in XI from people needing mules so that they had enough inventory to handle their multiple jobs, they made/make a lot of money from it.

[Hyan]

Yeah, of course it's intentional. They can do this so they will.

I just doubt it will affect other than the "top tier" of the playerbase. The rest will just enjoy the slightly less/normal subs fee and function well enough with the basic inventory management. I haven't, personally, had a problem with 160 spaces yet and I doubt I will before some much needed changes are made. Overall, I'm not that worried about 'being forced' to buy more inventory room myself.

[Kaylia]

1k needles is probably the most dramatic change, but most zones aren't like that, some are barely any different.

At least 6 maps had huge overhaul, and there is as many that had less importants but still noticeable change (ex: quests hub being replaced with a crater and the like). Sure, the geometry didn't always change, but seeing importants landmark being replaced/destroyed is pretty cool. And we arent talking about new areas. Knowing they were off limit before only make exploration better.

But again, I'm probably biased since exploration is my favorite things, and even the smallest change excite me.

[Elrina]

At least 6 maps had huge overhaul, and there is as many that had less importants but still noticeable change (ex: quests hub being replaced with a crater and the like). Sure, the geometry didn't always change, but seeing importants landmark being replaced/destroyed is pretty cool. And we arent talking about new areas. Knowing they were off limit before only make exploration better.

But again, I'm probably biased since exploration is my favorite things, and even the smallest change excite me.

Honestly, especially with what I've heard of Blizzard, I'm surprised they aren't adding this parallel to "old WoW" or whatever, and leaving the ability to visit it intact. I've heard enough about how Cataclysm is replacing it and all, but it is an expansion, so it's not completely out of the realm of thought that the areas would be added rather than replacing the old completely. Even if they replaced them, but the ability to "travel to old WoW" was there, for posterity and exploration if nothing else.

[Kaylia]

I wish they did, but I can understand why they aren't doing it from a technical standpoint. Duplicating every areas (more monsters, more quest, more npc) would add a huge load to the server and only an handful of players would care. It's not worth the price.

[Hyan]

Yep. Every developer is limited by the budget. Some more than the others.

Many times a developer's talent is simply based on how well he can use the resources given to him.

[Elrina]

Yep. Every developer is limited by the budget. Some more than the others.

Many times a developer's talent is simply based on how well he can use the resources given to him.

I almost want to take advantage of that statement to start flaming SE/XIV again, it feels ripe with potential, but I just can't be bothered. ._.

I hope you and Mioko and co. are right, and that things turn around for the better. It's just not worth arguing what is vs what could/may be later anymore.

It is what it is, enjoy it for what we can for now, eh?

[Kaylia]

Yep. Every developer is limited by the budget. Some more than the others.

Many times a developer's talent is simply based on how well he can use the resources given to him.

Budget limitations should never be an issue when it come down to the "fun" factor thought. Knowing your limits and designing a fun game around them is what matter.

[Hyan]

Budget limitations should never come to play when it come to the "fun" factor thought. Knowing your limits and designing a fun game around them is what matter.

Yeah, of course.

SE, for example, could have started outside testing even before Alpha began. I doubt they weren't without any testers but they were probably hired in-house, and exclusively Japanese. Not a good combination for a global game. They had the right idea but they didn't quite pull it off as well as they should have. Hindsight etc.

I hope they still have the same size team working for them. It might be too late, but they better give it everything they've got either way.

[Kaylia]

SquareEnix's direction probably took a wrong turn when they decided (again) to go all out on the graphics. Good visual might help the first impression, but it's not the driving force behind a mmo. Because they are working with limited time and money, directing too much ressources in the presentation mean the gameplay itself will be hurt (smaller world, harder to implement new gameplay features, less people working on it...etc), and in the end, the game will suffer from it.


If it was a new franchise, I could understand why they did this, but they can already count on a solid fanbase that was ready to give the game a fair chance.

[Nevex]

"Graphics" and "rest of the game" are never mutually exclusive. They're entirely separate aspects and improving one doesn't worsen the other. I doubt that the same people working on graphics are also working on game mechanics, UI and whatnot.
It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of design choices. With the same money resources they put in this half-assed UI, they could have done a much better job if they didn't make it server-based (read: no lag) and if they removed all the unecessary steps (I have to click a dozen of times to confirm a Local Leve synth when I can only make that one? Really?).

Been said that FFXIV's graphics aren't even that good. Copypasted envirorments, characters that look less detailed than PS3 games released two years ago, unimpressive battle animations (FFXI's weapon skills and spells looked much better) and so on.

And smaller world? If anything it's way too large. Maps could have been half the size so it doesn't take forever to travel from a place to another and monsters could have been clustered together in specific camps so they wouldn't give players who try to grind a headache.

[Kaylia]

They are not mutually exclusive unless you consider the concept of limited ressource (ie:30 millions to make a game), and you should. I shouldn't have to explain you why, but will if you insist.

This is not to say there was no terrible decision, but with reasonable graphic, they would have been able to spend much more time/money on contents that make the game more fun. That's why game designed by a single person like Minecraft can be great, and why games designed by the industry can fail horribly after not meeting the deadline.


You're missing my point about the size of the world. Do you like being stuck on a small trail around gridania? Thing like this happen because they want the environment to look great...which is nice, but not always fun from a gameplay perspective. The world right now is too empty, and traveling take too long, but it's imply because its lacking everything else (fast transportation, nothing to do outside a few specific camps)

[Riposte]

One could argue a lot of the big problems in the game could be fix with some thought. The SP system and the anima system seem to be easy to adjust. Same with guildleve timers if they ever wanted to go in that direction.

[Kaylia]

It's true for many issues that could be solved by changing a few numbers, but the unresponsive UI,the battle system slapped together at the last second, the lack of content diversity...these issues needed a lot more times to be balanced.