This game is a utter joke.. seriously.Follow

People say leveling and the sense of accomplishment is an outdated concept in MMORPGs. "No one has time for grinding" and so on. The AF quests I've notice are actually challenging (final pieces at least) but it has a good storyline to compensate any short comings. Gotta face facts, MMOs are all about easy playing and casual friendly, it can't have TOO much of a challenge.

I actually subbed to see what the jobs and gear would be like. Seeing that many people with full AF equipped made me regret the $9.99 I just spent.

The AF wasn't meant to be hard to get, nor does it have any stats that stand out compared to materia'd gear. I think you guys got the wrong impression about the value of the gear.

If you want hard-to-get gear, you want the Darklight Gear that drops from the new raids and is considerably better than the AF gear. And no, I haven't seen anyone walking around with Darklight yet, let alone even do the raids for a win.

Edited, Mar 9th 2012 12:07am by UltKnightGrover

You will always have the hardcore people that grind the sh*t out of games. Diablo 2, would have lvl 90s in a day after Ladder reset. And so on. I obviously can not tell you how to enjoy a game... but if you play a game and are bothered by the fact OTHER people have blasted through content, then you are probably doing it wrong. Last I checked, a game was meant to entertain the player the way they want it to. I personally don't know what you are doing to level up so fast, I might be a noob and just not know but I sure as hell can't level that fast. It might be because I take it slow, but that's just my personal preferance not to rush stuff. It'll be a good bit of time before 2.0 comes out anyways, this is essentially just a transition period, since they are pretty much in a hurry to get content out, a lot of research and factors could be skipped initially. Due to the fact they are redoing the whole entire game now, I now have confidence SE will have content for both Casual and Hardcore so Hardcore players can't have the best sh*t over night.

But in other words, Chill out brah. It's just a game, play it how you want and don't worry how others play it. You're not paying for their experience.

I couldn't wholeheartedly agree any more. I am a very new player and have a lot to learn about the game and it's nuances but I'm enjoying every step of the way. I could care less if someone has the time to complete new content as soon as it's released. I don't have that time anymore and I enjoy the time that I do get to spend on the game. I am definitely entertained and I have my own goals which I will reach at my own pace.

I'm one of those who think grinding mobs as a primary leveling mechanic is a little outdated but still wouldn't mind a substantial journey to the level cap. It's no longer the early days of MMOs, players aren't forced to play a game where we go outside and clobber rabbits for hours at a time in order to progress.

The easy method to getting around this problem is to make the leveling process go fairly quickly and focus mostly on end game content, but it's not the only way. If they make a truly interesting content to play through and progress along the way, people can still enjoy the leveling process. Whether that content is in the form of quests (and not all "kill the field mice, they're eating my crops" type quests but truly interesting quests with some depth and exploration to them), missions, storyline content, events, fights, or something to keep the player interested. Some MMOs and nearly ever good single player RPG manages to keep people engaged throughout rather than just at end game, so it's not impossible.

At the same time, if they do want to make a game where it's fairly easy to hit the cap and make all of the content designed for top level players, I'm alright with that too, it just shifts the content from one end to the other (although it does create a few problems with the way they designed DoH/DoL IMO, but that's a whole other can of worms). The most important thing is that the content that players want to enjoy playing is there, and that you don't have to spend a ton of time participating in activities you don't want to be a part of in order to participate in ones that you do.

I don't know what people are talking about. I have every job to 50, and I logged in 5 minutes after the servers were up, and used all my anima, played for 5 hours, and still haven't finished Pld. Straight pushing through these quests can be done in a single night for 1 job (I ran into a 1 1/2 hour delay getting a pt together to go into the Vale). And if you have a group of people to party with together, you might have gotten 2 done, but these quests are by no stretch easy, or quick.

At level 50, the first 3 quests are a little time consuming, but not bad. The level of the quests are staggered, so as people level up, they can get abilities/armor.

After the 3rd quest, it's party time. They can not be completed outside a party of 4 (ussually 8) level 45s.

To call this game a joke over the AF quests is to take it completely out of context. These are full stories, cutscenes, background on characters and the world.

You also need to take into consideration that they are adding stuff that many people felt should have been there from the start. With the content that is now in the game, getting started in it will feel more in-depth. You have your first teir quests. You have your class quests to 36, you have your storyline quests to 36. Then you have your Grand Company and your Job quests to 45-50.

There are stages of growth being built into the game. Things to do other than endless grinding.

Now, judging the fact that most people currently playing have one or more level 50 jobs, and there are armies of people lining up to do these quests, and that they got done with them in a day. You had set yourself up for disappointment, not on SE's part, but your expectations of the playerbase. Of course people are going to want to get stuff done as fast as they can. I want my Pld ready for the dungeon raids. That means I need to get all the abilities. Once I have that done, I will start working on other jobs, but, I can start doing raids immediately.

And while most of the AF armor is moderate armor, and we have outpaced it. Consider the level in which people will get the armor if the game does restore it's player base. It will be some of the best armor in the game for them. In time they will outgrow it, and shift to new armor.

Even now, the Pld armorset is better in many situations than any crafted armor. However, I will keep my +1 double materia armor for situations where I want higher def, or higher attack, or don't need as much enmity, or MP, or when I play as Gld.

I think this whole issue with hating the fact that people have finished in a day with 1-2 armorsets is pretty silly. People will chew through anything put infront of them that they can. And there are people who are stuck on the 3rd+ quest because they couldn't keep up with other players, or weren't on fast enough (my linkshell was already on the third set of quests by the time I even logged in, and seriously I logged in ~5-10 minutes after the hour).

The hardcore gamers will have all the new content beat before the end of next week. I, the casual gamer, on the other hand will take the next 12-24 weeks to complete all the job quests, get my room in the inn, defeat the new dungeons and level my remaining classes to 50.

While I don't disagree in principle that leveling is too easy. I do think that unless they add significantly more low to mid level content making drastic increases to the leveling curve is a mistake. At this point, Yoshi is trying to make it possible for players to all be on the same level. Finding parties has been hard enough at lower levels because of the small server populations and advanced level of most of the current players.

I do recommend he add more low to mid level content but the chore then becomes convincing the older playerbase they haven't been robbed and/or it is worth starting a whole new character to experience all the content again.

Edited, Mar 9th 2012 11:15am by kainsilv

You mean "worth doing" insofar as, if you don't do it right away, it will be nerfed down to stupidity and quickly subsumed by the next, newest dungeon two months later that features the next, newest reskins?

I agree with the principle of this, although I wouldn't go so far as to label them "bad" - it's completely subjective. While you and I might not enjoy it, others do and there's nothing wrong with that.

If I want to play an MMO that ascribes to current MMORPG design and gameplay theory I have hundreds of choices with more and more entering the market each month. Where are the online RPG gaming options for those of us who want more of that pre-2005, FFXI/EQ type gameplay? And I don't necessarily mean grinding rabbits solo for months on end to gain three levels, but where are the MMORPGs that place emphasis and sustained gameplay on the leveling process instead of casting it aside as a casual affair, to be completed at a fast-paced and leisurely actively only to relegate the bulk of the character progression to end-game carrot on stick gear grinds and gimmicky dungeon boss fights?

I had far more fun grinding crabs in Valkurm Dunes chewing forward to level 20 and the next mobhunt zone than I ever did in other MMOs in which I had to memorize that when the boss pulls out his purple flag you need to stand on the red square or that you don't cast heals when he shifts behind the second platform because that means it's opposite day and if you don't click the green orb he'll turn into Rip Taylor and shower the entire raid with confetti that removes all your hotkey and keybind presets.


Edited, Mar 9th 2012 12:14pm by Whales

Each storylne has it's own self contained plot, similar to the regular class quests. At least the BLM quest has no ties whatsoever with the main story or the 7th umbral era plots.

I beg to disagree my friend. Yes certain topics are subjective but some arent. Let's use an example of a cheeseburger from McDonalds and a cheeseburger from a 4 star restaurant. Most people with educated and mature palletes, foodies or even people with class and good taste would choose the 4 star restaurant cheeseburger over a BigMac. Yes there is nothing wrong with liking a McDonalds cheeseburger but in the end of the day, you have to be a reasonable judge of what is better overall. I remember reading some comments of when 2.0 came out and people were complaining that they LIKED the current repetitive, bland maps and didnt want new ones. Im sure most of us would agree theyre retarded. Oh but why? its their opinion and its subjective! Hey man, In life you gotta take sides. One side is always more right than the other.

Edited, Mar 9th 2012 1:40pm by VitaminD2112

I'm sorry, you can't compare the leveling speed in 14 to that of WoW anymore. Considering last week Blizzard is giving away level 80 characters to get people to return to the game.

To listen to people get upset about the rate at which they get Primal gear, then to hear how people are getting AF too quickly, it's really getting to the point where the fanbase is starting to sound like a Pushme-Pullme.

It's an MMORPG built by a company rooted in previous generation gameplay success that has billed itself coming out of the gates as being more mainstreamed to current MMO philosophy, which is now undergoing a completely radical shift not only in gameplay mechanics but in the entire client and server architecture.

That's about as a good a recipe to attract a divided community as I've ever seen, as both sides feel like they have an opportunity to speak up about the direction of the reshaped product.

Not excusing it or making it sound like it's OK, just saying it's what we're probably going to be stuck with until well after 2.0 launches, most likely into 2.1 and beyond.

FFXIV is becoming more and more like FFXI and thats no joke.. seriously.




Consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs hopefully.




No not accomplishment, relief (mostly for your bladder), quickly followed by despair and dread when you looked at the tnl for the next level.

Whales,

I get the feeling he likes to be spanked hard with a cat o nine tails. That's just my guess.

Yeah my main issue is I like a sense of accomplishment after overcoming some obsticle, but FF14 is so damn easy of a game and leveling is way to damned fast and such that I just can't seem to get this feeling, I used to love it when I leveled in ff11, I felt accomplished. in FF14 its like "meh, gained another level big deal" because its so fast and way to easy. Was in a party on my archer and stuff was dying so fast I could barely get 2 shots off, nevermind the fact that due to the game being like 90% level based even the gladiator was out damaging me even though I had the best bow/arrows I could use for my level, just because he was a few levels higher, its kinda a stupid system. Well out damaging my auto attacks anyway, I could spam ws's alot more than him. I dunno, I just can't seem to get into ff14 at all, i'm trying too but its just not happening, the whole games experence feels pretty shallow and unintersting to me. I know you might say "Well 2.0 will be good" but ask yourself, how much of the current playerbase do you think is going to be there 9+ months from now? I'd say not very many myself.

Also the entire materia system needs to be reworked, because its fairly annoying trying to get materia on gear when you end up needing 4 diffrent crafters for your gear set. I think they need to change it to not having any req to meld, just that u need a 18+ crafter for the quest after that you can put materia on anything, or set it up so if you say have a lv 30 crafting class, you can now put materia into any item up to level 30, insted of just into items that crafter can make.

I wouldn't say a community even exists per se. What you have is a tiny population of die hard fans, and a large population of gamers who largely see this game as a complete joke. I'd say if they wanted to boost their playerbase, they really have to revamp, not just please the current players (those will play no matter what).

It's funny to me that some people would complain about the job quests being too easy.

For the life of me, I can't even get a group together to do the first Darkhold quest, let alone the Aurum Vale quest to gather all of my armor.

If anything, these quests seem right on par with the quests in FFXI... hopefully, once the level cap for this game eventually gets lifted, I'll be able to round up the rest of my gear with just a couple of people, if it comes to that.

Edited, Mar 9th 2012 11:26pm by Thayos

People are still comparing WoW's total playerbase to XIV's total simultaneous logins during a certain primetime?

It is baffling what causes this, as one would assume that even an accurate comparison would get the point across.

This is going to be the issue for SE, the people with friends who get everything done in 2 seconds, and the one with no friends who can't get anything done and quits. The community is getting worse for new players cause most established shells have ridiculous admission requirements, so you come, get nothing done and quit. I know from experience cause I've quit several times for that reason alone. This is why most will wait for 2.0 and hope for new servers.

Only people who actually play have the opportunity to give feedback on the changes? Oh the horror >_>

Yeah, out of the 700,000 to 1,000,000 in sales you should only listen to the 19,000-25,000 devoted. #OccupyEorzea

Seriously, what I mean is if we were running this business we would be eyeing that huge chunk of people that wanted to give us their money but bailed. Then see what we could do to bring them back in. I'd still value the opinions of 19-25k but it would be secondary. I would totally agree with you if the current player base was 51% instead of 3.6% at best.

edited because i woke up way to early today.


Edited, Mar 10th 2012 11:05am by apapertiger

The problem is, it's the whiners and pessimists that have gotten the game to where it is now (half functional and somewhat fun). For the most part, the official forums is now a positive place, which is good, but not what the devs need all the time. I mean, just about everything that's been complained about has been changed, or will be changed, and it's arguably been for the better. I know, the people playing are having fun, and most don't care about the others, "Just stop playing and leave us alone!". It's fine to have that attitude, but on the other side of it, this game needs to make money. You bring people back, you make more money, you keep people employed who in turn make content who then make the game even more enjoyable. If this player base doesn't increase, and drops down to just 4-8 servers, will SE even bother updating every 3-4 months, no. You want people to criticize and you want people to come back, it's as simple as that.

No lol Yoshi P and his team have done that.
The whiners and pessimists are not a cohesive group they are just individuals with opinions, of which only a handful have anything of value to say. Yes SE has been guilty of fanserving with several of the changes to patches but thats just changes to 1.0 really. 2.0 is another matter and we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Thats the great thing about 2.0 because in many ways its immune to the opinions of haters or anyone else out there talking bs on internet forums, so we may actually have a good final result that isn't just for the few that are currently subbing.
Personally I reckon SE will keep going for current and former FFXI players more and more as far as 2.0 is concerned and hope the shiny graphics will do to attract the rest of the MMO fanbase. In other words what they should have done in the first place.