Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

[DakAttack]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

Impaction, compared to the class balance in FFXI, WoW is FAR LESS screwed then FFXI is. And your arguments are really really weak. So weak that I stopped reading after your character creation story. If you decided to get yourself involved in a conversation about someone benig an alien then...damn.

The only thing that is screwed about WoW is the population imbalances, on ShadowMoon Alliance to Horde ratio is 3:1. But does it matter? Hell no I still get ganked. Oh and there's absolutely nothing wrong with cookie-cutter builds, there are cookie-cutter builds in every game, yes including FFXI equipment wise.

And by the way, I created this topic to discuss about MMORPGs in general, not for you to turn this into Final Fantasy XI vs. World of Warcraft. I like both games, and if you hate one of them, too bad go home.

I'm not sure how to respond to such a rediculous post. For one, FFXI has far more classes than WoW yet still maintains a reasonable balance between them. Why do most posts in FFXI job forums not consist of whining? Because there really isn't much to whine aobut. All my points can be convinently proven by reading WoW's forums here. Sorry if you feel my arguements are weak, but I suppose you can go back to fooling yourself into thinking popularity=quality.

Honestly, I don't care why you created the topic. This has all been for the sake of arguement, as one has stated already. If somebody wishes to converse, or argue, I'll indulge them.

[kuu]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

WoW always comes into the topic because right now it's the pinnacle of MMORPG...in a sense.

It has amazing subscriber growth rate, but short track record.

One has to wonder how many sign on vs how many quit... Though moneywise, the box sale alone seems to be very profitable, and judging from how they impliment their servers, maintence cost shouldn't be that high either.

I think it's partially predictable and controllable tho about the price of crafting. The demands are always there so it's only a matter of controlling the supplies imo. Limited items from guild, the time needed to gather resources, their drop rates etc these all affect the price. If S-E really wants to keep the price down they can easily do it by increasing the drop rate or way to obtain them.

Remember refresh? lol it was over a million when it first came out. After one or two patches they increase the drop rate of it from BC and it's now dirt cheap.

Unfortunately,It's not as easy as it sounds.
People that don't know what they're doing, and even people that do, can make things more worse instead of better by trying regulate the market.

I don't think S-E has a budget to hire some hot-shot economists full time to continuessly monitor and regulate. Companies don't usually look for "Nobel prize winning economist" in resumes when they hire game developers.

[Jei]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

you seem to always find excuse to why things are the way they are huh kuu That's just stating the obvious: things we already know and not what we even care to talk about. We care about ways to improve them and so we say it. We here are not living in a communist country you know.

[kuu]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

you seem to always find excuse to why things are the way they are huh kuu That's just stating the obvious: things we already know and not what we even care to talk about. We care about ways to improve them and so we say it. We here are not living in a communist country you know.

Yep, I have a habit of doing that, but you'll be surprised how many people don't see the obvious unless stated.

Regulating drops/market is what I would consider, brute force approach. The unnatural changing of market forces for a "wellfare" like motto.

S-E does it in moderation, but A new ground up system(we are talking about future here), with some creativity is a better.

I'm sure Developers are always thinking of some creative ways to better it. The fishing system for instance and the food system, were all more "creative" ways...with mix results.... Seems people like the food system but hate the fishing system...

I would have to think long on it, if I wanted to do something similar to the crafting system...so I won't make stupid ideas.

As a starter...maybe do something about GS. GS is currently the most expensive I beleive(maybe smithing too), because gem drops are so rare... Perhaps add a new disposable in that field will even out the rate of money sink.

Just to play with the idea, maybe "shiny shiny" that will temporally dirvert a monster's attention, so it would stop chasing you, and give you some room to escape/zone/ whatever

[Pounce]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

I'm not sure how to respond to such a rediculous post. For one, FFXI has far more classes than WoW yet still maintains a reasonable balance between them. Why do most posts in FFXI job forums not consist of whining? Because there really isn't much to whine aobut. All my points can be convinently proven by reading WoW's forums here. Sorry if you feel my arguements are weak, but I suppose you can go back to fooling yourself into thinking popularity=quality.

Honestly, I don't care why you created the topic. This has all been for the sake of arguement, as one has stated already. If somebody wishes to converse, or argue, I'll indulge them.

It depends how you look at it.

WoW has it's share of job balance issues, but other than some endgame issues, most of them are PvP related, not PvE - something FFXI doesn't have to worry about at all.

Furthermore, a lot of WoW's job balance issues are "masked over" by virtue of the game's soloability, and overall ease of grouping (again, until you start approaching endgame).

FFXI's job balance issues stand out a lot more because of the forced dependence on other people.

All in all though, there's only two major issues with FFXI's job balance atm IMHO - the overabundance of largely interchangeable melee DDs - both the jobs and the players playing them - and the extreme lack of people playing the BRD job.

Speaking of which, I should add another item to the MMORPG "holy grail" list.

Abolishing the concept of "holy trinity" classes. The game should be designed so that each job/class should be equally sought after, and equally appealing to play. Most (if not all) current games fail at this, some more than others.

It's ironic if you think about it, because "holy trinity" jobs - such as backline healer/supporters - often tend to be the least popular jobs in most games. Yet many games revolve around them.

In almost every other industry, if you have a failing product line that no one is interested in, you give it the axe. But the opposite is true in the MMORPG industry so far.

It's like telling a family that wants to buy a Toyota Camry "Sorry, we can only sell you that car after we sell a hundred Pontiac Azteks first."

(For those of you who don't know, the Aztek was a car that was declared as the "ugliest car in the world", and no one wanted to buy it. Pontiac ended up axing it after barely a year in the market. BRD is the Aztek of FFXI, IMHO)

[csBahamut]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

I find that the problem with MMORPGs is not in the game itself, but in how the players percieve the game. Most of us have grown up on console RPGs. The games were done fairly quickly, and you always got all the uber gear. So everyone was uber and at the end of the game in a quick fashion. Then they could move onto the next RPG, and to the same. This is pretty easy to do with console RPGs because of their length and numbers. An MMORPG doesn't work that way. But that's not how people play. They still play like an MMORPG is a console RPG, and thus want to get to endgame and get all the uber gear, just like they did for console RPGs.

At least, that's what I notice.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

Very true. I always tell people that are console gamers, this game is not what your expecting. I detail out the differences and its pretty 50/50 as to the people that decide to try and it and those that decide not to. But if I had 5 gil for every low lvl player I heard complaining about FFXI and comparing it to the other FF's....

[Quietstorm777]

Re: Final Fantasy XI & future of MMORPGs?

i started playing FFXI during beta for NA, then quit the summer that World of warcraft beta tested..i didnt quit because of anything really wrong with the game, except the whole me being a Dark knight. it hurts to sit on your ass for hours on end cuz you dont feel like NM camping-- whilst you keep being overlooked for a party cuz a Ranger is seeking or a black mage is seeking. OMG HE DOES MORE DMG THEN DRK GET 'em GET 'em!!!...well i played World of warcraft for almost 12 months now (was released at the end of october i belive) and i had a 60 within 3 weeks of play.. because when i get a MMO i like to play it w/o break till the point of almost burning myself out. i got 300 armor smithing with relative ease (just too easy in World of warcraft) .. and now i quit World of warcraft LOL after i had all my lightforge armor(armor a paladin is destined to wear~) i realized.. omg i wanted an epic quest or something (i was so proud and happy when i hit 60 as my DRK and got to wear full AF.. after struggling to get the helmet so hard at 59..) i think WOrld of warcraft is missing epic quests, sure they have hydraxians and all this trash, but you need to be in an end game guild(i dont get along with those people) to do them, and it gets old really fast making an alt and lvling it up to 60 again and again.
Ive been playing MMORPGs since Diablo2 (forgot how long lol) i love soloability, but if you do it enough. its just like ya ya ya, same old story... when you have to depend on people to keep you alive, the thought of knowing they could screw up adds a certain thrill to a party for me. like one time in FFXI the redmage wanted her level really bad, and was getting tired (she was playing on PS2) eventually she admitted she was laying on her couch falling asleep-- she did, she fell asleep in the middle of a fight!! so that fight was by far the most exciting fight of the night ><;; and it was all cuz someone screwed up... so people think its bad people screw up, but if they didnt i think partying would be a helluva lot more boring.
ive played my fair share of MMOs shadowbane UO ,DoAC, MXO , EQ:OA , EQ1 , EQ2 , FFXI, WoW, D2 , L2 and have found small things i like in all of them(cept EQ:OA LOL) which made me want to keep playing, but the allure of others made me cancel my account.
99% of MMOs say to get good you spend time infront of the PC, people think World of warcraft does this less, i knew someone who led an end game guild(dosnt drop names) who spent like... 19 hours infront of their PC playing World of warcraft, played all day at work (was allowed) all day at home ate infront of the PC bla bla.. and only broke from it to sleep a few hours, this being said, he justified his time investment with his 1 lvl 60 no alts and alot of purples... lol... i really do think they need to make a MMO that you can pick up and play and put down at any time.

every MMORPG has something to offer, use the free month to decide if its what u want ^_^ LOL

[Brayden]

Re: Final Fantasy XI &amp; future of MMORPGs?

When I retire from FFXI, I want the next game I play to have the same driving force that brought me here: story. Ive seen a lot of other MMORPGs and while there are quests in them, there is no real overall "story" like FFXI has. I dont really have a drive to just get my char stronger and lvl up. I do those things so I can experience the story of the game (just like a single player RPG). I dont know a lot about Front Mission Online, but from what I gather a lot of it is PvP based- and since the world is at war, I cant imagine a whole deep storyline like Im used to seeing in FM3, 4 etc. Fantasy Earth Online too seems heavily focuses on PvP- which Im not fond of really. I'm about Pvp In a FPS, not a RPG- but thats just me ( I know there is a whole community of pro PvP people and I have no problem with that). With these looking to be the current/newest MMO games SE is focusing on, I am glad that FFXIs stint isnt over b/c I sadly dont see any other games that have what Im looking for.

[Quietstorm777]

Re: Final Fantasy XI &amp; future of MMORPGs?

i have been looking for a MMO with a good storyline too, World of warcraft i thought would have it. (on alliance human side) they have one stretching from like.. 1 till 40 or something (brotherhood) i think LOTR will have a good storyline and ive been looking at a MMO about pirates(forget the names) but i think they will both have a good storyline -- other parts of the game yet to be approved of.
the concept of pirates hasnt really been done to my knowledge in MMO and i think like a guild ship fleet will be fun to have.. and it will give alot of freedoms w/o drowning that most other MMOs havnt given (FFXI --- eew i cant touch water!!) (WoW -- noo i am going too deep! my muscles cant take it!) (L2-- i'm going to meditate underwater cuz i have seemingly unlimited breath~) lol ^^

[Omni]

Re: Final Fantasy XI &amp; future of MMORPGs?

There are several "holy grails" the MMORPG industry has been trying to pursue for some time now. Who knows if any of them will ever be achieved, but still, it's a general guideline on what people are hoping for in the "ultimate MMORPG".

1.) Balance of soloability vs. grouping. Making solo viable, while still providing ample incentives (not necessarily forced) to group with other players.

2.) Open-ness of PvP. Making PvP as open as possible while at the same time minimizing/elminating "grief" killing.

3.) Accessibility of "uber" high-end items. Make uber items attainable without ridiculous requirements, yet make them rare enough that they're highly sought-after.

4.) Accessibility of high-end content. This one kinda has been achieved recently, namely through instanced encounters.

5.) Skill vs. time. Most MMORPGs reward almost exclusively on time spent to the point that massive time expenditure is usually more rewarded than player ability. Balancing content for "hardcore" vs. more "casual" players.

FFXI is a rather unique title, but it shares more in common with Western games than it does with Asian ones - the vast majority being PvP-heavy Korean games that are of an extremely competitive nature. The "co-op" that takes place in these games is usually purely for PvP and is totally different from the forced-grouping system FFXI relies upon. Eve Online is IMHO, the closest Western game to these kind of MMORPGs, with the same kind of faction-building you find in games like Lineage.

i'm sorry but i need to disagree with this.

All of these points are very ideal but the fact is, they are unattainable.
The funny thing about mmo's there is only so much you can control before it becomes too much. if you control too much, the freedom and sense of discovery of the mmo is lost. too little, exploits and abuse arises. This isnt real lifeâ„¢, though at times a lot of the situations and feelings do share real lifeâ„¢ similarities. All of the points you've addressed are direct opposites. IMO its one or the other, unless you have some way to limit a persons ambition, greed, determination and resourcefulness, all the while being able to keep interest in the game, you can bet your gil that people will be exploiting everything till kingdom come or turn the game into a virtual dinosaur. since in game life has no consequence and ill-effects as does real lifeâ„¢, people act a lot differently online.

imo, i think ffxi has done a great job with balance. though, i do agree, it can be frustrating not being able to attain certain things b/c of the type of involvement this game requires, i still think this game has a good range of balance.

personally, i dont have the same amount of time that i used to when playing this game. it does bum me out, but just like anything in life, you need to put in something to get something. yes, this is a game, but i think this is what makes ffxi so intense. the deep involvment of its players with the game, community and each other.

[Susurrus]

Re: Final Fantasy XI &amp; future of MMORPGs?

I like the story in FFXI. Anyone who does missions knows what I'm talking about.

I'm only on PM4.2, and I'm already hooked on the story. (Was actually hooked after PM2.3.)

Windurst missions were fairly good for the story, Zilart was a little better. Promathia (what I've seen) is outstanding. My set is going to do PM4.2 soon (someone in the set wants to do it as RNG, and needs 5 more levels on it, so we're letting him do it.)