E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Level grind I can deal with, raids/instances requiring groups I'm all for, but I'd really like to see the ability to do the storyline missions/quests with solo or low-man. I've missed out on so much of the FFXI content because I don't have large chunks of time to find a group to do them (and now no one seems to be interested in doing them anymore).

No matter how easy or less painful EXP is made, I think we all know its going to be a grind no matter what. Grouping for EXP or soloing it - either works for me.

As far and endgame content goes, I want less emphasis on content that may need an alliance or more than one alliance to progress. Of course, its really all about finding the right group to do that with. Problem is with FFXI's server structure, you're at the mercy of whatever your server currently has.

DC Universe Online is going to evolve past that problem and I hope SoE is sharing their notes with SE on this one. DCU players will be able to team up with any friend from any server seamlessly. Slow night on the Earth Prime server? Let's try the Earth 2 Server or the Earth X server. No silly fees to transfer, its just part of the game. Or as DC would rationalize it, a "multiverse."

Would do wonders for endgame guilds. It would make finding groups so much easier, in addition to make community standing mean a lot more.

[Caspian]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

EDIT: Now! The important question. Who is creating Dreams in Eorzea so I can still post with all of you fine folks?

Get Ping on it.

[Murphie]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Well, I for one am incredibly excited. I'm surprised by how much.

And FFXI will be fine. Will it lose subscribers? Sure. But EQ is still going, and look at how old it is. EQ2 certainly pulled some veteran EQ players away. Some never left. Some went back. Some played both. Many went to WoW or other games. FFXI will likely experience a population decrease, but there are a lot of servers, and they can always be consolidated a bit to keep populations up. There is still a lot of content in FFXI worth exploring, so there's no reason to think that it will just die.

I want to say SOE did this thing where you had a subscription to both EQ and EQ2 or some other SOE game for one price (not the base line price for one game, but some sort of prorated shit). Or maybe I'm crazy. I don't know. But maybe SE would do something like that eventually.

EDIT: Now! The important question. Who is creating Dreams in Eorzea so I can still post with all of you fine folks?

[Taskmage]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Burrito and Enchilada are both in use on Lakshmi according to ffxiah. =/

More on topic it seems like every FFXIV video on youtube other than the one Murphie linked is a rickroll or some other sort of troll. It's annoying.

[neighbortaru]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Thanks TM but that would require me moving 2 accounts over... and then there's the problem of making sure our names are available

[Taskmage]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

I know of a good linkshell on Lakshmi that would be happy to help you <.<

[neighbortaru]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Level grind I can deal with, raids/instances requiring groups I'm all for, but I'd really like to see the ability to do the storyline missions/quests with solo or low-man. I've missed out on so much of the FFXI content because I don't have large chunks of time to find a group to do them (and now no one seems to be interested in doing them anymore).

[Caspian]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

In reference to many people wanting more limitied time friendly play and a few references to WoW being "solo focused": Its really not, yes getting to level cap can easily be done solo, Instanced dungeons are available at all levels of play and do require a full party to complete and are often a lot of fun. Basically, the difference in soloability between FFXI and WoW is the grind to level cap. Even then, when the last WoW expansion hit I had a LOT of fun questing and levelling with friends. But, if you want to do just about anything at cap, you have to do it with a group. You can solo for money and daily quests, but anything thats considered endgame must be done with a group. For pvp arena fights you have to have a small group of good players using vent to win. For PVE you're looking at 10 or 25 people working well together often for several hours a week to see progression. Thats something I think I would enjoy more in this new FF MMO. Hell, it took me two years to hit 75 in FFXI. Part of that was me wanting some of the best gear I could get, since as a DD unless you're geared to the teeth you're gonna have more than a little trouble getting parties and left waiting potentially for hours.

[Taskmage]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

There had better be goblins. Playable farking goblins.

[Taermus]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

There had better be goblins. Playable farking goblins.

[Telera]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

There are a few things that would get me to jump to watching XIV's every update and twitch, and I may as well go into them as not:

As Karinya said: making it so a job's main talent can't be pasted onto another's with nigh-equal efficiency. Ninja, White Mage, etc. Hybrids are nice to a point, until they start forcing other jobs into holes. Utsusemi is the worst offender in this category, but anything /whm is just about as bad. As stated, there is a line between making hybrids too gimp and making them too overpowered, but they need to find it.

The timed pops. Do away with them. Rare/EX gear should be 100% drop. It is not possible for it to flood the market, and no one piece of gear has ever broken anything in XI, so I honestly do not see the mentality behind Rare/EX gear having such low drop rates, other than the blatantly obvious point of time-sink. Sure, you should have to work (read: fight a difficult battle) for the gear, but fight the fight and then still not get it perhaps? And have to continue camping against 400 other joes needing the same gear? Annoying. Nothing enjoyable or challenging in merely waiting.

Which brings me to timesinks on the whole. I'm aware that they're a necessary evil in any MMO to a point. But really, SE, there's so much to do in XI that even if you cut the poptimer/drop rate/farming for gil for days on end nonsense, it would still take years for any one player to experience everything. Stop selling yourself short and padding the game with unnecessary timesinks. You really are great at adding enjoyable content. We don't need padding to keep us in. And even games with less content can keep players without using loads of timesinks if the atmosphere and gameplay are fun.

More solo/small group content. FoV, Campaign, even Besieged have taken huge steps in this direction. I'm aware some people think that 'earning' your right to solo is the right and proper way to run a game, but I'm going to have to disagree. I should not have to earn the right to gain exp in a way that fits my time and personality. There should be paths for all types of players and playstyles. You've got your social types who love to have a full group at their back wherever they go. You have your small group types who prefer to duo or trio with a few good buddies. And you've got your outright soloers who do it for the challenge, the relaxation, or because it's all their free time allows. All of these should be equally catered to, and be able to gain exp at a reasonable rate that is more or less comparable. Those worried about the skill of the soloer really needn't bother, as most of them wouldn't touch big-group content with a fifty foot pole. I do not see this as detrimental to the 'social' aspect of the game, and don't understand the argument that it is. Just because someone levels alone doesn't mean he never helps his LS or friends, or never participates in the economy. You don't have to have arbitrary forced grouping to have 'society'. How many parties have we all been in that were completely silent aside from pertinent battle information? Yeah, that doesn't count as 'socializing', sorry. A bot would give you as much company. Grouping doesn't create socialization by default. Social types will be social whether you force them into groups or not, and those who aren't won't be even if you make them group. They'll be the type that show up, do their job, and say little to nothing outside of what's necessary. (Which is what I did do back when I played, nine times of ten.)

Money. I'm not asking for super awesome easy money here. I'm not even rich in LotRO. But it would be nice if NPCs gave you a feasible source of income from selling them garbage that does not move on the AH. 4-5 gil for stuff? Pitiful. At least make it a decent secondary source of income. AH does not have to be the be all and end all of gaining money for the things you need. And if money isn't *too* rare, it actually works in the inverse favor of the RMT. If it isn't so time-consuming to get, the temptation and the 'demand' for the gil drops. They'll always be around, even LotRO has RMT, but they are surprisingly sparse, simply because money isn't such a timesink in and of itself. People laugh at the ads what little we do see them (I haven't seen one in over a year), and no one can conceive of a reason for anyone to even use the service. I burn 500s on repairs? Well, so I spend 30 mins/hour in Annuminas, sell the vendor trash and I have it back, along with maybe some pages for my Kinmate's alts. Win/win for everyone. I don't have to go farm one stack of something for 2+ hours and wait for it to sell, while likely being undercut by some Joe.

Oh, and more slots on the AH, plzkthx.

[Aksannyi]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

Jumping is fun, until some dev decides that since there's jumping, there should be some dungeons that are like 3d platformer games!

Except with lag. And basically none of the features of actual 3d platformers except jumping (e.g. no climbing or catching hold of ledges you almost hit). And players who don't LIKE platformer games and didn't expect to be buying or playing one. And did I mention lag?

So, basically, jumping can be fun but it needs to be handled carefully. Don't make anything other than convenience depend on it. (Ditto swimming or other forms of 3d movement - fun, but awkward with most control sets, especially ones primarily designed for 2d.) In an MMO, getting there is *not* half the fun, but can occasionally be 90% of the frustration.

I do agree that there should be clearer demarcation of what is and is not passable, though - that should have made it into my long post. (WoW is even worse, with some slopes too steep to walk/jump up and other *identical looking* slopes you need to walk/jump up to reach important places.) Freer movement would be nice in some ways, but otherwise give us clearly visible and obvious forcefields, lava, cliffs, or something else that players won't try to enter - and then don't put even one easter egg in it, *ever*, or players will spend the next 5 years trying to find the second place where you can walk through a wall or other unwalkable terrain.

Agreed, also, one thing I LOATHE about WoW is the ease of falling off of shit to my death. That's not even fair ... especially since I have to use the arrow keys to move, which is a lot more difficult than just using an analog stick on a controller.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

I want to see more emphasis placed on and encouraging exploration - this is one of the biggest and most unspoken problems that FFXI has had.

We are called "adventurers" and yet I'd say 90% do the exact opposite of that title, never venturing beyond the places they are familiar with. There are some really amazing places in FFXI that people are just frighted of or unwilling to go to, some of the best experiences I had were on BST, which not only let me go off the beaten path, but encouraged it.

[Taskmage]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

If Karinya said something I don't agree with I didn't notice. Aside from the gameplay issues there are obviously some deficiencies of the interface and the backend that need to be dealt with.

[Karinya]

re: E3 2009: FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Coming in 2010

What's wrong with jumping? Jumping is fun, and it beats having to get stuck behind something that is two inches high but I can't step over.

Jumping is fun, until some dev decides that since there's jumping, there should be some dungeons that are like 3d platformer games!

Except with lag. And basically none of the features of actual 3d platformers except jumping (e.g. no climbing or catching hold of ledges you almost hit). And players who don't LIKE platformer games and didn't expect to be buying or playing one. And did I mention lag?

So, basically, jumping can be fun but it needs to be handled carefully. Don't make anything other than convenience depend on it. (Ditto swimming or other forms of 3d movement - fun, but awkward with most control sets, especially ones primarily designed for 2d.) In an MMO, getting there is *not* half the fun, but can occasionally be 90% of the frustration.

I do agree that there should be clearer demarcation of what is and is not passable, though - that should have made it into my long post. (WoW is even worse, with some slopes too steep to walk/jump up and other *identical looking* slopes you need to walk/jump up to reach important places.) Freer movement would be nice in some ways, but otherwise give us clearly visible and obvious forcefields, lava, cliffs, or something else that players won't try to enter - and then don't put even one easter egg in it, *ever*, or players will spend the next 5 years trying to find the second place where you can walk through a wall or other unwalkable terrain.