Changes That Seem All Too Familiar - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

@Uiltetwr That's the direction Versus XIII is going in, its much more realistic and modern than any other Final Fantasy game, with dozens of in game locations being modeled after real world places. And its combat is supposed to be a mix of what was seen in Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts (a lot of the new gameplay mechanics in DDD were supposedly unused ideas from Versus, but still good enough to not discard)

@Uiltetwr kingdom hearts turned out well but dirge...well...

@cjtopspin You should play FF1... but for reasons that have nothing to do with FF14.

@cjtopspin trolololol

@cjtopspin Why?

@cjtopspin for real?

@skillz191 Wouldn't it be better if Square Enix started making good games again?

@Voqar I'm not really a fan of how S-E does their games, but if any game is likely to reinforce group play, it's FFIV. Ever play FFXI? That freaking game was pretty much impossible to play solo after the first few levels.

@Voqar I'm sick of games that require grouping to make significant advancements.  They COULD set up a system that adjusts monster strength depending on whether you're in a party or playing solo.  As a red mage in Final Fantasy XI, even with the experience point boosts in the updates over the past couple of years, it's hard to actually gain levels fighting regular world monsters when playing solo, and sometimes I don't want to commit to a party and end up feeling trapped in it for three or four hours if my leaving the party would disband it for lack of a replacement.  I get bored with endless, mind-numbing grinding for experience.  It takes a while for a red mage to kill something, and part of being a red mage is survival skill using magic.  But you get no experience for the time you spent keeping yourself alive while henpecking a monster to death.  Some high-powered thief, ranger or dark knight can kill three mobs in the same time it takes a red mage to kill one.  So those other classes can gain solo experience three times faster.

Maybe FFXIV will be different, but in FFXI, you get no experience points for completing most of the quests, unless the reward is an experience book.  But quests that give experience books are comparatively rare.

Fortunately there are now ways to make pretty quick FFXI experience gains (Campaign) if your level is high enough.  But grinding solo from 40-65 is just slow slow slow.

I'm not against some goals requiring a party, but then in a way, I am if some huge boss-monster could be instanced and then whittled down to a strength suitable for someone who likes playing solo.

Sometimes parties are a headache.  First, you have to find party members.  Then you have to wait for them all to gather in a location.  Sometimes the wait can be an hour and a half while people collect their gear, buy food, buy medicine, go to the bathroom, tend to screaming kids in the next room.  And then there are the people who suddenly say, "Sorry, gotta go."  And then the party is sometimes left too weak to continue and the mission or quest fails, especially if you're in some instanced dungeon nobody can get into to replace the deserter.

And then there's the issue of latecomers to the game who need to get missions accomplished -- missions others have had to run dozens of times for newer players, and that kind of thing can get boring.  In Final Fantasy XI, I helped a lot of people, and developing a reputation as a helper left me getting requests for help as soon as I logged on looking forward to crafting or leveling up skills.  I tried to avoid asking for help unless what I was after was literally impossible to do alone, such as acquiring certain pieces of Artifact gear.  I *HATE* asking others for help.  I didn't get Rank 5 (which gives airship passes) until I could solo it at Lv.50.  But you can ride airships at Lv.30, so naturally, there were lots of people constantly asking for help to get Rank 5 at Lv.30.

So all these problems could be remedied with "floating strength" monsters that become weaker or stronger depending on the number of people fighting them.  That said, parties would still have to go to higher-level areas to find challenges so they wouldn't all run out into beginner areas at Lv.70 and expect a challenge.

@lorider25 weird how that bit of reasoning sounds illogical until its put into context, huh?

@zhing_wong I use to play GW2 like you, but then I took an arr... until I found the leveling in PvP is separate from PvE....

@FFBruno Because they didn't let anyone down with the original FFXIV, the game they had to remake because it was so horrible?

@FFBruno Do we?

@breathnac Yeah! Let's all be levelheaded like you, breathnac. What score did you give World of Warcraft again? The answer is: 1.

@breathnac your right, the only thing that i hate about the old final fantasy xiv is the combat system, the craft system, the name of the classes and your gear breaks and logically you need to fix them with hard to find tools.

@YeahBuddy90  The FFfanboys will be there one day one without a doubt. There is nothing unique about progressive gear. All MMO's have one grind or another some are just better at hiding it.

@shojikun87 List some, I just got curious.

@gamerdan987A Realm Reborn also introduces a system called the hunting log, a feature that's familiar to anyone who's played Ragnarok Online 2. Players go through a checklist of enemies they need to kill for the log. Killing a required set of enemies will net adventurers extra experience. 

Please learn to read.

@Inigo1Montoya Besieged was actually scheduled and based on conditions. As for WotG campaign battles were random and could be related to FATEs.

FFXI actually laid a lot of groundwork for future MMOs, as did Eve, NWN, AO, EQ and even WoW. What we see these days is all a culmination of past games features. There never will be a groundbreaking MMO from probably 5 years ago forward until we reach the point (and I'm sorry for referencing this) Sword Art Online ie Virtual Reality MMO.

There will never be a "WoW killer" as blizzard themselves can't even kill their own game without turning the switch off. Which they will never do as it is akin to turning the lights on cockroaches, everyone will scatter and they will lose their behemoth market share.