exaggerating how much is changed?Follow

I'm just going bookmark this for a future reply. Don't mind me.

I agree with Kaichi. This isn't 1.0 with a new engine. *That's what I was hoping for :(* Oh well. It's completely different. The feel and the look and the in game mechanics have all changed. The only thing that remains the same is the art, lore, and the basic fundamentals that make it a Final Fantasy mmo. It isn't the same game. It isn't an exaggeration. Even the jobs have changed. From what I've seen from the game play videos they posted :o

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 3:20pm by GDLYL

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 3:30pm by GDLYL

I didn't think he had broken the NDA

Ahhhhh I see now, herp

The beta hasn't even started yet though right? Put down the pitch forks :O

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 3:31pm by GDLYL

Based on what we saw in the alpha videos, though, it is very different. The only thing I recognized in Gridania was the inn, and The Black Shroud was so different I would never have believed they were the "same" game.

I hear what you're saying... but I think Final Fantasy Online games break the mold a little. Time will tell, of course, but I recall being very excited whenever a Final Fantasy came out because they took years to make and they were (usually) pretty fun when they did show up in the store. So during those long waits, you might play your old Final Fantasy games again while you wished for a new one, but it just wasn't the same.

So in comes FFXI... a Final Fantasy that is constantly being developed with new things to do arriving all the time, plus, you also get to play with other Final Fantasy fans who like the same games you do at the same time. And thus, a terrible addiction was born.

So I think FFXIV's saving grace isn't going to be that it's the most popular MMO on the block. It will be that it's a Final Fantasy game that fills in the void of waiting for that next Final Fantasy game to come around in a constantly developed Final Fantasy world filled with the company of like-minded companions. Or something like that.

Thing with SWTOR is that there isn't a progressive series of Star Wars video games made by the same developers that brings the same loyal fans back for more each time. Yes, Star Wars does have a rabid fan base, which is good, but the world of movies and the world of video games seldom work together in harmony (as many failed movie-into-video-games and video-games-into-movies have shown).

LOTR and AoC both have loyal followings in prose and comics as well as the big screen, but they haven't been met with success in MMO-dom as much as it would seem like a no-brainer at first blush.

SE met success in FFXI because it was a continuation of a popular video game series to begin with, so it scratches an itch that its followers already had. I think WoW also capitalizes on this as well on the heels of the Warcraft series, but also the way it borrows elements of Diablo, and the renowned quality that Blizzard had, to their credit, delivered in their previous titles.

These guys already know how to hit their gamers right in the sweet spot in a way a movie or novel franchise has yet to figure out.

That's why I think the Elder Scrolls MMO has a good chance of success as long as it connects with its fans who know and love the Elder Scrolls series as video games in the first place.

FFXIV was bad not because it was a Final Fantasy game, but because its standards for quality was far too low to be passable in this day and age of gaming. They simply hadn't done their research and ignored the overwhelming crowd who had. But given another chance to fix these problems, I think it will turn out okay. I believe there will be enough fans left who still want that itch scratched to make it work.

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 7:33pm by Xoie

I'll have to wager a plate of cookies that fans will make a derivative MMO based on a video game series a success than it will fail because it wasn't innovative enough. I may end up with two plates of cookies this way, but it's worth the risk.

Edited, Feb 19th 2013 8:09pm by Xoie

wait, are people seriously claiming that SWTOR somehow failed harder than FFXIV?

SWTOR was certainly the more expensive disaster. Though I'm not sure what the cumulative cost of running FFXIV for free for so long was.

SWTOR's biggest problem was that they put all their effort into the leveling progression and the class stories (which were superb btw), and no effort at all into endgame which is where the majority of time spent in an MMO takes place. There were other problems with the game, but this was the biggest and by far the most damaging. You could level to cap and complete your story within a month and have just enough time left over in your one month of subscription time to realize that the game completely changes at endgame and ceases to be in any way enjoyable when compared to what you just did.

Also... "free to play" is quite a generous label to place on it at this point. It is, by a wide margin, the worst free to play model I've ever seen. Seriously, when you're charging people for hotbars, you've done it wrong.

Can't wait to finish reading the thread to ask this question...

...what exactly do you think competes with FFXIV "today"(IMO what competes with FFXI...lol)? Putting my opinion aside and many of my friends and fellow FFMMO players, I've read many negative responses towards "other modern" MMOs".

Two part question! And to be more specific...



What NA console based MMO will compete with XIV?

Only NA b/c in Japan DQO is doing well, but since the NA crowd can't stand that its an MMO, the ? only applies to the NA market.

I ask, because as a few know, people like me, are dependent on XIV to be a great game, b/c IMO no other MMO out there competes with anything SE has done. Maybe you know of a game I don't, I've tried a few, but nothing's done it.

This could kill my post, but I AM looking forward to trying ESO.



Edited, Feb 20th 2013 4:52am by Ishihara

Im sorry to disagree but I couldnt believe how corny/badly done many of the dialogue and character actions were during the storyline element of the game. Everytime they say something its followed by a corny hand gesture and atleast 3/4 of the lines I heard were awkward/lame/poorly done. I thought it was incredibly dissapointing given the fact they poured the majority of the games money into voice acting/dialogue scenes. Usually when you click an option for your character to respond he ends up saying something stupid which doesnt even match the response I chose. Gotta call people out when they claim the stories in the game were still great, I found them incredibly corny with a small percent of good parts during key moments. Id say Swotor failed harder than XIV and I think 14's launch was horrible too.

edit- example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDX8pJhglnA


Edited, Feb 20th 2013 9:02am by aadrenry

Have you seen Star Wars? It is full of corny dialogue and interesting acting. It is a cornerstone of the franchise.

... You're my only hope!
... I have a bad feeling about this!
... Rawr! -Chewbacca
... Beep, beep, beep -R2D2

LOL!

I actually really enjoyed SWTOR, as a single player game.

I sometimes grouped, had fun pvp sometimes, but always single player. SWTOR did one thing right:

The story was great and made me want to play all the classes. The few times where the players had to make a choice together we a lot of fun, and group conversations trees were an awesome way of engaging everyone while having a story. (I only grouped with 2-3 friends)

The downside, there wasn't enough story missions to level up a new class without havign to redo 800 other menial fetch tasks just to level up enough to do the main ones.

I had a blast actually role playing as a bounty hunter who only cares about money, and making all decisions based on reward, but there wasn't nearly enough 'MMO' in my 'RPG'.


Edited, Feb 20th 2013 2:24pm by Louiscool

I'm not really even much of a Star Wars fan, but I thought the quest scenarios and voice acting were great... probably better than anything else we'll see for a very long time. It was the foundation that those things were built upon that weren't so great. Gameplay that was too easy, lack of meaningful incentives, etc... same things that kill many games. It's really kind of boggling how developers keep making these same basic mistakes over and over. Not so boggling, I guess, considering they're basically trying to copy existing games.



Everything. Every other game--and every other activity--is a competitor. If I think I'm going to have more fun dicking around on the internet than playing FFXIV, then that's what I'll do. And you see this all the time-- people are unhappy with "other modern" MMOs, and what do they do? They don't play MMOs. I'm in that group myself.



Considering that the NA console market is rather small for MMOs, maybe nothing will compete directly, but it still won't be enough to save FFXIV. Thing is, at the time that FFXI became a console game, there just weren't really that many games with online play at all. Now, that's no longer the case... tons of games have online play, whether Call of Duty or Rockband, fighting games, racing games, etc. And computers that are built for gaming are just that much more available and viable as an MMO platform to younger players. For example, I didn't have access to a PC capable of running FFXI when it came out, but I had a PS2. Today, there are MMOs that you can run with a pretty standard PC.

So unfortunately, the question is kind of moot today. In 2005, the NA console crowd was pretty relevant as a subscriber base. In 2013, it's much less relevant.

Sometimes you do say things that make the most sense.....

Without in-game experience I can't know for sure how much or how little has changed. My spectator's perspective is that ARR is shaping up to be what FFXIV should have been from day one and every game at day one is, in degrees, less than what it is advertised to be.

I am extremely hopeful for ARR and since 1.0 was a big disappointment for me, I fear another disappointment will put me permanently out of the market for Square Enix. That being said, I have to firmly disagree with the idea that anybody has exaggerated the potential for ARR to erase my bad memories. The leadership for ARR has done an outstanding job of being transparent and peeling back every layer of the onion. What has been published seems consistent with what they have promised and with how much they have been sharing I suppose it would be easy to see that as overselling their product.



Edited, Feb 22nd 2013 7:38pm by DanforthWright

Well said.

I actually liked the original release to some extent. Of course I was all for a major overhaul as well. It needed it. Mainly what wore me out was the long, free period of not knowing how things were gonna turn out. Then when future plans were established, seeing how it was still gonna be a long while. My opinion of the game began to sour after all that. I was done and less optimistic at that point.

My time over at SWTOR has made me miss FFXI & XIV though. Some things I just prefer with SE's style over western games like that. I missed the 1 character switching jobs instead of rolling a ton of alts. I missed the atmosphere of the game worlds. Even a rushed, incomplete Eorzea had more life in it than SWTOR's dull worlds. Their areas were damn near depressing at times.

Anyway, so far these changes I'm seeing with XIV look promising. It could easily be enough to get someone like me, who already liked the original to some extent, interested in giving it another go. As for other mmo players, I can't say. We're all over the place nowadays in what we want from our mmos. A good example is SWTOR. Many quickly get bored with it and leave. I've read many posts on here talking about it in the past tense. Meanwhile there are others still enjoying themselves. People preordering an expansion that was initially slated to be a free content update.

One thing promising about the changes with XIV is different UI setups. That's one of the complaints I hear the most if I bring up FFXI/XIV. How their UIs were setup better for controller use. Getting that right could be the difference of someone giving it a quick trial, hating the UI, then bailing, and them sticking around longer.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2013 9:22am by TwistedOwl

Indeed it sounds like it would. I'd even now be interested in trying out the different setups. My time spent at SWTOR saw me transform from a controller only person to keyboard/mouse with one of those fancy gaming mice. Now I find myself wanting to use that expensive mouse on my other games as well. Make it worth the purchase ya know?

But yea, as simple as it sounds, that's a major thing. The UI & controls are what you'll be using the entire time you play. Ensuring that various types of players are all comfortable with their setup is important. You don't want people quitting over that. Personally I'm not big on add-ons, but I know many PC gamers are so that'll be good news for them as well.




Edited, Feb 23rd 2013 9:59am by TwistedOwl

~! /grrFace lol; I was going to do that with my site and only allowed non-bot related ones :) But on the flipside; having a home at zam would be the bee's knees for app :P

You'd be surprised what flash can do :)

I'm curious... why?