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[JudgeN]

Maybe 7 years ago. For a long time now, you don't even have to do that. You engage a target and when your TP hits 100+, use your best weapon skill immediately. Repeat for 3 hours.

Hey hey, now arrowburn's were totally alive and awesome during the RoZ days, ToA just brought TP burns to the forefront :lol

What changed? Do skillchains do less damage nowadays or something?

People started realizing that all jobs could TP burn, and monsters in ToA tend to have alot less HP then Golems in sky or Birds in Lufaise Meadows. They also cut the amount of exp you need to level from 60-75 but I can't remember what era that happened in, I want to say ToA as well.

 

[DaBuddaDa]

What changed? Do skillchains do less damage nowadays or something?

Skillchains actually do more damage than they used to, but people realized building TP as fast as possible and spamming weapon skills did waaaaaay more DPS than waiting to perform a skillchain.

 

[Loto]

The last several posts have been about or related to WoW in a thread unrelated to it. He even calls it spamming himself, so it wasn't as if I applied the label to it.

Yes you are right, but the whole direction of the thread went to talking about WoW. Just no reason to single out one person. Anyway, my contribution to the thread is I want this to succeed. It does deserve the criticism it's receiving for the current state of the game, but IMO 11 was amazing and I think the potential is there for 14.

 

[twofold]

Skillchains actually do more damage than they used to, but people realized building TP as fast as possible and spamming weapon skills did waaaaaay more DPS than waiting to perform a skillchain.

Oh. Skillchains were my favourite thing about levelling in ffxi. It was fun using them to keep the exp chain alive and work out the best way for your party to maximize exp/hour. Sad to hear that they became redundant years ago, heh.

 

[Lain]

Personally my favorite MMO of all time is UO:T2A (maybe DAoC for PvP), because that's how I envision the perfect MMO in all it's freedom and with a truly living, breathing world, but for the loot n' levels archetype WoW is an IMMENSELY respectable game for what it pulled the entire MMO genre out of when it came to a lot of things.

It's funny, as that was my first MMO and still, to this day, I believe it did so many things right that's it sucks other MMOs never took those aspects from it to incorporate them in the future MMOs from the get go.
The teleportation system with runes, taming, building your castle, stats growing up based on the action you took, all were awesome aspects of the game.

Maybe 7 years ago. For a long time now, you don't even have to do that. You engage a target and when your TP hits 100+, use your best weapon skill immediately. Repeat for 3 hours.

I stopped playing in 2004 or 2005, so I guess I go on outdated info in regards to that XD

 

[notworksafe]

So I take it this thread is now about you spamming for WoW now?

A question was asked, I answered it. Not my fault the game this thread is about is so garbage that people are asking about other MMOs.

 

[Soule]

Guys, this thread is absolutely beautiful on so many levels, I'm so disappointed having not found it earlier. I spent the a couple of hours going through it laughing at the crazier posts, some of the videos were gold, I still can't manage to finish the yogscast one, but the BFF(?) one had me in stitches.

This game seems comically bad, also somehow this thread has helped me rediscover my love for WoW so thank you Square-Enix and your valiant defenders

 

[-tetsuo-]

Skillchains actually do more damage than they used to, but people realized building TP as fast as possible and spamming weapon skills did waaaaaay more DPS than waiting to perform a skillchain.

But you can't magic burst random weapon skills...

 

[DaBuddaDa]

But you can't magic burst random weapon skills...

Black mages aren't invited to exp groups anymore (outside of abyssea), they solo.

 

[notworksafe]

Old as hell, but it really sums up this thread for me:
http://www.eegra.com/show/sub/do/browse/cat/comics/id/45

 

[Vinci]

It's funny, as that was my first MMO and still, to this day, I believe it did so many things right that's it sucks other MMOs never took those aspects from it to incorporate them in the future MMOs from the get go.
The teleportation system with runes, taming, building your castle, stats growing up based on the action you took, all were awesome aspects of the game.

It was also intimidating as hell for a lot of people. I personally loved UO, but I know that's not a common perspective outside of MMO veterans.

 

[MrMephistoX]

The MMO FF Team need to make a proper FF game (with out it being an MMO) I am sure they will defently create an amazing game.

Maybe, making an MMO doesn't suit them.

Wasn't that FFXII?

 

[RainbowByte]

So gents hows FFXI these days?

Its surprisingly busy on my server valefor, we had 4k people online at once over the weekend, lowest i've seen is about 1500 online.
There's more parties you can shake a stick at with the crazy abyssea parties, people come as pretty much any job and just burn mobs down and get 100k xp in an evening. It seems to encourage a lot more people to level more jobs up and experiment since xp flows so freely.

Prices on auction house goods have pretty much cratered ( once staple items back in the old days are laughably cheap now (scorpion harness 8k, Hagun 150k, etc) which makes the game for someone that wants to start over or regear a 'i gave all my stuff away' higher level character painless. At the lower and mid levels, between the xp rings, more xp for ep/dc mobs and fields of valor, you can take literally any class to high level solo with the most ghetto gear meleeing things down as long as you sub dancer and use the fields of valor refresh/regen buffs if you so desire. Gearing a character decently still helps a lot, its not uncommon to see people soloing or level syncing to get a job to the point of being useful in abyssea and quickly jumping to the new level cap.

The removal of level caps in the cop zones like riverne, etc make helping someone through CoP as a highlevel player enjoyable and also an interesting diversion for solo/duoing.
The level cap is up to 85 and as expected got a lot of magic using jobs subbing /rdm.
I find it difficult for ffxiv to hold my interest when i'm enjoying the current state of ffxi so much, each time they nudge the level cap higher its kind of cool to re explore zones and see how much more stuff you can do solo or with a small group in places where you used to bring a full party or alliance.
I think i'm pretty much going to stick with ffxi and maybe dabble in cataclysm. ffxiv is just too different than ffxi, not interesting enough to me, and too frustrating for my taste.

 

[notworksafe]

Wasn't that FFXII?

And it was totally awesome!

 

[HappyBivouac]

Wasn't that FFXII?

Not the same team, but it was an awesome game.

 

[Dreamwriter]

Not the same team, but it was an awesome game.

Dunno, I didn't really like it. Sure the combat system was totally awesome, but the story was boring, never got into any of the characters, the areas were too damn big (especially crossing the desert!), and I wasn't a big fan of the music.

 

[Inflammable Slinky]

Sundi and Kurosawa both mentioned that while they want to improve the interface on the PC, they also need to make sure that the interface works for both PCs and the PS3, which means that there are limited options for how many changes they can make. Balancing the needs of both systems leads to certain compromises.

Oh christ it's the revenge of PS2 limitations!

 

[Torquill]

I do like the concept of being able to switch classes by switching weapons, but it needs to be more developed. For example, it doesn't make much sense to me that a mage can turn into a tanking warrior by picking up a sword, but it would be pretty cool if he could turn into another caster class like a priest or something like that. Maybe the classes can be switched with another one that shares the same armor class.

No

 

[Torquill]

Oh christ it's the revenge of PS2 limitations!

There will be limitations, but it will be hings like not being able to add new races or something because of memory limtations. There's no reason the interfaces have to be the same n

 

[Dreamwriter]

...except the interfaces are handled server-side, so in fact they do need to be the same.

 

[duckroll]

So, I go to Metacritic to see how horribly the game is doing.... and what do I find?

Cheat Code Central:

84/100

We can't recommend that you spend $50, and then $12.99 a month after the first 30 days, on a title that has as many flaws as FFXIV does. But we can recommend that you keep an eye on the news to see how this game evolves.



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Wtf is that bullshit? It basically says "do not buy" but yet they give the game 8/10? That's fucking hilarious.

 

[Novella]

It makes perfect sense to me. It's a great game, but just don't buy it or spend any amount of money on it or spend too much time looking at it in the store or anything like that. They're recommending it, but they're also recommending walking briskly past any parts of the store that display it.

 

[Torquill]

...except the interfaces are handled server-side, so in fact they do need to be the same.

No they don't. The concept of the client interface being server side is nonsensical.

The server may be verifying data, causing the sluggishness, but that does not at all dictate how data sent to the client is displayed on screen or the controls shown to the user that allow them to organize there data.

 

[Mairu]

...except the interfaces are handled server-side, so in fact they do need to be the same.

Whose bright idea was to make the user interface handled server side? This seems like such a dumb decision since it's a big part of the reason why everything seems so slow when it comes to menu navigation.

 

[Khrno]

The MMO FF Team need to make a proper FF game (with out it being an MMO) I am sure they will defently create an amazing game.

Maybe, making an MMO doesn't suit them.

FFXI says otherwise, and it suits them really well. What doesn't suit them is when management makes them rush the launch of the game.

By the way, might not be the whole team, but Tanaka did Produced and Directed the FFIII remake while in-between dealing with XI expansions and XIV planning.

 

[kitzkozan]

Every MMO thread turns into this shit.

:lol

In a sense,it's a testament which prove that Blizzard is incredibly talented at perfecting and polishing. It's also a realization that SE isn't the be all of developers and that Blizzard is vastly more talented than most,which is why they can succeed where others will fail.

What they lack in imagination and creativity,they more than make up in term of polishing every aspect of their games.

WOW sure ain't perfect,but it work incredibly well and I will always know what I'm getting into when I resubscribe.I just log in,respec and 5 minutes later I'm doing quests,raiding or pvp and gearing up.No pointless need to fight the UI or controls or game crippling bugs.

I think we often take for granted how polished or full of content World of Warcraft is. No game will ever be able to compete with it imo,expect for the next mmo by Blizzard themselves.

 

[Wallach]

To be perfectly honest, I think this is the key to WoW's success. Being able to send in a tank who will never lose hate and then just spam AoE skills makes you think a lot less than fights that force you to keep on your toes and rethink your strategy as conditions change. People don't want to think too much.

This is only based on what my WoW-playing friends have told me. In their favor though, they are happy that Cata is supposed to fix this issue of mindlessness.

This is really only an issue introduced in WotLK. Prior to that (and based on Cataclysm info, probably post-WotLK) group coordination was much more important.

The real secret to WoW's success IMO is very simple. The most very basic interaction you have with the game is very satisfying and crisp, and the variety of content is quite massive. On the low end of the game, it is one of the simplest MMOs ever. At the top end, it contains some of the most challenging raid/group fights in the history of MMO design. It has struggled more in the PvP sense of things, but that is true of most MMOs not called Dark Age of Camelot.

 

[DR2K]

Wtf is that bullshit? It basically says "do not buy" but yet they give the game 8/10? That's fucking hilarious.

More like, "do not buy yet".

 

[Dreamwriter]

:lol

In a sense,it's a testament which prove that Blizzard is incredibly talented at perfecting and polishing. It's also a realization that SE isn't the be all of developers and that Blizzard is vastly more talented than most,which is why they can succeed where others will fail.

What they lack in imagination and creativity,they more than make up in term of polishing every aspect of their games.

WOW sure ain't perfect,but it work incredibly well and I will always know what I'm getting into when I resubscribe.I just log in,respec and 5 minutes later I'm doing quests,raiding or pvp and gearing up.No pointless need to fight the UI or controls or game crippling bugs.

I think we often take for granted how polished or full of content World of Warcraft is. No game will ever be able to compete with it imo,expect for the next mmo by Blizzard themselves.

Well, NOW it's polished. It was rather buggy at the start (people falling into the ground), was months before people could reliably login, everyone hated the system that punished you for playing too long (sound familiar?), lots of cut/paste areas (only like two cave layouts for most of the caves)...ya gotta remember the past when doing comparisons like this! MMO's are never very good at start compared to just a few months later.

The fact that Blizzard made it has nothing to do with its level of polish - FFXI is just as solid and polished.

 

[TheExodu5]

The fact that Blizzard made it has nothing to do with its level of polish - FFXI is just as solid and polished.

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[Xiaoki]

Well, NOW it's polished. It was rather buggy at the start (people falling into the ground), was months before people could reliably login, everyone hated the system that punished you for playing too long (sound familiar?), lots of cut/paste areas (only like two cave layouts for most of the caves)...ya gotta remember the past when doing comparisons like this! MMO's are never very good at start compared to just a few months later.

I dont know what server you were on but on my server the log in and lag problems were fixed in a week, there was no system that punished you for playing too long, the cut and paste areas only applied to things like caves, towers and keeps and such.
It also helps that when you do these comparisons you dont have a faulty memory.

 

[DaBuddaDa]

Anyone who claims FFXI is now a polished, amazing, classic, super-fun awesome game either hasn't played it or is a complete fool. It's still quite a stinker in the opinion of most MMOers.

 

[FieryBalrog]

Well, NOW it's polished. It was rather buggy at the start (people falling into the ground), was months before people could reliably login, everyone hated the system that punished you for playing too long (sound familiar?), lots of cut/paste areas (only like two cave layouts for most of the caves)...ya gotta remember the past when doing comparisons like this! MMO's are never very good at start compared to just a few months later.

The fact that Blizzard made it has nothing to do with its level of polish - FFXI is just as solid and polished.

Its weird how much nonsense gets thrown around about WoW's launch. I was there 2 weeks after release. The big problems were:

1) Too many people trying to log on
2) Too many people trying to log on
3) Too many people trying to log on
4) Too many people trying to log on

That's what led to the loot lag and the server queues.

The UI, while not nearly as good as it is now thanks to putting in all the Add Ons ideas, was smooth and functional.

There was a ton of content for an MMO at launch:

39 zones, all handcrafted
1500+ quests
around 18 5-man dungeons
and two 40 man raids were patched in within the first month.

Combat was about as solid as it is now; they've never really made any changes to it. There was no system that punished you for playing too long; that was in beta. They inverted it to create the "rest XP" thing which is still in the game. As for cut and paste, it was the caves and the interiors of many buildings, the latter of which is done by nearly every RPG ever made.

As for bugs, I played a mage at the time and blink would rarely bug out so you fell "through" the world; it happened to me a grand total of once though. There were some other bugs but compared to basically any other MMO launch at the time it was pretty bug-free.

 

[Dreamwriter]

I dont know what server you were on but on my server the log in and lag problems were fixed in a week, there was no system that punished you for playing too long, the cut and paste areas only applied to things like caves, towers and keeps and such.
It also helps that when you do these comparisons you dont have a faulty memory.

You've never heard of "Rest XP"? At WoW launch everyone was complaining about it, you only get full XP for a certain amount of time, once that runs out you have to logout for a certain amount of time before you get it back. Sure, they call it a bonus, saying you get 200% XP for a while, but it's not really different from what FFXIV does, it's just called a different name, to make it sound better than "you get half XP after X time". At launch it was one of the big things people bitched about all over the place. People don't complain now, because it isn't really a big thing, just like most FFXIV players have realized that the system we have isn't that big a deal either.

Basically what I'm saying is, the same sort of things people are complaining about in FFXIV, happen in all MMO's, including WoW. Heck, look at WoW's first post-retail patch (1.10) - it basically rebalanced the entire game and fixed tons of bugs. WoW is a great example of the right game design and right way to market a game for exactly the right time, but wasn't this super polished experience at launch.

 

[Technosteve]

Cataclysm is like blizzard resetting the game back to vanilla WoW.

Your FF mmo has hard level caps which are restricted by how many quests you can do per day. WoW has no limit to the amount of quests you can do. WoW wasn't made for the Chinese market in mind, but it's the number one MMO in China.

 

[Mairu]

You've never heard of "Rest XP"? At WoW launch everyone was complaining about it, you only get full XP for a certain amount of time, once that runs out you have to logout for a certain amount of time before you get it back. Sure, they call it a bonus, saying you get 200% XP for a while, but it's not really different from what FFXIV does, it's just called a different name, to make it sound better than "you get half XP after X time". At launch it was one of the big things people bitched about all over the place. People don't complain now, because it isn't really a big thing, just like most FFXIV players have realized that the system we have isn't that big a deal either.

There was no limit to the amount of quests you could complete in a day, no limit to how much experience you could get from quests, no limit to the amount of time you could spend playing a certain class. The only thing Rest XP did was give you a bonus for a short period of time if you hadn't played for awhile. You can argue that a bonus is the same thing as not getting 100%, but in effect there was no reason to stop playing because you no longer had rest experience. When you lost your rested XP the game didn't restrict what you had available to do in the game.

 

[Xiaoki]

Its weird how much nonsense gets thrown around about WoW's launch.

Yeah, what kind of revisionist history are these people trying to spread?

Oh, speaking of complete nonsense

You've never heard of "Rest XP"? At WoW launch everyone was complaining about it, you only get full XP for a certain amount of time, once that runs out you have to logout for a certain amount of time before you get it back. Sure, they call it a bonus, saying you get 200% XP for a while

 

[demigod]

Anyone that said WoW was unpolished and lacked content on launch day did NOT play WoW on launch day. The only problems that WoW had were server queues and loot lag which was fixed in like a week or 2. You can stop lying now Dreamwriter. People did not fall into the ground(only during warsong that I know of and that wasn't launch day) and there was no exp penalty for playing too long. And yes I know what you're referring to but still its not even bad. Back then it only took about 3 weeks to even max out lvl on a pve server.

I'm glad I canceled my preorder on Amazon. This game sounds worse than Aion and that game flopped hard. Hey guys, the game has been out for 3 weeks now. Where are all the fixes ya'll were saying that it wasn't fixed because it was beta? Its funny that some of the diehard FFXI fans are in this thread preaching that it'll get fixed when in fact updates were 3-4 months apart in FFXI. The FFXI team was terrible, broken promises and all. FYI, Wings of the Goddess will be 3 years next month and they still have not finished that expansion. They're too busy milking money from players with $10 expansions instead of finishing it. The same will happen to FFXIV because they know many naive people will still be supporting them to no end :lol .

 

[Effect]

Even if they manage to patch this game I don't think I want to go through the whole process of setting up my payment information again. At least not through the whole ClickandBuy service. Currently contacting them to close my account with them. Just the idea that you have to use that has been bothering and it's another part of SE just getting this whole thing wrong.

I would like to be in the SE offices though to see their real reaction to these reviews from gaming media and actual customers. If they don't work a miracle then they could forget about putting out the PS3 version if they can even get it working. I wonder how much concern there is about the damage this game is doing to their reputation or at least the reputation of the Final Fantasy brand.

 

[HappyBivouac]

So, I go to Metacritic to see how horribly the game is doing.... and what do I find?

Cheat Code Central:

84/100

We can't recommend that you spend $50, and then $12.99 a month after the first 30 days, on a title that has as many flaws as FFXIV does. But we can recommend that you keep an eye on the news to see how this game evolves.



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Wtf is that bullshit? It basically says "do not buy" but yet they give the game 8/10? That's fucking hilarious.

If you ask me nobody should be giving the game a numerical score at this point. Write-ups are great, and they should tell the consumer that the game is horrible in its current state. The scoring thing doesn't make sense though.

But we've been over that.

Anyone who claims FFXI is now a polished, amazing, classic, super-fun awesome game either hasn't played it or is a complete fool. It's still quite a stinker in the opinion of most MMOers.

Or they enjoy things that you don't. Gee, who'da thunk it?

I guess I must be a complete fool for liking free jazz, since most people don't care for it.

 

[darkwing]

So, I go to Metacritic to see how horribly the game is doing.... and what do I find?

Cheat Code Central:

84/100

We can't recommend that you spend $50, and then $12.99 a month after the first 30 days, on a title that has as many flaws as FFXIV does. But we can recommend that you keep an eye on the news to see how this game evolves.



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Wtf is that bullshit? It basically says "do not buy" but yet they give the game 8/10? That's fucking hilarious.

you are buying for the "potential"

 

[HappyBivouac]

Rating a game based solely on it's potential makes no sense.

But know what else makes no sense? Rating a game that is based entirely around growth and change over time based solely on how it is at launch.

 

[TheExodu5]

You've never heard of "Rest XP"? At WoW launch everyone was complaining about it, you only get full XP for a certain amount of time, once that runs out you have to logout for a certain amount of time before you get it back. Sure, they call it a bonus, saying you get 200% XP for a while, but it's not really different from what FFXIV does, it's just called a different name, to make it sound better than "you get half XP after X time". At launch it was one of the big things people bitched about all over the place. People don't complain now, because it isn't really a big thing, just like most FFXIV players have realized that the system we have isn't that big a deal either.

Basically what I'm saying is, the same sort of things people are complaining about in FFXIV, happen in all MMO's, including WoW. Heck, look at WoW's first post-retail patch (1.10) - it basically rebalanced the entire game and fixed tons of bugs. WoW is a great example of the right game design and right way to market a game for exactly the right time, but wasn't this super polished experience at launch.

You are delusional.

 

[-tetsuo-]

Anyone who claims FFXI is now a polished, amazing, classic, super-fun awesome game either hasn't played it or is a complete fool. It's still quite a stinker in the opinion of most MMOers.

What? No.

 

[demigod]

Rating a game based solely on it's potential makes no sense.

But know what else makes no sense? Rating a game that is based entirely around growth and change over time based solely on how it is at launch.

You serious? What you said is no different than rating a game on potential. Its perfectly fine to rate an MMO at LAUNCH, because that's what all reviews are for. To inform people if the game is worth buying NOW or not. So you think its ok for every site to hold reviews 6months? So the people that goes off trusting reviews shouldn't buy the game until 6months after its out? I don't trust reviews but the consensus in this thread and the official topic tells me that the reviews are correct or in fact too high still.

Take off your FF blinders please and accept that this game is a dud right now. What I want to know is, how many people are unsubbing after the free month :lol .

 

[Dreamwriter]

Hey guys, the game has been out for 3 weeks now. Where are all the fixes ya'll were saying that it wasn't fixed because it was beta?

There were some HUGE fixes at launch, and another patch last week that made it a lot better, and one this week which fixes a ton more stuff. Just like every MMO, including WoW.

 

[HappyBivouac]

You serious? What you said is no different than rating a game on potential. Its perfectly fine to rate an MMO at LAUNCH, because that's what all reviews are for. To inform people if the game is worth buying NOW or not. So you think its ok for every site to hold reviews 6months? So the people that goes off trusting reviews shouldn't buy the game until 6months after its out? I don't trust reviews but the consensus in this thread and the official topic tells me that the reviews are correct or in fact too high still.

Take off your FF blinders please and accept that this game is a dud right now. What I want to know is, how many people are unsubbing after the free month :lol .

If you've been reading the thread you'll know I've admitted to the game being a dud right now. I'm just saying while informative write-ups are great, tacking on a numerical rating for this type of situation is misleading.

 

[Pureauthor]

Whether or not people should re-review MMOs after a set time to ascertain if it has improved is an entirely separate matter from letting people know whether or not the MMO that has just launched is a festering pile.

 

[demigod]

There were some HUGE fixes at launch, and another patch last week that made it a lot better, and one this week which fixes a ton more stuff. Just like every MMO, including WoW.

Yet people are still in here complaining about the game. Did you not read my post? WoW barely had to fix anything because the game was in Beta so long that they ironed out most of the stuff before launch. That's what *polish* means.

If you've been reading the thread you'll know I've admitted to the game being a dud right now. I'm just saying while informative write-ups are great, tacking on a numerical rating for this type of situation is misleading.

Right, you're the guy that asked people what was wrong with the UI. So now all you're saying is that there shouldn't be a numerical ratings on these reviews? Make up your mind dude. If you don't think there should be numerical ratings in these reviews, maybe you should email those sites and stop posting in this thread about other game mechanics because it won't change the fact that there are still numerical ratings.

 

[HappyBivouac]

Right, you're the guy that asked people what was wrong with the UI. So now all you're saying is that there shouldn't be a numerical ratings on these reviews? Make up your mind dude. If you don't think there should be numerical ratings in these reviews, maybe you should email those sites and stop posting in this thread about other game mechanics because it won't change the fact that there are still numerical ratings.

I asked what people's problems with the UI were because I wanted to know. I know what problems I have with it. I didn't say "there's nothing wrong with the UI. you all are crazy."

Emailing the review sites isn't going to do anything, you know that. I'm just trying to shed light on how we should be looking at these reviews, but it seems the gaming community has a hard time with such nuanced thinking.