9 Months

After 9 months of release, what has FFXIV become now?

I'll just write a quick review for those who are interested in knowing more about FFXIV, from someone who bought collector's edition on first day of release, been playing since launch on and off, and still haven't ding R50.

Yes, at this point, I have to admit FFXIV is no fun to play, therefore I don't spend a lot of time on it, not as much as FFXI. Although I also have to admit that FFXIV has some extremely innovative idea, but none of them makes the game fun(which is always the most important aspect of any game) to play, sadly.

Note that FFXIV is going to have an update tomorrow, so SE may fix some of the problem tomorrow XD But I doubt the game may change with just one update.

Basically, I really like the causal approach of FFXIV. It benefits those who plays 2~3 days a week and 2~3 hours a day, but punishes those who play everyday for 8 hours. If you play a lot, you will find your class fatigue(that means you level slower) and run out of anima and leve very quickly, make it harder to travel anywhere and no leve to do. However, since I don't play a lot of FFXIV, I'm often sitting with full anima+leve. Those who plays MMORPG like a second job often complain a lot about this, but I don't see what's so bad about only playing the game for few hours a week and still able to catch up quickly. Also, gatherer and crafters are consider jobs, and you can level up by just doing crafts. So if you're kind of player that only want to spend 30 min to play a day and only craft, yes you can do that.


Another concept I like in FFXIV is the freedom. You can use the ability of other class if you have that class leveled. So you can be a lv 10 Lancer casting CureII from lv 20 Conjurer if you have it leveled. You can also equip anything armor on any job at any level, so you can basically dress up however you like, with wide variety of choice for different color. Although armors still has optimal rank and job. But wearing R50 heavy armor on a R1 mage job is pretty cool, I've never really thought about a MMORPG can be played like a social game, and you dress up your avatar the way you like.(Yes, I still hate how every lv90 NIN looks the same in FFXI)

The graphic of this game is top notch, and all the character animations are very nicely done and full of details, makes almost every western MMORPGs look terrible.

IMO, SE is trying to create an MMORPG that is not really MMORPG, instead of playing a MMORPG you kill giant bosses, clear epic dungeons, and obtain epic loot, SE wanted to create a virtual world for players to live in a causal way and play however you like, to interact with other people, with some old MMORPG element such as EXP grind.

Sadly because of it's half baked MMORPG element in it, it ended up as a failure. This game is basically, no fun to play at all.

For example, I don't mind crafting being an important element of the game and one main class. What bothered me the most is that crafting is incredibly boring to do in FFXIV, much worse than FFXI. It takes much longer, but you just sit there spamming buttons. I doubt anyone really craft their way to physical lv 50 - -

The concept of leve quest and behest is pretty cool from a FFXI player's perspective of veiw, you can log on for 30 min, do one quick leve and behest, and log off. You can make progress with 30 min of play time, unlike old FFXI that you have to spend hours to organize an EXP pt to level up. However, leve quest and behest is really just glorified GoV and FoV. You kill x amount of mobs, you get reward. If you want to do GoV/FoV, you can just play FFXI. Not to mention at higher lv you need to get a pt going in FFXIV as well if you want to be efficient. I'm having hard time lving my class after R26 due to the fact that I don't have the patience/time to wait or organize a pt most of the time.

In the end, FFXIV is really nothing but EXP grind. And you can do this in many MMORPG, including FFXI.

Some of the concept in battle system has good idea, but they just don't work very well, that's why the whole battle system ended up as a button mash fest.

I feel like SE has no idea what to do about this game. They wanted to create something different from main stream MMORPGs, but player base doesn't accept it because they want an old MMORPG that's FFXI-2. SE put some of the old FFXI element in it, but it's all half baked. SE wants to attract more causal players, but they didn't do it right, and even real causal players won't find FFXIV fun to play with.

Why this game fail, because SE did not have clear vision of what game they're gonna make, and didn't put the "fun" factor in this game when creating it.

So what's SE gonna do now?

I think they're going to make FFXIV more FFXI like, by implementing instance and dungeons and such. They already said they're going to redo the job system. So in the end this game may really become FFXI-2.

Will this save FFXIV?

To be honest, I doubt it. Ok you make FFXIV into another FFXI, epic dungeon, epic loot, gears takes 5000 hours to obtain, yay. But what's the point to play this particular MMORPG when there are one million other MMORPG on the market that's also all about epic loot?

On the other hand FFXI has become more causal than ever. You no longer have to spend hours to organize an EXP pt, you can do FoV/GoV nowadays if you only have 30 min of play time. Yesterday I was in a GoV pt leveling SAM, with an alliance. GoV alliance can totally be done with any setup, and you can join or leave any time you want. And you can level way faster in FFXI than in FFXIV.

At endgame level you can do abyssea, grind +1/+2/empyrean weapons really fast. The gap between average player base and elite player base are smaller now. I think currently FFXI is just right.

So what's the point to make FFXIV into another FFXI-2? Since FFXI nowadays is causal enough?

When SE made FFXIV, they said they want the players to play both games. But there's no way I'll have enough time to play FFXI and FFXI-2. I personally don't think FFXIV can be saved. But that's mostly because the MMORPG market is already very small, and won't have enough room for another old school MMORPG. Keep FFXIV as it is, it won't attract any hardcore MMORPG players, nor causal players(real causal players don't play EXP grind games). Make it FFXI-2, we can just go play FFXI/WoW/Rift.

And now SE said they're going to make another MMORPG, wtf - -

Well, SE actually made good MMORPG before. I used to love Fantasy Earth Zero very much. It's my first MMORPG, not as time consuming WoW or FFXI and much smaller in terms of scale, but it's really fun to play with, with plenty of new concept and they worked really well. It's not a time sink, and don't need to be played 8 hours a day(in fact if you play 8 hours a day you'd get bored too). But it's certainly causal player friendly. Most important of all, it's fun. If FFXIV can be at least half as fun as FEZ, then it'd be a good game. Too bad it's just too similar to FFXI, but less fun to play with. And even though I rate FEZ a "good" MMO, it's still not that successful.

If SE want to save FFXIV or make another good MMORPG, they need to toss the concept of FFXI completely. And focus on the "fun" concept of a game first. FFXIV, currently is far from being fixed.