GRT

Dranaerys, if the devs were aiming to make an approachable MMO for newbies, then they have failed utterly.

But I enjoy FF XIV because it's like a throwback game. Have you played Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS? FF XIV is like the MMO version of that. In the same way EO deliberately doesn't offer auto-mapping, FF XIV forces users to band together to figure things out.

Let's look at this another way. If S-E went back and made crafting a 1 step process, made encounters straight forward, put in an auction house, added gear drops as loot, did ALL the things people want them to add...then how would it be any different from every other MMO out there?

It'd be just another DIKU clone.

Yes, the interface is often frustrating and they need to address that. Again, my comment was in response to the post, not a generic "FF XIV is perfect" comment: it is *far* from perfect.

But the things Eliot wants changes are the things that make it different. Clearly mainstream MMO players don't want things that are different, they want another game that plays similar to those they've already played. I'm not faulting anyone for that.

But for some of us who've played every major MMO since Ultima Online and who're getting tired of the same old WoW-ish clone, FF XIV is fun because it forces us to jump online and compare notes and discover things, and because crafting is so complex.

I love how threatened Massively comment drones are that they have to down-vote my post because I don't blindly follow the author and his opinion. I humbly suggest that the author himself is mature enough to be able to handle a different opinion without resorting to such practices.

That's very cute, Tizmah, but the author didn't list inventory management as one of his issues.

I never said the game was perfect and yeah, the inventory UI sucks hard.

I'm talking about the gameplay systems, like the complex crafting and the varied difficulties of encounters. Not everyone wants to play a game where you can know ahead of time, via a color-coded system, whether you're going to win or lose an encounter before you even begin it.

I love the Massively audience. The author states an opinion, a commentor (me) states a dissenting opinion, and the trolls come out with their "clever" sarcasm to immediately derail any possibility of meaningful conversation.

Most of your "complaints" are what make the game interesting to me. Difficulty level indicators are just 1 part of the equation. The other part is personal experience and learning what enemies are tougher or easier for the job you're in at the moment.

Crafting is complex and thus rewarding. Do we really need another game where you hit a single skill to make an epic sword of slaying, and thus wind up with hundreds on the auction house?

The issues with the market wards are pretty much the only things in the post I really agree with.

Basically you want another easy-mode WoW clone with lots of convenience features. There's nothing wrong with liking casual MMOs but don't play a hard-core MMO and then complain that it's a hardcore MMO, which seems to me to be what you're doing.

So basically it sounds pretty similar to EQ2, with some tweaks to the crafting process but the same balance of durability vs progress, plus FF XIV adds quality as a separate scale while EQ2 uses it as points on the progress graph.

Yup, I was going to say that Anarchy Online is like a poster child for this situation. So bad when it launched, but it got so good as it aged.

"What you may not be aware of is that very little is actually going to get "tested" (much less re-implemented) during this month-long honeymoon. "

So you work for S-E in the IT department, then? You must, since you know that nothing is getting tested.

And yet in response to the load they're seeing, they added more servers today. Hmm, I wonder why they did that? Couldn't be because the Open Beta TEST illustrated they didn't have the capacity they needed for launch.

It must be awesome to be omnipotent like Jef Reahard.

What I'm most looking for is the 15 minute log-in queues. Oh joy!!

We must travel in completely different circles. All the GW players I know are pissed off as hell that GW2 has 80 levels and a focus on gear.

I wish I had a cute little fennec fox to curl up on my desk...

I salute Square-Enix for trying something different. MMO gamers constantly complain about games being clones of one another...then whenever a dev does anything slightly different, they get shat upon by another continent of MMO gamers.

They just can't win.

If I try the system and don't like it, I'll play something else. There's plenty of games out there. No need to get all butt-hurt over one dev doing something you don't like.

^^ Exactly

I wonder how many people who're so outraged would ever actually hit these caps? Don't you people have jobs? Don't you sleep? Eat? Go outside once in a while? All the time you're doing these things your 'fatigue' is diminishing.

For the odd nutjob who sits and plays a game for 10-15 hours straight, yeah this wil be a problem. But that person has much BIGGER problems already.