This game is not finished - Truth?
This was posted at ffxivcore:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xatsh
What is wrong with the game? It is not finished. The same answer about 300 other post have gotten.
There is a reason we are playing for free atm, there is no content in the game outside of leveling.
I thought this was common knowledge now... was this whole topic really necessary? It has only been stated 20times now.
If you want to play a complete perfected carbon copied mmo, I suggest playing rift nothing has been more finished near release then that game is currently (assuming you liked WoW, sorta has nothing else to really offer).
If you want to play a game that is not a shallow copy come back in about 6-9 months and check this game out again.
Why do most ppl play this game, one reason FFXI. Sounds stupid but out of all the mmos made since EQ ffxi was probably the only one that does not have shallow gameplay designed for the lowest common denominator (which is not casual it is stupid), the ones leveling to nothing atm are doing it as an investment in the future pretty much because they have faith SE will be able to make this mmo into the kind of mmo FFXI was.
What I said above might sound fanboyish, but this whole post considering it has been covered a million times, and is by a 1 post person is sorta trollish as well.
I've been logging in periodically to try and note any changes, I've noted the UI lag being fixed, but still there are questionable amounts of content. So, is FFXIV truly "unfinished"? Reflecting on other MMO's I've taken part in, I can see how by the end, they were much, much more refined then at their starts, but in most scenarios, their starts at least had content (which doesn't even appear true for FFXIV).
Did Square truly release an unfinished game?
Fair warning: this is one of those tl;dr posts.
A typical expansion for Final Fantasy XI added more content than there currently is in FFXIV. They traditionally introduced a number of new quests, missions (including complete story lines), multiple end-game events, dozens of new enemies and notorious monsters, hoards of new gear, usually additional jobs, and other significant content bonuses. An expansion.
Granted, all this was usually introduced over a period of time, but except for the Wings of the Goddess (which took an ungodly two years to complete largely because of the concomitant development of FFXIV), it was over the period of a few months.
It's not completely that Final Fantasy XIV is lacking in content. It was definitely lacking at launch, but I do think it's starting to get there now. However, it's also disappointing that even though they acknowledged the failure shortly after release, here we are about eight months later with relatively little introduced in the way of content. Granted, a great deal of this has been due to the volume of mechanical and gameplay errors that required correction before they could even think about content, but that's hardly an excuse that leads me to forgive the development team.
I don't mean this as a way to criticize you, Bob, but so far as I know, you're pretty new to the MMORPG scene and don't have much in the way of a basis of comparison. Final Fantasy XIV is woefully far behind the rest of the new titles in the genre, largely because Tanaka failed horribly at keeping up with how the genre had changed. World of Warcraft (remember that FFXI is over two years older than WoW and is very much an MMORPG modeled off of the original successes) shifted the MMORPG landscape, and in the development of FFXIV, Tanaka rebelled against those changes which have already been embraced by the majority of the MMORPG-playing community. I recommend checking out the development blogs for other pending releases. Some big names out there to take a look at are, as Omecle mentioned, Guild Wars 2, but also others like Star Wars: The Old Republic or Blade and Soul. Pay careful attention to how much more involved an active community is in the development of these titles (each from established developers). Star Wars: The Old Republic is probably the closest to Square Enix as they don't have much (read: any) experience with MMORPGs. But look how much more they're involved with building a community. I mean hell, they let their fans name one of the job classes. Square Enix and its approach to developing MMORPGs is downright archaic. Yoshi-P is trying, but he can't single-handedly reverse Square Enix's entire mentality about video game development. Boy does that company love their secrets.
The problem with the content is that a large portion of it is glorified grind. That's not the kind of content that keeps most people coming back. Final Fantasy XIV needs end game. It needs more than 20-some NMs, most of which don't pose threats to alliances. It needs goals for high level characters that are difficult to obtain. It needs gameplay mechanics that people can understand and master. I've followed some discussions about exploration of the mathematics behind player stats (whether you're into it or not, the community of an MMORPG is driven by the few who take the time to derive calculation formulas to exploit them, and the ultimate consensus at this point is that your stats are largely insignificant. These types of developmental oversights are unacceptable.
As much as I would love for FFXIV to become worth playing, the game has not yet deserved such optimism or defense from criticism. It is the sore thumb of the MMORPG community right now, and deservedly so. I am cautiously optimistic that, given time, the new development team is headed in the right direction and can salvage the wonderful parts of this game (it's lore and potential therein, mostly). Unfortunately, time is not a luxury that Square Enix has right now. By the time the new battle system starts rolling out, it will have been almost a year from release. They need to step up their game, or the game is going to become vaporware, no matter how spruced up it is by the time they release it on the PS3.
And I think that's also one of the biggest problems. They're overestimating how useful that PS3 launch is going to be to them. Let's be honest. Outside of Japan, the console MMORPG is almost nonexistent. The largest market share for the genre is dominantly computer. The only value of a PS3 release is another potential shot at reviews, and I'm not sure the larger part of the MMORPG community has already been poisoned against the game anyway.
Ditto Ouch!, this is also tl;dr stuff xD
Again, I'm kind of left asking what content you want FFXIV to have that others have at launch. You're right in that I'm new to MMOs overall, but I did play FFXI and I did experience the content up to level 40 there, and I still think that FFXIV is currently around a similar level of things to do. I do agree that it's not at the same level, but then, I played FFXI in 2008 with four expansions included. It's fair to say that I expected FFXIV to have a lot less, and I was right. Initially I was full on with the criticisms of how there was no content, but I've pushed on and now that I'm playing class quests, story quests and sidequsts along with guildleves, I'm finding myself doing content more often than I'm grinding. Which I like, personally. Obviously you could probably still get a single class up to rank 50, do all the class quests, all the story quests, all the sidequests that the specific class group (DoL, DoH, DoW or DoM) will allow for you and then feel that the game is empty after that... but I've still not got a rank 50 class, I'm still finding dozens of sidequests and I'm still not being able to finish them all. The class quests are very good for me, including lengthy cutscenes and a lot of lore (although I will say that one or two classes had far shorter sidequests than others, something which should be worked on - but then, it was the same for job quests in FFXI).
As for how hard it is to keep up with the game without playing it, well, yes, I suppose you could do so by watching YouTube and whatnot, but if that's your way of keeping up with a game and how it's improving then I do still suggest actually getting at least one class to rank 20 and having a shot at the relevant quest. Unfortunately I know you (Rostum) use a gladiator and that was probably the most boring of the class quests I've done so far. xD The Marauder one wasn't that much better. I prefer long cutscenes, so I really enjoyed the Miner one. I wish they did these class quests more regularly.
The cryptic updates (I do assume you're referring to the Last Word news updates and the Hatching-tide updates?) are more for people playing the game than not playing. I wouldn't consider them to be anything remotely to do with updates to do with what changes are being made to the game. They're lore, basically. If you're wanting actual updates on the game, wait for Yoshida's posts. If those are what you were referring to as cryptic to you, then okay, I can respect that. They don't explain exactly what is happening. It would be nice if they did, I agree.
It's very easy to say how involved fans are with the development of games these days but this is a Japanese company. GW2, SW:TOR, are they being developed by English teams? If so it's perfectly understandable that they would provide a lot of feedback opportunities to English speakers. But it's insanely difficult to get regular conversation going between the likes of Yoshida and ourselves. It's just not workable without inevitable lost-in-translations scenarios.
Regarding the stats being insignificant, we're due an update in June that will update the battle system. There is also a job system in the works. What kind of systems these will be are unsure, but the goal is to make jobs/classes more unique. With this in mind, I'd expect stats to become more significant going forward. Hopefully. :)
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Outside of Japan, the console MMORPG is almost nonexistent.
That's weird, roughly half of the FFXI players I knew had it on console. =| Many of them had it on both console and PC for some reason, but hey. I do prefer PC, but when the PS3 version is launched I do think they will get more out of it than "just another shot at reviews" - I know many people who have stated that they were waiting on it being released for PS3. You have to keep in mind that not every average joe out there who wants to play FFXIV is willing to upgrade a PC just to get it running. Yes, the PC market for this is massive compared to the console market, but you do need to take competition into account and where there is little competition, there is more chance for success.
I think FFXIV will get to a worthy place because I can't think of any company out there who would have waited this long with F2P before going P2P without intending on it being a success, one way or another. They're obviously determined and since Yoshida took over he has done a lot to show that he is interested in taking ideas from the community. There is still work to be done with regards to communication but I do respect that a Japanese company will always struggle to communicate regularly with English players. They actually have to accommodate for the French and German, too, which probably makes it even more of a nightmare. But yeah, SE have used FFXI as a cash-cow for what, ten years or so? If that's the case then I think they will happily keep plugging away at this until it works, because when it does work, they will have a cow that they will hope will last them for many years to come.
Defence from criticism is something everything deserves so long as people are willing to defend it. That isn't to say it doesn't deserve criticism, very far from it. But criticism without defence? Going by that, the game should have shut down before it even began. As should almost every othe game out there. Everything deserves criticism, but all criticism should allow for a rebuttal/defence, or at least time to make corrections based on the criticism. Optimism? Well, that's another story. I'll say it many times though: If you haven't played up to even rank 20, it's very difficult to take the criticism laid out at the game too seriously. Experiencing content first-hand is the main way to understand how good a game is or is not.
