Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
Ignorance isn't the best word, more just not having used other systems - although I get the point of what you're saying and it runs very true in my case, I suppose. But then, people have said EVE's system was bad, too, and I thought it was amazing. Go figure. FFXI's, though, I never really enjoyed at all. I liked the game regardless because of the great community.
SEMANTICS: I actually think ignorance is the perfect word. It's just that we've learned to connote the word ignorant with stupid, but it really means no such thing. Most people take exception to being called ignorant, but it's really not an insult and I didn't mean it as such. Outside of the connotations it just means being unaware which is precisely your stiuations.


I liked (and do like) FFXI for many reasons. The story, though sometimes haphazardly constructed, really made you feel connected more. Problem was, you didn't get to be involved unless you leveled quite high. I also just love the FF flavor with White Mages and other very FF thing. I liked the community and I appreciated them far more after playing a game like WoW (though LOTRO still had a far better community when I played it).



On another note, a recent interview with Sage Sundi said that SE are listening and they are reading the premium fan based forums. But really they need to improve on communication, not just listening.
He has said this before. SE in general has claimed this before. For years when they said that nobody needed windower. When they claimed RMT wasn't a problem. When they said that Ullikummi being a bottleneck in sky was a non-issue. AV being unbeatable wasn't an issue. Sure, they've cleaned up, but they blatantly ignored the userbase of FFXI for nearly 5 years before they started making adjustments. All the while they claimed they were listening.


Most of the complaints people have are because they have to click one extra button when talking to an aetheryte - which is not a huge deal and it doesn't affect anything at all (in fact it doesn't even take 1 second to do).
This type of annoyance does add up. In FFXI there are around 3 confirmation boxes to list an item on the AH. When you're trying to quickly list lots of items this takes forever. There's no need to have so much confirmation. Extra confirmation stuff is very annoying. WoW did a great job any time the community complained about the redundancy of these things. Blizz didn't just write off the players and say it's not a real issue and the whiners need to shut it. They changed it because it's annoying in a game that is at its heart repetitive to have mundane repetitions shoved down your throat.

Or there's the battle interface, which is fairly identicle to most MMO's but you get the "lag" of the character pulling out his weapon - again this isn't a really fast paced MMO where you need instant action. Of course if you don't like the slower paced then fair enough, but you can't really say it's a broken interface because of it.
I don't care if it's not a fast, action based MMO. This is probably my biggest gripe with FFXI. I hate how long it takes to enter combat. What I hate more is trying to enter combat right after finishing a mob.

You must wait longer to perform that action.
You must wait longer to perform that action.
You must wait longer to perform that action.
You must wait longer to perform that action.
You must wait longer to perform that action.

You say it's identical, but I don't remember such an issue in LOTRO, Aion or WoW. You can stream quickly from one foe to the next without hesitation. There is no noticeable lag in drawing a weapon. If I hit a macro in WoW it goes off immediately. Leaving combat with one foe doesn't stop me from entering new combat for 5+ seconds.

Even worse is trying to do certain actions on the AH or check your delivery box. There is NO REASON that it should make you wait 30 seconds to check again. There's no reason it should be so impossible to look up the going rate of an item on the AH in FFXI and there's no reason they shoud've foregone AHs in FFXIV.

The concept of a player-drive economy with only player-sold/traded items is cool... as a concept. In reality it's smurfing annoying.