Do you think FFXIV will bring back old school endgame?Follow

Your average player by what standard? Again, the point I'm making is that the average player in 2005 wasn't nearly as thirsty for endgame content as your average player a decade later is. By today's standards, your average player wasn't even playing FFXI because it was 'too grindy'.

That's the main reason why FFXI only grew slowly instead of blowing up like XIV 2.0 did. It wasn't accessible to anyone on their own terms. You couldn't just click a button and go afk until you were alarmed and summoned to an instance for experience. You actually had to take the time to seek out other players who were looking for the same things you were.

CoP release didn't make RotZ content pointless. People who were still working through RotZ when CoP launched continued to do so knowing that their progress was still worth the effort. Most NA players (even those who started early like I did), weren't really in any position to challenge Sea or Limbus had they been available from day 1 anyway. Not really worth mentioning that the expansion content came out over a period of months and several updates because most people still weren't ready by the time the last update was available. Surely they were doing something with all that time...

If you're suggesting that only 10% of the people actually cared about the story in a franchise that prides itself on just that... I mean, you couldn't even access endgame for the expansions until you got through all but maybe the last few missions. You should probably check your facts.



Again we're comparing XIV to XI at the same points in their life cycles. Aside from Pankration not being introduced yet, everything else was not only viable but it was being played quite often. I had linkshells for EF, garrisons and ballista specifically aside from my social and HNM shells. Just because you may not have been one of the people participating doesn't mean that it wasn't being done.

It wasn't for everyone so I understand that it might not have offered you a lot, but that doesn't mean it didn't have anything for anyone else. I can make a list of things I would have changed longer than the list of things I enjoyed doing, but it wouldn't change the fact that my plate was always full.

I don't think those stats reflect how little people cared about storyline... I think they reflect how hard it was for people to get anything done.

It was easy to find linkshells to help get you sky access, because people needed you to help them farm items... but once you got to sky, those endgamers didn't care about helping to finish RoZ.

And CoP -- probably the game's golden moment -- pretty much required a static, given the nature of the dungeon crawls and item farming built into some missions. And most people with normal obligations and healthy social lives don't have time for in-game statics. The only reason I was able to beat CoP was because my wife and I had opposing schedules for a year, and my "Friday night" didn't really start until 11 p.m. Saturday... by the time I got home, the wife was asleep, my friends were winding down and I really had nothing better to do than log in and play.

ToAU wasn't as punishing as RoZ, but those missions were still difficult to find help for without a static.

I loved FFXI... loved, loved, loved FFXI... but I knew tons of people who were always somewhat frustrated because they just couldn't get anything done, and it was always so difficult to find help. Even when the help was there to get things done, there was always that requisite hour of standing around while people gathered up and got ready. Everything just took so damned loooooooooooooong. And while that wasn't as bad at the time, I just couldn't make a good argument to revert to that kind of game.

But talk about a sense of accomplishment when you finally got it done! When I got my Rajas ring I really felt like I had done something special. I felt like a member of an elite club. I used that for a long time.

Yeah, it was a big accomplishment! In my static, we all cracked beers when we finally reached Sea... it was epic.

I just don't think there's any way to really go back to that. Not only has that old-school audience grown up and become much busier in RL, but today's younger gamers are being raised on such atrocities as Angry Birds, Flappy Bird and whatever other dumb-*** one-dimensional bird game you can stick on a tiny smartphone screen.

Someday, I'll tell you guys how I really feel.

If getting your *** pulled inside out by Promy-Mea and Holla wasn't enough to strengthen your bond, nothing will.

Oh yea...we did that, usually with groups already in the zone. Helping each other up each floor. Then there was the mad dash to the zone line and one or two people 'taking it for the team' to grab agro while everyone else zoned in. oh great times that was.

All it took to do a 6 man climb pre-nerf was patience and awareness. Players had the former by default, but someone always managed to get too close to the true mobs or facepull something. I don't really remember having any derpy issues up until the paths split. Usually at that point you'd end up grouping with people who somehow managed to skip talking to an NPC so you made your way across the world and sat there for an hour while that person retraced their steps. Aside from that I didn't think it really got all that challenging until I hit moblin fight.

I honestly don't feel that the content was that difficult, but the experience loss penalty was still harsh back then. PUGs generally weren't willing to step outside the cookie cutter setups because most of them didn't want to bother with forming groups later on to gain any lost experience back. BCNM and KSNM I can understand the logic because seals were rare, but you can farm a few levels back in a matter of hours. Getting people to make attempts with alternate group compositions was almost like pulling teeth back then



That was kinda my point. The release of CoP didn't obsolete the content of RotZ. Not merely for the fact that it took so long to flesh out the missions, but because it was actually additional content. FFXIV along with many of the more modern MMOs are inserting content that essentially takes the place of content that was already there.

So essentially while you had to wait for a little while, you ended up getting additional content to go along with content you already had in FFXI. You didn't just drop what you were doing in RotZ at the time and move to CoP content. I honestly though that ToAU was going to award some sort of godlike neck piece or back piece to support AF and other class based armor sets(think sea torque +1), but it didn't happen. If it had, you probably would have seem multitudes more people actually clearing it.

The current meta is almost a zero-sum kind of thing though. Developers going the vertical progression route essentially nullify old content. Though there may be new zones, new crafting patterns and new styles of gear, it's all just replacing stuff you already had. So instead of having the old content along with additional content, they just remove old and replace it with new old... if that makes sense.


Edited, Aug 15th 2015 5:43am by FilthMcNasty

I think it goes hand in hand a little with things taking more time and restrictions in XI as well though. Because in XI you might do dynamis a couple of times a week, HNM every now and then, ENM every 5? days, BCNM/KCNM when you had enough seals or to help, Nyzul when that was applicable, SKY/SEA content, once or twice a week, limbus, salvage etc and all of it usually took quite a while to do and there were usually some restrictions on some of them at least so you could not do it more.

In XIV however things don't really take all that long and instead what you are supposed to do is do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again the whole week. I have to be honest, with a system like that I am not sad that they completely replace the old content. This is made even more apparent because of the token system where a lot of the time people just choose one dungeon which is the best and grind that one because it is the fastest tomes etc. I mean unless you just don't play that much of course and just do expert roulette or w/e its called once a day and even then I'd think there are better ways of doing it.

If their dungeon was say a super long dungeon crawl where you could save your progress and just continue deeper down every time you logged in and for most people that took a week or two to complete, instead of doing a short dungeon over and over, I could see there being a point in building on and adding content instead of replacing it because many would not be super bored and hate the dungeon when new content came along. With short lasting content with few restrictions though I don't think I would very much enjoy content being added on top of the rest regardless though even if the reward was still relevant. I dunno, I mean I am a big proponent of horizontal progression, but I am not sure I think it matters much in XIV because of how the system is set up around it. I think there would have to be a lot of changes aside from just making the rewards come from different things and hold you over for longer.

Yeah I don't think it would work at all. XIV has already settled itself into it's foundation. If it were ever going to happen it would have needed to be at the start of 2.0 at the latest. I don't dislike XIV, I just prefer a lot of options in how I can progress to keep it interesting. The game has improved tremendously over what it was at initial launch. It gets my attention, but doesn't quite hold it long enough for me to stick with it. Freshly re-skinned hunt mobs and raids with different flavored fire to avoid standing in only gets me so far

And I'm not sure why I need to mention the fact CoP offered no endgame at the point of comparison (the expansion's release). Why you keep constantly ignoring this fact is beyond me. When considering CoP at a similar timeline to HW, all you can do is talk about missions and a two-year-old RotZ endgame.

If you want to compare the two games at least stop ignoring the facts while doing so.

Edited, Aug 16th 2015 8:57am by Hyanmen

I get what Filth is saying (although Hyamann is correct on needing to be consistent with comparison points), but XIV is a totally different kind of game being verticle progression. The only reason xi worked was being horizontal AND we could swap gear during battles. This meant devs could make new carrots to chase simply by making a new price of gear that had just one stat that was awesome. In XIV, the devs don't have that option. So, instead, we get new content on a more regular basis.

XIV will never be like XI, which is both good and bad. I do miss thebsensebof accomplishment from XI. I don't miss having to farm the same content for a year to get one drop, or needing to depend so much on others to get anything done.

I also really like story mode Alexander... It's like endgame for casual players like me who don't have time for SM statics.