Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

[Eric]

This must be the season of 180s, I've never seen a game make such a complete and total turn-around before. I remember trying the beta for the original game and it was a mess, I had no idea what to do, how it worked, where to go, how to quest, or how anyone could fathom the combat being any fun, I remember people swearing the retail would fix the issues, and it didn't, a fool friend of mine bought it, played it for a week, quit and let me try it on his account, and I lasted maybe an hour. FFXIX was one of the worst MMOs, if not one of the worst games I had ever played.....

And yet somehow I'm having fun with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

I think it's a testament to Square-Enix that if they just put some fucking effort behind their releases they can still make great games.

I spent a cool 2 hours in beta, and I actually had fun. The game looks beautiful, the intro quests are very easy to follow, the ui is easy to customize, the combat isn't overwhelming, it's simple, but fun, and the battle music is just a joy to listen to(I think I kept myself chain killing mobs and staying in combat just to listen to the music). I really wanted to get into a party and see what it felt like to do battle with a bunch of people. The combat in this game just FELT good, even if it doesn't break any particular walls in the MMO genre like TERA or Blade & Soul.

Actually optimistic/excited for the next time the servers are up.

[Don]

I saw the interview about the guy working on FF14 saying games don't become F2P because they wanted to have a F2P and he has a point. I hope the game backs up what he says.

I didn't quite get into the beta yet. From what I heard they slow down the combat pace, which I thought is actually a pretty good idea. Ever since EQ1 you pretty much can't chat while fighting because every game from WoW up requires you to hit a button every 1.5s or faster to optimize what your output.

[Don]

I got in the beta. There's literally no way this game will succeed in anywhere outside of Japan if it has a subscription cost. The pace of the game feels deliberately slow, and while that's not a bad thing that doesn't work with sub games. We're way past the era where people might pay $15/month and take an year to hit level 50. If they care at all for market outside of Japan they should reconsider some kind of B2P model like Guild Wars. The game itself may or may not be good (haven't played enough to tell), but the model simply cannot be financially viable.

[SineSwiper]

There's nothing saying you can't making a slower pace game, but still give much better XP. Slow combat, but the XP matches everybody else.

[Don]

There's nothing saying you can't making a slower pace game, but still give much better XP. Slow combat, but the XP matches everybody else.

Right now the game feels like it's going to take significant time (at least several months) to hit level cap. I think a game with a model like that literally has no chance of working in the western world outside of a few niche games. I could be wrong since I only played it for a few hours but looking at history I suspect this isn't a game you'll max out in 2 weeks like every other MMORPG out there. Now I don't personally mind that but I just don't think it will work because people will feel like they're wasting their money if it takes 4 months to hit level 50 while paying $15/month. People simply don't pay $15/month to level up anymore. That's the EQ1 era and it's way in the past. I don't mind but I know I'm definitely the minority here.

Now they could have a game that months to just level if it costs less, like say $5/month, but I'm guessing they won't do that either due to fear of being perceived as a bad game. But the old 'have 1 month of content and slow pace down to 1/12' model just won't work in today's market.

[SineSwiper]

There are also niches in that field of "hard MMORPG" such as Aion. But, Square will have to realize that it's a niche and not the next "WoW killer". On the plus side, niche MMOs can have a steady base of loyal fans.

[Don]

It's hard for me to see FF being a 'niche MMORPG' since that's supposed to be Sqix's flagship product. I realize Sqix isn't what it used to be but I really doubt they spent all that money just to be a niche MMORPG with say 100K subs.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, I agree.

[Eric]

It feels that grindy to you Don? I mean I've played the Asian/Korean MMOs that have real grinds, Aion being the absolute worst offender, TERA, etc. I don't think FFXIV has that kind of level grind, at least at first impression, I don't run out of quests, I don't have to stop and kill everything in addition to the kill quests. It doesn't seem like WoW leveling which you can 1-90 in a week, but it's also a new game leveling should take a bit longer without feeling like a chore.

A grind to me is when the quest mobs take all day to kill and cause significant downtime, ie 1 quest taking an hour due to having to drink/eat and recover every 2-3 mobs, or running out of quests and having to kill grind a bunch of smaller monsters to move on to the next zone, or the worst offender, repeat quests to kill the same thing over and over for a minimal amount of exp each time in every single zone.

[Don]

The Koreans grinders are all F2P in western audience if not everywhere now though.

If it takes say 4 months to get enough classes to level max so you can be considered the equilvaent of 'level max' in other MMORPG and you need to pay $15/month for that, I just don't see how it can possibly work in the western market. There's no way this game is better than WoW in the sense that you're supposed to pay $60 more just to hit the level cap. The only game people ever paid large amount of money for leveling up consistently was EverQuest 1, and you can argue the only way it worked back then was because there was no WoW. Certainly no MMORPG has been successful with the EQ1 model recently where you need to play like an year before you hit level max.

And since MMORPG are social games this matters. Even if you don't care about the money your friends might do, and it's not necessarily because $15/month is a lot of money but that the game isn't better to demand $15/month for 4 months before you can even hit the equilvaent of level cap. At least, I assume it's going to take significantly longer than the typical 1 week hardcore 1 month softcore time to hit level max like any other MMORPGs.

[Don]

I managed to hit level 11. What the heck is this 'assign 3 points into your stats that we tell you absolutely nothing about what they do and it's permanent'? I mean even Diablo 1 you've some rough idea of what the heck the stats do. Here in FF14 I don't even know if more points into dexterity improves my accuracy because there's no information on this whatsoever and I'm supposed to assign 3 attribute points with no chance of reassigning them?

[SineSwiper]

No respecing in a modern MMO? WTF?

You should play Rift instead.

[Don]

No respecing in a modern MMO? WTF?

You should play Rift instead.

I played RIFT before and I found that it's too hard to find enough people who are hardcore enough to beat the hard stuff there, and if you do easy stuff like soloing it's not any different than any other MMORPG. The original expert dungeons are probably on par with an above average raid in a MMORPG in terms of difficulty on the harder bosses. It's great if you got the people to do it, but if not you'll just be hitting a brick wall. I'll probably download it again to see what Storm Legion is like, but from what I can tell RIFT has evolved into some kind of ultra hardcore game at the high end which I don't really plan on doing, and at the lower end it's no different than any other MMORPG, though it's certainly one of the better ones for the same old solo stuff.

The game seems to allude there's a way to respec, but it didn't tell me how. It was like this in the original FF14 where you assign points into your attributes without knowing what they actually did and it's not obvious how you're ever supposed to get them back. There's a reason why Japan isn't leading the world in MMORPG and FF14 shows. It's probably something you can live with, but again I see no reason how a game that can't compete with the top western MMORPGs can possibly survive on a subscription model unless their price is way lower than the norm. The game in general seems pretty aimless. It says I'm supposed to complete my class's level 10 quest before I can take another job, and I have no idea where my class quest is. I don't mind a game that's more sandbox than the WoW 'go from point A and then B and then C' deal, but again you can't make people wander around aimlessly for 4 months while charging $15/month. There's just no way that's going to work now. Maybe if the game cost $5/month it'd be okay.