Or perhaps your perception of what an MMO is supposed to be differs from what it actually is? Nothing in the definition of an MMO states that it has to be specifically designed for the hardcore gamers and ignore the casual ones. You may personally dislike their approach but SE have provided a perfectly valid reason for making such a design choice, being that of a balancing mechanism. There's also the fact that a lot of gamers, particularly those used to other MMOs such as WoW, will often rush to the end game content and focus on a single class to get there, and in doing so will be missing out on two of the FF MMOs primary selling points, which are the huge variety among the different classes and the fact that the game places an emphasis on the journey to the end game, rather than the end game itself. The system that SE have put in place acts perfectly as a control mechanism, which are sometimes required to enable players to get the full and intended experience out of a game. It is not an objectively bad design choice, and from many angles is actually a very good one.
Not to mention the facts that:
A) 8 hours spread over a week is hardly that small an amount of time.
B) It only prevents you from gaining experience points, not from playing as the actual class.
C) It only applies on an individual basis for each class, not for every single one.
D) You can still work on the primary build of your character whilst levelling secondary jobs as the armoury system enables you to use abilities from other jobs whilst using whatever your favoured one is. Levelling a secondary or even tertiary job can still add to the capabilities of your character whilst wielding your primary job, so even if you have one fixed idea of how you want your character to be you can still add to that by relying on alternative ones.
So wait, you're fined for making a second character, the explanation being that you're supposed to experience all the classes with one character, but penalised for doing so?
Based on several reviews I have read this must be one of the poorest games recently released, certainly the poorest MMO. At first I was intrieged because of the cutscenes and some of the graphics but apprently the game has such a vast number of flaws and is the opposite of enjoyment. I can be bored and waste time for free, why pay money for a game and its subscription to do it?
Well, the first one is already the only MMO to really seriously compete with WoW.
And it's certainly going to destroy anything else that's come out recently or will come out in the next year or two. So I'm pretty sure they'll do fine against WoW.
Well I dunno about that- TOR has a lot of momentum gathered, and I think Lineage had a greater number of consistent players than GW. WoW just passed 12 million subscribers also...
Still, the time is right to start knocking chunks out of it. But where's the triumph there? It's been top of the game for so long, and even Blizzard thinks it is time for the MMO to move on. It would hardly be one in the eye for them.
In the end, no-one ever beat it. It was unbeaten. When something 'beats' it in the future, it will be purely a matter of that it had run its (very long) course.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Saw the reviews and thought they are total BS! I've played FFXI and I believe it received bad scores too. FFXI was the best game I ever played, only thing that killed it was the people and the fact you needed really large groups to get the good stuff. Too many elitist pricks who were the leaders of linkshells killed the game for me. I'm getting 14 on PS3
The rough translation is that they are alarmed by the negative feedback and are extending the free trial to try to keep subscribers whilst they fix it, if possible.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
The reviews aren't BS. The game is total baby back horseshit. crappy payment system, and lame combat, and dull missions, and a shit interface will await you when you purchase this lame excuse of a MMO.
quoted for truth.. there is absolutely no room or excuse for yet another unpolished game from such a huge corporation as square enix.. they want to kill wow but they're gonna try to pawn an unfinished product off on their fans.. great strategy
I think they just got it wrong, simple as that. I'd say they should have learned more from XI... but the slightly irritating fact is that XI was financially successful, so they likely didn't see the need.
Which long term will do them no favours as it was successful because of the name and in spite of the mechanics, and evidently they can't pull that trick twice. Not in the face of much stiffer competition.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Actually XI was nothing like XIV, and a really solid MMO and game in itself. This however... is absolutely terrible. I'll play for the rest of the free trial but after that I'm not going to go back to it until the PS3 release, where I imagine they'll be releasing all the stuff they're currently holding back like the auction house and the chocobos and airships.
Their basic gaming principle is the same as it was in XI. Obviously the details have changed, but they have the principle wrong. XI is more excusable due to its era, though only somewhat. The fact absolutely remains that MMO games are moving on, and XIV is showing none of that.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Oct 19th, 2010 at 09:05 PM
It couldn't be more different actually; did you play FFXI out of curiosity? FFXI was the definition of a hardcore MMO; extremely challenging to learn and master the gameplay functions, extremely punishing to the player, impossible to play solo and progress much at all, takes an insane amount of time to level, with extremely challenging and cryptic quests. FFXIV on the other hand provides little to no punishment to the player, you can do everything solo easily enough, levelling is easy, and the quests are repetitive and brainless. FFXI was much more about the world and the story as well, whereas FFXIV is a mindless grind fest after the first story scenario. FFXI also encouraged the player to invest lots of time into it whereas FFXIV punishes players that do. You couldn't find two MMOs more different in principle than XI and XIV.