They key aspect to FFXI was on something the vast majority of today's online games have abandoned: Teamplay. And I don't mean adding the occasional group quest here and there. Leveling up, unlocking new abilities and skills, raising your level cap, acquiring important gear - all of these things were tied to quests, which were simply impossible to do alone. Every player depended on the help of others at some point, even if it meant teaming up with fellow adventurers, who wouldn't benefit from helping you in any material way, be it gold, experience or items.
In theory, that's a pretty horrible concept: You cannot achieve anything unless you get help from people, who don't have any connection to your personal quests. If you weren't shy to socialize with people and ask for help, though, the system worked out beautifully and created a community I haven't seen in any other game. Everybody depended on each other, people were willing to help and hoping to get a little help in return. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I'll never forget the fun I had with my guild (or Linkshell, as they are called) on there.
When Final Fantasy XIV launched roughly one and a half years ago, it had no actual group content. Except, of course, inviting other players to share perfectly soloable quests with. They tried to enforce that sense of camaraderie with dumbass mechanics like gear damage, where you had to run around looking for players to repair your god damn underwear in the middle of nowhere. I'm not even making this up: Every female toon came with a set of panties, which would take durability damage over time. And it was prohibited to self-repair them, because doing so would require you to take them off. You seriously had to look for other players to repair. Your. Fucking. Underpants. I want all of you to know that this is the kind of game we're talking about here.
I tried to love this game. I seriously did. Visually, it mimicked it's MMO-predecessor so well, it looked like a prettier, much cooler version of it, with all the cool races and classes and monsters and landscapes fans of the first online FF experience knew and loved so much. But beneath the surface, it wasn't simply broken or unfinished. There was simply nothing there! No content, nothing to do! The game would literally allow you to do 8 quests every 24 hours and stop you right there. If you decided to level up by grinding baddies, the game would penalize your experience gain at some point until you'd completely stop gaining experience points for the rest of the week!
I don't want to bring up any more examples of how blatantly evil and stupid the very idea behind this game was. Basically, they created a cool tech demo, a pretty but lifeless shell with no actual game behind it, sold it to idiots like me, who fell for the neat graphics and the idea of a prettier, faster-paced FFXI-remake and in the end, they got fired. Final Fantasy XIV remained entirely free to play for the next year to come, no subscription fees, no paid extras, no nothing. And a new developer team has taken over.
I haven't really touched the game since then. Tried it here and there since it was free, nothing really seemed to change and eventually I ignored it. Then they announced dungeons, raids, massive boss battles, the fabled "2.0 total overhaul" is supposed to happen this year and curiosity finally got the better of me when they introduced the job overhaul, along with job-specific armor sets. Anyone familiar with FFXI AF armor will know what I'm talking about. And it looked good:
So I logged on and became a paladin. I loved being a paladin on FFXI. Fighting at the front line, calling the shots, setting the pace. It was unbelievably stressful and awesome at the same time. Tanking, helping out with the healing, blinding baddies to avoid getting hit too much, difficult, complex multitasking for... okay, I'm getting carried away here. Let's just say I love being a paladin. On anything that isn't WoW.
When I say I came back to FFXVI to become a paladin, what I really mean is that I got the required class upgrade quest, but I couldn't do it, because it required a full group of players. And believe it or not - when I asked around for help, not only did I find a bunch of nice players to join me on my quest. When they realized I didn't have my own mount (which had not been implemented when I last played), they helped me obtain my very own goobbue:
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| This is my fucking mount! Rawr? |
So after a fun little adventure I had a brand spanking new monster to ride around on and I was a real paladin! And when I got ready to part ways with my new friends, one of them sent me a trade request and without me asking for any help, I had an extra 200,000 gil (monies) and a link pearl (aka guild invitation) in my pocket.
During my absence, the guys at Squeenix have added quite a bit of new stuff to do. There are the new 'Grand Companies', which send you on quests around the globe. You get special class quests every five levels, on which you obtain class-specific gear and abilities. Resting at the brand new inns grants you experience bonuses for faster leveling rather than punishing you for excessive grinding. And while the game still only allows you to pick up a terribly restrictive 4 new quests every 12 hours, at least these new 'allowances' (that's what they're actually called!) stack over time for up to 99 consecutive quests.
Most of all, you actually have a motivation to do all the new stuff. You'll want to unlock the cool new classes. With the upgraded combat system, playing a paladin is actually fun! I won't lie to you - the UI, whilst somewhat improved, is still atrocious and borderline useless. Why do I have to switch back and forth between three individual hotbars instead of just displaying all three of them at the same time like on every other fucking game allowed me to do a decade ago?
And it's inconsistencies like that, which make Final Fantasy XIV a bad game today. Not the horrible, broken, abysmal game it was last year, but it's a far cry from being finished and enjoyable. Why can I stack up to 99 quests allowances, yet I only receive 4 of the stupid things every twelve fucking hours? One quest takes roughly 15 minutes and then there's no more questing to be done for the rest of the day. Why do I get rested XP bonuses to encourage killing mobs, when monster spawns feature enemies, which are nearly 20 levels apart from each other? When I'm level 35, I don't want to be in an area where half of the mobs are level 25 and the other half are level 39! On average, their level is just right. But most of them pose no challenge and yield no experience and the rest of them are almost impossible to kill. Which idiot came up with that shit?
Some of the new Grand Company quests (or 'leves' as they call them) are supposed to be quick and easy to get you right into the action: Activate them right at the quest area, jump right in, none of them take longer than 15 minutes. The bigger Grand Company quests are the exact opposite and are absolutely atrocious: The game will send you to the other end of the game world, forcing you to spend a full 10-15 minutes traveling to your quest destination. Once there, some other quest NPC will send you to yet another spot, which is yet another 5-10 minutes away. From there, you'll usually get into a small fight, which takes less than a minute to resolve, then you gotta run all the way back to the second quest NPC and THEN you're supposed to travel back to town to hand in your report. It's an easy 30+ minutes of walking around and boring, dumb cutscenes full of endlessly stupid, mindless drivel and shitty writing, half a minute of combat and zero sense of reward.
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| Just what the fuck are you talking about? |
The really sad thing is how, as a fan of the first FF online game, I'm enjoying FFXIV now, lousy design and everything. Teaming up with my new linkshell, unlocking new pieces of set armors and getting new abilities, earning the right to own and name my own chocobo - it's actually fun, if just for nostalgic value.
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| He looks delicious! |
The main problem with this game is that it's like a Final Fantasy XI inside joke. They're adding more and more references to the original Final Fantasy Online, from advanced jobs to artifact armors to summon-battles against Garuda and Ifrit. If you've experienced these things back in the day, they're more than likely to conjure some happy memories. In fact, these elements are good enough to be mildly enjoyable. But only if you understand the reference. Only if you've actually been there, if you're willing to relive some of those happy old days some of us had back on FFXI.
If you haven't played, maybe even disliked the spiritual predecessor of FFXIV, then I just don't see how you could possibly enjoy this game. Fancy graphics or not - would you enjoy playing a game, where doing boring run of the mill kill-quests is tied to a cooldown timer? Would you enjoy flicking back and forth between three different action bars, because you can't just display them all at the same time? Would you enjoy a game that considers pointless walking around for 20+ minutes actual content? Would you enjoy being sent to the asshole of the universe on a level 25 quest, with a level 25 character and aggressive level 45 monsters lurking along the way? And quest dialoge containing, "And lo how they quicken"?
Yes, this game has dungeons now. From what I've seen, they're a total of two. Two dungeons. Two 'raid' boss encounters for groups of eight players. And seven advanced classes, which you cannot unlock without the help of other players, whith abilities and gear you cannot unlock without teaming up. You may not mind if you're the social type. But if you like getting stuff done without depending on others, you're fucked.
There is simply no way this game will ever succeed with anyone but the most die-hard fans of the series. And by series, I'm really referring to the 8bit games, 'Tactics' and the previous online game. This is a game made by people, who have never seen, let alone played a modern MMORPG. I refuse to believe that any of those guys know anything about WoW, Guild Wars, SW:ToR or any other online game people have talked or cared about, recently. It fails on even the most basic stuff. If I can't just log on, jump in, grab a few quests and start leveling, because everything feels tedious, complicated, like fucking science and full of artificial limitations, if you can't even get your fucking key elements straight, then you won't win any new players. Fancy new class armors or not.
And that's a damn shame. I mean, look at this:
Those are the characters Claire and I are playing. Yes, the tails, freaky haircuts and hair- and skintones may not be everyone's cup of tea. Freaky anime shit. But the level of detail, the animation, the way these two interact with each other is so impressive, life-like and unlike anything I've ever seen in any other game. That stuff looks really, seriously good! The first time I hopped on my massive goobbue it felt so strange, so surreal, the last time I've seen anything like it was in a Studio Ghibli movie.
I can't in my right conscience recommend this game to anybody. Because it's horrible. Because it feels like you have to do a college course on FFXIV before you even understand basic questing.
But if you do have friends who are seriously willing to help you through job quests, if you're dying to own a chocobo, if you're as stupid and naive as I was, getting tricked by the fancy graphics and the incredible soundtrack, well... let's just say they finally have airships travelling from town to town and repair NPCs, who sort you out all the way to 99% at reasonable prices. And a market search counter, which lets you buy your stuff straight away instead of forcing you to find a fucking retainer. They've started to add basic comfort features and common sense. But that's as good as it gets.
-Cat
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