Laverda wrote:
I didn't mind the iLevels in FFXIV because at least they were there from the start, upfront and honest, instead of blindsiding the established tradition. But the big thing is that while pretty much every update to FFXI from ToAU onwards had me reacting, "Oh no, they just broke THIS now!", every FFXIV update has me excited about the changes and new content. That's a pretty good indication that I'm in the right game now.
Those things were actually what made me quit FFXIV 1.0 since i loved it at first. I loved how it played, how it looked, everything about it. But then the "updates" happened. And we werent talking about optional things either.
* First we had additional icons next to monsters to show aggressiveness, ok. That wasnt too bad. But then massive things like a huge HP bar being visible above all monsters you couldnt turn off.
* Following that they suddenly nerfed every cure spell, making no one want to play healer for months. MP costs went up from 7 MP to something like 1/3rd of your MP bar per cast (and i wish i was joking about this one). No one could solo anymore, no one wanted to be a healer, the entire game fell apart.
* Then crafting was the next to die with changes to all recipes and items, removing most of the things that were required to be synthed.
"Oh, did you craft an inventory full of expensive ingredient items for armor and weapons in preparation for the update? Well, you can no longer use them in recipes, go and sell them to a npc for 1 gil. Sucks to be you" - SE
* That wasnt the worst thing, all stats for all items were adjusted at one point too. Weapons went from doing amazing damage to hitting targets for next to nothing because of a HUGE DMG nerf.
* Armor went from offering amazing protection to next to nothing. The armor i spend 1 mil on i could basicly toss since it became rubbish, i could just as well have been naked.
* They didnt reduce monster HP till later, so that still meant that 20 second battles went to 5+ minute solo battles against some things, and you were still liable to die since you could only cure yourself three times before you ran out of MP.
* They also adressed that you could no longer equip gear regardless of level. The level of the gear now directly meant your character had to be that level too, which made a lot of people naked or holding items for months they could no longer use till they (if ever) got back to that level. The synched down stats worked perfectly before all that.
* Oh, and at the same time they removed Physical Levels (1.19) which made everyone a whole lot weaker without any compensation as well.
* We used to be able to sub 90% of the abilities of any class as well, they removed that and only let us use a couple of crap abilities no one wanted to use. Right when i got Archer's AoE attack on my Gladiator and i loved it.
* minor, but all monsters used to drop crystal shards but we lost that somewhere along the way.
* Oh, and i nearly forgot Auto-Attack. The worst curse of it all. Removing an AMAZING (yes i dare to go there) system such as the stamina system where you could pace out your attacks and not run out, or blow it all in seconds for a good chunk of hate/damage but not be able to attack as much afterwards till it recovers. We also lost our Light and Heavy attacks. Which turned the whole system into waiting 10 seconds for a Marauder to swing once for a TERRIBLY weak attack and people to just stand there so they could eventually use a 1500-2000 TP attack out of a maximum of 3000 TP you could build up. Worst decision they could ever have made. Went from flashy action based to just standing in the same spot boring yourself to death waiting for your one ability to build up, only to hit it in a slightly diffirent way for 20% more damage.
And they probably ruined a whole lot more later after i quit since aparantly the game went belly up from all of it.
But man, the MP nerf and the weapon damage thing really pissed me off. As well as the physical level removal thing :/ I grinded my buff off for that, and i was doing so well. And ugh the ability restrictions.
I loved 1.0, i really really did. But by the time it was 1.23, there was nothing left of the game...
It was like giving a kid a bunch of toys he was really happy with, and then breaking them or taking them away every couple of weeks. We're really lucky 2.0 turned out as well as it did. (Though it could still use more subbable abilities from other classes)
Edited, Jan 30th 2015 12:41am by KojiroSoma Edited, Jan 30th 2015 12:54am by KojiroSoma