Final Fantasy XI was the first MMO I played. Ever. I got into it because of the “Final Fantasy” name, of course, but was quickly sucked into the world of Vana’diel, never to look back (until I dropped it for WoW, but that’s a whole other post). It was great at first, but slowly and surely sucked the life out of me – forced grouping, brutally losing experience upon death, a headache of a crafting system and an infuriating end-game all finally took its toll and I quit cold turkey.
Ever since FFXIV was announced at E3 a couple weeks ago, I have thought long and hard about what they can do to improve this time around. According to the developers, they do want the game to appeal to a wider variety of people. I take that to mean they want to steal some thunder from World of Warcraft. That being said, targeting the more casual player is probably the way to go.
No Forced Grouping – For the love of Cloud’s spiky hair, don’t force us to group to level up quickly. A solo leveling track for all classes from level one to whatever the level cap is would be preferred. How they go about it really doesn’t matter, as long as it is possible. It doesn’t always have to be questing, some can be grinding, I don’t care, as long as there is no forced grouping.
Story-Driven Questing – I loved the story segments and cut scenes in FFXI, but now they need to expand that to quests. Give us a hundreds of easily accessible and visible quests that each tell a unique story. Sure, there can be a few that tell the tale of an old farmer who wants you to go kill 10 wolves so his sheep will be safe, but don’t focus on those boring MMO standby quests, either. Make things interesting. Experience for the quests would be nice, but its not required as long as the rewards are good and they stick to my first point.
Crafting that Means Something – This gets requested with every new MMO that comes along, and I don’t think any have actually succeeded yet. When I spend the time and in-game currency to skill up a crafting profession, I actually want it to mean something. I want to be able to sell what I make and make more money from it that the materials cost. I want it to be useful to my character in more ways than just a few things every now and then. Also, please no more “you have to face this direction at this time of day and on this day of the week to yield maximum results” or losing expensive materials in a crafting failure.
Faster Travel – Finally, something that’s not such a big deal to people, but was one thing that ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back – the speed of travel. In FFXI, if you missed an airship, you had to wait 12 minutes just for a new one to come in, let alone the additional five minutes for it to fly to its destination. Chocobo rental prices always fluctuated based on their use, instead of being a fixed price that people could expect and plan for. The means of transportation is fine, because it fits in with a typical Final Fantasy world, but the time it takes is a bit on the ridiculous side.
Those are my four major hopes and dreams for this new MMO effort by Square-Enix. Will any of them come to pass? Only time will tell. Rumor has it the beta may be starting this fall. I’d like to get in on some of that action.
