1293: [Incredibly tough][Miq’ote][rod]

I’m getting a bit antsy for Final Fantasy XIV. I haven’t felt genuinely excited about an MMO for a while — the last one I played, which was The Secret World, was something I picked up more out of idle interest than anything else. Final Fantasy XIV, meanwhile, is something I’m really looking forward to.

While I’m waiting for the announcement that the open beta has started and I can finally start building what will become my “permanent” character in the game, I’ve been reading back over some of the forum posts, and particularly about people who once played Final Fantasy XI and ended up leaving.

I enjoyed Final Fantasy XI a lot. I didn’t play it for anywhere near long enough to reach the level cap or anything like that, but I enjoyed the experience of what I played. It helped that I had some good friends who played regularly, but it was also just an experience that I found enjoyable. I’m hoping Final Fantasy XIV recreates that kind of feeling, though I’m already aware it’s a very different game — and I’m glad about that.

Final Fantasy XI was hard. Really hard. This was the kind of game where if you inadvertently got a monster chasing you that was too strong for you to beat, you’d better outwit them and run away as fast as possible, because they would chase you across the whole map, and they would kill you. To add insult to injury, Final Fantasy XI also penalised your experience each time you died, meaning that dying too much could actually result in you losing levels if you weren’t careful — something I haven’t seen in any MMO since. This gave the game a real feeling of consequence — if you got yourself into a situation you couldn’t handle, you had better either figure out how you were going to deal with it, or accept your fate.

This sort of “penalty” thing is something that people praise Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls for, because it makes death meaningful. And that’s good. In World of Warcraft, death just means your equipment gets a bit damaged and you have a bit of a run back to your corpse, but otherwise there aren’t really any major penalties you have to deal with. This means that in many cases, challenges can be brute-forced by simply chipping away, dying, running back, repeating. This isn’t really possible when you’re by yourself, as monsters who aren’t being actively attacked tend to run back to their spawn point and heal fully, but if you’re in a party it was most certainly possible.

In Final Fantasy XI, meanwhile, you had to work together. It was one of the most intensely cooperative games I’ve ever played, and while this sometimes led to player tempers flaring, I was fortunate enough for the most part to group with people who both knew what they were doing and were patient with newbies.

Getting into a fight in Final Fantasy XI was a big deal. It wasn’t a hack-and-slash game; it was something where, when you saw an enemy, you had to carefully weigh up your chances of victory as a group. Once the battle began, everyone had to play their part and know what they were doing — even in combat against non-boss enemies. Battle was an intricate dance led by the Warrior, who maintained the enemy’s attention while other classes dealt damage or healed the party. It was stressful, but in a good way; as I say, it was intensely cooperative, and the knowledge that what you were doing was important felt great. Contrast this with something like World of Warcraft, where I often felt rather detached in party play, particularly playing as a Mage. Combat often boiled down to little more than standing back and spamming the same few attacks over and over again while other people did their thing independently.

(Aside: I have no idea what “Abyssea” is, but people who stuck with Final Fantasy XI longer than me seem to complain about it an awful lot.)

I’m not yet sure how Final Fantasy XIV’s cooperative play will work as I didn’t get a chance to try it during closed beta. I am curious to see, though, since from what I’ve heard from other people, each class plays noticeably differently from the others. The Pugilist class that I experimented with had a strong focus on quickly triggering attacks in a specific order to form combos, and this was probably most like what I was doing as a Mage in World of Warcraft. You had to memorise the combination of buttons that was most effective, then repeatedly trigger them as appropriate. Final Fantasy XIV added a bit of extra depth, though; positioning is important, as you can dodge area-of-effect attacks and do extra damage from certain angles.

Party play in Final Fantasy XIV also features the return of the Limit Break gauge from Final Fantasy VII, which I’m interested to see — in this particular incarnation, it’s a meter shared between the whole party which any member can use when it’s charged. The exact effect it has is determined by who triggered it. I’m wondering how sensible and restrained people will be with this feature, or if it will end up getting spammed by people. We’ll see.

With the recent announcement of Everquest Next and its impressive dynamic quests and terrain deformation, attention seems to have swung off Final Fantasy XIV a bit, but I’m still intending to give it a good shot. I really liked what I played in open beta, and I anticipate it’s something that I’ll enjoy sticking with — particularly if I get the opportunity to play with some people on a regular basis, which is looking likely.

Hopefully not too long to wait until open beta. Count on some enthusing on these very pages when it does arrive.