Final Fantasy XI

[Vergil]

Ah, I didn't really have much incentive to talk to every npc I saw

Game doesn't give you incentive to do much of anything.

[Kalarion]

@Shillitron sar I have come to do the needful for you:


Please log in now for your special prize, please and thanks.

(Otherwise I'm selling them for massive cash. HURRY.)

[WhiteShark]

Yeah, I didn't realise the stat differences before, or that the Elves have the lowest HP, which wouldn't be the best idea for a tank

I think you must've misread something. Elvaan have the second highest HP. It's Tarutaru who have the lowest by quite a bit.

[Kalarion]

@Vergil think I won't? Think I WON'T?!

[Vergil]

@Vergil think I won't? Think I WON'T?!

why do they look like that...

[J1M]

You can switch your job at any time at your Mog House. The only reason to make a new character would be to change your race, but every race has something it's the best at.

Yeah, I didn't realise the stat differences before, or that the Elves have the lowest HP, which wouldn't be the best idea for a tank

BLMs are the supposed to be the highest damage (though SMNs may beat them on this server, not sure). They're the archetypical glass cannons. They do so much damage that they actually have to hold back lest they take aggro and explode when a monster looks at them.

I thought so, still confused where Monk fits into it.

Your first Chariot Band should be free from the guard if you've done the tutorial quest (which is not at all obvious): https://horizonffxi.wiki/Tutorial_NPC

I didn't feel like it was telling me anything useful tbh, and just wanted to jump into actually playing the game. I'll do it this time around though.

The heavy armor melee jobs (Warrior/Samurai/Dragoon/Dark Knight) generally deal the most damage.
Monks can deal a lot of damage, but they can't wear heavy armor, so if you want to be a Monk tank you would want to equip warrior as a subjob for the provoke and damage boost (samurai's damage boost for wielding two-handed weapons does not benefit a Monk who uses hand to hand combat), and to really pay attention/invest in your gear.
Dealing damage. There are only a few jobs that deal so low damage that they are generally more valued for what else they bring to the table (Thief for pulling and increasing droprates, Ranger for pulling, Bard for buffing, etc).

That's my point though, the melee jobs with more armour/ HP do more damage than monk

So I guess it's just the aspect of not having to buy or maintain gear yet still doing damage on par with others.

It's more of a team sport. For fighting certain enemies (undead?) monk have favorable conditions in the type of damage they do. But generally speaking, ninja = evasion tank, not monk.

[Vergil]

@ArcaneLurker you don't have to keep playing it btw it doesn't "get good" or anything so don't feel bad for hitting the bricks and getting outta there sooner rather than later

[J1M]

@ArcaneLurker you don't have to keep playing it btw it doesn't "get good" or anything so don't feel bad for hitting the bricks and getting outta there sooner rather than later

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

[Gastrick]

@ArcaneLurker you don't have to keep playing it btw it doesn't "get good" or anything so don't feel bad for hitting the bricks and getting outta there sooner rather than later

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

The things bad about the game make it good, what? Having a broken UI that doesn't target properly and uses a PS2 controller, and how it takes 20 minutes of walking to do any town stuff? Not even getting into the lack of satisfying progression with the offensive spells being weaker than hitting the enemy with your sword and all the animations being lame, and that there's nothing interesting to do outside of grinding that isn't brokenly slow.

"You grinded for 10 more hours and then could clear the hurdle with ease, congratulations"

[Vergil]

@ArcaneLurker you don't have to keep playing it btw it doesn't "get good" or anything so don't feel bad for hitting the bricks and getting outta there sooner rather than later

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

"Actually the game is fun because nothing works correctly and the gameplay consists of nothing but mob xp grinding"
I can see why it's infested with ****** this is very mental illness core.

[Kalarion]

@ArcaneLurker you don't have to keep playing it btw it doesn't "get good" or anything so don't feel bad for hitting the bricks and getting outta there sooner rather than later

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

The things bad about the game make it good, what? Having a broken UI that doesn't target properly and uses a PS2 controller, and how it takes 20 minutes of walking to do any town stuff? Not even getting into the lack of satisfying progression with the offensive spells being weaker than hitting the enemy with your sword and all the animations being lame, and that there's nothing interesting to do outside of grinding that isn't brokenly slow.

"You grinded for 10 more hours and then could clear the hurdle with ease, congratulations"

The only complaint listed here that is valid is the broken UI. Everything else is completely false. I can understand why you don't know what you're talking about, you joined and barely heard from any of us. I regret not being more active with you. If you started playing again I'd support your initial hours more.

You're still wrong though.

[Stack of Turtles]

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

The things bad about the game make it good, what? Having a broken UI that doesn't target properly and uses a PS2 controller, and how it takes 20 minutes of walking to do any town stuff? Not even getting into the lack of satisfying progression with the offensive spells being weaker than hitting the enemy with your sword and all the animations being lame, and that there's nothing interesting to do outside of grinding that isn't brokenly slow.

"You grinded for 10 more hours and then could clear the hurdle with ease, congratulations"

The only complaint listed here that is valid is the broken UI. Everything else is completely false. I can understand why you don't know what you're talking about, you joined and barely heard from any of us. I regret not being more active with you. If you started playing again I'd support your initial hours more.

You're still wrong though.

Kalarion, out of the five non-broken-UI complaints (and what, that's not enough?), three of them are unarguably subjective - progression being unsatisfying, animations being lame, and nothing being interesting. The other two sound like hyperbole. Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

[Vergil]

Look, you aren't the only one who hates the Dunes. The reason the game is fun is because it has hurdles to clear. Even including the UI, controls, and travel.

The things bad about the game make it good, what? Having a broken UI that doesn't target properly and uses a PS2 controller, and how it takes 20 minutes of walking to do any town stuff? Not even getting into the lack of satisfying progression with the offensive spells being weaker than hitting the enemy with your sword and all the animations being lame, and that there's nothing interesting to do outside of grinding that isn't brokenly slow.

"You grinded for 10 more hours and then could clear the hurdle with ease, congratulations"

The only complaint listed here that is valid is the broken UI. Everything else is completely false. I can understand why you don't know what you're talking about, you joined and barely heard from any of us. I regret not being more active with you. If you started playing again I'd support your initial hours more.

You're still wrong though.

Everything he said is true and multiple other people have expressed identical sentiments.
The UI is objectively bad and you guys STILL have to tinker with it occasionally.
Every single time I would play with you guys half the play time was spent walking and trying desperately to not accidentally aggro an enemy and reset 30 minutes of progress spent walking.
The progression sucks ****. You just run around in a circle killing the same 5 enemies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over to get meager scraps of xp so you can level up and get a marginal imperceptible stat increase. Quests don't give you any good gear to get more gear you have to grind for gil to spend on the auction house.
The offensive spells take ages for you to charge up your bar from mindlessly swinging, no sorry, watching your character mindlessly swing while you yourself do nothing for a pittance of damage.
The animations are extremely boring and sluggish with everything being punctuated with the exact same animations for any task. Slowly pull your sword out at the st art of combat, slowly sheathe it at the end etc.
Grinding is the ENTIRE game. I have never not once seen or heard you guys do ANYTHING but kill the same enemies over and over and over again every quest involved either going to a place and then returning or killing the same enemies over and over and over and over again until RNG blesses you with a quest item. There is no gameplay. It's pure cookie clicker trash. Go play WoW and never leave the starter zone until you get to level 20 purely through killing enemies and then walk on foot to the other end of the continent and then do nothing but kill mobs for 20 more levels and you get the FFXI experience except WoW has functional controls that don't take multiple DAYS of troubleshooting to fix.

You're reaching the absolute bottom of the cope barrel when your response to criticism is "heh, well actually the game being broken and not fun actually makes it super hardcore, guess you just couldn't handle it kid...."

[WhiteShark]

Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

Why is it so important for the Vergilsphere to complain about this game day in and day out?

[Stack of Turtles]

Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

Why is it so important for the Vergilsphere to complain about this game day in and day out?

Because this is a politically incorrect forum where people have a natural urge to defy propaganda and shout the truth into the void.

[WhiteShark]

Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

Why is it so important for the Vergilsphere to complain about this game day in and day out?

Because this is a politically incorrect forum where people have a natural urge to defy propaganda and shout the truth into the void.

I asked why it's so important to whine endlessly about a game you guys barely even played, not why @Kalarion does what he does.

[Stack of Turtles]

I asked why it's so important to whine endlessly about a game you guys barely even played, not why @Kalarion does what he does.

Look, I've never played the game at all and have no opinion on it whatsoever, and so far you guys, not Vergil, have convinced me that it sounds awful and I should never give it the time of day.

Sure, V's probably sulking a little because his friends are playing a game he doesn't like without him, especially Arcane, whom he likes and respects and seems to genuinely want to save from what he believes to be a torturous experience. But from where I'm sitting, the reason his dislike for the game has become a constant refrain is because you, Kalarion, and Shillitron cannot seem to handle other people not liking something you like and you keep insisting on making it a big deal.

[WhiteShark]

Look, I've never played the game at all and have no opinion on it whatsoever

Yes, I knew you hadn't played it; I was just referring to your clique's collective hours played.

But from where I'm sitting, the reason his dislike for the game has become a constant refrain is because you, Kalarion, and Shillitron cannot seem to handle other people not liking something you like and you keep insisting on making it a big deal.

I don't recall doing this at all. As far as I know, this is the first I've said anything about this. I frankly don't care if you guys don't like it, and I certainly don't want to play a multiplayer game with someone who doesn't enjoy it. That said, it's not at all strange that there would be pushback when your group constantly complains about a game to people actively playing that game.

[Stack of Turtles]

Look, I've never played the game at all and have no opinion on it whatsoever

Yes, I knew you hadn't played it; I was just referring to your clique's collective hours played.

I don't feel that I'm in a clique

But from where I'm sitting, the reason his dislike for the game has become a constant refrain is because you, Kalarion, and Shillitron cannot seem to handle other people not liking something you like and you keep insisting on making it a big deal.

I don't recall doing this at all. As far as I know, this is the first I've said anything about this. I frankly don't care if you guys don't like it, and I certainly don't want to play a multiplayer game with someone who doesn't enjoy it.

I don't particularly think you've done it before, but I'm including now.

That said, it's not at all strange that there would be pushback when your group constantly complains about a game to people actively playing that game.

How is that not strange? Why would you push back against someone just not being into it? That's very strange behavior to me. I never got the slightest pushback over not liking games people were playing in chat before, especially from what I assume to be the members of this "clique". At most, I could see wanting to reassure people who haven't played that it's possible to like the game, but this is absolute "seething" level.


eta: btw, I don't think I've ever really interacted with Gastrick at all. I know Fin quit the game and he and I are friends, but I haven't heard him say anything about it afterward. I don't remember anyone else disliking it. Is my "clique" literally just Vergil?

[WhiteShark]

How is that not strange? Why would you push back against someone just not being into it? That's very strange behavior to me. I never got the slightest pushback over not liking games people were playing in chat before, especially from what I assume to be the members of this "clique". At most, I could see wanting to reassure people who haven't played that it's possible to like the game, but this is absolute "seething" level.

It's utterly disingenous to say it's just been the Vergilsphere 'not being into it'. People who just 'aren't into it' don't spend weeks complaining in IRC and then come to the game's thread to complain about it more. There's one group of people seething, and it's not the FFXI players.

Again, I don't care if you (collectively) don't like it, but I also don't see why we all need to be reminded of this multiple times a day.

[Stack of Turtles]

That said, it's not at all strange that there would be pushback when your group constantly complains about a game to people actively playing that game.

How is that not strange? Why would you push back against someone just not being into it? That's very strange behavior to me. I never got the slightest pushback over not liking games people were playing in chat before, especially from what I assume to be the members of this "clique". At most, I could see wanting to reassure people who haven't played that it's possible to like the game, but this is absolute "seething" level.

Actually, let me expand on this a little bit since I'm going to bed and won't see you reply.

If you like a game and you get a friend to try it out and your friend hates the game, what I would consider socially normal responses would include things like "Oh, okay, sorry you didn't enjoy it, let's play something else." or "If you want to give it another try, you can do x, y, and z to address the issues you mentioned."; "No, all of your negative opinions are LIES, how DARE you spread FAKE NEWS about you not liking this game?!" is fundamentally a noticeably abnormal response. It's strange to me that you think that isn't "at all" strange.

[Oyster Sauce]

returning to your childhood neighborhood and seeing it taken over by foreigners who don't even speak your language is kind of like the multiplayer channel for me right now

[Stack of Turtles]

It's utterly disingenous to say it's just been the Vergilsphere 'not being into it'. People who just 'aren't into it' don't spend weeks complaining in IRC and then come to the game's thread to complain about it more. There's one group of people seething, and it's not the FFXI players.

Again, I don't care if you (collectively) don't like it, but I also don't see why we all need to be reminded of this multiple times a day.

Sorry, I was posting as you posted.

I only ever saw Vergil complain about it, first, whenever he was being begged to come back to the game, and afterward, when Kal and Shill were ******** on him for not liking the game while they tried to beg OTHER people to play. He also hasn't mentioned it in days; this most recent time, I brought it up and Kal immediately started ******** himself that I used a single negative word - so Vergil argued in support of it, sure, and then, when he heard Arcane was gonna play, yes, came to this thread, like I said, out of a possibly misguided genuine desire to "save" him. The idea that he's just been complaining nonstop without provocation is insane - I think you guys really don't understand how unpleasant it has been to be on the other side of this.

---

Okay, I guess Oyster's in the clique too, that's fair. (I agree with him.)

[WhiteShark]

If you like a game and you get a friend to try it out and your friend hates the game, what I would consider socially normal responses would include things like "Oh, okay, sorry you didn't enjoy it, let's play something else."

We've bantered about various HQers coming back to the game, but nobody's forcing them to play.

or "If you want to give it another try, you can do x, y, and z to address the issues you mentioned.";

Solutions for UI problems have been offered. There are many helpful addons that make the game much more palatable. These have largely been ignored.

"No, all of your negative opinions are LIES, how DARE you spread FAKE NEWS about you not liking this game?!" is fundamentally a noticeably abnormal response. It's strange to me that you think that isn't "at all" strange.

If a friend of yours played perhaps 0.01% of a game's content and then started throwing out unfounded opinions about the whole, would you not find that ludicrous? Not liking the early game is normal. The first ten levels, in particular, involve a lot of punching rabbits for XP and not a lot of interesting mechanics. It's a rough start. If that, and maybe a touch more, is all someone has played, though, he cannot have an informed opinion about the game. There's a lot more going on later.

To address why Kalarion took issue with Gastrik's post:

1. Broken UI: Kalarion acknowledged that this is an issue. However, you can fix a lot of it with addons.
2. Town travel times: travel in general takes a while (until you get teleport crystals, Outposts, and chocobos), but '20 minutes of walking to do town stuff' is a huge exaggeration. If you're wandering around talking to every NPC, sure, it will take a while, but if you're just doing essential things, even Windurst isn't nearly that bad.
3. Lack of satisfying progression: ridiculous claim. He didn't play far enough to even know if this is true.
4. Offensive spells weaker than autoattacks: at very low skill, perhaps true, but not true in general. BLMs tend to do so much burst that they have to hold back to not pull aggro from the melees.
5. Lame animations: I don't think they're lame, but, either way, he's only seen a tiny fraction of them.
6. Everything besides grinding is slow: this is really bundled up with travel times. Part of the fun of the game is unlocking new methods of quick traversal. It makes the world feel big and it makes the player feel accomplished when he can get places quickly despite this. It's also fun sneaking through dangerous areas for supply runs. Kalarion and I had a lot of fun making our way to Jeuno for the first time early on to unlock chocobos. In short, yes, travel is slow, but the game would lose a lot of its charm if travel were always easy, and once you do have quicker means of travel, 'everything besides grinding' isn't particularly slow.

I hope you can see why someone might feel compelled to rebut these claims instead of letting them stand. There's a difference between someone saying, "I didn't like this game and I don't want to play it anymore," and, "This game sucks for (false) reasons X, Y, and Z, and you're stupid for liking it."

[Stack of Turtles]

If you like a game and you get a friend to try it out and your friend hates the game, what I would consider socially normal responses would include things like "Oh, okay, sorry you didn't enjoy it, let's play something else."

We've bantered about various HQers coming back to the game, but nobody's forcing them to play.

or "If you want to give it another try, you can do x, y, and z to address the issues you mentioned.";

Solutions for UI problems have been offered. There are many helpful addons that make the game much more palatable. These have largely been ignored.

"No, all of your negative opinions are LIES, how DARE you spread FAKE NEWS about you not liking this game?!" is fundamentally a noticeably abnormal response. It's strange to me that you think that isn't "at all" strange.

If a friend of yours played perhaps 0.01% of a game's content and then started throwing out unfounded opinions about the whole, would you not find that ludicrous?

No.

Not liking the early game is normal. The first ten levels, in particular, involve a lot of punching rabbits for XP and not a lot of interesting mechanics. It's a rough start.

A game that starts so bad you don't want to keep playing it is a bad game.

If that, and maybe a touch more, is all someone has played, though, he cannot have an informed opinion about the game. There's a lot more going on later.

To address why Kalarion took issue with Gastrik's post:

1. Broken UI: Kalarion acknowledged that this is an issue. However, you can fix a lot of it with addons.
2. Town travel times: travel in general takes a while (until you get teleport crystals, Outposts, and chocobos), but '20 minutes of walking to do town stuff' is a huge exaggeration. If you're wandering around talking to every NPC, sure, it will take a while, but if you're just doing essential things, even Windurst isn't nearly that bad.
3. Lack of satisfying progression: ridiculous claim. He didn't play far enough to even know if this is true.
4. Offensive spells weaker than autoattacks: at very low skill, perhaps true, but not true in general. BLMs tend to do so much burst that they have to hold back to not pull aggro from the melees.
5. Lame animations: I don't think they're lame, but, either way, he's only seen a tiny fraction of them.
6. Everything besides grinding is slow: this is really bundled up with travel times. Part of the fun of the game is unlocking new methods of quick traversal. It makes the world feel big and it makes the player feel accomplished when he can get places quickly despite this. It's also fun sneaking through dangerous areas for supply runs. Kalarion and I had a lot of fun making our way to Jeuno for the first time early on to unlock chocobos. In short, yes, travel is slow, but the game would lose a lot of its charm if travel were always easy, and once you do have quicker means of travel, 'everything besides grinding' isn't particularly slow.

I hope you can see why someone might feel compelled to rebut these claims instead of letting them stand.

Nope. I still think it's stupid. The game isn't your child, who cares.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have playfully jabbed at Vergil once or twice in the multiplayer IRC chat about him coming back. I don't think I have ever seen anyone try to "force" him to come back. That is dwarfed by how much he has talked about FF11 negatively since.

At any rate, I wouldn't try to "force" him to come back. It is a very time consuming game, and while Vergil is incorrect about a few things, he did not seem to enjoy the core gameplay, which is a 6 man party surrounding a mob and people chit chatting during the low APM combat or the long travels. It's really an MMO about the social interaction, where the difficulty is to force people together and the slow pace of the game allows people to chat and talk to each other, unlike an action game like retail WoW where you have to stop gameplay to really socialize. He was mostly quiet. If he wasn't talking and enjoying the gameplay then, then he's probably not going to enjoy it even if he gave it another 2 or 10 hours. We have limited time on this earth let alone free time, and I would like to spend that time doing something I enjoy. If he wasn't having fun then he would be better off doing something that is more entertaining for him.

[Kalarion]

Kalarion, out of the five non-broken-UI complaints (and what, that's not enough?), three of them are unarguably subjective - progression being unsatisfying, animations being lame, and nothing being interesting. The other two sound like hyperbole. Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

I suppose I can grant those as subjective opinions. Let me instead say that I think they're bad subjective opinions.

The assertion given in your question is baseless and a lie, and I will not answer it beyond that.

Everything he said is true and multiple other people have expressed identical sentiments.
The UI is objectively bad and you guys STILL have to tinker with it occasionally.
Every single time I would play with you guys half the play time was spent walking and trying desperately to not accidentally aggro an enemy and reset 30 minutes of progress spent walking.
The progression sucks ****. You just run around in a circle killing the same 5 enemies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over to get meager scraps of xp so you can level up and get a marginal imperceptible stat increase. Quests don't give you any good gear to get more gear you have to grind for gil to spend on the auction house.
The offensive spells take ages for you to charge up your bar from mindlessly swinging, no sorry, watching your character mindlessly swing while you yourself do nothing for a pittance of damage.
The animations are extremely boring and sluggish with everything being punctuated with the exact same animations for any task. Slowly pull your sword out at the st art of combat, slowly sheathe it at the end etc.
Grinding is the ENTIRE game. I have never not once seen or heard you guys do ANYTHING but kill the same enemies over and over and over again every quest involved either going to a place and then returning or killing the same enemies over and over and over and over again until RNG blesses you with a quest item. There is no gameplay. It's pure cookie clicker trash. Go play WoW and never leave the starter zone until you get to level 20 purely through killing enemies and then walk on foot to the other end of the continent and then do nothing but kill mobs for 20 more levels and you get the FFXI experience except WoW has functional controls that don't take multiple DAYS of troubleshooting to fix.

You're reaching the absolute bottom of the cope barrel when your response to criticism is "heh, well actually the game being broken and not fun actually makes it super hardcore, guess you just couldn't handle it kid...."

In order:
Like you, I don't care what most other people think about the things I like or dislike. Irrelevant.

Agreed. The UI is awful.

I'm willing to grant this, to some extent. The last night you played was a pretty epic example of how bad a play session can get in FF XI. I sympathize with your frustration with it, and it certainly didn't help that I, for one, didn't give you a lot more support in playing, just as I failed with Gastrick. I wish I had, and if, for instance, you decided to give the game another try (for whatever reason), that's one thing I would do very differently. But it's not representative of all, or even most, of your group play experience. Every time bar the Dunes Night of Doom that I played with you, we progressed fairly well. I do grant that the amount of progression was dissatisfying to you (and again, I can sympathize even if what irritates you so much suits me perfectly well - FF XI is a very slow-paced, methodical game), I just don't grant that it wasn't happening at all, or going backwards.

Your dissatisfaction with the feel of progression I must grudgingly accept. As Stack said, it's subjective. My opinion is that the progression in FF XI is some of the best in any MMO, precisely because even small things that would normally be immediately dismissed - "You gained a level! You gained 13 max hp, +1 strength, etc etc" - make an enormous difference to play and performance here. Every +1 attribute counts. I can show you the math if you'd like. Every ability picked up or trait gained matters to your play. I can show you the math there too, or I can demonstrate it to you through group play.

Your characterization of never doing anything but "running around killing the same 5 monsters over and..." is wrong. Again, I can demonstrate it if you'd like.

Your characterization of quest rewards is completely wrong. From low to high level, there are multiple quests that give excellent rewards for all classes and roles. If you're interested I can point you to them.

I grant that most people seem to progress their gear by buying it. I find it a refreshingly unique facet of games like FF XI and, before it, EQ. But I can also understand your frustration with it, because I feel it to some extent. I want to go out and kill nasty monsters to get cool loot, but most people seem to want to farm xp and gil as fast as possible to buy what they need at the Auction House. C'est la vie. I would point out that, had I known your dissatisfaction in this particular area, I would have been (and would be) very happy to try to do cool **** together for phat loot. It's my favorite part of the game, but most people never seem to see it.

Yes, grinding is the game. That's what MMOs from this period were - kill tons of monsters, get experience and/or get loot, rinse and repeat - and loot wasn't guaranteed on first kill. There's more to it in FF XI, but if you couldn't see and couldn't be bothered to look, fine. The gameplay loop you're railing against is as old as Wizardry I. If you don't like that style of play, fine. I do.

The animations are repetitive, but given how often you're performing the same actions (engage, disengage, swing, parry, block, weaponskill, skillchain, cast spell), it's impossible and mean-spirited to demand endless variety. What company could plausibly satisfy your desire in an MMO? What animations there are, I find excellently done and fun to watch. Watch Whiteshark play as his Samurai some time. Or watch me play as my Dark Knight.

Characterizing this gameplay loop as "pure cookie clicker trash" is one point that I firmly denounce as a lie. The amount of decision-making required for a good, competent group, versus a bad or even mediocre group, is incredible. And the game rewards good play in a way I've rarely seen, especially for an MMO. No other MMO has such a high ceiling for expressing skill at strategic group gameplay. The fact that you never bothered to learn those facets of group play doesn't mean they don't exist.

Your characterization of "play wow by leveling 20 levels solely through killing enemies", is of course basically correct. That's what this generation of MMOs does. I love it. I recognize now, and recognized back when we were first talking about FF XI, that you probably would not. Again, c'est la vie.

Your final sentence I assume doesn't apply to me.

I'll type some more tomorrow.

[WhiteShark]

No.

Ok, you're not being serious. I'm sorry I bothered.

[J1M]

The things bad about the game make it good, what? Having a broken UI that doesn't target properly and uses a PS2 controller, and how it takes 20 minutes of walking to do any town stuff? Not even getting into the lack of satisfying progression with the offensive spells being weaker than hitting the enemy with your sword and all the animations being lame, and that there's nothing interesting to do outside of grinding that isn't brokenly slow.

"You grinded for 10 more hours and then could clear the hurdle with ease, congratulations"

The only complaint listed here that is valid is the broken UI. Everything else is completely false. I can understand why you don't know what you're talking about, you joined and barely heard from any of us. I regret not being more active with you. If you started playing again I'd support your initial hours more.

You're still wrong though.

Kalarion, out of the five non-broken-UI complaints (and what, that's not enough?), three of them are unarguably subjective - progression being unsatisfying, animations being lame, and nothing being interesting. The other two sound like hyperbole. Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

We have literally had different people, unprompted, express how satisfying the progression in the game is in the LS chat over the last week. And not necessarily about the same game elements either.

I understand why some people bounce off the game, but it does a number of things that you don't really see in games anymore that have payoffs you can't really see at level 12.

[Vergil]

The only complaint listed here that is valid is the broken UI. Everything else is completely false. I can understand why you don't know what you're talking about, you joined and barely heard from any of us. I regret not being more active with you. If you started playing again I'd support your initial hours more.

You're still wrong though.

Kalarion, out of the five non-broken-UI complaints (and what, that's not enough?), three of them are unarguably subjective - progression being unsatisfying, animations being lame, and nothing being interesting. The other two sound like hyperbole. Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

We have literally had different people, unprompted, express how satisfying the progression in the game is in the LS chat over the last week. And not necessarily about the same game elements either.

I understand why some people bounce off the game, but it does a number of things that you don't really see in games anymore that have payoffs you can't really see at level 12.

"DUDE it gets good after 50 hours"

Why is it so important to you that nobody is allowed to dislike this game?

Why is it so important for the Vergilsphere to complain about this game day in and day out?

Probably because the same three people never stfu about it in chat day in and day out while trying to coax more people into playing and getting peak defensive over criticism
Although I guess it makes sense since the busted unusable UI makes chatting so annoying you rather use a third part application.
The fact you have to come up with some cope conspiracy that it's the "vergilsphere" when people I've never talked to like Gastrick agree with me is very telling!