CritialGaming said:
1. I don't mind grinding, within reason. And yes I do stay clear of F2P/MMOs. Last one I played was TERA and I actually had fun there, though I didn't get to end game. However in FFXIV I got my Monk to level 50, and found it boring and slow trying to level any crafting profession, or other job class in the game because you basically sit in a single area farming levequests until you are ready to move to the next area.
That, would be you simply not knowing how to actually level those jobs. It is trivially easy and laughably fast to level crafting classes, between leves/GC turn-ins and later on Ixal quests, I literally leveled all crafting classes sans culinarian to 50 on two separate alts on my alt account back when I still played them solely for field repair.
On nothing more than maybe 20 min. a day, if that.
Same goes with other jobs, if you're doing nothing but grinding leves, you're doing it so wrong it's not even funny. The staple method of leveling in ARR for DoW/M is dungeons and if you can stomach it, fates. Leves was something you do while you wait for the dungeon queue to pop.
What you're doing is basically complaining it takes too long to go to the supermarket on the other side of town because you decided to walk instead of driving.
2. A single player RPG does not hold you back based on the whims of over people. Yes in a single player game they expect you to do things in A,B,C, order. But you can do it all at YOUR pace. In FFXIV there were moments where I had to sit for two hours waiting for a dungeon que to pop before I could proceed further into the game. Sometimes I don't have the kind of time to sit and wait, it is bad design. Not to mention while in a que, you cannot do certain other quests. So the game literally holds you back, which single player games do not do.
This is the fundamental part of single vs multiplayer games, it's not "bad design" any more than a game of Battlefield requiring more than 2 people to play.
Also, don't want to wait forever for queue? Don't play a DPS class like everyone else is (not that those kind of queue times have been seen since the beginning of ARR/launch of NIN, even on DPS my queue time these days is no more than 10-20min at the most).
Most importantly - how does what is effectively your own personal preference for single vs multiplayer games somehow makes multiplayer games bad? Because this seems to be the argument both you and the person I responded to is making: "I don't like this genre of games, therefore those games are all bad and terrible".
3. Expansions are meant to reset the playing field so that old players can return and not have to play catch-up to reach the rest of the player base.
Says who? You? Eve's had dozens and dozens of expansions in its 12 years, I can't recall a single instance where any of it was designed, explicit or otherwise, to "reset the playing field"
Now specifically for FF14, the fact of the matter is the playing field actually HAVE been reset. All that Dreadwyrm gear from FCOB? Little more than level fodder gear that you'll replace long before you reach 60 and finish the main story in HW.
FFXIV almost punishes players who have quit the game for returning by forcing them through pointless content
If you haven't done it before, why is the story "pointless content"? Is Xenoblade Chronicle X going to be all pointless content when it comes out in the US because people have already beaten it in Japan?
while their friends are already chewing through the expansion, essentially prevent players from ever catching their friends without pumping out all nighters to catch them.
This one here deserves so many /facepalm gifs, and would be amusing if it weren't so sad. You realize there are already players who have started the game with/right before the expansion and finished the main story from the start of 2.0 to the end of 3.0, and they did it without "pumping out all nighters" either, because SE added so much exp bonus to the 2.0 portion of the game right?
I know, because we have a couple of those in our FC.
You should consider going with less hyperbole and more fact. There is nothing for new players to "catch up" to, simply because there is so little 3.0 endgame content at the moment (Alexander HM doesn't come out for another week). Everyone is basically chilling at the starting line waiting for the race to begin.
Again bad design, a new expansion should welcome players with open arms, and this one kicks old players in the balls and then laughs at them.
SE welcomed everyone, it's only some old players who decided to imagine they're being kicked in the balls.
