Now an MMO like Final FantasyXI or XIV is a completely different skill set. Final Fantasy online is akin more to a game of chess. Knowledge, strategy and yes quick timing with macros and casting are what win the day. Thinking so many steps ahead of your opponent knowing their weaknesses, knowing their behavior and to estimate your survival or your parties survival if you intend to engage some difficult mob. What makes Final Fantasy difficult isn’t instant death from a hail of bullets, it’s the intellectual approach at killing your opponent. Just like chess, if you charge in without preparing or knowing anything about who or what your fighting it is indeed guaranteed death. Its an RPG not a high speed game like laser tag. You think before you act. And while forethought and strategy are the corner stone of any war game the games you were talking about are not of that design. They are fast paced action, reaction, oriented games.

Saying a game that takes active reasoning and planned out strategy to be good at is not a skill by way of comparing it to a game who’s actions are on a completely separate playing field is like saying it takes less skill to be a General than a grunt who fights on the field. They’re completely different. In Final Fantasy you are your own General. Your avatar fights for you, with augmented input from you.

Sorry for the long post.

And also I’m not saying that being an actual grunt is easy or siding with how our country runs our army. Was just for the point of this post.

But… as far as the Galka/Elvaan stats go they do seem pretty backwards, so i’ll give you that. The skill thing you brought up though is pretty pointless. You don’t think there’s different kinds of skills people can have? So you’re telling me the guy in the arcade who can dodge a million bullets on the arcade game can cook, do mathematics, play an instrument, good at organization and planning, flawless memory, is an artist in literature or painting etc. etc. that he can do everything? Reality is, probably not. And the point i’m trying to make is it takes different kinds skills to play FFXI, than it does to play a fast reflex game. The biggest one having the endurance and patience to deal with all the garbage.

What I like about FFXI is that team aspect though. I remember when the game first came out and a majority of players were upset how the game wasn’t solo friendly. I didn’t understand this though. Why play a MMO if you want to solo all the time? Why play a Final Fantasy MMO for that matter when you should know from past games that the basis is a group of people with common goals vanquishing evil?

Yea I figured you meant if the same two characters have the same gear. But my point was isn’t that the point with having different races? They are supposed to vary. But like I said, that’s when the beauty of FFXI comes in and at higher levels, keeping up with other races of the same job is not a problem with the gear available. Just because your Elvaan or Galka doesn’t automatically mean your going to suck as a mage because you have like 5-10 less INT then a taru at 75. And where did I say “Oh Aaron but teh Elvaan has teh superz str, I can be the leet meleez with my blm scythe… lol” lol? No offense to anyone here but lol@BLMusingScythe

Though I don’t agree or understand what you mean with racial differences, I do agree to an extent with you on your argument over skill. In terms of SE taking some tips from Blizzard, you can rest assured that they have been eyeing WoW; especially with the recent but not so much so recent article where SE mentions that they want to compete with WoW. I was kinda under the impression that you were fond of WoW lol but it seems thats not the case^^

As far as Elvaan BLM putting some tarus to shame, there is merit to that but my point is that if that Taru had the same items it would once again be Taru > Elvaan. The person who posted above me before made a comment about 5 races offereing 5 different ways to play but that simply isnt true. All 5 races when playing BLM (sub any job really) will be casting spells as your main dmg tool. I guess you could say that a “different” way of playing is that elvaan will do less dmg and be able to cast less spells but thats not really “different” but it is much WORSE. Also the argument fails if you wanted to say “Oh Aaron but teh Elvaan has teh superz str, I can be the leet meleez with my blm scythe… lol” This statement and arguement are Fail.

Overall I wanted FFXIV to have diffrences in the races more the way WoW did with different racial abilites and more minor differences in actual stat allocation (not no difference just less). I’ve played FFXI for 5 years, its not like I don’t know the ins and outs of the game, its my opinion that is this regard SE could take a page or two from blizzard. That being said I LOVE FFXI and I HATE WoW but I’m willing to see the pros and cons of each.

Finally, I agree with the statement that adding more skill to MMOs would mae them more fun.

I just liked how in FFXI that you werent defined at jobs due to race like in traditional MMO’s like Everquest. You don’t have to pay for another character to make that mage you’ve been dieing to experiment with, because you can just go to your moogle and change from your Warrior to Black Mage on the fly. Any race can be good at any job with enough hard work and determination. That is one of the beauties of FFXI.

And you saying that FFXI has no skill and then advocating for arcade games really doesn’t help either. Though I sort of get what you mean in an MMO with the whole “monotonous” level grind(it can get boring for some people no doubt, however why play and MMO if you don’t like that to begin with?), and the arcade scene for that matter, there are a number of missions in FFXI, HNMs, and many other activities that actually do require skill. Then again, if FFXI has no skill could you post vids of you soloing AV? It would greatly help the FFXI community^^