A perfect example has been provided for why gamers aren’t taking to the world of Final Fantasy XIV like you’d expect.
For those of you wondering exactly what kinds of issues players are having with Final Fantasy XIV that led to a free trial extension, this video explains them perfectly. When a Final Fantasy XIV player attempts to perform the simple task of selling 20 items, it ends up taking way longer than it should.
Game Informer points us to the video that shows off the odd interface issues Final Fantasy XIV foists upon players. It takes nearly three minutes just to complete the task of selling twenty items in Final Fantasy XIV, while a comparison to World of Warcraft at the end shows how item selling should work. In WoW, it takes less than ten seconds.
Part of the problem could stem from the fact that Final Fantasy XIV has to have an interface that works both for a mouse and keyboard and a controller, as it’s also planned for release on consoles next year. Still, it’s things like this that make me wonder what game designers are thinking sometimes.
Don’t think the issues with the game are related only to item selling, because the frustration that players are finding in just this minuscule task are also found in multiple other aspects of the game. I’m not saying that every MMOG should copy World of Warcraft, but when a genre is taken backwards in the simplest of ways it’s a real problem. In fact, it’s sometimes frustration from the simple things that will make people quit playing MMOGs, or any game, because nobody wants to spend all day just trying to unload Chocobo beaks. Hopefully, Square Enix will somehow get it together and fix problems like this as soon as possible.
Source: Game Informer
Published: Oct 17, 2010 06:34 pm