Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

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Originally Posted by Colvin

of course One game has 11 years of content and the other has 4 months.. but who is counting...

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Like I said, that wasn't counting endgame stuff in XI, that's just lvling, which was more fun than what we have in XIV. Back when I started XI, that's all there was to do was lvling and the storyline and guess what, it still made me want to play the game every single day and all day. XIV rushes you to 50, then you sit there in your inn / Mor Dhona and que for the same crap over and over and this early into the game if people are losing interest, it's not a good sign.

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Originally Posted by Colvin

of course One game has 11 years of content and the other has 4 months.. but who is counting...

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Well, considering you get to 50 in a week or two in this game- that is the developer's fault. They warped people to end game, they should have content to support it.

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

Well, considering you get to 50 in a week or two in this game- that is the developer's fault. They warped people to end game, they should have content to support it.

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Not even that long. I watched a guy in my FC go from mid 20s to 47 just overnight and from dungeons

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

They warped people to end game

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Had this exact discussion with a FC member. And for those angry people let me put it like I did to him.

Lets say FFXIV takes 2 months to level to 50. (which is way too long but that way the super casuals who pay a sub to play 2 hours a week will not have any ground to stand on when they start attacking me)

Lets also say FFXIV will not have an expansion for 1 year (12 months)

So if I'm thinking right that means about 83% of the time you play in the calendar year you will be lvl 50 right?

Now how much of the game world is for level 1-49??? That's what I thought. It is probably something in the order of 90% of the game world is designed for the levels that you are going to spend less than 20% of your playtime experiencing.

That is poor design. I am having fun playing 14 don't get me wrong. But people who cry and complain about "omg I don't want to have to grind to 50!" are the ones who made it so that 90% of the content in the game could be removed tomorrow and a vast majority of us wouldn't even notice (without being told) that it was no longer there.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Velhard, I don't think anyone is suggesting we bring back low drop rates and the 6 hour HM camps for an Ochuido's Kote. What they want is some permanence to the value of end game content. If we are going to get thrown for a loop every 3 months where the last content they released is going to become way easier to do, and the primary reason to do any of the content is to see the unique story thread for that encounter set (its an RPG after all), it doesn't leave much incentive to stick around to tackle the harder content. It really isn't about the gear or the achievements, but the fact that the payout for doing stuff is going to be devaluated relatively quickly. They are suggesting things like sideways progression because they want the value of the content to be preserved.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

If you do horizontal, you have to balance how long it takes to acquire said item. Unless there is ideas I simply cannot think of, the best way to do so is low RNG and over the top time sinks to balance the longevity of the content.

The idea of devalue is all on your own opinion. I am not in favor of holding the same gear for a long period of time because I have some emotional attachment to it. I like that there is always a feeling of progression and no extreme road blocks. For many years I wanted a TP piece on my SAM that wasn't Haubergeon+1, an ugly piece that was lv.59 no less and couldn't even use the higher level versions of it. Ask how many people were disappointed that there was no gear progression past ilvl90 in 2.1. I felt a great sense of accomplishment beating all the content available in 2.0-2.1. I don't need gear longevity to prove that. The fact that I beat T5 in it's prime, which the majority of players have not is good enough for me. I look forward to repeating this pattern in 2.2 and so on. On how often gear gets outdated within a year can be debatable, but either doing horizontal or vertical, SE will never get it just right because there is no way to be right.

I have always said that people don't know what they want, they just know what they don't want. Make something one way, people complain. Cater to the will of the people, they still complain. Only thing developers can do is balance what is right and attempt to understand what people truly want, which is near impossible because I believe people truly don't know what they want anyways. You can throw me in that guilty party while you are at it.

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Thanks for the reply Velhart. I think Fendred's response sums up my sentiment more: It's about the payout for finally accomplishing stuff in current patch being devalued pretty quickly by another patch. I *never* want to see a return to crazy 20+ hour HNM windows where everyone's camping and people are botting to claim, etc. I'm not asking for that. I'm not asking for 7 Year-long windows either.

Horizontal Progression doesn't necessarily have to mean playing the same dungeon over and over with no new content. Just as a quick example (I'm sure there are much better ones people can think of): Instead of raising Item Level every few months, why not explore sidegrades that bring something meaningful? Like having a piece of equipment that had "Enhances Stoneskin" or "Increases Holy Damage" or something?

Why not have more than the ~2 same boring Stats that get swapped out (in our current Allagan vs. AF+1 limited choices)? Instead of just Crit vs. Spell/Skill Speed, have more Stats that can be affected and be meaningful. Of course, with Yoshi P limiting and controlling our Stats so much (so VIT and [Core Stat] are always fixed and never deviate), and with no real Elemental System (his choice again), there is very little wiggle room to do anything except vertical.

I'm all for more dungeons, interesting battles / scenarios to engage us with patches every few months; I never said I didn't want that, that would be great. :) You said that for you, "The fact that I beat T5 in it's prime, which the majority of players have not is good enough for me."

So if the fact that you beat a challenging fight is "good enough for you" (and we get new fights every few months with a patch), then why would it bother you if some of us are asking for the accomplishment / payout for clearing the latest and greatest not be devalued so quickly?

You're right that SE (and probably any company out there) may never get it exactly right, but every few months feels far too fast, considering the previously mentioned time to actually figure out the fight, overcome it with your own group of friends, then actually try and earn some of the rewards (let alone all of them) for your particular Job, and then trying to get all the pieces (and then some for your secondary, tertiary jobs, etc.).

It's like we barely have time to "breathe," before it's all "reset" again.

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Originally Posted by Kiara

It's like we barely have time to "breathe," before it's all "reset" again.

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It will always be like that for the people that barely beat content before the next patch. The benefit to being the slowest completers is that you constantly have content to work on.

My problems with the game.

* Slow combat - Combat is slow. I don't know if it's just Skill Speeds or animations but it doesn't feel right.
* Crafting is worthless after level 45 (imo) Unless you're a Weaver and can Craft Vanya Pieces.
* Can't link items in chat.
* Level 45 job quest for job armor is annoying.
* No "dressing room" to see what stuff looks like before you equip it.

Bard feels weak... I am prolly just doing it wrong.
Monk seems very bleh imo but lots of people like it
Black Mage while does a lot of damage. I would be willing to give up on upfront damage if everything I had wasn't a 3sec recast.
I hate Marauder/Warrior class because its a tank class. When I picture them I seem them as heavy hitting DPS or filling the off tank role. But people like it so it must be ok.
Paladin is meh. Warrior seems to out perform in tanking in many ways.. But maybe thats because I have had bad Paladin's.

Content relevancy and longevity is vital to every game that plan to live for years to come. Thinking that trash content that is beatable in a couple of hours from release and completely farmed in few weeks coupled with fast trash content development of the same type of content will only exhaust more money and resources with nothing to show for. The ratio of money + resources to the time this content last your player base is just silly. what makes it worse is how much sub time (and thus cash) it can only buy compared to how it used to be before.

To be frankly honest though, the current twintania fight is pretty bad, and I'm glad that they are going to hit it with the nerf bat. It's not that I dislike hard encounters, but there isn't any pre-fight or cutscenes to show off the ability set of the boss before you fight him, and that's kind of important considering he can one shot people with a lot of his stuff. The extreme primal fights were better designed, since we at least saw many of their abilities before, but even those fights still dropped surprises that instantly wipe the group. I'm not against surprises as long as quick thinking can be used to make a recovery and avoid it later. Having a room suddenly fill up with plumes( except two very small spots) that deal enough damage to nearly floor everyone isn't something you can recover from when the boss hits like howitzer.

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Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Who the hell needs a sense of accomplishment from a damned video game?
Whatever happened to playing games because they were a fun thing to do?

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Feeling a sense of accomplishment isn't part of the fun?