We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

There will still remain a "best" way to approach a given situation. If you add elemental weaknesses and make Black Mage the most consistent in dealing damage against said weakness, it immediately becomes the de facto caster teams want. If you make a boss weak to Piercing, DRG/BRD/MCH are now slotted as the best. Look at how many people bring 3-4 tanks into Rathalos. Why? They can shrug off his dives far better than DPS jobs can and laugh at the stack mechanic. In that sense, they're the best option, which vaults them into the "default" positions.

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This depends on how the game environment works. If you create a rich and diverse environment you make it incredibly difficult to have BIS builds or preferred jobs..

The sheer amount of diversity within the environment counters that a lot. He problem you have is when the environment is not diverse and everything within shares the same traits.

If you look at ffxi many people know many of the jobs were considered undesirable even some of the particularly strong ones. The reason for this had very little to do with the jobs themselves and everything to do with the environment of the game world. Pets fed mobs to which made fights harder than they needed to be. That is the main reason pet classes were shunned.

90% of stuff above 50 shared the same weaknesses so if you didn't do piercing damage you weren't desirable. Or in the case of Dragoon. You did do piercing damage which was perfect for most mobs. But you had a pet so um no thankss.

Magic was the same especially when so many higher end mobs would silence you every 3 seconds or throw your magic back in your face.... Yeah ok no magic jobs.. it wasn't that jobs were broken or weak it was the environment was heavily biased towards a particular damage type.

If you make variednand complex environments best jobs or best builds become virtually impossible. One of the simpler ways to look at This is with things like first person shooters. If your in big open areas a sniper rifle build might be awesome and have a mahor advantage over someone with a shotgun Yet in an enclised building or such that same sniper build is now at a disadvantage over a shotgun build.

The builds don't change only the environment does. And a good environment makes it impossible to be the best everywhere.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

That is the main reason pet classes were shunned.

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DRG was shunned only because SE made the wyvern a two hour ability at first. Bad design. So one death and you lost a large chunk of dps for two hours. They fixed it by making it a 30 min resummon. BST was shunned because charming pets and using them in battle was a big exp penalty. If you used jug pets they were okay. PUP was just very complex, but i wouldn't say it was shunned.

BST actually was one of the best MMO experiences of my life. Learning to solo as a classic enchanter charm class is gameplay that's been lost, sadly, but it took a lot of skill.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The builds don't change only the environment does. And a good environment makes it impossible to be the best everywhere.

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This isn't exactly true. While the environment in FFXIV is very 1-layer. Even a complex set of layered environs will have a job or jobs that will be the "jacks" after a while. Builds are as important as the environs since the environs make the build, and said build works the environs.

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

Moro, in every MMO I have ever played including being a co-leader of one of the largest raiding guilds in WoW's hayday from 2004 to 2010 on my server...I never needed to get carried once. But if it makes you feel better to consider me a individual who isn't willing to earn my rewards strictly on my critique on how FF14 favors the minority in this game over the rest of the player base...have at it! Very sad though in attempt to put down my two cents into this conversation.

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Doesn't that make you a raider? Are you secretly killing the game on our behalf? Or are you just mistaking raiders for another group?

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

Moro, in every MMO I have ever played including being a co-leader of one of the largest raiding guilds in WoW's hayday from 2004 to 2010 on my server...I never needed to get carried once. But if it makes you feel better to consider me a individual who isn't willing to earn my rewards strictly on my critique on how FF14 favors the minority in this game over the rest of the player base...have at it! Very sad though in attempt to put down my two cents into this conversation.

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I always find it hilarious when people say this game caters to raiders. If that were the case, why has our content (Savage) gotten progressively easier to allow for more accessibility, and why was our other content (Ultimate) canceled for 4.51? If you think FFXIV caters to the raiders, you must be playing this game in an alternate dimension. Because it doesn't.

As for "killing this game", the game isn't dying. But it is certainly becoming more and more stale with its staggered releases, same ol' formula after five years, and centerpiece content seeming to always be a disappointment. That's hardly the fault of the raiders, though. Unless you want to try to blame them for something like the state of Pagos.

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

But if it makes you feel better to consider me a individual who isn't willing to earn my rewards strictly on my critique on how FF14 favors the minority in this game over the rest of the player base...have at it! Very sad though in attempt to put down my two cents into this conversation.

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I mean, it made you feel better to generalize an entire subset of the community and make an outrageous claim about them killing the game?

Now you suddenly can't handle someone questioning your logic about it?

She didn't say you don't earn your rewards, she was just wondering how often raiders end up helping people who 'irrationally hate raiders' clear content by carrying. This doesn't necessarily include you, and she didn't single you out.

It is funny how people can blame subsets of the community for killing the game when we have no power over said game. Last time I checked regular players, raider or not, are not SE employees nor do they work at SE or have any control over what SE does with FFXIV.

But I guess people just need someone to blame for whatever doesn't go exactly their way, even if who they blame literally has no power to do the thing they are being accused of /shrug.

This whole "raiders stole my bike and kicked my dog" mentality is just getting sad. If you hate a painting in an art gallery then you can go and yell at the painter if you feel so inclined, not the random guy standing by said painting and just observing the finished product; after all he didn't create what you are so angry about.

Also it sounds like you aren't even playing FFXIV, because 95% of the content in this game is casual content.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I always find it hilarious when people say this game caters to raiders. If that were the case, why has our content (Savage) gotten progressively easier to allow for more accessibility, and why was our other content (Ultimate) canceled for 4.51? If you think FFXIV caters to the raiders, you must be playing this game in an alternate dimension. Because it doesn't.

As for "killing this game", the game isn't dying. But it is certainly becoming more and more stale with its staggered releases, same ol' formula after five years, and centerpiece content seeming to always be a disappointment. That's hardly the fault of the raiders, though. Unless you want to try to blame them for something like the state of Pagos.

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You know people who hate raiding and raiders will not listen to reasonable arguments, right?

The only group of players who tend to destroy games are the ones who refuse to learn to play their classes and the mechanics right and always complain until everything gets nerfed into the ground.

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Originally Posted by Miste

I mean, it made you feel better to generalize an entire subset of the community and make an outrageous claim about them killing the game?

Now you suddenly can't handle someone questioning your logic about it?

She didn't say you don't earn your rewards, she was just wondering how often raiders end up helping people who 'irrationally hate raiders' clear content by carrying. This doesn't necessarily include you, and she didn't single you out.

It is funny how people can blame subsets of the community for killing the game when we have no power over said game. Last time I checked regular players, raider or not, are not SE employees nor do they work at SE or have any control over what SE does with FFXIV.

But I guess people just need someone to blame for whatever doesn't go exactly their way, even if who they blame literally has no power to do the thing they are being accused of /shrug.

This whole "raiders stole my bike and kicked my dog" mentality is just getting sad. If you hate a painting in an art gallery then you can go and yell at the painter if you feel so inclined, not the random guy standing by said painting and just observing the finished product; after all he didn't create what you are so angry about.

Also it sounds like you aren't even playing FFXIV, because 95% of the content in this game is casual content.

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I understand the bitterness towards raiders regarding their complaining about Diadem in 3.1 RNG drop gear being as good as their savage gear. Something was literally taken away from the entire community directly because of the complaining of the "raid community" so yes, raiders do have an impact on the community despite not being on SE's payroll.

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Originally Posted by Bahati

I understand the bitterness towards raiders regarding their complaining about Diadem in 3.1 RNG drop gear being as good as their savage gear. Something was literally taken away from the entire community directly because of the complaining of the "raid community" so yes, raiders do have an impact on the community despite not being on SE's payroll.

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Okay, I'll bite. What was taken away, here? Diadem? We still have Eureka. Non-savage ways to reach i370? Tomes still exist, and Anemos gave i350 gear with five open materia slots which put them in the running easily for some non-savage BiS. I think the reason Pagos has no gear is just cuz devs don't want to design AF gear every other patch.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Okay, I'll bite. What was taken away, here? Diadem? We still have Eureka. Non-savage ways to reach i370? Tomes still exist, and Anemos gave i350 gear with five open materia slots which put them in the running easily for some non-savage BiS. I think the reason Pagos has no gear is just cuz devs don't want to design AF gear every other patch.

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In this instance the opportunity for casual players to have the same high ilvl as raiders simultaneously was taken away. This random pink gear dropped from this particular period of Diadem also had random stats that in some cases made them better than the current savage gear. The raiding community was quite vocal about their upset that casual, non-raiding members would have any chance (RNG or not) to have gear just as good as their savage clear gear. These items were removed entirely (unless you were lucky enough to get one before the patch out) to appease the raiding community.

I'm not arguing if this is right or wrong. I'm simply saying the raiding community has affected the state of the game and everyone's experience in this case.

But casuals can have the same ilv as raiders, through tome gear. So I don't see the issue here. Like I said as well, Anemos rewarded gear that contends for BiS for some jobs when Savage gear isn't taken into account.

If by "simultaneously" you mean "same patch", Gordias came out 3.05, Diadem was 3.1, so that descriptor doesn't work either. Also in 3.1 was Void Ark, which gave out the Mhachi items that were traded in for gobdips etc to upgrade 200 to 210 as well, as I recall. The 24 mans do that to this day, btw.

If you're talking Diadem 2.0, which had the 280 weapon, you should note relic weapon holders were a lot more vocal than raiders about it at that point.

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Originally Posted by Bahati

I understand the bitterness towards raiders regarding their complaining about Diadem in 3.1 RNG drop gear being as good as their savage gear. Something was literally taken away from the entire community directly because of the complaining of the "raid community" so yes, raiders do have an impact on the community despite not being on SE's payroll.

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I never claimed raiders have zero impact on the game, just to be clear. There is a difference between having a bit of influence on something and having full control.

The person I responded to said raiders are killing the game so I was disputing that. Only the creators can kill their MMO, only the creators choose who or what they listen to, only the creators make the final decisions on everything involved with their game.

Despite your reply being unrelated to what I said....sure I'll answer you.

Some raiders did complain about the diadem drops, but SE never removed the gear? Maybe they nerfed the drop rates of it? I can't find anything in the patch notes showing they removed the gear or nerfed the drop rates though. This kind of change would have been in the patch notes.

Looking at Patch 3.2 notes it added in the option to desynthesize i210 gear from The Diadem. i210 was the same item level as Gordias Savage raid gear so it seems it was not removed like you are claiming. If you check patch 3.1 it lists all the i210 gear from diadem that they added and it is never said after the fact that any of it was removed, or nerfed.

"[2.0] The following items can now be desynthesized:
Iron clapper / Item Level 210 gear obtained from the Diadem."

source: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...d0980ac2b5a39c

Also when they released the second iteration of diadem sometime after 3.4 they added in a weapon that was better than the raid weapon. If raiders had such an impact on SE's decisions then why did they do it AGAIN a second time after all the complaints the first time?

Is this really all you have to back up this idea that people should be bitter at raiders? It is an extremely weak argument full of holes.

If you are speaking of Diadem itself not coming back.....it didn't come back because I guess SE decided it was failed content. Barely anyone did it or was interested in it and every subset complained about it for different reasons. The only thing that was fine about it was the gathering aspect.

You cannot claim diadem didn't come back all because of raiders, since raiders were not the only community of players who complained about diadem. All types of players had criticism about diadem as a whole.

So unless you can prove diadem was taken away from us solely due to raiders complaining about the gear in it, with some kind of statement from SE to confirm it, then this is a weak argument to use to be "bitter" towards the raiders.

How about we get some facts to be bitter about and not just bias perceptions?

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Uninspired reply by someone who lacks vision and is unable to grasp that alternatives exist to the current boring and underwhelming game design of FFXIV

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a) Yes you can. People have been playing some games for decades and even centuries now. As an example, chess does exist since 1200 after JC. Also, even today, people play old school video games that were very well designed, despite not having any "rewards".


b) As already stated in my previous post, there must be various situations with various ways to tackle it. Because there is only basically only one gameplay situation in the current FFXIV, there can only be one matched solution (eg homogeneized classes). But it is a misconception to assume alternatives aren't possible, especially by making the game less battle centric than what current FFXIV is.

c) Fates have always been terrible in FFXIV and the only reasons people used to do it were xp and atmas, but it support what I m basically saying : in FFXIV, nobody would do anything if there weren't any reward because the gameplay is lacking. Would you see people in pagos if there weren't any rewards ? No you won't, and that's why there is a problem.

d) there are several ways to do that, by making daily quests asking you to find one particular monster accros the lighthouse, by making the lighthouse some sort of places where players would have to complete various quests, etc. There would be endless ways to accomplish that, ways that used to exist in games such as FFXI, FFXII, everquest or more broadly tabletop RPGs. And regarding your concern about the so called "time efficiency" of exploration, it could be easily solved by getting rid of that "hamster wheel" reward structure.

e) FFX is indeed a single player games, but FFXI isn't. And FFXI is built upon a very strong battle system, gameplay wise. It would have been possible to make a game like FFXI without all the associated timesinks that were implemented in order to artificially make the players subscribe. As an example, the depth of the group centric battle system can be preserved with the trust system, that allows players to progress as if they were in a group but without having to wait hours to find one.

f) there are no such thing as "old school" or "modern" design when it comes to game design. It is a forgery coming from the PR teams of blizzard when they started to decide game design was overrated (but it did eventually backfire, and hard). Furthermore, I didn't suggest anything, as it is pointless to give any ideas here because SE doesn't give a damn.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Doesn't this argument fall apart because WoW is based off of Warcraft, which is an RTS?

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When did we talk about warcraft ? WoW used to be a RPG back in 2004 (my figure doesn't cover the lifespan of the warcrafts RTS).

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

When did we talk about warcraft ? WoW used to be a RPG back in 2004 (my figure doesn't cover the lifespan of the warcrafts RTS).

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About when I brought it up. You didn't disqualify the RTSes that it was based on until just now.

Are you saying that WoW was not always an MMO? Or are you saying it used to be an MMORPG in 2004, and it's no longer an MMORPG?

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

About when I brought it up. You didn't disqualify the RTSes that it was based on until just now.

Are you saying that WoW was not always an MMO? Or are you saying it used to be an MMORPG in 2004, and it's no longer an MMORPG?

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I still don't understand why you're talking about the RTS. They were never intended to be RPGs. The only link between wow and warcraft is the lore.

What I m saying is that wow used to be designed as a RPG before WOTLK, then blizzard tried to make a pseudo action game out of it that only make a few players happy, then came back to RPG since legion.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Uninspired reply by someone who lacks vision and is unable to grasp that alternatives exist to the current boring and underwhelming game design of FFXIV

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You know...every time you change the quote of the person you are responding to to something snarky and passive aggressive you basically already lost the argument before your post even gets to your points.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

I still don't understand why you're talking about the RTS. They were never intended to be RPGs. The only link between wow and warcraft is the lore.

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Well, read my post and maybe you'll understand. Your goal posts didn't shift until the post after I brought up Warcraft being an RTS. I'm not as precognisant as I may seem.

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What I m saying is that wow used to be designed as a RPG before WOTLK, then blizzard tried to make a pseudo action game out of it that only make a few players happy, then came back to RPG since legion.

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So by your logic, if it came back to RPG in Legion, it would have spiked in popularity using this hilariously bad metric of googles over time.

But it doesn't.

https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...0of%20Warcraft

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Well, read my post and maybe you'll understand. Your goal posts didn't shift until the post after I brought up Warcraft being an RTS. I'm not as precognisant as I may seem.


So by your logic, if it came back to RPG in Legion, it would have spiked in popularity using this hilariously bad metric of googles over time.

But it doesn't.

https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...0of%20Warcraft

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If blizzard had kept designing wow like it used to be in wod, nobody would be playing the game today. They saved the game with legion. Please do not forget wow in a 16 years old game, so it is natural that the playerbase would be declining. The fact that a 16 years old game is still the most popular MMORPG out there and one of the most watched game on twitch should tell you something.

And even by reading your post I don't understand why you talked about the RTS. Wow was never meant to replace warcraft, it is simply a different sort of game, but it never did pretend to be a RTS.

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Originally Posted by Miste

You know...every time you change the quote of the person you are responding to to something snarky and passive aggressive you basically already lost the argument before your post even gets to your points.

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Honestly I m tired of seeing people tossing around over a decade of bad PR explanations that blizzard came up with, without exercising critical analysis about what they are talking about while thinking they are the one who came up with the idea. And honestly I m not even trying to win anything there, I m just tossing my displeasure about the game as a customer.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

- snip -

If you're talking Diadem 2.0, which had the 280 weapon, you should note relic weapon holders were a lot more vocal than raiders about it at that point.

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Which brings me to my biggest peeve with this game. SE's insistence that we have large group scenarios for all of this stuff but won't fix their infrastructure to support it. I'm tired of object culling removing my current target, hiding AoE's and hiding party members standing next to me. It has been a problem with world bosses, Diadem FATES and Eureka NM's (which are really just another FATE). I've argued with SE about fixing their culling algorithm but they had no interest there acting like they had no idea what I was talking about. SE needs to quit creating large group content unless they get serious about fixing their code platform.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

If blizzard had kept designing wow like it used to be in wod, nobody would be playing the game today. They saved the game with legion. Please do not forget wow in a 16 years old game, so it is natural that the playerbase would be declining.

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That's a bold claim you made. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove or falsify that claim.

First, google searches over time is a hilariously bad metric to use for a lot of reasons, I don't even know who started bringing them up, because people invested in their communities won't be searching up the game name of the community they're in very much. For instance, I don't google "Final Fantasy XIV" or any variation of it despite being a loyal customer of the game. I have bookmarks to access the communities I'm in that revolve around it. But even taking that data as gospel...

Second, since you mentioned the time aspect, this only makes the RPG claim that much harder to prove. Yes we see the decline, but you can't prove to me if that was a natural over-time thing, or if it was because of WoW focusing on action-based gameplay.

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And even by reading your post I don't understand why you talked about the RTS.

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Warcraft was an RTS game for RTS lovers. While I'm sure people flocked to a Warcraft RPG, I don't think they were as married to the idea of it being an RPG as you claim.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Honestly I m tired of seeing people tossing around over a decade of bad PR explanations that blizzard came up with, without exercising critical analysis about what they are talking about while thinking they are the one who came up with the idea. And honestly I m not even trying to win anything there, I m just tossing my displeasure about the game as a customer.

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I lol'd /10char.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

That's a bold claim you made. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove or falsify that claim.

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Actually there really is, if you had played wow at this time you'd have seen. The sky was literally falling at the end of wod. There are no shortages of interviews where blizzard admitted they screwed up (according to them it was because they trained new developers).

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Second, since you mentioned the time aspect, this only makes the RPG claim that much harder to prove. Yes we see the decline, but you can't prove to me if that was a natural over-time thing, or if it was because of WoW focusing on action-based gameplay.

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Except the decline in the case of wow is correlated to the beginning of the bad design decisions they started to make. As a long term wow player I can tell you there was a noticeable point in time when the game stopped to work as well as it used to, WoD being the ultimate low point. Sure legion and BFA aren't perfect yet but there actually are improvements.

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Warcraft was an RTS game for RTS lovers. While I'm sure people flocked to a Warcraft RPG, I don't think they were as married to the idea of it being an RPG as you claim.

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Except, as already said, blizzard never claimed that wow would be a RTS. So, here again, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Sure some people would have loved to get warcraft IV, but that's beside the point. Nobody forced the RTS players to come to wow.

If SE wanted to make a race game out of final fantasy one day, they perfectly could. The issue would be if they made a race game while advertising a RPG.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

a) Yes you can. People have been playing some games for decades and even centuries now. As an example, chess does exist since 1200 after JC. Also, even today, people play old school video games that were very well designed, despite not having any "rewards".

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You do realize Chess is a complete different game? Can we stop with these asinine apple to orange comparisons. If my "vision" is so uninspired, why can't yours actually provide examples from the genre we're playing in rather than making pointless strawmen?

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

b) As already stated in my previous post, there must be various situations with various ways to tackle it. Because there is only basically only one gameplay situation in the current FFXIV, there can only be one matched solution (eg homogeneized classes). But it is a misconception to assume alternatives aren't possible, especially by making the game less battle centric than what current FFXIV is.

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Care to posit a few? You have sprouted plenty of hot air but I see nothing tangible except "FFXIV is boring. Change it to what I'd like!" Furthermore, I have never said an alternative approach didn't exist. I merely criticised your ideas. And I'll criticise another seeing you mention gameplay. Focusing less on battle content will inevitably drive away people who came to FFXIV for it. Considering virtually all successful MMOs rely on combat as their core feature, I sincerely doubt reducing it will have positive results. Unless you wanted FFXIV: The Sims.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

c) Fates have always been terrible in FFXIV and the only reasons people used to do it were xp and atmas, but it support what I m basically saying : in FFXIV, nobody would do anything if there weren't any reward because the gameplay is lacking. Would you see people in pagos if there weren't any rewards ? No you won't, and that's why there is a problem.

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And you don't think people play games to achieve something. To borrow your Chess example earlier, the "reward" is beating your opponent. If FFXIV made a decent PvP system in lieu of gimmick garbage, they may have something worthwhile. You cite Pagos yet ignore the chief complaints. People aren't saying "less battle content!" They want more varied objectives—many of which include killing things. Quests, leves, hunting log and frequent NM spawns. FATEs are considered boring because FFXIV's combat itself is basic at its core. Once you incorporate mechanic, that's where it begins to shine. Unfortunately, the devs have focused less on those and aren't innovating the way they ought to. Curiously, the most popular request from players is Mythic+ styled dungeons. Funny, that's battle centric. It's almost like people want good battle centric content not less altogether.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

d) there are several ways to do that, by making daily quests asking you to find one particular monster accros the lighthouse, by making the lighthouse some sort of places where players would have to complete various quests, etc. There would be endless ways to accomplish that, ways that used to exist in games such as FFXI, FFXII, everquest or more broadly tabletop RPGs. And regarding your concern about the so called "time efficiency" of exploration, it could be easily solved by getting rid of that "hamster wheel" reward structure.

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And then people have no reason to touch it. Putting quests to find a specific monsters with nothing but the "fun of exploration" isn't going to work. Look no further than Diadem. The whole concept was designed around an area we could explore. No one cared to. Removing the "hamster wheel" isn't going to make them care. It will simply have them quit. Quests are all well and good, but they lack longevity. Once you complete a quest, it's over. A MMO requires content to last months. None of your suggestions take this into account. Likewise, you once again assume it would have a huge turn around on entertainment. If so, why has Perform fallen out of favor? Here you have something purely roleplay driven. No rewards, just a side activity you can partake in at your leisure. And it's less popular than Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

e) FFX is indeed a single player games, but FFXI isn't. And FFXI is built upon a very strong battle system, gameplay wise. It would have been possible to make a game like FFXI without all the associated timesinks that were implemented in order to artificially make the players subscribe. As an example, the depth of the group centric battle system can be preserved with the trust system, that allows players to progress as if they were in a group but without having to wait hours to find one.

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No, it wouldn't. FFXI existed over fifteen years ago. That style of gameplay has long been considered archaic, so much so even SE themselves shifted towards more action oriented gameplay since. At its basic core, FFXI was an extremely grind heavy MMO, and coincidentally boasted less active players than FFXIV does currently at its peak. FFXIV is hardly without flaws, but turning it into FFXI won't accomplish anything except a further disgruntled playerbase. We've been how people respond to grind heavy content. And your example essentially describes Duty Finder except the hassle of trying to find people on my server has been removed.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

f) there are no such thing as "old school" or "modern" design when it comes to game design. It is a forgery coming from the PR teams of blizzard when they started to decide game design was overrated (but it did eventually backfire, and hard). Furthermore, I didn't suggest anything, as it is pointless to give any ideas here because SE doesn't give a damn.

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That is flat out false. If it weren't, games wouldn't move away or entirely abandon systems which worked in the past. For example, Halo revolutionized the matchmaking system to such an extent, it's tantamount to career suicide if you were release a competitive FPS without some variation of it. You see this in all forms of media, be it sports, video games or film. What worked several years prior won't necessary capture audiences the same way it once did. Blizzard's mistake is they went too far away from their core design—something you ironically are advocating SE do with FFXIV. WoW's two recent expansions, Legion and BoA have both been incredibly well received despite being "modernized." They kept what worked and innovated.

And by the way, WoW is practically all battle centric. Seems to be working quite well for them.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Actually there really is, if you had played wow at this time you'd have seen. The sky was literally falling at the end of wod. There are no shortages of interviews where blizzard admitted they screwed up (according to them it was because they trained new developers).

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That's not exactly proof of anything, but I'll take your word for it.

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Except the decline in the case of wow is correlated to the beginning of the bad design decisions they started to make.

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Except no, it isn't if you're going to stick to "It all started falling apart in WotLK." WotLK launched in November of 2008; the game was dipping in search popularity as soon as February, 2007.

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Except, as already said, blizzard never claimed that wow would be a RTS. So, here again, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Sure some people would have loved to get warcraft IV, but that's beside the point. Nobody forced the RTS players to come to wow.

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Nobody forced RPG players to come to XIV.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Still more beside the point replies for the sake of whitekniting

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a) Chess is a different game but is still a game. Meaning game design had to be accomplished in order to come up with the rules. FFXIV is a video game, therefore it is still a game. What I'm saying is that FFXIV is lacking in its sets of rules and in his game design. Because its set of rules are so simplistic, they are simply unfun and nobody would play without the so called "rewards" and the pretty graphics and cutscenes (something SE is good at). I was talking about chess because on a theoretical standpoint the fact people are still playing the game today mean its game design is very strong, and you don't get any achievements the more games you play and your ilvl doesn't increase.

b) I didn't propose any ideas but merely provided examples. It is not my place to teach SE how to make games, especially considering the expertise square used to have in the era of FFX, FFXI and FFXII (probably the pinnacle of what Square used to be able to design). But the ideas do exist and can be found in several decades of tabletop RPG games (square managed to find some when they started the final fantasy saga, they can still find more).

c) People play games to achieve something but that's generally not the alpha and the omega as it is in FFXIV. There must be balance in all things. The issue with FFXIV is that the rewards became the whole game.

d) Diadem was flawed because the area in itself was boring, the spawn mechanics underwhelming, the mobs weren't exciting and there weren't any purpose storyline wise. Nobody wanted to explore diadem because there only were a bunch of rocks and some clouds in a small instanced area. Talk about underwhelming content.

e) Considered archaic by who exactly ? A RPG is a RPG. The only reason SE talks about archaic game design is because it tries to cater to a demographic that doesn't like RPGs. FFXI sure wasn't perfect and even had a boatload of flaws but its core gameplay is what used to make it strong despite its flaws. People complained all the timed about how it was a pain in the butt to group, how it was hard to claim a nm and the like of it, but people NEVER complained about the gameplay as people do in FFXIV. People never complained the game used to be the same (even so there weren't a lot of updates), etc

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

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Blizzard's mistake is they went too far away from their core design—something you ironically are advocating SE do with FFXIV.

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You re perfectly right but the problem is that FFXIV is heavily inspired from the wow that strayed too far from the RPG genre, the one that isn't working gameplay wise. What I'm saying is that SE should try to go back to what they know how to do (design RPGs) rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to cater to players who do not exist.

By the way, FFXIV ARR was more of a RPG than stormblood and to some extent Heavensward. There were some more open dungeons with interesting mechanics, raids with some attempts at making explorable environments, more support oriented class specific abilities, etc.

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And by the way, WoW is practically all battle centric. Seems to be working quite well for them.

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The issue isn't that the game is battle centric, the issue is that there is only that in FFXIV. Even in wow there are more open dungeons/raids, something you never see in FFXIV (with the monster in a box and dungeon corridor design).

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

That's not exactly proof of anything, but I'll take your word for it.


Except no, it isn't if you're going to stick to "It all started falling apart in WotLK." WotLK launched in November of 2008; the game was dipping in search popularity as soon as February, 2007.


Nobody forced RPG players to come to XIV.

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Issue is FFXIV is marketed like a RPG.

As for wow popularity, there were other factors at play during the TBC era but I won't dwell into that here because that's beside the point (it has something to do with the elitism issue of TBC).

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

a) Chess is a different game but is still a game. Meaning game design had to be accomplished in order to come up with the rules. FFXIV is a video game, therefore it is still a game. What I'm saying is that FFXIV is lacking in its sets of rules and in his game design. Because its set of rules are so simplistic, they are simply unfun and nobody would play without the so called "rewards" and the pretty graphics and cutscenes (something SE is good at). I was talking about chess because on a theoretical standpoint the fact people are still playing the game today mean its game design is very strong, and you don't get any achievements the more games you play and your ilvl doesn't increase.

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Childish quote editing aside, everything you wrote here is entirely subjective. You are not the arbiter of fun. Regardless, for someone so readily willing to toss around accusations, you comically missed the point yourself. The achievement in Chess is winning because it's a competitive game. FFXIV doesn't employ the same direct competitiveness, therefore it's a poor comparison. Some people play Chess for the fun of it, just like some play FFXIV for those same reasons. Apparently, this makes me a white knight. Good to see you can handle disagreement.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

b) I didn't propose any ideas but merely provided examples. It is not my place to teach SE how to make games

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This is a blatant cop out.

If you cannot provide ideas your criticism is entirely worthless. How can the developers change without knowing what the playerbase wants? This applies to any game not simply FFXIV. You've essentially boiled it down to:

"I don't like it. Change things!"
"Alright. What would you like to see?"
"It's not my job to tell you. Figure it out!"

What happened to the purported vision? Or was that merely a poor attempt to sound informed?

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

d) Diadem was flawed because the area in itself was boring, the spawn mechanics underwhelming, the mobs weren't exciting and there weren't any purpose storyline wise. Nobody wanted to explore diadem because there only were a bunch of rocks and some clouds in a small instanced area. Talk about underwhelming content.

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Indeed. Therefore, they should have improved upon it. They didn't. Making Ridorana into an area we can explore isn't going to revolutionize the game. You conveniently ignored how I mentioned quests are a one and done activity. Now you have a giant instance/zone people have little reason to touch once they've done the handful of quests, which generally can be finished within a day. Regardless, you may find looking for a specific mob fun. I hazard a guess you'd be in a sharp minority. Put this in the open world and it's a different argument but omitting battle content so you can roleplay... it just isn't going to work.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

e) Considered archaic by who exactly ? A RPG is a RPG. The only reason SE talks about archaic game design is because it tries to cater to a demographic that doesn't like RPGs. FFXI sure wasn't perfect and even had a boatload of flaws but its core gameplay is what used to make it strong despite its flaws. People complained all the timed about how it was a pain in the butt to group, how it was hard to claim a nm and the like of it, but people NEVER complained about the gameplay as people do in FFXIV. People never complained the game used to be the same (even so there weren't a lot of updates), etc

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The millions of players who don't purchase the game? Once again, you completely ignored my examples to go off on a rose-tinted glasses tangent about FFXI. If you believe people didn't complain about FFXI's gameplay, well, we know where you biases lie. Nevertheless, going back to the example, a FPS game will simply be discarded without a matchmaking system. Even FFXIV and WoW could never abandon their respective Duty Finders. People largely prefer the convenience, at least if you're aiming to attract a mainstream audience.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

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And?

All that proves is FFXIV isn't something people actively watch. That has no bearing whatsoever on whether it attracts a playing audience. Despite my own criticisms and concerns with FFXIV's future, it has a large playerbase. You know when FFXIV spikes into the several thousands? When raiders prog the new Savage and Ultimate tiers. But wait, I thought you said people were getting bored of battle content.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

If you're talking Diadem 2.0, which had the 280 weapon, you should note relic weapon holders were a lot more vocal than raiders about it at that point.

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That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

The raiders, while I'm not a fan of them personally, generally don't affect gameplay much because SE cordons off high-end raiding from the rest of the game. The danger with them in my opinion is the requests to make the game overall harder at all levels, to make players git gud.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

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Twitch in general only has high view numbers for maybe 14-15 games at a time, then they drop heavily. I don't know why people even worry about it, people who watch games do so because they don't want to play them. That's why God of War for ps4 was so big on it, for one reason.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

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What "next progression race"? It was the end of the expansion. Any raider who genuinely thought they needed a 280 for the "next progression race" is outright dumb, because the weapons we had starting at Lv70 were i290 and we were i314 total by the time Deltascape even started. Basically everybody knew and acknowledged that all Creator Savage-tier gear would be outdated by Lv66.

No, it was relic grinders who threw a tantrum because they were running on the precedent set by Square in ARR that their relic weapons would be BiS until the next expansion came out; instead they were outdated within a month.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Issue is FFXIV is marketed like a RPG.

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It's marketed like an MMO.

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As for wow popularity, there were other factors at play during the TBC era but I won't dwell into that here because that's beside the point (it has something to do with the elitism issue of TBC).

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Right. I suppose it's always elitism in the end, so easy to blame all the problems on it.

I'm confused on how one person is saying that WoW wasn't inspired or designed, at least, on it's first leg and basis from the Warcraft RTS games. Literally, they took the story and lore of what they already had and expanded upon it until they got their financial motherload project which turned into WoW. It's not surprising to see how expansive they were able to go from an RTS setting towards an MMORPG setting. They took something existing inside an already rigid structure, because let's face it that's what RTS games are, and went full blown creative with it.

But, to say that the two are only relative to each other out of lore is a half-truth. Warcraft involved into World of Warcraft and all large projects had to start small somewhere. For XIV, it was XI and 1.0.

Warcraft gave birth to World of Warcraft. I mean, it's literally part of WoW's name.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

The raiders, while I'm not a fan of them personally, generally don't affect gameplay much because SE cordons off high-end raiding from the rest of the game. The danger with them in my opinion is the requests to make the game overall harder at all levels, to make players git gud.

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Layla Bell outright said "Anyone who cares about those i280 weapons is an idiot." If you're not familiar with him, He's from Elysium. Likewise, Angered members, Xeno and many other hardcore raiders had similar sentiments. My own thoughts aligned with theirs in the sense it appeared more like a desperate attempt to try and get people to actually bother with Diadem. The people upset were generally relic grinders, especially as this relaunch came out nine days after the final relic step. Raiders were long done with Creator by then.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Layla Bell outright said "Anyone who cares about those i280 weapons is an idiot.".

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No, at that time you were doing relics just to do something, and anyone who seriously did them really didn't need them or care about BiS. If i remember some of the relics even weren't BiS anyways; they were subject to the same weird stat pool SE lieks to give casual gear. The raiders who complained weren't the world first crew, but the people who wanted to prog or try it and were worried about it acting as a barrier, because you know if it had mattered elysium would have gone out and farmed them up stat. The reason why those raiders set that was that they realized the percent chance of getting those weapons were so low that they didn't act as any barrier at all.

I mean, i have about 7 completed HW relics, and the value of them was something you could work for solo at your own pace which looked really cool. Diadem if anything didn't even have the look cool part, all the random pieces were basic 30ish armor in appearance if i remembr right.

You customized your own stats on the relic weapons, giving you the advantage to fine tune them to be your best possible stats. That's what made the relic BiS before the diadem weapon came out.

Also I noticed you dodged the point. There was no race for anybody to care about at that point. The 280 weapon was an expac ending weapon, it would be outdated before the next relevant raid content came out.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

The raiders who complained weren't the world first crew, but the people who wanted to prog or try it and were worried about it acting as a barrier, because you know if it had mattered elysium would have gone out and farmed them up stat.

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So which was it? World firsters who care about "the next progression race" or not?

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

If i remember some of the relics even weren't BiS anyways; they were subject to the same weird stat pool SE lieks to give casual gear.

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Relics are not BiS when the two main stats were custom made? Are you sure?!

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

You customized your own stats on the relic weapons, giving you the advantage to fine tune them to be your best possible stats. That's what made the relic BiS before the diadem weapon came out.

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Look noone cared about BiS then, because the only place where BiS matters is in Savage. Most people who did the relic grind did it for fun or something to do as a long term progression goal, because BiS in this game is 100% useless; if you can obtain the pieces, you've beaten everything in the game already and don't need it for anything. And it wasn't just weapons, you could get randomized armor pieces with the same stats in the very first iteration of diadem if i remember right. That was the world prog issue.The weapons invalidated the savage gear much more than the relic, because any random 24 man could get one piece that was better than anything someone did savage for; but every new tier of savage invalidated the relic, and no one really assumed the relic took skill.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Look noone cared about BiS then, because the only place where BiS matters is in Savage. Most people who did the relic grind did it for fun or something to do as a long term progression goal, because BiS in this game is 100% useless; if you can obtain the pieces, you've beaten everything in the game already and don't need it for anything. And it wasn't just weapons, you could get randomized armor pieces with the same stats in the very first iteration of diadem if i remember right. That was the world prog issue.The weapons invalidated the savage gear much more than the relic, because any random 24 man could get one piece that was better than anything someone did savage for; but every new tier of savage invalidated the relic, and no one really assumed the relic took skill.

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We're going to go in circles all day with your revisionist history.

People who raided savage didn't care about the 280 weapon. Most had already finished and speedran the content to death by then, and didn't need or want a 280 weapon. People who built the relic because they were playing the long game for the best weapon till expac's end were disappointed when their weapon was outdated 9 days after its release (thank you Cass for providing actual day count there).

Creator Savage released on September 27, 2016.

Diadem 2.0 came out in March 8, 2017. That's 5 months, 4 days; a little under the regular life cycle of a raid tier.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Relics are not BiS when the two main stats were custom made? Are you sure?!

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I was so sad when my Anima relic was no longer good enough, lol....

MY SPELLSPEEEEEEED~!

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

because BiS in this game is 100% useless;

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I literally could not read past this one line. Here, we have a person who does not raid yet feels that they're knowledgeable enough somehow to tell others that do raid what is or isn't considered BiS. Riyah, stop, please. That whole post was embarrassing, but THIS one line is really bad.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

People who raided savage didn't care about the 280 weapon. Most had already finished and speedran the content to death by then, and didn't need or want a 280 weapon. People who built the relic because they were playing the long game for the best weapon till expac's end were disappointed when their weapon was outdated 9 days after its release (thank you Cass for providing actual day count there).

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The weapon had been outdated multiple times in its lifecycle. Many people don't even bother doing it while its even useful; its filler content designed to give people something to do, which is why people still grind them now, and why people grind more than one HW relic despite the time it took. The customizing stats was a hold over from the previous relic, not so much because people clamored to do so; when SE removed the ability to do so (because anemos relics have stat caps like ornate gear) and made the ilvl worse than tome weapons, there wan't this huge OMG relic is no longer BIS!

If BiS mattered everyone would be raging hard over pagos, since it won't even be usable by the time many people get it done it seems. Relic players really don't care about bis that much, or they'd do savage,

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Originally Posted by Sigma-Astra

I literally could not read past this one line. Here, we have a person who does not raid yet feels that they're knowledgeable enough somehow to tell others that do raid what is or isn't considered BiS. Riyah, stop, please. That whole post was embarrassing, but THIS one line is really bad.

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name one thing you need bis to clear.

Name one thing bis gear with savage pieces lets you do that you can't do in the game already. By the time you get all the pieces, you have cleared everything worth clearing, and nothing is tuned so tightly that you need bis to beat it, not even ultimate or it would be 100% impossible to sell runs.

And no offense, raiders are just people who bang their heads against single fights for weeks to months, a lot of you are even LESS skilled than casual players because we dont need parsers, zoomhacks or act triggers to play a videogame.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

The weapon had been outdated multiple times in its lifecycle.

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Yet the precedent at that point was that the relic weapon would be the best weapon of the expansion in the end, beating out the final raid tier weapon. A precedent set by the Zodiac Braves weapon line.

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Many people don't even bother doing it while its even useful; its filler content designed to give people something to do, which is why people still grind them now, and why people grind more than one HW relic despite the time it took. The customizing stats was a hold over from the previous relic, not so much because people clamored to do so; when SE removed the ability to do so (because anemos relics have stat caps like ornate gear) and made the ilvl worse than tome weapons, there wan't this huge OMG relic is no longer BIS!

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Yes, there was. You can keep acting like there wasn't, but there was definitely more outcry from relic grinders than there was from raiders.

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If BiS mattered everyone would be raging hard over pagos, since it won't even be usable by the time many people get it done it seems.

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I don't know if you read the FFXIV Official Forums a lot. It's a neat place. There were maybe ten or twenty threads raging about Pagos for various reasons, and among them was this very one.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

name one thing you need bis to clear.

Name one thing bis gear with savage pieces lets you do that you can't do in the game already. By the time you get all the pieces, you have cleared everything worth clearing, and nothing is tuned so tightly that you need bis to beat it, not even ultimate or it would be 100% impossible to sell runs.

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You don't have to need BiS to want it. Or are you above desire too, oh elite Riyah on high?

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And no offense, raiders are just people who bang their heads against single fights for weeks to months, a lot of you are even LESS skilled than casual players because we dont need parsers, zoomhacks or act triggers to play a videogame.

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I'm just gonna keep this quote here. The words of the Great Holy Riyah Arpeggio deserve to be enshrined and gilded. I'll just go back to my lolfflogs, that's my content, right?

EDIT: In case you forgot

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

You have lolfflogs, thats your content. Go focus on padding your runs.

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Raiders are the toxic ones.