Your biggest fears for 4.0

They wont add swimming.. I just want to go swimming

Honestly biggest fear is... It will be to much of the same.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I understand this sentiment, but what do you propose they do to replace it? The system exists for many reasons (to let new players catch up, to keep old content relevant, to stop players from getting the best gear in a week then complaining of a lack of content) and I can't come up with a better system that accomplishes these (very important) things.

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Unfortunately, I know this as much as everyone that a solution is hard to find. But it is a fact that a lot of people are not enjoying this anymore. All I hear from people I know, is how annoyingly boring it has become. I can only voice how I'm not having fun with this anymore.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Why do you want this? Many of the older dungeons have this, and are completely ignored every time. Every dungeon gets speed run, why should they waste dev time on content no one will ever do? I mean, people won't even spend five extra seconds to get a very slightly out-of-the-way treasure chest with a possibility of currently relevant gear.

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Many dungeons? Not really. There are a very few select ones. And the only one that instantly comes to mind is Brayflox longstop and maybe cutter's cry. And I'm being generous to include them. Because honestly only brayflox has an "open" feeling. While still being straightforward unless someone decides to check the occasional dead-end side-path.

But honestly, what I'd prefer to see is harder to kill mobs. Or mobs that can actually cause a wipe. And are not simply there so that a dungeon can last the obligated 20 mins requirement.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I don't know how they make 24-man raids hard without making them impossible. The probability that enough of those 24 people are bad to cause a wipe and the inevitable immediate vote abandon is just too high. Short of FC content (which would be so inaccessible as to make it a waste of dev time), I don't see how they manage this. Maybe a dynamic difficulty scaling in 24-man raids? Maybe a 24-man dungeon where it's more of a race between the three parties to see who's the best rather than relying on all three parties for mechanics. I don't know.

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Again, Ozma is a perfect example of how to do it. And also shows that the community CAN overcome difficult hurdles. The reason behind wipes is also because everything in this game is too much catered to this suppposed "casual" crowd. Which in turn make people lazy whenever they do new content. Ozma still remains a boss you need to stay focused or you can cause a wipe. The game does not need to continue thinking that we can't play our jobs properly. We have tons of raids and dungeon experience behind us.
Bare in mind, that this is coming from someone who doesn't even do savage stuff. And I still want my game to be challenging.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I understand this sentiment, but what do you propose they do to replace it? The system exists for many reasons (to let new players catch up, to keep old content relevant, to stop players from getting the best gear in a week then complaining of a lack of content) and I can't come up with a better system that accomplishes these (very important) things.

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From my perspective, the tomestone system does the opposite of what you're saying for old content. Hullbreaker HM, Anti-Tower, Sohr Kai etc. etc. are all dungeons that I never run any more, ever. There's no reason, as it's faster to get tomestones via expert roulette. Old tomestones are handed out like candy via raids, bonuses etc. Having a new tomestone come in so frequently (and new dungeons) that push these other dungeons out of expert makes old content old faster and makes it so doing that content less rewarding.

That said, allowing players to catch up can be done in a myriad of ways, and I don't think that the tomestone system works necessraily well at this, nor the best. WoW's system where you get drops in open world content quite easily that give you what you need for Heroic level dungeons that give you drops that you need for Mythic that give you drops for raids, works quite well. At no time do you feel left out of content, accessing content is pretty easy - and you can even just keep farming open world content for warforged/titanforged drops to increase your ilvl (assuming you don't feel like / want to do dungeons, or if the queue is really long). They also have rewards scale to your current ilvl, so as you gear up, open world content rewards are increased. This works pretty well at having people catch up easily, but you still won't have the best gear in a week.

So, imo, the tomestone system does all 3 of what you're saying poorly or not at all.

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Why do you want this? Many of the older dungeons have this, and are completely ignored every time. Every dungeon gets speed run, why should they waste dev time on content no one will ever do? I mean, people won't even spend five extra seconds to get a very slightly out-of-the-way treasure chest with a possibility of currently relevant gear.

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I also want this. Ignored or not, I prefer dungeons like this. I am always blown away when I do 2.x dungeons about how great they were (comparatively, they are still worse than dungeon experiences I've had in other MMO's). Dungeons in Heavensward, I've got to the point that I don't really pay attention to where I am or what I am doing. I just spam my rotation and chat with friends for 12-15 minutes and then leave. Having variation decreases the rate of burnout. Having multiple paths makes the dungeons more interesting at first, which reduces the point at which you start to feel bored (I'd rather feel bored on my 2nd run through than my first, even). Out-of-the-way treasure chests is an extreme poor method of implementing this, but it's still better than what we have now. I just want my dungeons to feel more life like and interesting, currently they remove all this feeling, leaving them feeling like a chore.

I also like Vydos's point about having difficult trash. One thing I like (again) in WoW, is that in a trash pack there is usually one mob with more HP and more damage that can easily wipe the group if not taken down quickly (due to some sort of skill, i.e. fearing everyone into adjacent rooms which are otherwise avoidable). It's a good idea to have your AoE'er take down the trash pack, while the ST'er focuses the individual mob and interrupts them. In this sense say a NIN could focus the mob and SMN could take down the rest of the trash.

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I don't know how they make 24-man raids hard without making them impossible. The probability that enough of those 24 people are bad to cause a wipe and the inevitable immediate vote abandon is just too high. Short of FC content (which would be so inaccessible as to make it a waste of dev time), I don't see how they manage this. Maybe a dynamic difficulty scaling in 24-man raids? Maybe a 24-man dungeon where it's more of a race between the three parties to see who's the best rather than relying on all three parties for mechanics. I don't know.

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Personally, I'd just like multiple difficulty levels. Have an extreme level of raids (Alex Normal, Extreme, Savage) and have an extreme and savage of the 24-person raid etc. I feel like they could spend some time to create an engine that automatically dynamically scales content for this. I am fairly certain that is what WoW has done (implementing 13 levels of difficulty in dungeons currently, I doubt they individually tweaked each level for each dungeon, but maybe?). I am no software developer, so maybe this is just not feasible. As a consumer, I would greatly welcome it, however.

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Originally Posted by Vydos

Unfortunately, I know this as much as everyone that a solution is hard to find. But it is a fact that a lot of people are not enjoying this anymore. All I hear from people I know, is how annoyingly boring it has become. I can only voice how I'm not having fun with this anymore.

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i don't do Expert roulettes as much anymore. i cap tomes now also doing PotD and Aquapolis. i know some people that almost exclusively get them from PvP. they don't need to get rid of it as much as they need to keep adding multiples ways to get there and keep them all relevant. they should add some tomes to the daily hunt bills, make the B rank a daily and A ranks weekly.

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Originally Posted by Vydos

Many dungeons? Not really. There are a very few select ones. And the only one that instantly comes to mind is Brayflox longstop and maybe cutter's cry. And I'm being generous to include them.

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Sastasha and Tam-Tara has extra rooms that no one ever goes into. Dzemael Darkhold has an unnecessary path and no one ever takes it.

Toto-Rak has backtracking and is the worse. Qarn has hidden rooms that people don't open and go into. Aurum Vale's first room is wide open and no one kills everything.

Biggest Fear: RDM will not be a DPS. Or RDM will be a DPS but I don't like its design.

Likely to happen but not afraid of: RDM will have too much utility/performance and be considered mandatory in raids/OP.

tomes..moar tomes

Biggest fear: the hint towards red mage had no merit and Red Mage (regardless of role) will not be in the game.

Other, lesser fears:
Dancer won't be in the game as a playable job (the woman in the trailer might just be a monk, can't confirm anything until SE tells us).

The supposed overhauls to systems in the game turn people away from the game.

With the raising of minimum PC system requirements those with older and/or lower end graphics cards and CPUs will be forced to upgrade their systems in order to play at a decent frame rate at least at lowest settings.

The loss of PS3 support means the loss of a chunk of the playerbase, as some do not have or are unwilling/unable to purchase a PS4 or PC powerful enough to run the game. I say this as a PC player.

My biggest fear in the future is that they will take the idea of ability pruning too far to the point that the jobs won't feel the same anymore.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I understand this sentiment, but what do you propose they do to replace it? The system exists for many reasons (to let new players catch up, to keep old content relevant, to stop players from getting the best gear in a week then complaining of a lack of content) and I can't come up with a better system that accomplishes these (very important) things.

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That last bit is the key though. As long as something else can fill that system, this particular iteration can be replaced, and it's quite possible the replacement can do a better job in terms of those functions even while mitigating the annoyances others see in the current system.

For instance — spitball idea, mind you — you could have a sort of job- and character- specific prestige system, where you earn prestige towards specific gear through challenges, dailies, weeklies, and any typical source of tomes, both for the job you queued as or manually allocated the reward toward, and generally. The job-specific exp has weekly capping, either a hard cap on expenditures (where the remainder on a given week rolls over to the next) and a soft cap on gains, or a hard cap on gains alone as is the current system. As you acquire more and more prestige, gear costs decrease, but you're also given access to better, much (almost exponentially) more expensive gear. The character prestige, however, does not cap, and can similarly reduce cost as you progress to higher totals acquired, and can be spent on any job (just keep in mind the weekly, rolled-over per-job spending cap). Same idea, but with better alt support, and one that can potentially throw challenges, leaderboards, or whatever else SE likes into the equation. Because the gains themselves are soft-capped, although perhaps painfully so, players can still progress further with their excess time, though it would serve much more efficiently to gear up alt jobs than to continue with the one that is, frankly, being purposely held back to keep gear checks relevant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I don't know how they make 24-man raids hard without making them impossible. The probability that enough of those 24 people are bad to cause a wipe and the inevitable immediate vote abandon is just too high. Short of FC content (which would be so inaccessible as to make it a waste of dev time), I don't see how they manage this. Maybe a dynamic difficulty scaling in 24-man raids? Maybe a 24-man dungeon where it's more of a race between the three parties to see who's the best rather than relying on all three parties for mechanics. I don't know.

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The main thing, imo, is to simply introduce more challenges, greater difficulty, and better learning support early on. Don't baby the playerbase — just provide due support to ensure that the learning is happening. That way you still have an exciting level of mechanical complexity or intensity without a large portion of players holding the rest back. If Yoshi wasn't dead set on the game waiting until level cap to really "start", you wouldn't have players waiting until level cap to really learn (at which point they already have very low expectations and tolerance).

SMN playing like a alchemist or salvemaker with another terrible lookin egi and then being told that's the revised edition