FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

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Originally Posted by Iromi

It is..but it won't. Plenty of people quit and left for good when they saw how 3.0 was rehash of 2.0 with the tomes, and low and behold..we are getting tomes again in 3.2 lol. They don't really listen to the players...

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The purpose of tomes was to supplement raid drops and nothing else. But I suppose they had fixed that problem by dropping pages. But sure, (I'm assuming you're suggesting) we can remove tomes and just have raid gear at max lvl.

the trouble with the relic is tie to the raid, the trouble is to gate all the challenge behind raid, if they had added another type of endgame to 4-24 player it will be easier to ask people to do a endgame challenge for finish it.

me my main concern about ff14 is the fact that the game don't offer any option into endgame, it's raid or raid.

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Originally Posted by myahele

The fact that we can meld materia into Tomestone gear in 3.2 will be nice addition in terms of optional customization

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This is NOT customization. Materia is NEVER about Customization(Not in ARR anyway). People will be melding their primary and secondaries if they can. DPS Crit and Det. BLM Spell Speed/Crit. SMN Det/Crit, etc. You stray from this, and you're doing your melding wrong. Sadly this extends into Crafting and Gathering too. You need to meld specific gears to reach minimum stats for Star Tier crafts until you can get the higher gear to alleviate some of the materia(which ultimately goes to waste anyway)

Edit: I just remembered. There IS some customization in materia in this game. Ironically, it's only in PVP with the Resist Materias.

This is exactly why I never will get another relic weapon cause to me they are totally pointless when by the time you get your hands on one they are more then likely gonna be obsolete. So really what's the point in investing alot of time and money on something that is go as be so obsolete. Anyway that's just my thoughts.

I agree with you 100% OP. I just hope this gets the attention of the community team.

I wish people would stop going to the extreme opposite end when someone mentions horizontal gear progression/different builds.

- I've played loads of mmos with horizontal gear, I never had to carry more than 5 sets or anything over 2. And the second set was used for 2-3 dungeons and pvp. There's always a happy medium.

- If someone doesn't want to play with you because you don't have a cookie cutter build, don't play with them. Once people with that mindset start limiting themselves and noticing it's taking longer and longer for their parties to fill, they'll come around.

This game needs variety, the gear here, which is usually the main reward with mmos, is horribly boring. Yes he said they'll add materia slots in tome gear, but 2 slots? No overmeld? Secondary stats only? Not good at all. With Aion for example, you can take your gear enchant it (Making it +1, +2 etc), add manastones (materia), combine the weapon with another, add a Godstone (bonus effects), add an Idian (more bonus stats) and condition it (activate bonus stats). Now we don't have to have all of that but 2 materia slots on end game gear with boring stats, that's not good enough.

Before someone starts screaming because I used Aion as an example. Just like the games mentioned in the OP, they didn't die from having horizontal gear and variety. And depending on how you look at success most of them did better than FFXIV. FFXIV doesn't have millions of active subscriptions, just accounts, which is saying something.

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Originally Posted by Pride

2. Player choice in both gear and progression is basically nonexistent.

Everything about this game is vertical, and streamlined -- It's a huge problem, that needs to be addressed.

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I was completely shocked when i learned that the Armoury system, materia, and attributes barely make a difference in character customization. I heard ARR ripped off from WoW after the 1.0 disaster. But I was under the impression that WoW had character customization on the level of Diablo 2.

I loved the story, characters, and AMAZING amount of quests. But when i completed the MSQ i got completely bored knowing my character had no real aim or direction. I still have not gotten to Heavensward content yet. But It's hard to keep interest and I doubt I'll resub. Not until i hear substantial news about the Materia and Armoury Systems.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

the trouble with the relic is tie to the raid, the trouble is to gate all the challenge behind raid, if they had added another type of endgame to 4-24 player it will be easier to ask people to do a endgame challenge for finish it.

me my main concern about ff14 is the fact that the game don't offer any option into endgame, it's raid or raid.

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How can they make something challenging and not require a dedicated practice group to do it. I don't know what standards you have, but if something can be cleared in the first day it was released, then it's not challenging.

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Originally Posted by Terribad

- If someone doesn't want to play with you because you don't have a cookie cutter build, don't play with them. Once people with that mindset start limiting themselves and noticing it's taking longer and longer for their parties to fill, they'll come around.

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Cookie cutter builds really only matter when it comes to raiding and even more so with progression raiding. Serious progression raid groups don't take people who chose to run non cookie cutter builds. Yes they cut down the number of raiders they have to choose from, but choosing to run a non-cutter build means you see gate yourself off from content.

Its a yin/yang scenario in which you got too choose what you feel is the lesser of two evils.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

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I've personally done serious raiding in several games, non cookie cutter builds, no one knew, no one cared and I wasn't the lowest DPS. Unless you guys actually play with these people, why does it matter? especially since A good majority of raiders in this particular game, already have their own pugs.

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Originally Posted by Terribad

I've personally done serious raiding in several games, non cookie cutter builds, no one knew, no one cared and I wasn't the lowest DPS. Unless you guys actually play with these people, why does it matter? especially since A good majority of raiders in this particular game, already have their own pugs.

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But why would you want to do something strictly inferior, even if you're not doing content that requires it? If you can do 1200 DPS with one build, and 1000 with another, why would you choose the one that does 1000? Regardless of the content you're doing, you'll do better using the 'cookie cutter' build, and so why would you want to do less?

I've never understood this argument--the vast majority of actual 'game' in MMOs is about improving and maximizing your damage output, and, for tanks, learning how to maximize defensive CD use to mitigate as much damage as possible, and for healers maximizing healing output without overhealing or running dry on MP (and DPSing when possible).

Not doing that in an MMO is like, I don't know, playing a fighting game and never graduating past button mashing. Sure it might be fun for awhile, but I've never understood how it can be fun continuously.

And THAT is why raiding meta tends to trickle down into the playerbase at large, and things like str tanks aren't just for the people pushing hardcore content anymore, but a thing that most of the player base recognizes as better, and why healer DPS isn't just for raids, but something that is becoming expected. Because pushing the envelope and doing as well as you possibly can is part of the fun for a majority of people, and I just don't see where playing any game repeatedly for months or years on end can be fun in the slightest if you AREN'T doing that, regardless of the content you're doing it in.

I also don't HAVE to buy eso gear. Upgraded law is good enough to clear any of the current content. I don't HAVE to put all my attribute points into str as melee dps or mind as healer or int as magic dps, etc. I could load up on piety as a black mage. It'd be considerably less effective, but I COULD do it, and, hey, it'd even slightly change my play style as I'd be able to maintain astral fire longer! But no one does that! Because it's worse! And no one wants to be worse.

And given that, I'll never understand why 'you don't HAVE to use the mathematically best build unless you're a top raider' is an argument. It's simply not. The majority of people will do what's mathematically best not because they 'have' to, but because their goal is to be the best players they can be--as it should be--and in following that goal there is no 'choice'. Which makes things like skill trees nothing but a meaningless waste of time--both player and dev--as it only exists for people to click the button they were going to click anyway because it's the mathematically superior button.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

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But why would you want to do something strictly inferior

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I think our definition of "cookie cutter build" is very different. A cookie cutter build isn't a build that's better, it's usually easy to play, requires no skill, and or some streamer uses it. Let's take Archeage for example, the cookie cutter builds there are DarkRunner and Primevil(sp). Those builds are not the best at all, just easy to play.

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I could load up on piety as a black mage. It'd be considerably less effective, but I COULD do it.

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Obviously the point is to use stats that could effect your class/job for the better. In Aion as a chanter I could go Crit/Attack Crit/HP and or Attack/HP 3 different builds (which there's more) and each one effects my class for the better.

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Originally Posted by Terribad

I think our definition of "cookie cutter build" is very different. A cookie cutter build isn't a build that's better, it's usually easy to play, requires no skill, and or some streamer uses it. Let's take Archeage for example, the cookie cutter builds there are DarkRunner and Primevil(sp). Those builds are not the best at all, just easy to play.

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No. That's really not what it means. Or what it has ever meant.

Cookie cutter builds are pre-designed builds that have been mathematically tested and found to have the best over all potential. Stuff like, to use an example we all remember, the 2.0 stat weights and zeta weapon materias. The cookie cutter Zeta for most DPS classes was Det/Crit. It was mathematically the best choice for them because people calculated out the stat weights (I don't want to go find the 2.x stat weights so no numbers, sorry), and found that det and crit were worth the most DPS out of any secondary stat. And that's why Det 4 materia was at ridiculously high prices during that time. Everyone wanted as much as possible.

The origin of the term is that when you use a cookie cutter, all of the cookies look the same. Thus, a cookie cutter build is one where everyone is taking all the same talents, because they are the superior talents, which results in everyone at end game looking the same. Cookie cutter.

Because it was always used in as a derisionary term, it has taken on a less used usage that is something close to what you're saying, HOWEVER, that's very clearly not what it was being used as in this conversation before I came in, unless you read:

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Cookie cutter builds really only matter when it comes to raiding and even more so with progression raiding. Serious progression raid groups don't take people who chose to run non cookie cutter builds. Yes they cut down the number of raiders they have to choose from, but choosing to run a non-cutter build means you see gate yourself off from content.

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And thought to yourself 'Yes, that is right. Top tier hardcore raiders only allow people with very easy to play and suboptimal builds into their progression raiding teams. That is how world first clears are made. With poor builds,' it is abundantly and painfully obvious what was meant by the term.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

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Outside of an MMO the term is used when referring to something that's mass produced and **low quality**. In mmos I've only ever heard anyone use that term for "go to" builds. Not necessarily the best in the game, just what the masses go to for being easy.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

And given that, I'll never understand why 'you don't HAVE to use the mathematically best build unless you're a top raider' is an argument...

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I might just be an outlier, but I played marksman hunter fairly frequently in WoW, even though Beastmaster and Survival are still better (though they're all competitive, really). Sorta like now how BRD is essentially better for most of the circumstances in raiding due to foe and RoD lowering the healer's miss rates, but I still play MCH over them because I like having my wildfire burst. The two functionally fufil the same role but do so somewhat differently. It just becomes a problem when you let that become the limiting factor to really add anything else to the game (such as new jobs or horizontal skill progression), and it makes for a very flat viewpoint for all of the players. People already exclude people for the silliest of reasons (such as excluding MCH/BRD during 3.0), and nothing's going to change that.

Just to rebute, the ultimate goal for the player in a game should be to have fun. Some find it fun to be competitive an shoot for the best, others find it fun to mess around with different gimmicks without being a total burden to the party.

There will always be cookie-cutter builds, even in FFXIV there's already evidence to that. Anytime there's a choice of a stat, or gear, there's "cookie-cutter" type choices. STR Tanks, BiS gear choices, Materia Melding etc.

But the best example of a good (although VERY DEEP) talent tree is Path of Exile. There's Dozens of very good builds for each class that are built around a play style, now I'm not saying that XIV do that (I doubt the dev team could even wrap their head around that concept that POE has) but there are ways to create talents that don't negate the other talents that are available. Even WoW, with it's streamlined talent system has multiple builds designated for certain encounters/situations. In any case, discussing talents in a game that will likely never have them almost seems like wasted time. :(

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

I might just be an outlier, but I played marksman hunter fairly frequently in WoW, even though Beastmaster and Survival are still better

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It's funny you use WoW as an example, because Blizzard agrees with me so hard (and so does EA/Bioware), that those builds don't even exist anymore. They realized most of the talents were pointless, in a given tree, either because everyone took them, or no one did and so the trees are gone. They have been uprooted and sent to the toothpick factory.

That said, while I don't remember hunter very well as it was a long time ago, I remember most classes had very very different feels depending on your main tree--and often fulfilled completely different party rolls (like shadow priests being DPS). So picking a marksman hunter was basically like playing a different, but related, class, compared to Beastmaster/Survival. And that's completely understandable.

However, I have to ask, did you pick your talents in the marksman tree based on which would be most effective?

Because, okay

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Just to rebute, the ultimate goal for the player in a game should be to have fun. Some find it fun to be competitive an shoot for the best, others find it fun to mess around with different gimmicks without being a total burden to the party.

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I understand this. I really do. Better than most, probably, as whenever I play a tabletop RPG I tend to gravitate toward this kind of play style. For me making something that shouldn't work, work, is a lot of fun--and it puts a strong damper on my power gaming ways so that I don't ruin anyone else's fun. But, the thing is, it's still about being as good as I can be within a constraint, regardless of what that constraint is.

And even in those situations a lot of the 'choices' laid out for you are meaningless.

The only time when you can have meaningful choices is when they create large but roughly balanced changes to core gameplay. I.E. when it's about the equivalent of having a different class. But then, within that class, you still end up with most people looking almost exactly the same--whether they got there through experimentation on their own, or went and looked up a guide written by someone who did.

You probably didn't look much different than other marksman hunters.

And even then, if the numbers don't line up close enough, you end up with a massive dearth of certain classes. Shoulda seen SWtOR at release if you wanted a good example of this. There were lots of classes that no one was playing at all because they were terrible. The smuggler forums were a ghost town. You could learn everyone's forum account by name. I still played smuggler because no other class allowed me to kick sithlords in the dingle berries, but due to the fact that the scoundrel subclass was over-nerfed due to having burst that was too high for fair PvP play, and gunslingers just never being that good until months and months later (and smugglers having animation issues that made them inferior to imperial agents), there was basically no one there. Last time I checked in, it was the marauder/sentinel forums that were mostly empty other than people complaining about how dead their class was. EA/Bioware are absolutely awful at class balance, by the way. Just throwing that out there.

Also, for the record, when I played a WoW hunter last (aaaaaages ago, around the release of BC I think? Maybe?), a Marksman/survival hybrid was best if I remember right.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

They realized most of the talents were pointless, in a given tree, either because everyone took them, or no one did and so the trees are gone. They have been uprooted and sent to the toothpick factory..

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Actually they streamlined the old talent trees into what the first iteration of the new skill system is because each expansion was creating a mess of the talents and trying to balance them was near impossible. Skill bloat and meaningless talents was another reason why they changed how talents and skills are done in WoW.The old skill trees in WoW, actually did lend to some pretty cool builds, the hybrid builds for DK that actually topped the charts due to how the skills and talents synergized. Other builds also came about with those trees, but in the end, having 50+ talent points to manage in multiple builds became more of a chore. So they changed how skills/talents are done to a far far far more simplistic and open option.

Right now, in ffxiv we're starting to see a lot of skill bloat, the next expansion better have some skill/ability revisions, otherwise it's just going to be a mess.

Why dont you compare the sub numbers for the mentioned games to the subs numbers of FFXIV ?

P.S remember SWG and how it died

Ya know, after hearing a lot from both sides of the horizontal progression argument...I don't even know what to think anymore. I was for it, somewhat avidly, but now I just want to enjoy the game. Which I do even now, to get that out of the way...

I realized last night while reading this thread that the very job system itself might have been an attempt at not horizontal *character* progression, but horizontal *player* progression. This probably helps nothing, and I agree that having play style customization to a class/job is what we expect, but does no one realize that the current system allows player *skill* to be the defining trait to a PC? If you don't agree, how many times have you gone "this is a good healer" or "wow, buddy...maybe no tanking for you"... In other MMOs we saw character-specs, but now...

I would like a little more definition to my character builds, but honestly I realized I'm kind of already doing that, it's just not where we expect, in the stats (I have several characters, each with specific jobs. I'm nuts, I know...). I realize this does not address the current end-game hum-drum, but I gotta ask...did most of you power-lvl to get there? Maybe slowing down, just enjoying the game and all of the content through-out might help solve that dilemma...the game might be built to savor, not to scarf.

Please realize I'm not saying the game's perfect, this is only in regards to the current debate.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

How can they make something challenging and not require a dedicated practice group to do it. I don't know what standards you have, but if something can be cleared in the first day it was released, then it's not challenging.

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you can have dedicate group of different size you know?
i'm not against dedicate group, i'm against only 1 format for the endgame challenge.... more option is better. you have guild with a lot of people and can't really do a raid at 24 challenge since it don't exist. same you have guild of smaller size that can't really gather 8 people for do content. irl is like this.... but that don't means they don't want to do challenging content, simply they can't have them friend at the same time together. do that means they must abandon them friend?

what i'm saying is they need to add content for dedicate group of 4-8-24 player! more option it's always welcome!

I like how people are saying: "Cookie Cutter" when comparing no brain choices like Parry and Critical Modifier.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

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If you have question with my play history, feel free to do the research and look my character up. I'm on a Legacy server, with the tattoo, and played a lot during all stages of the Beta. That said, I spent a lot of time at sea during 2.xx so I may or may not have the best recollection of how or when the events occurred; specifically if I was deployed when the major changes occurred. However, I do my best to provide the most accurate information I can with regards to the facts. My opinions are clearly marked as such, and viewer discretion is advised.

I will, however, go back and edit my original post with the quotes from individuals who have already caught and informed me of the information I was lacking.

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Originally Posted by Darkling

Why dont you compare the sub numbers for the mentioned games to the subs numbers of FFXIV ?

P.S remember SWG and how it died

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A lot of those games no longer have subs but I know when Aion released it hit 1million active subscribers (And it's still going very strong in Korea). FFXIV won't release active subscription numbers, which is strange. But someone on reddit mined the lodestone for an estimate and currently it's estimated to be around 750k Active subscribers. GW2 I believe is number 2 for the healthiest mmo currently out while FFXIV is number 3. ESO is number 4.

Now take that 750k and compare that to the million of accounts made. Their retention rate is awful. Besides the games mentioned are all still up and running, so if they were that bad no one would play them and they would be shut down.

On the topic of cookie cutter builds. I agree there will always be one. However the point is to try and make it so the others aren't irrelevant or not an option. I believe that can be done. We focus too much on the negatives of stuff and shoot everything down.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

That said, while I don't remember hunter very well as it was a long time ago, I remember most classes had very very different feels depending on your main tree--and often fulfilled completely different party rolls (like shadow priests being DPS). So picking a marksman hunter was basically like playing a different, but related, class, compared to Beastmaster/Survival. And that's completely understandable.

However, I have to ask, did you pick your talents in the marksman tree based on which would be most effective?

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My point was in regards to picking the specialization and the talents in general (which means I'm referring to playing a hunter post-cataclysm expansion, where they had already done away with the old talent trees). Even I agree that something like their pre-catacylsm talent trees were a bit outdated, because everyone always went for the same build. However, you still had some horizontal character progression and choices in the form of specializations (cataclysm and onward), and somewhat more limited in the talents themselves (which have undergone tremendous change) and glyph.

Had I played a hunter during WoD release, I would have taken something like exotic munitions to add as secondary effect to my ranged auto attacks. On the other hand, I believe that lone wolf was a better dps increase for marksman hunter, since EA didn't benefit from their mastery.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

Also, for the record, when I played a WoW hunter last (aaaaaages ago, around the release of BC I think? Maybe?), a Marksman/survival hybrid was best if I remember right.

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Like right here, we probably have two completely different perspectives. As I mentioned above, I was playing a marksman hunter during MoP, at that point they had done away with talent trees and specializations were more-or-less a "job route" for each class. Marksman has always been behind BM and SV as far as dps was concerned, but I still prefered using physical shots as my source of damage. Not enough of a difference to prevent htem from being able to clear the top tier content, mind you, just comparatively lower.

They've done away with a lot of fluff and pointless numbers (like 0/5 rank talents that give % damage increase), but still give some resembelence of horizontal progression. Sure there's going to be some that's better for the extra 2-5% dps, but I could always mess around with my talent points if I wanted to change my pacing for a dungeon, raid or dailies. I can't necessarily say that I have the same luxury on FFXIV when it comes to raiding due to gear being job specific...and the fact that my role is the "support dps" of MCH/BRD, the two having gameplay that's been homogenized as hell.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

you can have dedicate group of different size you know?
i'm not against dedicate group, i'm against only 1 format for the endgame challenge.... more option is better. you have guild with a lot of people and can't really do a raid at 24 challenge since it don't exist. same you have guild of smaller size that can't really gather 8 people for do content. irl is like this.... but that don't means they don't want to do challenging content, simply they can't have them friend at the same time together. do that means they must abandon them friend?

what i'm saying is they need to add content for dedicate group of 4-8-24 player! more option it's always welcome!

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What you end up getting is 4-man raid, 8-man raid, 24-man raid. How is this any different than raid? If they made Void Ark (etc.) as hard as 2nd coil (at launch, not the trash that it is nerfed to now) then no one could do it because you'll have a hard time practicing with the same 24 people. Might as well skip the obvious misstep and just have 8 man raids that are challenging. Anything that can be pugged and cleared the first day is not challenging so there's no other way they could provide "challenging" content in the format you want.

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Originally Posted by BlatantPyre

I want to use an example of why I think this topic is important: Red Mage.

We all want it. Yoshida even teased us with the idea this past Rising. After thinking about it though, I wonder how it could even function in this current system...

Now, I've thought long and hard about how it *could* work, but I want to focus on one point, that Red Mage is really supposed to be a swiss-army knife class, say like Druid in WoW, and such like it. But such a class only works in a system with horizontal progression, where you can modify/self-personalize your job's path. We don't currently have that...how's that going to work?!

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To be honest, I don't see why horizontal progression would be required beyond the obvious--different (healer, tank, and DPS) gear sets. Naturally, if it could do everything with the same set of gear (tank, heal, and DPS), then it would give it an overwhelming advantage in flexibly gearing up compared to gearing one job of each type. But being gear-locked into a particular role is as close as horizontal progression really has to being relevant here. (At best that gear-locking occurs more subtly, such as for ideal secondary stats for a particular role or two, while the primary stats are already shared among all roles.)

To take the druid example further, a druid has only ever really been, in practice, as much a swiss army knife as a (Wrath) Blood Death Knight or Retribution Paladin. Once gear- and talent-locked, they perform a particular role very clearly, and the hybrid flavor of the class only shows through off-role procs, be it Predatory Swiftness (for Healing Touch) or Art of War / Eternal Flame (on Ret). (Feral previously being mostly shared gear- and especially talent-wise was the closest they've gotten to being truly hybrid (particularly with its self-healing benefits and caster/cat/bear synergy), though again almost identical in that aspect to Blood DK.) Horizontal progression really has surprisingly little to do with "hybrid" functionality. And of course, it doesn't help that talents do not progress beyond the level cap, where you will undoubtedly spend the majority of your time anyways... Doesn't really warrant the term "progression", when it doesn't progress. (Gear did, but mostly vertically. Key stats, mixed with tier artifact gear bonuses allowed for new rotations and priorities, but not that they were scarcely more multi-stated even back in Wrath than we are here in XIV. They simply had far more rotational matters dependant on secondary stats and managed each tier to get enough of said stats to slightly adjust gameplay, capping crit chance (75%) with their crit specs by the end of the expansion, while we'll likely never exceed 45%. A vertical difference, not horizontal. And a difference in ability/passives design.)

Edit: Don't get me wrong; I like the idea of horizontal progression. I just don't like seeing the idea of it misplaced / mis-attributed.

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Originally Posted by Terribad

A lot of those games no longer have subs but I know when Aion released it hit 1million active subscribers (And it's still going very strong in Korea). FFXIV won't release active subscription numbers, which is strange. But someone on reddit mined the lodestone for an estimate and currently it's estimated to be around 750k Active subscribers. GW2 I believe is number 2 for the healthiest mmo currently out while FFXIV is number 3. ESO is number 4.

Now take that 750k and compare that to the million of accounts made. Their retention rate is awful. Besides the games mentioned are all still up and running, so if they were that bad no one would play them and they would be shut down.

On the topic of cookie cutter builds. I agree there will always be one. However the point is to try and make it so the others aren't irrelevant or not an option. I believe that can be done. We focus too much on the negatives of stuff and shoot everything down.

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Retention rate on any MMO or online game tends to be pretty small percentage wise. WoW I think was said to have had around 100 million accounts made during its lifetime. Comparing concurrent to accounts made isn't a great rating of performance.

Also I wouldn't read too much into not listing active subscriptions. Most game don't. Even Blizzard has stopped doing it now. You list GW2 as a very healthy MMO at the moment but I cant remember ever seeing anything beyond it listing accounts made.

The issue with customisation and horizontal progression will always fall down into a balance between variety and sustainability of content vs complexity and inaccessablity.

Complexity can be very offputing. GW2 is a perfect example of that where the game designers even suggest you go to third party sites to find a build that works well. GW2 is also an example of broken balance as the 'freedom' it offered effectively killed the value of support(healing) and control(tanking) builds. Literally if you were using such a build you were playing the game wrong and gimping your allies. There is vast amounts of 'customisation' in that game which is completely useless outside PvP and all builds are variations of dps.

Accessibility is also important cause all MMOs have player churn. They will keep a core number of players but the rest are those who come and go for whatever reason. I big risk with complexity and horizontal progression both is for a new or returning player the game can feel too overwhelming, difficult or requiring too much work to get back into the more social endgame.

Now I'm hoping we will see both more customisation and horizontal progression but both can easily damage the game and drive off existing players so I want them to take there time and be very careful about it. The current formula might not be perfect but it is workable and accessible and while individual jobs have no customisation, being able to play multiple jobs allows some variety to players.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

My point was in regards to picking the specialization and the talents in general (which means I'm referring to playing a hunter post-cataclysm expansion, where they had already done away with the old talent trees). Even I agree that something like their pre-catacylsm talent trees were a bit outdated, because everyone always went for the same build. However, you still had some horizontal character progression and choices in the form of specializations (cataclysm and onward), and somewhat more limited in the talents themselves (which have undergone tremendous change) and glyph.

Had I played a hunter during WoD release, I would have taken something like exotic munitions to add as secondary effect to my ranged auto attacks. On the other hand, I believe that lone wolf was a better dps increase for marksman hunter, since EA didn't benefit from their mastery.


Like right here, we probably have two completely different perspectives. As I mentioned above, I was playing a marksman hunter during MoP, at that point they had done away with talent trees and specializations were more-or-less a "job route" for each class. Marksman has always been behind BM and SV as far as dps was concerned, but I still prefered using physical shots as my source of damage. Not enough of a difference to prevent them from being able to clear the top tier content, mind you, just comparatively lower.

They've done away with a lot of fluff and pointless numbers (like 0/5 rank talents that give % damage increase), but still give some resembelence of horizontal progression. Sure there's going to be some that's better for the extra 2-5% dps, but I could always mess around with my talent points if I wanted to change my pacing for a dungeon, raid or dailies. I can't necessarily say that I have the same luxury on FFXIV when it comes to raiding due to gear being job specific...and the fact that my role is the "support dps" of MCH/BRD, the two having gameplay that's been homogenized as hell.

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[Iirc, Focusing Shot had the best general dps, but Lone Wolf had the best 80-100% and Kill Shot % dps, especially with guaranteed Aimed Shot crits at the opening phase, often averaging out to greater gains if pure single-target. Easily within 2% in single-target unless movement killed Focusing Shots' usefulness, but potentially much larger bonuses from Focusing Shot if AoEing frequently. Munitions tended to lag behind each unless somehow (usually just in 5-mans), you could cover most of your AoE needs just though the Incendiary/Explosive ammo's AoE component while STing...

Moreover, the talent choices now are even more cookie-cutter in that they each have a near-direct relationship with certain fights or styles thereof and can be individually mixed and matched to the situation ("input"), where before the focus was on the class itself and its rotational dynamics (essentially "output"). If two talents now could perform equally well, there's all the more chance that two similar talent builds (whether Wrath or Cata) could have been even more equal in value, and allowed finer nuances. The change to the current was purely a decision made for development cost. (Even if you disregard said talent nuance / identity, the largest change is that we now carry stacks of 99 tomes so that we can swap our talents out for every fight as needed. Boss talents > Trash talents > Boss (2) talents > etc.])

On topic though: what I liked about those kind of choices was their gameplay differentiation, but at the same time, even talents as 'changing' as the Mists/WoD/Legion ones can go wrong, or provide little/few increased identity, options, or general entertainment. Moreover, at least in my opinion, the job would often be better done by something more subtle, such as the Wrath/Cata talents, that don't simply swap out a major button (e.g. Steady > Focusing, Eviscerate > DFA, TV > FV) but also affect those finer rotational priorities, and more importantly one's breadth of capability. More than the talents themselves, even, that's what I feel was gradually sapped out of WoW -- the versatility, the breadth, of the classes. Had we more dynamically usable abilities, or at least no button space wasted by duplicates like Inner Beast / Fell Cleave, or Whirling Thrust / Fang and Claw, or by abilities than do nothing more than buff a certain other ability (Power Surge), our sheer action count in XIV would practically guarantee that breadth. Not saying it has to, it just feels weird that we have this many actions, yet so few in-combat rotational builds available to us -- the number of options that we have regardless of spec. [Queue popped; will fix this rant later.]

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

All the games you mentioned. ESO, GW2, SWOTOR, and Wildstar have had less success than FF14

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FFXIV has more success since it lowered the entry for new players to a simple easier level, leaving most of the harder content till near end game. The game is also pretty easy (not to mention this is final fantasy aka graphics heaven). I don't know about this "Players asking to make this game faster" unless you mean when most of the players who played when the game started reached end game and were leeching an empty vessel (not including lvling multiple classes) who asked for more content while the devs were on a extended vacation while we waited for a long time for something new.....that something new was few story missions and a minigame, now we wait some more, few story missions, one side mission and a optional quest.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

All the games you mentioned. ESO, GW2, SWOTOR, and Wildstar have had less success than FF14.....

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Actually, ESO and SWTOR (and to an extent GW2) have had a lot of success since their move to F2P. Despite SWTOR having the worst F2P model in existence and the most limitations, the game community is still quite large, and it only got bigger with the release of the last expansion (and the movie of course). And they just refreshed their talent system (much like WOW's).

Wildstar didn't do well due to the difficulty of the game, even after the "nerfs" it was still a very steep cliff to climb to get into end game raiding. Carbine specifically tried to pull the "hardcore" raiding community from WoW and other MMO's in and found that it wasn't enough to keep the game going (along with several issues regarding stability during launch etc..).

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Originally Posted by Shyle

Actually, ESO and SWTOR (and to an extent GW2) have had a lot of success since their move to F2P. Despite SWTOR having the worst F2P model in existence and the most limitations, the game community is still quite large, and it only got bigger with the release of the last expansion (and the movie of course). And they just refreshed their talent system (much like WOW's). /snip

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Actually SWTOR hasn't. Yeah people will say "it made X money" but read the earnings calls. Since its f2p transition it has either broken even or been seen as a loss, all the f2p transition did was stop an absolute free fall. Also according to NCSofts financials GW2 has lost money big time over the last year. Finally there is no way to tell if ESO is now successful or not, private companies have no obligation to publically release earnings.

To the OP... Part 1

1. RIFT. They balance the game now around 61 point builds. A couple hybrids survive by chance. The idea of the soul trees was great for players but a nightmare for developers to keep balanced because of synergies.

2. SWTOR. You haven't needed to use a calculator for over a year because not you get "utilities" but the utilities are such that everyone takes the fact same ones,

3. Wildstars just massively dumbed down runes in Sept.

4. EQ2 is an apples and oranges thing imo. That is a game that is now going on for over 10 years. Procs for the longest time, were rare as all heck. One of the biggest reasons for procs on gear became common was to maintain a sense of gear prog. without crazy stat numbers and/or unintuitive new stats (such as crit MIT) it wasn't about making gear "unique".

Part 2

As for the Relic thing. it all depends on what you see the purpose as. It seems clear that SE sees the Relics as serving these two purposes.

1. Give non-raiders a way to get psuedo raid quality weapon by replacing raid with time sink. To minimize the time sink, and to give them unique traits would then create an already bigger debate as to the balance between them and raid weapons.

2. The second purpose is, because of how one optains them, high level characters have to go into old/ lower level zones. A perennial problem in MMORPGs is the "old world" and/or lower level zones feeling like ghost towns to new players and the Relic weapons help alleviate that.

So in the context of SE's purpose for the gear the current set up makes perfect sense.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

Snip

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I admit retention rate on MMOs isn't all that great but 5 million accounts made with an estimate of 750k active subscribers? That's extremely low by anyone's standards. Blizzard released their sub numbers for Q2 of 2015, as with majority of subscription based MMOs it lets people know how well the game is doing and the amount of people playing.

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Complexity can be very offputing.

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No one is asking for complex, people are asking for a variety which can be achieved without being complex. I get it that most of this playerbase can barely think and chew gum at the same time so we don't have to go the extreme route. Again, everything doesn't have to be at the extreme opposite end, there can be a happy medium.

Well to start off with are all theses mmos mentioned in original post compatible with ps3?

I think that's the main issue with the engine being outdated and it has to stay compatible with ps3 so really
it will be hard to compete with other mmos due to console limitations of ps3 preventing the game from
moving forward.

Sad fact they can't drop ps3 support so really only way is to end this game after this end of hw story and make a new FFXIV-2 4.0 onwards that will be a new game non expansion that would copy all account data to a new game that will be PS4 and PC only. cause unless its a new game they cannot lawfully drop ps3 support.

I think that estimate of 750k is definitely low. Here is the logic. First a registered account must have subscribed independently, post free with box, for 30 days. At the end of 2014 the game had 2.5 Million such accounts, beginning of 2015 4 million, August 5 million. I would argue based on that, that 1- 1.5 million would not be out of the question. This would be good because today there are a lot more MMOs than when WoW started nd many of them are f2p. If I remember right the 750 number came froman estimate from the 2014 earnings call when they said 1 million between this and FFXI. Thing is that earnings call was before China and Ps4 launch. a well thought out estimate imo.. Another good Reddit elsewhere noted the average loss of BAD games...28% remaining. They crunched some nunbers and came up, based on SE statements of a 35% retention overall here, which would be 1.7 million, which would be consistent with the link I posted.

Competition, whether PvE or PvP, is one of the least fun things about MMOs and won't improve anything in FFXIV. MMO competition is grinding, which is why it's not fun and can't be fixed.
The way to win competitions in MMOs is outfarm your opponents.
For PvE, run more dungeons, farm more materials, craft more stuff, or spend more time grinding than anyone else.
For PvP, grind gear to farm players who have grinded less and have little chance to win.
Farming competitions people will not create a sense of community.
Giving relics horizontal progression is also a terrible idea. If it's BiS, then raiders will have to farm it in order to raid. If it's not, then everyone will ignore it.

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Originally Posted by IndigoHawk

... MMO competition is grinding .... <and pretty much everything else she said.>

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You do realize *everything* in MMOs, especially FFXIV, is grinding, right? Also, in games, competition does NOT necessitate grinding, unless it is developed that way, and that can be said about anything and everything in the medium. As far as competition goes...

I gotta get this off my chest...it saddens me the younger generation is being so heavily deceived on stuff like this, I've run into it elsewhere. Most seem to be confusing greed with competition, and while the two aren't mutually exclusive, neither are they intrinsically linked. Someone said something about it causing death earlier - but what she described had nothing to do with competition, it was greed.

Competition in its purest form is not only healthy, it is *essential* to life. Greed wields many aspects of things we need to survive in order to feed itself and essentially destroy, but that doesn't mean we should then hate that which was used. Would you stop eating food because it's possible to poison it? I hope not...

Competition does not beget death, it does not rely on loss, and it does not have to be unbalanced. Greed and avarice do, and they will employ whatever they can - peoples needs, empathy, and yes, even competition, to meet their ends. Please try not to be so easily deceived on such things...no matter who it comes from, no matter the reported intentions. You'll find you will cause that which you are trying to avoid...

And with that out of the way...as far as our suggestion of expanded PvP goes, I believe it was even suggested that grinding be left out in one of the posts, give us some even ground to stand on so it could be about skill. I think in the end we're just asking for more options as far as play styles go, so that both casual and hardcore players have things they can enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

The sad fact here is that so many people die needlessly because of competition. For example, delivery companies could easily hire two truck drivers that alternate shifts so one doesn't cause an accident because he's tired and falls asleep mid-drive (Or, allow them some longer sleep-breaks). That alone would save hundreds of lives each year. But it isn't done, unless the law demands it, because it is costly, limits your delivery times and thus, is detrimental to the competitive standing of the company. It's cheaper to just pay compensations whenever it happens. And that's just one fairly harmless example.

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Definitely greed.