So, I see alot of ''negative'' threads on this forum.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I"ll give my two cents here. If I would have to rate HW or more importantly 3.x it would be 3 out of 5, not horrible but not great. I"ll back it up with some key points about how the game really didn't expand past what 2.x offered.

*added 5 new actions which fixed some issue people had with 2.x but also lead to what many called skill bloating. I will give bonus points for changing the style on how some jobs play
*added 3 new jobs which is good but annoyed how the borrowed some niche play style from other jobs.
*added massive new lands but failed to actually fill them with content post level cap.
*added Ishgard, awesome then added Idlyshire for the end game hangout........ Why copy Mor Dhona formula again?

I still like FFXIV but disappointed that the devs really aren't expanding upon what they built in 2.x. At the end of the day it's still the same formula many got tried with in 2.x. Dungeons, 8/24 raid, primal, repeat. True, patches add something else with each patch but is that something enough to keep players happy during the patch cycle? I just wish they would have tried to change the mold a little and expand options for end game.

I will add the first thing SE needs is the ability to make 24-man alliances outside of Duty Finder. That would open so many doors for future content.

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The main issue to this all is. The game has "less" content then it did in 2.x

So, this x100.

They could of expanded upon what they had, and not raised the level cap and made more of a horizontal approach giving more dungeons and raids a variety of loot, maybe updating zones and adding more raid zones.

So basicly, they took a gun and shot themselves in the foot.

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Originally Posted by Seraphix2407

Not really. The content we had last 6-7 months: Alex savage (4 room raid) for whole 6-7 months. 4 dungeons 3 primals . Now I'm not an MMO expert, I played only 3 in my life. FF14, Secret world, FF14 and currently trying and playing blade and soul. Okay sure, we get patch 3-4 months in between, but the content is less than we used to have. I will say it and I can't mention any MMO having reciving more content. But the problem is the content we have isn't lasting long enough,

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Players will always be able to run through content much quicker than developers can create it. Players who spend a lot of time in the game (several hours per day or more) and who don't try to do absolutely everything there is to do in the game, but rather focus on some parts (e.g. doing raids/dungeons but not maxing out crafting) will run out of things to do between patches. It is the same in every MMO, and not much to do about it.


Me? Well, I split my time between several games, so I progress slowly. I still haven't even hit level 50 despite playing for several months. Still got lots and lots of things left to do.

That is what forums are for.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Players will always be able to run through content much quicker than developers can create it

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Yes, I agree. But this is not the only issue in my honest opinion, the content we have is ''almost dead on arrival''. Let's say I do beat the raid, but the gear I obtain it, has no value for a long time. Most likely will increase my dps, healing, tanking etc, but I wish the gear we obtained had it uses for other raids.
Example: There will be 3-4 raids. I will doing all of them, becaus the gear we obtain is different, different stats, different values, etc. I need to somewhat beat raid 1 or 2 to be better geared and suitable for lets say raid 3. Reward isn't ''that great''. Of course. you have those people who do raids just for fun, so do I. But there is a point where you want to get paid for it as well, after all this is an MMO. Not everyone thinks this way, obviously. You have people who doesn't care about tomestones and can mindlessly grind or do expert dungeons, whole 4 of them for 6 months.

No progress = no motivation to play!
They just need to give the players something to do...
What they did is capping and tightening to the limit where you HAVE to do "something" for progress!
The difference is if you don't do the "weeklys" as example you will fall back, the players dont have any freedom left, nor any choice...
Square Enix calculated with how long the player have to spend time to get "something" for "one" Class and thats the main problem!
Players refuse to play months for "outdated" gear because -> no progress, just outdated (players like to get gear when it was announced and not months later when the next gear is shown in live letters)
Same with brickwall content -> After 100th time you just cant see the content any more and mostly the desired item never dropped (void arc)
Mechanics are either onehit or boring, there is nothing inbetween... mostly just avoiding and fighting lag -> there are way too few mechanics like using bombs to blow up slimes (beacon standing mechanics arnt that good either) but the main problem is the boss is static programmed, there is no different in what you kill first and we having support class with useless skills (when did you sleep anything in a bossfight?) -> all that counts is avoiding and damage (sorry, but reduced to that its no longer a RPG genre)

Edit: The formula is easy and simple -> An adventurer is getting experience with whatever he does, slaying monsters or foes gives money (head hunting like) to buy new gear, with exploring dangerous caves you may find treasure (or bones and death ^^), The older you get (long playing) the stronger you will become, instead of repeating same over and over again there should be sandbox style always something "new" to experience... its simple and easy to create an adventure for players!

I dont really mind content droughts to be honest, but what I do mind are actually poorly executed concepts.

Last night I just got my savage 1 clear after a long time of trial and error, finding the people etc. and at the end a FC Member asked me:

"Wasnt that fun?" - Which I just calmly replied to: "Nope, not at all, just a rehashed fight I tanked for a bazillion of attempts now."
It is indeed challanging, pretty harsh if your dps are putting their face on the keyboard, but it just feels really cheap.

People told me bismarck and ravana ex should be hard? Nope not at all, just a long dance that you just memorize as in a Rhytmgame.
I mean dont get me wrong! These were actually quite fun in comparison to savage as they werent that harsh on the dps checks etc. but what I am getting at is:

What does need to happen to get fights like Leviathan again? Or maybe a 24 raid on WoD Level? Coil? It has already been discussed to death, but especially at T9/T13 I really had the feel of "I DID ET!". Or even T5 for hells sake, I dont even consider Twintania as epic mindstruggeling boss with the wowzers effect, BUT even there it had a million times more style and creativity than a recycled shiny splitting A1S robot which just feels like a filler lol.

Not to mention that...
- You basicially cakewalk the game from 1-60, they even nerf older fights and expect people to play their classes perfectly at 60 with no real curve what so ever.
- Weekly tomes to keep you interested *cough cough sub*
- Well thought out ideas like Diadem, although they admitted their fail there a bit, it reallly should've gotten at least 1-2 months more dev time, as zergfests are not really that intersting. (And no, random 210 gear doesnt save it.)
- Running Pain Arc over and over again just for the weekly loot
- Nice additions like LoV, I really like it! Not even joking, but there isnt a real reward to actually play it besides grinding some mgp. Also you have to be in the saucer to play it etc.

And still with all the stuff that kinda annoys me at times, I still have a bit of faith in SE. 4 Man Raids sounded like a cool addition to the standart formula. Only questionable if they will ever bother with it, but it will probably come with the summoner egi glamours.
Important Stuff Soon TM

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Its not even about the content droughts before each patch. People are mad that content feels stiff, just calculated theatre shows they play their roles in with almost no freedom at all. Some people dont mind - some people do. /topic

I'm negative because I care... I wouldn't post an essay if I didn't care...

Dungeons;

Name the key difference between Sastasha and Pharos Sirius (Hard). Answer; The wallpaper. Pull group of mobs, AoE them down, pull next set, do the same. Oh a boss. The only changes are purely superficial. How we explore dungeons, what we do in them, none of that has changed... If anything we've gone backwards. Sastasha had extra rooms, they were ignored because their rewards were crap, but it had them. It felt like a dungeon, not a treadmill. Two new dungeons in 3.2 is not going to add any variety to the game, not for a significant period of time. I'll run Antitower a couple of times, admire the new wallpaper and music, then it'll be old and the fact that I'm running the same treadmill as Fractal and Neverreap will kick in... No split paths, no puzzles, because we have to cater to speed runners exclusively, even though of all the demographics, they're going to be the ones yelling "Bored" first... It isn't hard to balance multiple paths or puzzles...

Trials;

Same problem with dungeons. Mechanically the bosses are different, for the most part, but at the end of the day I'm still fighting enemies in a static ring... Take Leviathan... Why not fight him in a cave? The DPS check phase could be escaping said cave as it floods, with Leviathan and Sahagin trying to block your path. Weak DPS, path is blocked and you drown. Nothing too big, of course, but that would be a better use of the current dungeon formula IMO, a quick sprint through the area to liven up the fight. Ironically we nearly get this, with a bleedin' comic relief Greg fight... The vents in A4 were a welcome surprise in this regard at least... This is why I liked Steps of Faith so much, you know, until they nerfed it into the ground... Now it's just a sad reminder of how terrible the playerbase is, and why we can't have nice things...

Raids;

Alexander was a significant step back from Coil in just about every possible way. The story absolutely blows, but the mechanics are perhaps more important (I'd disagree, and the fact that you get the story (which is the real reward) for cheesing easy mode annoys me and kills all motivation for the real version). Take the introduction; ADS required team work, if you didn't Silence High Voltage, you died, and you needed to rotate Silences to achieve this. Now look at Faust, nothing but a mindless DPS check... To a degree there is the same problem as dungeons, too. More so with Void Ark, which takes the exact same "Here is three groups of trash, then a boss, then a split up trash, then a boss, then some more trash, etc." from Crystal Tower... The vents in A4 were a nice touch, but completely underdeveloped... Whole time I felt like I was fighting Gobbie trash, rather than Alexander, the vents being the only nod that I was fighting in a Primal... Raid bosses still just feel like Trial bosses though...

Open World;

Underused. Hunts, which are horrible IMO, and Treasure Maps, which have a lengthy timer attached... What happened to Levequests? You could kill two birds with one stone here, give us endgame level Levequests that have a personalized Hunt attached... Can actually activate a Levequest with friends, feel like I'm hunting something, then kill Bune together, rather than watching the server zerg him down in seconds... FATEs are horrible and I hope we stop getting them... Go look at Besieged and Campaign in XI, that is what you should have developed Hamlet Defense into, not these crappy FATEs...

PvP;

Good Job. No, really. Still some issues that could be dealt with, but this is perhaps the one aspect of the game (or rather, game play, I can't praise the story/music/etc. enough) that I feel has the developers listening and implementing solid additions to... Ironic, really...

Relics;

Absolutely awful... Not just Anima weapons, either (though I should lay on about how the only new thing developed for the Anima weapons was the weapons themselves, the entire quest is just a big "F*ck You!" to people who complained during Atma/etc.). The entire questline rewards mediocrity... You do a bunch of old content to get a new weapon, when you really break that down... You're doing leveling content to get a relevant weapon... Dwell on that for a minute, please... The entire Anima weapon quest can be done without being Lv60, Lv60 is only a requirement because the quest says so, the quests content though... Don't need Lv60 for it... That's absurd... I'm not saying remove the grind and make it skill based, but at the very least keep some measure of skill in it... I get the problem with the original Relics, but Titan made it feel great to earn one of those weapons... Now? With Stone, Sky, Sea you've got the perfect system in place to test skill without forcing people to rely on a group. Right now there is nothing epic or worthwhile in the Relic quests, an epic solo trial, that tests a players skill would be the perfect solution. It makes the quest more interesting. It gives a skill check that doesn't rely on seven other people. Something like that would be worthy of a weapon like Excalibur, instead you're rewarding Excalibur for... Grinding FATEs? It's pathetic, either stop making these Relics "legendary" weapons, or start making the quest "legendary". Right now we should be getting <Weapon> of Complete and Utter Mediocrity, because that's what the quest is rewarding...

Diadem;

Nice idea, awful implementation... You just slapped Hunts in an instance, ignored the fact that people grouped up to make Hunts a joke, were somehow surprised that happened in Diadem, then you slapped Gathering on top and completely ignored any implications that might have (Gatherer's not helping out in fights at all, but casting lot on rewards regardless)... It's awful... A claiming system. Just f*cking embrace it already. As for Gathering... You really need to make an attempt to meld it with the combat side of things; One complaint I have about the combat is the bullet sponge nature of the enemies, you could easily throw some temporary items into some chests that Gatherer's find, then Gathering in Diadem plays sort of like a true support role. You could also double down on the exploration aspect of Diadem, rather than having nodes spread all over, you could make use of those caves. Make them worth delving into, then just block the entrance with roots/rocks, and you've got the perfect excuse to give Botany/Miner a role in Diadem. Do you know why Fishing works in Diadem? Because they sit in one space and fish, a party could reasonably fight near a Fisher and take advantage of any Fresh Tracks the Fisher spawns, while Botany/Miner are stuck flying around the entire map all event long...

Gear;

I don't get why we still have stats on gear... Given how stats in this game work, I don't get why we don't just get stats boosts from clearing content, with gear being purely cosmetic... Sort of a play on the old Physical Level system, perhaps... It would really be no different than raising your item level, except it arguably keeps content more relevant, depending how you work it... Something like Crystal Tower could still be completely relevant, because people could still want the stat boosts applied from clearing it X times. Instead it is completely irrelevant, because nobody cares about the i90/i100/i120 stats earned from it. That gear does not help anyone, you can completely skip over that gear, where as a stat bonus cannot be skipped over, it's a bonus no matter what. You could ignore it and do endgame content without it, but why would you? A static extra +2 DEX for Ninja from clearing World of Darkness X times completely beats some i120 gear from clearing World of Darkness X times. One is always useful, the other is completely irrelevant these days.

Of course, the better solution is just to make the stats on gear worth a damn, but I can't see that happening ever... Plenty of systems you can work it with, especially with that whole materia on raid gear coming in 3.2, but I still can't see it happening...

Gold Saucer;

Is actually OK... People aren't there all the time? Good. It's a bleedin' casino, it's there to blow off steam when everything else gets a bit stale, I wouldn't expect it to be packed daily... Chocobo Racing is dead (it could do with a Tournament I think), but I actually enjoy giving it a go every now and then... Some issues with "cheating" for things like Triple Triad Tournaments, but overall Gold Saucer is a good addition to the game, just like Housing (and based off a few comments, it seems like Housing and Gold Saucer share a development team, so it isn't like Gold Saucer/Housing content takes away from dungeons/etc., they guys working on dungeons are their own team, the guys working on this are their own, same goes for PvP) Lord of Verminion is another matter, though... Triple Triad and Chocobo Racing work because there is a strong NPC presence there, no matter what you can enjoy them as a result. Verminion... From the ground up it is too complex... That means NPCs can't be involved, it means there is a steep barrier for entry on the players side, it means it was dead on arrival... Lord of Vermilion works, because it is its own game, with a playerbase interested in it, they're dedicated to it, so they'll learn the ins and outs. Lord of Verminion fails because it has no such playerbase. Nobody in an MMO is going to dedicate that kind of time to what is essentially another game entirely, not unless it is absolutely amazing (and it's not). Chocobo Racing and Triple Triad work, because they start out simple enough and build complexity. That's the same reason Pokemans (the obvious other minion based fighting game) work, fire burns grass, grass absorbs water, water puts out fire. What's not to get at the start of Pokemans? Lords of Verminion doesn't do this, not in XIV at least. You have an entirely new control scheme to learn. The minion types are simple enough, but every minion has its own strengths and weaknesses and specials, and they're all thrust upon you at the onset, where as Pokemans would have you leveling your minions to slowly learn their strengths, weaknesses, and special skills. The whole thing was honestly doomed to failure from the onset... I'm sure some people enjoy it, but it really needs to be scraped and redesigned from the ground up... Something that complex is never going to work as a side attraction... Lords of Vermilion was its own game for a reason...

Grand Companies;

Well, this ties into a few things, and I've made this post before, so I'll just link it here. At the very least I'd like some solid story attached to new ranks...

At the end of the day, SE set up these forums to get feedback, so I'll give them feedback. I could give them more positive feedback, but I don't think Soken needs me to tell him that he is awesome, so I'll stick to telling them what (I think) needs to be improved. When they do that, I'll be positive, like I've been with PvP. Until then, they've taken feedback on Atma and given us Atma 2.0, of course I'm going to be negative...

I'm negative because I think I'm neither SE vision of hardcore or casual. This isn't an advantage, one patch or another it feels like I'm being squeezed into a playstyle that just isn't me anymore, only to rage when content proves to be unsatisfying or out of reach.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

I'm negative because I think I'm neither SE vision of hardcore or casual. This isn't an advantage, one patch or another it feels like I'm being squeezed into a playstyle that just isn't me anymore, only to rage when content proves to be unsatisfying or out of reach.

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So much this. How will you improve without constructive feedback? Whether it is positive or not.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

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Hit the nail on the head here; agree 100%. Not sure how SE can be so proud of this game when they continuously re-hash content with a new skin...oh right, because $$.

I gotta admit, this thread came out more positive than I expected. People here have opinions and reply in a respected matter, well most here do, which is great. I think it's good to talk about the matter, rather than pointing fingers on who is wrong or right. Many people experience the game different, but a lot of players love the game, but some do think a bit change is needed/wanted, some rather have it stay the same, because they benefit from the system more than players like me, who do raid for progress, who do play for progress and most importently fun and things to do. When you are type of player doing things in a slow phase, which of all due to respect is how you choose to play, is not my concern. But when you are playing an MMO it's not always about the players who do things in their own phase, it's also about people who do want to progress and have content to do:). When there is no progress, mean's there nothing to do. And I want MORE for all type of players or some different ideas for raids, instead of having pure 4 rooms all the time. Maybe make some mini raid for 4 people? Some varitation isn't a bad idea after all! :)

The thing is it doesnt makes sense to change anything from devs stand point. Subs are strong with the current formula and that way itll continue exactly as it was. I dont like it but thats how it is. Itll propably continue the same way till the servers get shut down.

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Originally Posted by Laladyn

The thing is it doesnt makes sense to change anything from devs stand point. Subs are strong with the current formula and that way itll continue exactly as it was. I dont like it but thats how it is. Itll propably continue the same way till the servers get shut down.

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It's a concern if the subs are relatively the same if you take into point that there has been quite a bit of sales of the game going up to 50% off. The sub numbers seem the same, but that's more reflective of a revolving door and they'd eventually run out of "new" players.

Why on earth would any self respecting developer settle for catering to a single niche with the same type of content year after year, when they can expand their horizons and appeal to far more players? That's ultimately more profitable for them. A shallow game which is sustained by new players, as the old get bored of the exact same formula being recycled, will not last for long and will not be remembered. Setting trends will appeal to old and new players, and will result in an incredibly successful game.

The main problem here is their progression system... It's kind of hard to work new types of content into the game when we're set on this treadmill; Why make a new type of dungeon, when dungeons are only relevant for 3 months? Content is rendered irrelevant in this game so quickly that they have no real choice but to stick to formula. You can't put more work into something new, when you have to pump it out to match progression. Why make Bismarck (Extreme) an amazingly unique and memorable fight, when it was completely irrelevant at launch? You did it once to unlock Ravana (Extreme), and you don't even need to do that anymore...

The developers really need to slow down... This progression system is unsustainable, we're going to get a new 24 man raid in 5.1 for i400 gear at this rate, and since plugging that i400 into the game is driving development, they wont put effort into the new raid, instead we'll just get the same "Trash > Boss > 3 party split > Boss > etc." formula we've had since 2.1, and everyone will be bored of that by then... Slow down, and keep content relevant for longer, and you have more time to work on better content. Diadem could have been perfect for this, whatever the new max item level is, they could update Diadem with to keep it relevant and justify constantly improving it, though the materia aspect already makes it somewhat relevant in the long term anyway.

Depends what the developers want for this game; Do they want a game where people get bored, leave, and less new people come in as a result. People who get bored are not going to recommend the game, currently this game is sustained by the good will 2.0 earned. That would seem to be the path we're currently on. I think it would be better to retain players for longer, with better and more varied content. Such player would then continue to recommend the game, ultimately drawing in more new players, all of which will play for longer. That's a better game and it's better for profits. It's the difference between dying slowly, and growing.