So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

In case we want to talk about new features we'd like to see that wouldnt require fundamental changes of the game:

I'd like to see the option to redo any quest in the game. Without getting the rewards, ofc. Just doing the quest again - a lot of sidequests are telling great stories and in a singleplayer game I would probably have a savegame that would allow me to do that quest again without playing through the whole game. Doing 2.X Hilli again? Yes, please!

Frankly I dont know why this isnt already in the game - we even have a character in the game that could give us the quest: The Wanderin Minstrel, whos singing about our adventures and telling our story.
So what I'd like to see is: Go to him, pick the quest(line) you want to do again, get the quest from him, follow the quest normally but without getting any rewards (no exp, no gil, no gear - just the quest).

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Originally Posted by Ririta

This is good, though. Gearing up to the basic level should be quick.

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No it's not -- it's rewarding people for not putting effort into gearing.

Basically the intent in Stormblood is to split the game into a top tier (ex trials, raids, hard raid, harder raids, all the raids) where you have to work hard for your stuff and give it your very best effort and still possibly go home empty handed;

and a bottom tier (normal trials, 24 man trash, dungeons, fates, hunts, potd, whatever) where everything is handed to you on a silver platter, where you don't have to put in any effort -- and then pretending that this split never happened because tomestones fix everything.

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Originally Posted by St0rmchild

No it's not -- it's rewarding people for not putting effort into gearing.

Basically the intent in Stormblood is to split the game into a top tier (ex trials, raids, hard raid, harder raids, all the raids) where you have to work hard for your stuff and give it your very best effort and still possibly go home empty handed;

and a bottom tier (normal trials, 24 man trash, dungeons, fates, hunts, potd, whatever) where everything is handed to you on a silver platter, where you don't have to put in any effort -- and then pretending that this split never happened because tomestones fix everything.

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I'm gonna be a jerk here and just say that the top and bottom tiers should be split in this game. Let the super casuals have their game, and let the hardcore raiders have theirs. The drama in this game comes from those groups mixing.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

The last time the relic was a challenge, Titan Hard was actually hard.

To the person who said it before, I agree now more than ever: "Bring back the bees." .

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I remember those days, i was only pld back in 2.x, it probably took around 2 or 3 months to get my relic, in fact my luck with drops from ifrit and garuda were so bad, that I ended up tanking my win with a high quality aeolian scimitar lol. After finally getting past the monstrosity that was tttan hard, then the game unlocked the raid, assured you had a competant weapon, and skills required to tackle or at least a chance at succeeding. That was good content pacing, but others may not have been so lucky. But in some form shape or color, i definitely agree with your sentiments. At least you didnt have to tank those bees though, god that was pretty awful. DRG. LB THE LEFT BEE!!!!!!

I suspect a great deal of the money is going into server moves and upgrades. That isn't going to be cheap. A lot of foundation stuff rather than just more content. As for content, they have mostly shown us stuff we are used to but they very rarely discuss new content before it is ready.

As for the gearing, the gearing the moment you hit 60 was painful and unsatisfying. It involved grinding Neverreap or Fractal Continuum over and over again. The initial gear set is probably a pretty good idea. As for Tomestones, they are a RNG mitigation device. You don't have to grind them if you don't want to. There are alternative places you can get gear from. All removing Tombstones would do was make the RNG sources more compulsory.

Finally on the Relic, it will focus around Eureka which we currently know precious little about. Regardless I doubt it will be highly challenging. Time consuming but not challenging. Having the relic be challenging entirely defeats the purpose of the relic. It is supposed to offer players who don't farm EX primals and Savage raids an option of getting a good weapon. Players who want challenge already have a multitude of ways to get weapons. People who don't do that content, don't.

Not everyone who plays is after a challenge just like not everyone who watches TV wants to be educated. Saying people should do challenging content is like saying people should watch documentaries and News instead of comedies, sport or dramas.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

I'm gonna be a jerk here and just say that the top and bottom tiers should be split in this game. Let the super casuals have their game, and let the hardcore raiders have theirs. The drama in this game comes from those groups mixing.

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Pretty much this. SE would do well to either figure a way to close the skill gap between the two communities (ideally by better in-game tuition and instruction, better incentives for good play, the much vaunted button reduction and some resemblance of a difficulty curve on content as players approach the end game) or at least think of a way to reduce the friction and frustration when players of wildly differing skill levels have to interact.

Hoping there's something good in new this set or I'll be saving myself a lot of money canceling my sub during majority of the 5.0 cycle. 13$ a month for 1-4 fights for a few months isn't enough to keep paying.

So did you all miss the memo where Stormblood is just supposed to be more of what people liked about Heavenward? They're not trying to add new things, just give more of what people want.

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

Hoping there's something good and new this set or I'll be saving myself a lot of money canceling my sub during majority of the 5.0 cycle. 13$ a month for 1-4 fights for a few months isn't enough.

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Technically the best way to handle this, is buy the game play till msq and your level is max. Then stop untill the next expansion is about tocomes out 3 months later, resub with all the nerfs and gear catch ups and the full story and bam you've played the full expansion with many more features than when it started off...you even get 2/3 months of double weekly tomes to catch up and enough time to down all of story added since expansion launch.

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

Hoping there's something good in new this set or I'll be saving myself a lot of money canceling my sub during majority of the 5.0 cycle. 13$ a month for 1-4 fights for a few months isn't enough to keep paying.

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Well there more to the game then that, unless you don't do any of that other stuff like crafting, gathering, RPing that many seem to like (least on my server). Lot of times I just log in to talk to FC/LS chat.

I have one thing to say

Lord of Verminion.

"Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it." This expansion is nothing more than Mist of Pandaria, FF style. They need to be more creative and more willing to take risk. Also getting off the teat of instant content wouldn't hurt.

The only plus FFXIV has going for it is a healthy development schedule. Other than that, it basically the same as other MMO's on the market and the genre is in decline....

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Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

Maps the same size as Heavensward with the same amount of areas.

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This is my biggest disappointment from the Live Letter. Everything else was expected, but I was really hoping they would learn from Heavensward and not fill Stormblood with the same huge, uninteresting areas, and instead focus on more smaller, different looking areas.

Maybe the large areas will be better broken up into distinct locales within the zone. At the very least, having parts of the zones be under water should break up the monotony.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

"Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it." This expansion is nothing more than Mist of Pandaria, FF style. They need to be more creative and more willing to take risk. Also getting off the teat of instant content wouldn't hurt.

The only plus FFXIV has going for it is a healthy development schedule. Other than that, it basically the same as other MMO's on the market and the genre is in decline....

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The last time they took more than one risk in a patch we got Diadem and LoV and both fell flat leading to most players having very little to do till 3.2 came out. It very much hurt the game I suspect. I would prefer they take sensible risks rather than overhaul everything and have the whole thing fail.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

This is my biggest disappointment from the Live Letter. Everything else was expected, but I was really hoping they would learn from Heavensward and not fill Stormblood with the same huge, uninteresting areas, and instead focus on more smaller, different looking areas.

Maybe the large areas will be better broken up into distinct locales within the zone. At the very least, having parts of the zones be under water should break up the monotony.

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We haven't seen all the zones in great deal, only a few screen shots, but at least the zone with Rhalgr's Reach attached will transition from the forests at the edge of the Black Shroud to the Wastes of Ala Mhigo so we will get at least a little variation within zones.

Here we go again. We had the numerous threads similar to this one during the wait for HW too. I expect it is going to be a repeated cycle and this argument will resurface each time before an expansion and last till 2 months after the expansion releases.

People were complaining how SE was sticking to the same formula and that they were disappointed because "expansions are supposed to change the game fundamentally" before HW too. I can never fathom where this idea came from. Why do some people expect expansions to change how an MMO is fundamentally? If they wanted the basics of the game to be changed, why are they even playing in the first place.

Don't get me wrong. FF14 is definitely not perfect. However, we can't deny that SE has made changes to improve (whether they worked or not) and is still trying to do so. Heck, why are people even complaining in this thread that SE is giving a gear of your class at the end of a dungeon. Isn't that part of trying to improve and change the flaws of the game, where people ran dungeons several times and the "rng" that people always complain about is causing them not to get any gear drops?

Just because that changes you personally want is not being implemented by SE doesn't mean that the game hasn't been changing.

Triple Triad is fun, I really need to get back into that and update my collection before SB. That said, pretty much every other thing S-E tried came out half baked for the most part in terms of murderkilling stuff in new and wonderful ways. In all honesty as others have stated, people don't know what they want. However, I know what I want. I want dungeons set up akin to those in 1.xx. Mazes that required exploration and could be handled in different ways. Better yet, add spots where you could gather in them if you were able to go in solo and your sneaking would depend on how the mobs aggro you. Obviously make the stuff worthwhile somehow. In this manner, you can essentially use the same instances for different content. If they were to go this route, I'd be more than happy to settle with 2 dungeons per patch cycle... which burn me way more than the side content currently. At least I have no issues keeping our FCs 4 airships occupied doing useful things.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

I'm gonna be a jerk here and just say that the top and bottom tiers should be split in this game. Let the super casuals have their game, and let the hardcore raiders have theirs. The drama in this game comes from those groups mixing.

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Effectively you're saying "either be a real raider or don't even bother with improving your gameplay coz you're a casual" - meaning you don't even want any level of challenge below the raid level -- thereby creating that glass ceiling that keeps the baddies bad, by removing their reasons and incentives to improve, and "protecting" the small group of 'real raiders' from the possibility of having to deal with new people.

The bigger you make that gap between the bottom and top groups, the fewer people will be able to cross it.

I don't think SB will bad or anything. It's just that some things concern me and Yoshi&Co raised the bar with this game with 3.0 and I expected more effort on new features.
It's good they worked to solve the inventory problem and they are addressing the housing nightmare by adding new houses in a new area.
But there are some things that left me underwhelmed as far as new features go.
No new race
No more character customization options (like more heads or facial hair)
No new graphical improvements (no AA options except from the blurry mess that FXAA is, no higher res textures option or post-processing effects)
No new tank or healer jobs
Areas are the same size as HW which is not a bad thing but mounts will be moving faster now so the maps will feel kinda smaller now.
We don't know yet about the number of the new dungeons.

Where is the message that they said they would be "changing things up" ?

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Originally Posted by Beckett

This is my biggest disappointment from the Live Letter. Everything else was expected, but I was really hoping they would learn from Heavensward and not fill Stormblood with the same huge, uninteresting areas, and instead focus on more smaller, different looking areas.

Maybe the large areas will be better broken up into distinct locales within the zone. At the very least, having parts of the zones be under water should break up the monotony.

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Variation will be good if they have it, but I hope they never go back to smaller zones. I felt utterly claustrophobic in ARR because of the small areas and some of the corridor/labyrinth map designs from 1.0.

HW has been amazing map wise. And to be honest, while the areas in ARR were different, most were grouped into either The Shroud, La Noscea or Thanalans aesthetic. Every map in HW was vastly different from the others.

Within-map variation would be nice too, of course. However it shouldn't be overlooked that on a macro level, HW brought much different themed lanscape as all of ARR.

I was actually hoping for bigger maps. Especially since they're increasing mount speed.

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Originally Posted by RaijinSupreme

Where is the message that they said they would be "changing things up" ?

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Two quotes that stick in my mind (although I'm currently unable to find the source for this, then again we are missing some (fanfest) live letter transcripts and there's been so many interviews) were that

1) The expressed intention to close the gap between the bottom and top performers
2) That Heavensward was considered a "safe mode" expansion and Stormblood would be a lot more ambitious

It's obvious that adressing #1 won't be by pulling up the bottom performers since they're removing incentives to improve (look, free gear you can use from dungeon, more free gear for making level 70!) -- and that #2 was just marketingspeak (since SB will launch with the exact same tiered gear treadmill we just finished in Heavensward. Please look forward to it -- again!)

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Originally Posted by St0rmchild

It's obvious that adressing #1 won't be by pulling up the bottom performers since they're removing incentives to improve[...]

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Well, they've already discussed how they're intending to "bring the bottom up" - by making it easier to perform at a higher level. The idea is that if a top player can bring 2000 DPS and a bottom player 1000 DPS, they'll just make the bottom player deal 1500 DPS with the same skill level while the top player still brings 2000.

And that's why ideas such as permanent Enochian are tossed around.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

Here we go again...

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It's a continuing discussion because it's a continuing issue. SE in the past did plenty to change the design and flow with each new expansion, I still remember Chains of Promethia, driving players to seek gear that had previously gone to waste so they could play in some of the new areas with level caps. The biggest stagnation of XIV is the lack of creativity. They already have multiple stats in the game they don't bother using (elemental resistances, slashing/piercing/blunt), whole 3d worlds that become wastelands within a weeks and repeated and recycled content. Deep dungeon is basically a watered down Nyzul, Daidem is a failed Dynamis and Alex is just a re-skinned Coil, all with rewards that become outdated the next morning. About the only lasting aspect that continues is building is relics. You can call us old timers if you like but "settling" for what we have isn't something that should be encouraged in game development.

With this, gotta wait to see the Battle System changes to decide if they are being stagnant or not. And honestly any content can be considered "watered down" because the one thing you neglect with said examples are the fact that all those pieces of content were time based. Dynamis I believe is 1/day now, but it use to be an awkward time like 3 days and some hours or something to the extent where you could only do it twice a week.

If Diadem had the same restrictions as Dynamis, then said weapons would be even rarer as each group could only go twice a week at most, and yet with the current setup one can go twice in an hour.

It's a different game ideology which I prefer since XIV reduces the amount of time based restriction to content in favor of being able to do it to your heart's content. However the ability to do it to your hearts content does cause people to be ungrateful because they don't realize how freeing it is to have the freedom to not be restricted to access to certain content on a day to day basis.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

This is my biggest disappointment from the Live Letter. Everything else was expected, but I was really hoping they would learn from Heavensward and not fill Stormblood with the same huge, uninteresting areas, and instead focus on more smaller, different looking areas.

Maybe the large areas will be better broken up into distinct locales within the zone. At the very least, having parts of the zones be under water should break up the monotony.

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Make the maps smaller and they can turn off flying in those small maps. Flying need big maps.
also HW zones were designed with PS3 in mind. They can put more into the SB maps now.

From reading this, I feel like I am the only one who is happy that we get the same. I like the game the way it is, I am not saying it can't improve but I like the way progression works in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by RaijinSupreme

Where is the message that they said they would be "changing things up" ?

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It was at the japan fan fest where he announced the two extra devs. The one from FF12(matsuno) and the dev from persona. Yoshida spent a long time explaining why he put them on the team and how they will help him "shake things up" , you can probably find the video now..anyway, I saw it on the paid stream :)

Edit: And as for my opinion on this thread, Yoshida said the barebones formula won't change...but he expressed that he is hopeful that with the help or these two devs, and working along side them...he hopes that they can help him "shake things up" he specially said that does not mean getting rid of tomestones.

I got the impression it just meant perhaps different battles, maybe new content be wants to put in that he never has, etc. He never gave me the impression that it was to entirely change the games formula. Hopefully OP watched the same fanfest I did where yoshida announced this?

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Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

1. No intention of adding new character customization options in the future.
2. Maps the same size as Heavensward with the same amount of areas.
3. Hunts returning in the same mindless zerg fashion.
4. No new graphical options.
5. More tomestones and they'll have the same weekly limitations.

We're getting an underwater feature, but so far it seems as if this is the same "safe" expansion Heavensward was. What's really here that's going to shake things up for the players? All the vibes I'm getting at the moment is that this is another Heavensward, which is confusing as the budget is a lot higher.

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I don't think SE is going to change anything up unless they start losing subscribers. As long as there are an abundance of pseudo-gamers willing to fork over a monthly fee (and additional cash via the Mog Station) for a dress-up simulator with a shallow layer of PvE content layered over it, that's exactly what we're going to get.

At this point, the only motivating factor I have for Stormblood is the storyline. I'll be waiting for reviews, of course, before purchasing (especially since SE is charging a rather-high $40 for the expansion). That's about the only 'fresh' thing the expansion appears to be offering.

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R: Before 2.0, you described this system where beast tribes would summon Primals in the open world and you’d be able to fight them outside instanced battles and Free Companies could go fight them. Has this idea been completely discarded or is it still in plans in some form?
Y: It is planned as content, and it's still a thing. But it’s a matter of when it would be a perfect fit to have that content released. If the community becomes very tight-knit and sort of like closed almost, kind of like on auto-pilot. If and when that happens is when I feel it’s appropriate to release this kind of content; I'm envisioning a guild versus guild type of scenario. I feel that releasing the content is still way too early at this point, had it not been for so many players being on FF14 yes that’s still kind of the reason we’re needing to monitor the situation. At the time of 2.0 development, we didn’t expect so many people joining the community.

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This is a statement that bugs me the most. The problem isn't the community but rather the game design. The entire game can be played from town with random people from other servers. You group up with them, say hi and bye, and never see them again so you never have a chance to "befriend" them. Studies show the people you are most likely to be friends with are school and work associates. This is because these are the people you see on a daily bases and have communication with. Reason older MMORPG had tight-knit community is because it was closed world and you kept seeing the same people over and over. You would group up and eventual form guilds.

Now I'm not saying DF queue is a bad thing but you need a healthy mix of Open World and Open Data Center content. We still can't even form alliances in open world for FATE and Hunts, seriously come on SE. I'm also not saying we need FFXI's HNM battles either but need open world group content. You can even add a World based Duty Finder to make it easier be matched up with people.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Well, they've already discussed how they're intending to "bring the bottom up" - by making it easier to perform at a higher level. The idea is that if a top player can bring 2000 DPS and a bottom player 1000 DPS, they'll just make the bottom player deal 1500 DPS with the same skill level while the top player still brings 2000.

And that's why ideas such as permanent Enochian are tossed around.

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That's not bringing up the bottom, that's dumbing the game down -- and rather than bring up the bottom, it drags down the top; if it's that braindead to have 'acceptable' dps, why bother going the extra distance to perform better ?
That's a very slippery slope to go down ...

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

The entire game can be played from town with random people from other servers. You group up with them, say hi and bye, and never see them again so you never have a chance to "befriend" them. Reason older MMORPG had tight-knit community is because it was closed world and you kept seeing the same people over and over. You would group up and eventual form guilds.

Now I'm not saying DF queue is a bad thing but you need a healthy mix of Open World and Open Data Center content. We still can't even form alliances in open world for FATE and Hunts, seriously come on SE. I'm also not saying we need FFXI's HNM battles either but need open world group content. You can even add a World based Duty Finder to make it easier be matched up with people.

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Older games also had a much smaller population in said open world. People go nuts if you don't wait 10 minutes for hunts. more open world stuff would make the community WORSE, not better.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Older games also had a much smaller population in said open world. People go nuts if you don't wait 10 minutes for hunts. more open world stuff would make the community WORSE, not better.

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I would like to see open world content that uses spawning items that we obtain as an FC, kinda like sea from XI or another form in which people are not made to compete for content. I think it can be done, when people say open world content they automatically think of how its been done in the past and reiterate why they are not done in the present, but the future doesn't have to be the past? We can do better?

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Originally Posted by Marcellus_Cassius

I would like to see open world content that uses spawning items that we obtain as an FC, kinda like sea from XI or another form in which people are not made to compete for content. I think it can be done, when people say open world content they automatically think of how its been done in the past and reiterate why they are not done in the present, but the future doesn't have to be the past? We can do better?

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We have that with maps and FATEs, but those don't count for some reason. Theres actually quite a bit to do in the open world, people just complain "thats not what we want"

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We have that with maps and FATEs, but those don't count for some reason. Theres actually quite a bit to do in the open world, people just complain "thats not what we want"

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It's a fair point most people ignore World content but I would counter that the rewards are secondary to those you need in DF. People are always going to take the path of easiest gains. The rewards should work in tandem with rather than counter too instance content. As for new content, I would be happy with Guildleve having a light party/full party option and Beast tribe having a two or three quest for party play. Couple that with open world alliances and party filller queue; a lot of the complaints would be solved.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

It's a fair point most people ignore World content but I would counter that the rewards are secondary to those you need in DF. People are always going to take the path of easiest gains. The rewards should work in tandem with rather than counter too instance content. As for new content, I would be happy with Guildleve having a light party/full party option and Beast tribe having a two or three quest for party play. Couple that with open world alliances and party filller queue; a lot of the complaints would be solved.

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You can do leves in a party. It actually helps while levelling since you can do them at a higher level (if you struggle anyway) and if you have friends doing the same thing, you can knock them all out for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You can do leves in a party. It actually helps while levelling since you can do them at a higher level (if you struggle anyway) and if you have friends doing the same thing, you can knock them all out for everyone.

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Is that a better method of leveling than queue for DF? Do you get equal rewards from Guildleve than running dungeons for tomes? When I say Guildleve with groups I mean guildleve specifically designed in scale, challenge, and reward for parties. Something you can't just do by yourself.

I like the DF, always have but I also understand that if you want to build the server community you have to push the people on that server to interact with one another. Developing long lasting MMO requires a bit of psychology and understanding the fundamentals on how humans interact. Yoshi-P wants to build stronger communities but fails to understand that he needs to provide situations for people to meet one another on the same server to do that. If I did the same task with the same people over and over, odds are we would join the same LS and FC.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Is that a better method of leveling than queue for DF? Do you get equal rewards from Guildleve than running dungeons for tomes? When I say Guildleve with groups I mean guildleve specifically designed in scale, challenge, and reward for parties. Something you can't just do by yourself.

I like the DF, always have but I also understand that if you want to build the server community you have to push the people on that server to interact with one another. Developing long lasting MMO requires a bit of psychology and understanding the fundamentals on how humans interact. Yoshi-P wants to build stronger communities but fails to understand that he needs to provide situations for people to meet one another on the same server to do that. If I did the same task with the same people over and over, odds are we would join the same LS and FC.

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Most people already have that. Thats why all these FC's and LS's exist. lol. I already have a group I play with, I dont NEED a reason to group. And actually, for leveling, leves are quite good. Thats how I got the majority of my jobs from 50 to 51. can do it in less time than the dungeon runs it takes. I just see most people advise saving leves for crafting/gathering classes, which is probably why it gets ignored.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

It's a fair point most people ignore World content but I would counter that the rewards are secondary to those you need in DF. People are always going to take the path of easiest gains. The rewards should work in tandem with rather than counter too instance content. As for new content, I would be happy with Guildleve having a light party/full party option and Beast tribe having a two or three quest for party play. Couple that with open world alliances and party filller queue; a lot of the complaints would be solved.

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And therein lies the problem (re: the part I bolded). If open world content ever becomes a better option than the duty finder, then people will use the duty finder that much less. That will in turn kill the game. The duty finder being well-used is vital to letting new players (of which there are a ton right now, I will note) catch up. If everyone's off doing some cool open world content because it's better than roulettes, then roulettes don't get done and people have exponentially longer queues. And then they quit the game out of frustration. I mean, there's a thread right now about removing duties from the MSQ because of how bad DPS queues are right now.

The long and the short of it is, duty finder must always be a part of the best way to advance. That's the lynchpin of the entire game design. Changing that would be suicide.

Well, people have to join a nice FC, or Linkshell and be social and make their own groups instead of using the DF sometimes. Since day one I've always made my own group's for content and hardly ever played with randoms. If these people come to play a MMORPG and don't want to be social at least a little, then why not just play a single player game?

Even if you queue with a friend its not so bad. But saying that we can't have other ways to obtain things or open world content because it will kill the DF is hyperbole. When hunts came out many people did that to cap tomes. Personally I do potd or roulettes with my fc. If someone is going to quit over something like that then they don't belong here in the first place really...you have to put in a little effort at least...

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Originally Posted by Talraen

And therein lies the problem (re: the part I bolded). If open world content ever becomes a better option than the duty finder, then people will use the duty finder that much less. That will in turn kill the game. The duty finder being well-used is vital to letting new players (of which there are a ton right now, I will note) catch up. If everyone's off doing some cool open world content because it's better than roulettes, then roulettes don't get done and people have exponentially longer queues. And then they quit the game out of frustration. I mean, there's a thread right now about removing duties from the MSQ because of how bad DPS queues are right now.

The long and the short of it is, duty finder must always be a part of the best way to advance. That's the lynchpin of the entire game design. Changing that would be suicide.

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Sorry but I think you missed the sentence right after the one you highlighted in bold; Rewards should work in tandem. DF would reward you with weapons, gear, etc... while OW rewards would be materia and alternative BiS. You can create a healthy balance which players can enjoy both sides of the coin.

I've said my peace on open world though, whether anyone agree with me or not. My hope is with 4.0 they add a method to merge parties and form alliances to make it easier for FATE and Hunts, or for when FC's or FC Alliances want to run 18-man raids.