Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

because of the dev AND player! yes dev was lazy to try new thing, but player are the one at fault, let me ask if tomorrow they decide to not focus on raid as much as now, what do you think will happend?

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Sorry, honey, but after 8.5 years of raiding in WoW, all I can tell you that releasing 4 raid bosses every 6 months can hardly be called "a focus on raiding".

If you want to see what "focus on raiding" really looks like, go and play WoW as a non raider.

i did play wow for a veeeeeery long time, outside pvp (that wasn't present at the start outside savage pvp....Xroad i will never forget your defense) and raid, what are the end game content added by the patch? more important the recent decline of wow was mostly because they did receive less and less content patch...
most of the other activity like craft and such can be done quite fast (in comparaison of FF14) yes, you have achievement that can be your focus, or the minion fighting... but can they really be called endgame content? yes you have too the mythical dungeon, but they have the same trouble that most of the heroic of wow since day 1 they are only dungeon with monster that have more hp and hit harder (didn't try legion then maybe it was changed from here).
i did heard about the class place and relic that indeed look interesting, but do it's really end game content? it's means, not an end... like the gears was a means to beat the last boss of raid... a good example from wow... like you wasn't not able to beat bwl without craft onyxia cape... kill onyxia was not the goal, the scale was the goal for be able to slay bwl last boss.
or like me and my guild was spending countless hours to prepare consumable like pot and such for face AQ40... in the end the goal of this action is to beat the boss of the raid... they are indeed activity outside the raid, but take out the raid, what it's left?

what i point out, is the fact that outside this they have a huge trouble to really create other challenge or content that will be on par. plus i did used wow as example of what did lead to this situation.

people will say is not true, then explain me why the best weapon is only in the raid (that not the case for the x.55 patch, but mostly because that the last patch before expansion)
why relic that can end to ask more time than raiding end to be a below weapon? instead to treat it like an alternative way to equip yourself, to have more choice in the activity and equipement you receive?

why didn't we have seen a sort of arena pve where player are forced to fight wave after wave of randomly generate enemy for see if they can beat a challenge and be able to receive a reward for them teamwork and skill?
why didn't we have seen a content challenging as as hard than savage for group of 4 player? it's was simple to do it, create content that will ask a certain level of skill, teamwork and equipement for be completed, while one more time receive a decent reward?
why didn't we have seen a true hunt system a la FF12 by example, where player need to hunt down a monster for them group only, avoiding the zergfest mess we did seen? is more enraging since they show with eureka that it's possible to make it. (here i say it's possible to create a hunt that will only allows a target to spawn if you have the right hour or weather or because you did slay a certain number of enemy in an area)
why didn't we have seen more FC or GC activity that will have offer reward with the color of your guild or GC?

and i can continue encore and encore and encore.... you have soo many idea that can be simply added to the game that will have offer more CHOICE.... more ACTIVITY.... but what is the focus of FF14 right now?
- do it's pvp? nope
- do it's craft? nope
- do it's dungeon? nope

it's raid... most of them time is invested in raiding... we did receive 4 different raid(without count primordial) since the release of stormblood... pvp did receive one new mode and new map, we did receive 5 new dungeon.. 2 tribes quest... uznair and Eureka.

soo far i dare anyone to tell me that the main focus of FF14 is not raiding.

people want change, like said it's nice, but do people are ready to make FF14 not focus only on raiding and accept that other content can be called the other endgame content? i doubt it...

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

Action combat please. The exp model can stay the same with instances giving out majority of the exp. I want the most common thing in the game (combat) to be fun and loosely different each time.

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Can't do that. Aside from it requiring basically scrapping the entire combat system to make it action combat and needing to redo all the content, effectively changing the genre of the gameplay would turn off existing players that like the current combat. And all the issues aside, there must be people who like the current model otherwise nobody would be here.

It makes more sense to improve what's here now than to burn it all down.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

soo far i dare anyone to tell me that the main focus of FF14 is not raiding.

people want change, like said it's nice, but do people are ready to make FF14 not focus only on raiding and accept that other content can be called the other endgame content? i doubt it...

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I think I agree with some of what you are saying.

Right now adding new content is what people desperately want. But it is more than just. “Let’s add a new game mode and stuff cute stuff in lockboxes that we give them!” It ties back to a concern I had that the devs are willing to make other content suffer for the sake of making raiding “the best”, the ilvl system, the materia system, hell even relics, they are all molded into a hierarchy through ilvl and the speed of updates that makes them less rewarding, and thus less preferred, than attempting the raids.

The materia does not update ilvl, and has an merciless rng, and stat limits to ensure you cannot customize something better that is outside that hierarchy.
Ilvls tell you at a glance what armor is “the one to get”, with only one clear option, getting the one with the highest ilvl.
and it isn’t just the grind, it is also the amount of time outside of said grind that is important. Because eventually the ilvl raises and you are back in the treadmill, into another grind of content you might not like, all to raise the ilvl. because you don’t raid.

If there is to be any room for new content to grow, that hierarchy must change.

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Originally Posted by Okamimaru

The only way I see it changing directions is if they decided to completely rewrite the combat system from the ground up...

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I think the current combat system could be salvaged. If only they added a fourth party role and implemented more utility spells/status effects. However they really do need to increase the party sizes a bit to make it work (and they re going to have to do it anyway if they plan to keep adding new jobs).

As for the topic of new routes for FFXIV, they need to drop the current extreme vertical progression we have on gear (it feels silly when any given ilvl threshold only makes for like 4 bosses) and capitalize on horizontal progression over the course of an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

They need to re-do the entire game really on a new engine.

It's amazing a game nearly a decade and a half old like WoW can manage smooth combat where any number of abilities register instantly, and in FF Ninja's have to take server lag into account to use Ninjitsu properly. Unfortunately they probably didn't expect ARR to be a success at all and were given a tight budget and as a result the servers and game engine are simply incapable of decent combat.

FF14 is just far too limited by its game engine. They can't give us lots of bag storage or make fully fleshed glamor systems or support proper vehicle quests or cope with large amounts of characters attacking a boss or anything fancy like other MMO's with good quality game engines can pull off. As a result the game never advances or develops, we just get variations of the same things. If they were serious about ARR, they should have invested right from the start. But they didn't.

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^This, the game problems lies at it's roots

Honestly I hope by 2020 they have enough money to rebuild the game on a new engine to be able to release it during 2021 alongside a new expansion

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Eureka turned out different to what players had been expecting

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Eureka turned out different to what the devs themselves have promised, is the reason for a lot of backlash about it. Those player expectations didn't come from nowhere. Biggest example is that they promised it'd be solo-friendly. It's not.
Now, take something that 1. has been hyped to high heavens and back for months if not years at this point, 2. came at the expense of other content, 3. goes against a lot of things that were promised about it and it's easy to see why people are upset. This doesn't even have as much to do with Eureka itself but how SE handles itself and its decision making. Saying Eureka is soloable and then giving us what they did is the company outright lying to us. I'm not saying I'm going to unsub though at this point it's hard for me to deny it's because of inertia. I have quite a few alts, most of them active in varying levels, I'm at 600 S ranks, halfway to the mentor mount, and yeah these are all in-game goals but dammit I want to get there. That also means that I have things to do in the game outside of Eureka. Given that I was hoping for new content however and have to lose it for the likes of Eureka... that bites.

That said, it is a nasty strike on SE's record and will be taken into consideration next time I want to buy any of their products and yes, if my sub'll be in danger of running out. Some people act like every single incident exists in a vacuum, but it doesn't. These bad decisions pile up at some point.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

Can't do that.

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I tire of hearing "I can't". I want to start hearing about what CAN be done.

End of discussion.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

[...], effectively changing the genre of the gameplay would turn off existing players that like the current combat.

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What irritates me the most about the calls of action combat is:
The combat at endgame isn't really slow. People complain about getting hand cramps, pains and carpal tunnel as is when they have to engage in combat for a prolonged period of time, I fail to see how making combat even faster is going to alleviate the issue in any way.

It just isn't deep or interactive.
Basic mob attacks are just un-avoidable damage you can't interact with and even if you could, that's only the tanks job, leaving nothing but mechanics for everyone else. DPS rotations are fixed, regardless of whether you fight a bandit, a god or a striking dummy, it's all the same until mechanics come in. To top it off, healers trivialize most things anyway, so even if you DID manage to change things up... would it matter? Or would people just brute force through the new combat mechanics on the back of powerful healers?

Realistically, I don't see much way to change things up on the core level. I suppose they can add CC and buff/de-buff and their removal, minor sub-systems that allow for a bit more interaction between mob and player, but that's about all I can see actually happening. The rest is just too deeply rooted.

I really have to wonder about people saying there is a lack of content. I have not felt this way about XIV at any point.

But my history with WoW probably colours my view on this. At least up until the expansion before last (not played the current one) 99% of patch content was aimed at raiders. If you didn't raid the patch content rarely had any impact on you unless it was an expansion. If it had impact on you it was rarely anything other than daily quests.

After dealing with that I feel spoiled for choice in XIV.

That isn't to say I think XIV is perfect, it's not. But it's not hurting for variety or quantity of content. Whether that content appeals to a person is another thing altogether.

Can say that def if you were not raiding during TBC or WOTLK you were staring at the floor of shattrath/dalaran after you were done with the dailies which let's be honest were as pointless as they could get

edit to safe posts@Vyriah: It's my biggest gripe on wow each new systems have been rendered moot coming a new expansion, now with BFA when you'll get the artifact the only thing you'll get it'll be the weapon and the relics
And the saddest was that I knew it was going to be like this since their reveal even before they had the interwiew where they confirmed this and I actually was hoping to be proven wrong for once

I'm not sure how you can request more innovation, more thing to do while the longest running problem that game have is that new thing gets added only to be forgoten later. New thing to do, new content, different things will always resulted in something underwhelming.

There's no point in good ideas if they can't make it to the game. Getting the game to a more stable state seems really more important that any kind of new activity you could add in the game.

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Originally Posted by Vyriah

I'm not sure how you can request more innovation, more thing to do while the longest running problem that game have is that new thing gets added only to be forgoten later. New thing to do, new content, different things will always resulted in something underwhelming.

There's no point in good ideas if they can't make it to the game. Getting the game to a more stable state seems really more important that any kind of new activity you could add in the game.

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Then it's just a matter of updating those things, rather than just leave them behind to collect dust. They could've easily added branched out maps in PoTD with new mechanics and even tiered difficulty (like an 8man potd raid style someone suggested recently). Fates could've taken greater expansion with an attempt to include DoH/DoL jobs this time. In short, there have been a thousand suggestions over the forums about revitalizing a lot of old content that SE has left behind for years and yet, they're just not interested in doing so.

Yes, but I honestly don't know how or what.

At the base we need better servers and better code. Anything that gets added is limited somehow by bad code or just the servers with hardware from the 90's. I saw a post where Yoshi-P said that everybody would get a house and that there were other games were people would loose their house but that there would be no such thing in this game, apparently everybody here is ok with the developers lying.
I have played free to play MMO's where there's no limit and everybody can have a house (even free players), I haven't played RIFT since the day it went F2P but I can login there right now and my house would still be there.
I haven't played WoW since December2016 but I can login right now and go to my garrison (housing system in WoW) and it would still be there.

In WoW you have your main bag and up to 5 addable bags, I think the maximum slot bag is 32 and 36 for gathering (every expansion there's new bags with even higher size), same story for your bank, you have up to 8-12 (don't remember out of my head how many it was) addable bags, yeah you can put it full with 32 size bags too. You're in a raid or any other instance? Worry not here's an item to summon your bank, evening opening your huge inventory with all those slots is no problem.
But here in XIV, they increased the size but the can't do more or the servers will crash. Why doesn't WoW servers crash with everybody having this near endless inventory space and opening it in instances? (can somebody explain this to me actually? I don't know too much about servers).
RIFT same story and again this is a F2P MMO.

You can talk to LS & FC in instances, but no you cannot open the interface and you cannot talk to friends or access friend list. In WoW and RIFT you can open guild or friend list interface, you can talk to guild members, friends, kick guild members, kick friends, add guild members, add friends, ....
Why is this not in XIV? Will that crash the servers too, why doesn't it crash WoW/RIFT, (any other MMO) servers?

World Vs World in GW2, 3 servers against each other, 100 players from each .. no problem, 300 players fighting it out at same time with no issues. During beta (!) it crashed 4-5 times at most (this game was released in 2012 (!)), I had quite some framerate drop so I reduced the particle qualities and there's also a setting to reduce the details when there's loads of players to render. Well next time we all came together in the middle, the 300 players I had 40-50FPS, sometimes dripping to middle 30's but most of time it was in the high 40's. I call this amazing optimization.
And no I do not have a nasa powered PC or quantum CPU's. The average joe will probably have better CPU/GPU then me.
RIFT had these big open zone fights, does anybody remember volan in the first expansion? That would sometimes bug out, it did had issues but it's nowhere as bad as Eureka. Oh yeah RIFT is F2P btw.
Same thing in WoW there's even a display system like prioritize display enemies > party members > guild / friend list players > other players.
But yeah here XIV in Eureka servers would probably crash if we would be able to see enemies / party members over the other players?

Glamour commodore, who thought of this complicated system?
GW2 > transmute a piece of gear to the looks of any gear you had unlocked, or just simply select a costume you have. RIFT has this easy wardrobe system where you select whatever you want to wear and done, oh yeah this is a F2P game.
WoW has an amazing system, there's this NPC and there's a log of every available piece in game, you obtain a new gear piece and it gets unlocked in your log, you can safely delete said item. Go to the NPC select from anything you want to wear and you're done.
Yeah we have the glamour commodore ... they're making it so much harder for themselves instead of having a simple system like other MMO's.

In Wow, your artifact weapon you can upgrade, change the looks, respect the talents, you never need to unequip it > it works just like that. Quest finished? Just talk to the NPC (either read the dialogue or don't) click accept and you're done.
Here you have to move your mouse to inventory hold and drag the required items to the window or right click and select add, anyway, it's anno 2018 why doesn't it go auto?

Anything in this game just reeks of #serverlimitations,
Even F2P games have better QOL, why is it so hard to do it like this, can somebody explain this because I don't know much about servers?


To all the XIV worshippers that want's to put me on the fire-stake, just think of how amazing this game could be if we wouldn't have #serverlimitations everywhere, just think about it .. it could be so much better.

I've been playing WoW since 2006 somewhere, I've played it for +10 years, I've seen the game evolve, updates, server upgrades, adding new technologies, adding more servers. Why can't XIV do this?
I'm not playing WoW any more, I don't have that much time any more and I just really love FF in general and the story here, but I have to say WoW is miles ahead with their server infrastructure.
I just hope that one day XIV will do this too, just think how much more amazing his game could be.

I love FF XV, a lot of people don't but I'm not talking about the gameplay, but 'behind the scenes'. Technological and the code sure there are some bugs but every game, every piece of software has some bugs here and there. XV really blew my mind when I played it on my regular PS4 back in 2016 at launch (not even sure how they made such an amazing game ran on a potato console). And I'm just wondering why can't they show this love for XIV?



As for the boredom, I don't know for some reason I'm extremely bored in the game now guess that's only natural when playing solo for over half a year, maybe I should find a new FC and friends but I've been in 3 FC's already and they've all been fail as for friends a lot of people are just drama queens.
I work full time and attend evening classes + study daily but I only need 5 hours sleep / day and I play for several hours daily. Right now I just do my dungeon roulette's, log off and go play XV (windows edition) until I go to bed.

Please make this game great again.

I don't know if a new direction is particularly what they need, but there is a severe disconnect in how they go about designing content. Eureka is pretty much the epitome of everything that has been wrong with the game in the past few years. If this is the best they can manage in 17 months of development, then it's obvious there are issues behind the scenes.

For me it's baffling because FFXI thrived for years and added new systems to the game that creatively pushed what their engine could accomplish. Each expansion brought something new that wasn't just a rehash of older content. In SB what did they add? Nothing. Meanwhile GC ranks are still unused after 5 years. Squadrons are still a shell of what they could be. This would have been a perfect opportunity to incorporate all of that into a new system. We're at open conflict with the empire! Use that! They could have had a few forts on the open world where we could vie for control of the map from the empire. Have NPC armies come to fight, similar to campaign battles in XI. Let us contribute to the war effort both on these open world battles we participate in and in other fronts we indirectly influence. Let crafters and gatherers have turn ins that enhance the allied forces armies NPC's gear. Let us send out our squadrons to help push the empire back in these areas. Let us work towards the GC ranks that have been unobtainable since 2.0. Let us do SOMETHING different. This expansion offered so many opportunities to be creative with content and introduce different systems of play, but they did nothing with it.

At the end of the day this is why I have become increasingly frustrated with the game. ARR was flawed, but the game had promise. There was hope they could expand on it. Instead the game feels like its stagnating and creatively bankrupt. Between the constant updates to the cash shop and the blatant reusing of assets in the game it really feels like this game is just turning into a money milking scheme. Put in enough effort to keep enough people but get out enough cash to fund their other projects.

I think they really should look at updating itemization in this game. To me, ilv lasting 6months is one of the larger issues in the game. I would prefer incremental ilv increase like in WoW. Basically a constant carrot on the stick system.

Maybe ‘another direction’ is too strong, I’d like to see improvements of course, but it seems unreasonable to expect to it to turn into something else entirely, again.
That said, if they do decide to take ‘another direction’ I’d like if they looked at the combat system. New content is alll well and good but when the combat is so limited in scope (just attack the mob) it’s hard for the game to keep your interest regardless of the content. In effect we're playing for this content, not for the game or system itself.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

Anything in this game just reeks of #serverlimitations,
Even F2P games have better QOL, why is it so hard to do it like this, can somebody explain this because I don't know much about servers?

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It's because this game was built largely on 1.0's code and server structure which was taking a far different direction then the currant game is. I'm honestly surprised they got to work what they got now in game to work. The games you mentioned were built from the ground up to be what they were now, so more is possible. This game wasn't however. SE's main goal was to save the franchises name above all else. If 1.0 had any other name other then Final Fantasy, then it would have been scrapped and a new game from scratch would have been made from the ground up. Since it does have the name Final Fantasy and numbered into the main series to boot, it had to be saved no matter what, and that meant salvaging as much of the 1.0 code as they could.

the only change that have to happen is a stop of nerving contents 2-3 updates later

I've always hated the combat system myself it's just something I tolerate...
it's all flash bang sparkle and no actual substance or weight. The 1.23 one was much better every button you pressed had impact and was visually different also had a lot more depth with things like incapacitation break a bosses tail or something and the fact TP and MP actually materred... but in this game its all just flash bang sparkle and by and large every move is basically the same. and TP is essentially Infinite outside of AOE

sam for example I couldn't even tel you the difference between jinpu and shifu visually and I don't really care either. as long as that buff icon goes up on my buff bar that's all I care about.

Same kinda thing with paladin. savage blade and riot blade if you just showed me the animation I couldn't tell you which one was which there's no substance or weight to either of them... just slightly different flashes and splarkles... blurred in with everyone elses flashes and sparkles. You never get that oomph!! Like "holly hell my jinpu hit for x damage..." because its just a blur in the middle of loads of other blurs....

Regarding a change in direction though I sometimes think the devs often listen to what we say but they don't actually hear it...
Its like the stereo typical husband and wife sat at a dinner table thing. hubby is watching tv and the wife is talking to him about something...
"I tell you jane at work is lazy every day we all have to pick up her slack and yet the bosses never see it.... I don't know how she gets away it all the time"
and the husband is there going " mmhmmm, mhmmm mhmmm,"
then the wife be like " are you even listening to me? what did I just say?"
husband is like oh um " jane is your new boss at work???" because all he heard was "blah blah jane at work blah blah blah boss blah"

or in se's case.
Players: "here's a cool idea for a glamour catalog designed in such a way that wouldn't stress servers and had virtually limitless capacity"
Se hears "blah blah blah Glamour blah blah blah blah more capacity blah blah..."

or with eureka when players spent years saying there'd like structured engame like XI then we basically got an exp party crossed with fates that everyone hates. and has hated since like 2.0...

its amazing how many times they can get things soo wrong.

I do think though that if they were going to look into a change of direction they should do a mass survey thing and not just for current players. but for former ones as well. that would give a better set of results. you might find for example that the 500k current players love the treadmill / tomestone grind which might look great to devs. but it might turn out to be the reason 5 million players quit because they hated it and gear was meaningless.... suddenly it doesn't look so good..

Edit:-
On the topic of coding I don't even know what to say. I look at xi and the fact it's nearly 20 years old and often suffered lolps2 limitations. But they pulled out some real nice stuff with that code and had a living breathing dynamic world that was ever changing.... zones that had mazes that changed every hour. Puzzles and things all over the place. Constantly pushing the limits with various additions like tactics pearls and large scale battles like besieged. Managed to make virtually every new content feel few and fresh....

They could do all of that on code that's nearly 20 years old for heaven's sake. What the he'll is the problem in xiv

Something has got to change.

IMO ever since 4.0 the game has gone a sharp turn downhill outside of 4.0's QOL updates outside of Job changes.

The content in general feels rushed and not well thought out. Granted Diadem in 3.0 was something new that they have never tried before so I will give them the excuse there.

However 4.0 continues to be a complete downgrade when comparing to 3.0 with job changes, server issues, cold steel and the feel of overall less content but most importantly less quality content.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I think they really should look at updating itemization in this game. To me, ilv lasting 6months is one of the larger issues in the game. I would prefer incremental ilv increase like in WoW. Basically a constant carrot on the stick system.

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Current WoW? They do the same thing though, except there is a RNG chance you might get a higher ilvl but it is low (titanforge).

The big difference is that if you don't actually raid higher than RF your ilvl caps a lot lower (you don't even get near raider ilvl unless you get the RNG luck but that's usually only a couple pieces and maybe some legendaries). Non raiders don't get near the cap ilvl most of the time. They only increase the ilvl when the next tier comes out but the ilvl cap has gone up already so you are perpetually stuck halfway into the ilvl increase if you don't raid.

It'd be like if you were stuck at 360 this tier and only raiders got 370-375. Once the next raid releases they let you get the 370-375 stuff but the raiders would already be at 400-405 and then you would be stuck at 390, repeat etc.

FFXIV is a lot more fair in that regard to people who don't raid.

FFXIV needed to "take another direction" since patch 3.2 or so.

What makes FFXIV unique is the art, the setting, its focus on story (however slipshod that story is), and the music.

Gameplay-wise, it's been a low-budget World of Warcraft from Day 1 of ARR, and a dev team that has repeatedly demonstrated that they either can't or won't learn from their mistakes, or perhaps acknowledge mistakes at all.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I tire of hearing "I can't". I want to start hearing about what CAN be done.

End of discussion.

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When people suggest stuff like "change the genre of the game", there is nothing to discuss. That's totally unrealistic. There's been lots of discussion on what can happen, including netcode improvements, lowering the size, adding other things to do in there, etc.

They should take the element system from Eureka and expand it outside of that instance and apply elements to armor and weapons or bring back element materia... that alone would give a more vertical progression feel to gear and add a new yet classic ff level to combat without having to change how skills work... it would give people a reason to grind for particular weapons and armors... also updating the world spawns based on weather and time of day like in eureka would make the world feel more alive... I see potential in what they started in eureka... it's just if they can manage to run with it enough to make it matter...

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Originally Posted by Marluxia

Gameplay-wise, it's been a low-budget World of Warcraft from Day 1 of ARR

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As someone who played WoW for over ten years, I strongly disagree.

Yes there is a considerable mechanical overlap but there is with most pve orientated mmorpgs. That sort of thing tends to happen when games are in the same genre. But does having some basic mechanics in common make several games the same game? No, of course not.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

As someone who played WoW for over ten years, I strongly disagree.

Yes there is a considerable mechanical overlap but there is with most pve orientated mmorpgs. That sort of thing tends to happen when games are in the same genre. But does having some basic mechanics in common make several games the same game? No, of course not.

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I've also played WoW for close to ten years, and I'm actually going to agree with you on this.

WoW at least has had major changes to the gameplay loop with every expansion, and hasn't recycled its formulas nearly as much as FFXIV has. The two are different games with vastly different dev cycles.

When I say FFXIV is a low-budget WoW, I'm specifically referencing WotLK-era WoW with its endgame loop of weekly currency caps leading into raids and daily roulette dungeon, peppered with the occasional new set of daily quests. In fact, I'm fairly certain (but not completely sure) that there's an interview somewhere of the dev team having played WotLK/Cata WoW as a reference.

Now as you rightfully pointed out, WoW hasn't been WotLK for close to ten years now, so the comparison is a misnomer, especially for people who have never played WotLK.

That said, FFXIV resembles World of Warcraft far more than it resembles any other MMO, and FFXIV desperately needs to define itself with something other than its WoW-style combat system and its WotLK endgame loop when it comes to creating new features, because the weak combat system is why FATEs and Hunts and Diadem and Eureka are incredibly dull and un-engaging, and repeating its formula is just going to make things more stale than they already are.

Just no. I like how is it. Naoki Yoshida is better than anyone in SE in this moment. I think on Tabata or Nomura and, while I like their works, won't make any good to this game. Neither that guy form FFXI (sorry FFXI fanatics ,that game is outdated). I rather want current director stays rather than throw it to other guy and totally change things. Yoshida fix the game, now you want he stay away? That's very hypocrite. Could 6.0 being still that same, and I will be happy. I love the game how is it now, not how can be. If I want a different game, I play another game.

No offense to whom likes Nomura but Imagine how long it'll take for something to be done by him

In my opinion they should at least try. Let's use it's #1 competitor as a baseline.

In WoW raids mattered. You actually feel like you have a purpose going in that instance and that every raid is unique. I remember going to fight Elegon, the celestial dragon and being amazed by his arena, mechanics and the extra lil achievement to boot. In FFXIV it's more like, oh this thing is here, guess you have to fight it... We are literally murder hobos. Something arrives, we kill it. Sure we do it to protect but we never actually get above that. Coils were the only decent raids that could be compared to WoW's. It felt alive and part of something bigger. Not disjointed like Alexander and Omega feel.

The PvP in WoW is actively supported. Open world PvP might be dead but the BattleGround (our equivalent of frontlines) and Arenas (our equivalent of the feast) are still really active and diversified. You can play capture the flag one game then play oddball the next swinging by escorting payloads. In FFXIV the PvP is.... suffering. Now before the PvP fans jump on me. I have played plenty of XIV's PvP, before and after the rework. It's not that I never did well into it, just that doing so felt painful. The combat system of XIV just isn't suited to it and PvP feels more like they had a checklist and PvP was on it. No actual passion for it in the development of it at all.

The side activities. That point is hit or miss obviously but the greatest contrast is Lord of Verminion. Imo LoV should of been what Pet Battles are for WoW. A Pokemon like minigame. It's silly to say but Pet Battles are extremely fun even through their simplicity. LoV tried to be complex and strategic and it blew up in it's face... Even though FFXIV has side activities like Triple Triad and PotD, it's just not enough and not updated enough through the patches. WoW has the Brawlers Guild where players have solo encounters against multiple bosses testing their awareness and their skills to take them down and get as far as possible through the gauntlet and there's probably other stuff I haven't seen yet as I rerolled on a differnet server. Tl;dr, side content is fun and varried while being supported.

Community mentality. Oh boy that's a touchy subject... You could say WoW is the polar opposite of XIV. Often seen as the bastard child full of toxicity while XIV's is a little angel making sure everyone got a chance. Well this sucks. Not everything is for everyone and content should not catter to the lowest common denominator. Not everyone can do savage raids, so why make the first 2 fights a borderline joke and just make the challenge on the 3rd out of 4? Why are EX primals so easy that a group could clear it blind in 1 hour? This is both an opportunity and a problem. Gets more people into endgame content but alienates those that thirst to push themselves. Sure there's Ultimate for the latter but it's more a matter of how much time are you willing to invest I feel. Also the community coddles the bad performers and SE encourages that! No feedback on bad DPS play. Healer and tanks getting away with only doing their basic jobs instead of pushing their DPS whenever possible. It gets so bad, that it's the players who actually push themselves that are the bad guys. I lost count of how many times I was called a tryhard for being MT and in Deliverance on EX primals. While on WoW it's the opposite but not as bad as people imagine. Sure you get the tirades that you always get of "l2p scrub", "trash tier damage" etc etc. but it's only the reverse that you seen on XIV. Except of complaining about the good and tryhard, you complain about the bad and lazy.

All in all, maybe WoW seems to have so many upsides because the team has over a decade of experience behind them by now but you see that they are not afraid of innovating and improving what is there. SE being once burned twice shy are very hesitant to step out of the tried and true method but that is slowly poisoning them. I'm not saying FFXIV will die befor elong and being a doomsayer here. I'm saying that it will start losing appeal. It can fall back on having great story and gorgeous boss fights for sure but once that initial wow factor is gone, what is there left? SE just has to take the game in a new direction, doesn't matter which and it'll show it's players that they are willing to work on the problem. That would quiet down alot of worries and bring satisfaction to most players. Until it does that though, content like Eureka (which is just a repackaged Diadem and a failed Timeless Isle clone) will just keep driving people away.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

When people suggest stuff like "change the genre of the game", there is nothing to discuss. That's totally unrealistic. There's been lots of discussion on what can happen, including netcode improvements, lowering the size, adding other things to do in there, etc.

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I'd rather they fix things like the character post limit on their poor excuse of a forum website. Baby steps.

Good comments so far. I can't say I disagree with a lot of the points made here so far. I'm still stuck on my phone, so let me limit this comment to the combat system. Honestly, I think it's fine. I'd like to see some areas of combat that utilize more usage of role actions. For example.... Every instance, a protect is thrown up. Maybe include deprotect on enemies, and unprotected allies start getting targeted with tankbusters? Just trying to think outside the box here. Obviously, my thoughts extend beyond combat, but til I get to a computer, what do you guys think of most this example for a start?

I feel like I’m in the minority by saying that I like the direction Eureka is going with this game. Monsters don’t feel toothless anymore, FATEs(NMs) aren’t a face roll anymore and require a community effort to down, the items received are plentiful and worthwhile, and they set a pretty big boundary of what can come from the Eureka instance. They can bring dailies, weeklies to Eureka, or even more side content. Having a completely separate leveling system also gives this instance more life. And most importantly: you don’t have to do the same thing over and over in Eureka to reap rewards. Want to chain monsters to gain exp? Sure. Want to chase NMs in a giant group? Go for it. You’re never in one area, the entire time grinding. You’re constantly running around, always in a fight or flight situation with the strong monsters. I hope Square continues down this route.

I think we might also be a small part of the problem folks.

It's fairly clear that FFXIV is in desperate need of some netcode updates and programming updates if it wants to continue forward and provide stronger content that deviates from the current formula (how often have we asked for something and been met with 'but limitations' after all?) Doing this though, they'd have to focus their time and energy on it meaning we really wouldn't be seeing anything content wise for us to do. Worse, we would start seeing an awful lot of bugs pop up and worm their way into our everyday activities as things went live and broke in ways the devs didn't plan for.

Just look at one of the biggest arguments around Eureka, there are people absolutely livid that they took all this time, thinned out all this content, and only delivered Diadem 3.0. So how do you think those same players would react when the only new content coming out is maybe a new glam or minion? Something that takes virtually no time or effort to toss in because they're focused on major overhauls. Sure, plenty of us would be patient because we know it NEEDS done and we'd be willing to wait and see what changes came of it. But you can bet there would be plenty of folks leaving over it.

That says nothing about if they do it, they update it, and they don't produce something stunning in the very next content patch afterward. It might honestly break the back of FFXIV if that happened.

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Originally Posted by Keridwyn

I think we might also be a small part of the problem folks.

It's fairly clear that FFXIV is in desperate need of some netcode updates and programming updates if it wants to continue forward and provide stronger content that deviates from the current formula (how often have we asked for something and been met with 'but limitations' after all?) Doing this though, they'd have to focus their time and energy on it meaning we really wouldn't be seeing anything content wise for us to do. Worse, we would start seeing an awful lot of bugs pop up and worm their way into our everyday activities as things went live and broke in ways the devs didn't plan for.

Just look at one of the biggest arguments around Eureka, there are people absolutely livid that they took all this time, thinned out all this content, and only delivered Diadem 3.0. So how do you think those same players would react when the only new content coming out is maybe a new glam or minion? Something that takes virtually no time or effort to toss in because they're focused on major overhauls. Sure, plenty of us would be patient because we know it NEEDS done and we'd be willing to wait and see what changes came of it. But you can bet there would be plenty of folks leaving over it.

That says nothing about if they do it, they update it, and they don't produce something stunning in the very next content patch afterward. It might honestly break the back of FFXIV if that happened.

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If they make it very clear that they're going to do a hard overhaul that will benefit the game infinitely going forward I think most reasonable people will understand. Especially if it leads to much requested things like increased character customization/less inventory issues/higher textures etc;. The problem with eureka is that it was hyped up to be something totally different that people would enjoy over the standard relic grind and for alot of people that promise was not delivered on despite months of delay.

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Originally Posted by F_Maximillian

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It's not the game that become easier, it's player getting better at it. Because some are playing for really long, because there's more of them. StormBlood got a lot of new blood that got on top of the alreday accumulated knowledge about the game and with social tools like reddit, FFlogs and such made the game system less of a secret.

But there's something interesting in what you're saying. You're telling me that I'm from a casual crowd, but I'm actually a pretty high performing mid-core raider. You can check, if you want. On the opposite, everytime I say what I'm saying right now, there's always a crowd answering to me the way you do. Exactly what's happening here.
Shouldn't be the other way arround if I follow what you're saying ?

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Originally Posted by Keridwyn

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The thing is, they are a large company. They could afford to spare a few developers on other projects in the company if not outright hire temporary people to work on only that aspect of the game.

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Originally Posted by Keridwyn

I think we might also be a small part of the problem folks.

It's fairly clear that FFXIV is in desperate need of some netcode updates and programming updates if it wants to continue forward and provide stronger content that deviates from the current formula (how often have we asked for something and been met with 'but limitations' after all?) Doing this though, they'd have to focus their time and energy on it meaning we really wouldn't be seeing anything content wise for us to do. Worse, we would start seeing an awful lot of bugs pop up and worm their way into our everyday activities as things went live and broke in ways the devs didn't plan for.

Just look at one of the biggest arguments around Eureka, there are people absolutely livid that they took all this time, thinned out all this content, and only delivered Diadem 3.0. So how do you think those same players would react when the only new content coming out is maybe a new glam or minion? Something that takes virtually no time or effort to toss in because they're focused on major overhauls. Sure, plenty of us would be patient because we know it NEEDS done and we'd be willing to wait and see what changes came of it. But you can bet there would be plenty of folks leaving over it.

That says nothing about if they do it, they update it, and they don't produce something stunning in the very next content patch afterward. It might honestly break the back of FFXIV if that happened.

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It might. Or it might not. If they're going to stop content updates for a patch cycle or two in order to focus on netcode and infrastructure level stuff that will help us later, their usual method of "tell players nothing until right before it's done" will result in total failure.

Here's the thing. We all know that stuff needs to be done. We openly ask for it. If they were open about what it'd cost us to deliver it, I think most of us would be pretty tolerant because we see the long term benefit. Open communication gives you a ton of benefits when you need to do something hard, as we see from other (usually indie) game developers that need to make hard decisions and openly engage their players about it. That often works better than you might think, and it can absolutely work in a MMO where players are deeply engaged with the game and have played it so long that they care about it. We want cool stuff in the long term, and a lot of us would be okay with some short term pain to get that because we're here for the long haul. Do it right, and you wind up having your most engaged players acting as ambassadors to the rest of the playerbase.

But doing that in secret doesn't give us that. All we see is nothing happening for months and weak updates when they do come out. Without a mindset shift, the only way this works is if we limp along as we are right now and 5.0 surprises us with major fixes to this stuff. But that makes the entire 4.x cycle pretty painful. I mean, honestly I'm not sure how 4.3 is going to go because while 24 person raids are great, one of those alone can't sustain Stormblood for 3 months given the mess that Eureka is. People will get bored, fast. They need something to look forward to. Right now, everyone who dislikes Eureka has a pretty big hole because it was intended to give them content to do for a while and it's not delivering on that.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

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This right here. Here's the thing...as toxic as Overwatch has become in-game, Jeff Kaplan has been pretty open and available to the fans of the game. As wonderful as Yoshi P. is with the Live Letters, I feel like SE themselves could take a page out of Jeff Kaplan's book with communication. I'm sure some of the backlash would fade if SE, not Yoshi because he's doing as much as he can, would be more open about the state of FFXIV. Don't feed us general information - actually communicate with us and show that you're actually taking some of the more popular feedback seriously, and then address it directly. Don't give us PR statements...actually talk to us, your customers.